PCIe slot dilemma

[MatMK]

Hi,

I recently got a new NVMe SSD which I want to install in my older PC, in hope of upgrading the rest when the prices settle down. Problem is, my motherboard offers only 2 PCIe slots:

1. PCIe 3.0 x16 (16 GB/s), connected to CPU
2. PCIe 2.0 x4 (2 GB/s), connected to chipset

The SSD has PCIe 4.0 x4 with advertised speeds up to 7000 MB/s and my GPU is GTX 1060, which has PCIe 3.0 x16.

 

What configuration do you think is the best with least performance hit? Installing the GPU in the first slot and hampering the SSD speeds by nearly 4 times by putting it in the gen 2 slot? Or the other way around? I read that GPUs don't usually need full bandwidth while the SSD could use every bit of it, but do you think that slowing it 8 times to only 2 GB/s is not gonna noticeably affect frame rate? I will try to do some benchmarks, but in the end I care about the real world "feel". Would it seem snappier to have a faster SSD, not only in desktop usage (which is also important for me, as I use it for work), but also for example in open world games? Or will the drop in the GPU bus speed be more noticeable?

Thank you for your opinions.

[exynol]

Generally from what I Know (Which may be wrong) but what i would do is leave the Graphics Card in the top slot as for real world performance in games won't be affected that much by it, its not the most ideal scenario but from what i can tell it seems like the best at this point. (Same for Desktop usage it won't be that noticable, LTT did a video a bout it a little while ago comparing diffrent SSDs and came up with the result that as long as you have an SSD you generally won't notice if its on a smaller bus unless  you are transfering lots of files)

 

[exynol]

Just now, exynol said:

Generally from what I Know (Which may be wrong) but what i would do is leave the Graphics Card in the top slot as for real world performance in games won't be affected that much by it, its not the most ideal scenario but from what i can tell it seems like the best at this point. (Same for Desktop usage it won't be that noticable, LTT did a video a bout it a little while ago comparing diffrent SSDs and came up with the result that as long as you have an SSD you generally won't notice if its on a smaller bus unless  you are transfering lots of files)

 

Although as its a 1060 its hard to tell weather it will be affected if its on the slower bus, In your case i would do some testing with the hardware you do have. There is nothing stopping you from swapping the PCIE slots around in the future.

[WhitetailAni]

9 minutes ago, exynol said:

Although as its a 1060 its hard to tell weather it will be affected if its on the slower bus, In your case i would do some testing with the hardware you do have. There is nothing stopping you from swapping the PCIE slots around in the future.

It will definitely be slower when routed through chipset lanes, not to mention the speed will be 1/8 as fast.

The NVMe SSD should connect over M.2, and unless your board is really old it should offer an M.2 slot. What exact SSD and motherboard do you have

[YoungBlade]

What are you doing with your computer? At 2.0 x4 speeds, you'll be getting nearly 2GB/s of bandwidth and you'll still have all the random performance. In day-to-day tasks, you'll never notice the loss. However, if you're planning to do bandwidth heavy tasks, like 4k video editing, then you might notice.

[MatMK]

Thank you for responses, the SSD is WD Black SN850 1TB and the motherboard is Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H. There exists an ATX version of this board that has M.2 slot, but sadly my Micro ATX variant was stripped from it, leaving me only with the two PCIe slots I mentioned. I am using an adapter for the SSD so I can put it in the full sized slot.

Tomorrow I am going to do some tests so I will let you know, but as I said I am not sure if the tests will represent the day-to-day usage, especially with the GPU.

As for the usage, apart from gaming I use my PC for programming and I am used to multitasking, opening and closing a lot of heavy apps and want the process to be as snappy as possible. It is true that the random performance shouldn't take that much of a hit as a sequential one, although there will also be some penalty, at least from the added latency of the older bus.

[MatMK]

For anyone who is interested, benchmark results were:
Sequential speeds for the SSD at Gen 2 were both around 1150 MB/s, whereas for Gen 3 it was 2300 MB/s, which is a 100% improvement as expected. Random access wasn't affected nearly as much, with only around a 5% improvement, more pronounced in writing than reading. These results were pretty stable with little to no variance.
That wasn't the case for the GPU. It suffered between 4 - 30% FPS penalty, depending on the benchmark or game. These results were also hard to reproduce, the performance change was different almost every time the game was run. Strangely, even games/software that did not have almost any bus usage suffered the FPS dip.
That let me to conclusion that it is better to keep the GPU in Gen 3 x16, as you recommended me. Thank you for your answers.