Does an SSD's lack of cache/DRAM affect read speed or only write speed?

[LOST TALE]

Does an SSD's lack of cache/DRAM affect read speed or only write speed?

[Electronics Wizardy]

It will affect both reads and writes. This articly by Anandtech goes over it pretty well, https://www.anandtech.com/show/16504/the-samsung-ssd-980-500gb-1tb-review/3

 

Also the speed difference really depends on the task, for most desktop workloads there will be basically no speed difference, but if you push the drives you can see massive performance differences.

 

Also this really depends on the drive model and how its setup.

[LOST TALE]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It will affect both reads and writes. This articly by Anandtech goes over it pretty well, https://www.anandtech.com/show/16504/the-samsung-ssd-980-500gb-1tb-review/3

 

Also the speed difference really depends on the task, for most desktop workloads there will be basically no speed difference, but if you push the drives you can see massive performance differences.

 

Also this really depends on the drive model and how its setup.

what about loading games like battlefield 1 or 5 etc?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, LOST TALE said:

what about loading games like battlefield 1 or 5 etc?

Basically no difference. Almost all ssd will load games at around the same time. 

 

Look here, game load times are normally with a few seconds for bottom of the line ssd vs top of the line https://www.techspot.com/review/2116-storage-speed-game-loading/

[tkitch]

does it make a difference?  Absolutely.

Does it make a real-world difference that normal people can actually tell when using the system?  Not nearly as much.

The primary consideration on SSDs at this point is the total write expectation on the drive.  That's more important than the cache or lack of cache is for most normal uses.

[LOST TALE]

Doesn't the NVMe Host Memory Buffer mitigated the dram problem almost entirely for writing files?

[Ydfhlx]

On 5/7/2021 at 9:30 PM, LOST TALE said:

Doesn't the NVMe Host Memory Buffer mitigated the dram problem almost entirely for writing files?

The gap still is there - SSD can't borrow 1GB or system RAM, and that's typical DRAM size for a 1Tb drive, and it will be slightly slower.

 

Although the difference isn't really noticeable in this case.