Do speeds matter much with gaming?

[Leychee]

I'm thinking about finally getting rid of my 2TB HDD and replace it with a 2TB M.2.

I have a budget of approximately 100€, so my options are a Crucial P3 (3500MBps read) for 123€, Lexar NM610PRO (3300) for a bit less than 100€. There are other options that are slightly more expensive. If the extra cost is worth it, and faster speeds are significantly better I might consider spending that extra buck. I know it's going to be faster no matter what, since I've been rocking a good old SATA SSD for a while now.

 

What do you think?
Thank you!

 

[will0hlep]

How much is an Kingston NV2 where you live? it's quite a good value right now in many places.

Having an NVMe drive is worth it imo, but if all you do is game you really don't need a top tier nvme drive, any decent nvme will do.

[SquintyG33Rs]

so the only thing where this will matter is direct memory access for the game assets for the GPU. and as long as it's nvme and connected directly to CPU lanes, the answer is pretty much no. even if it's a gen3 vs gen5. even sata is not bad in real games that Resizable BAR (more than double HDD around a third of nvme performance).
 

[Leychee]

2 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

How much is an Kingston NV2 where you live? it's quite a good value right now in many places.

Having an NVMe drive is worth it, but if all you do is game you really don't need a top tier drive.

I only see 500GB NV2 for 40€ unfortunately.

2 minutes ago, SquintyG33Rs said:

so the only thing where this will matter is direct memory access for the game assets for the GPU. and as long as it's nvme and connected directly to CPU lanes, the answer is pretty much no. even if it's a gen3 vs gen5. even sata is not bad in real games that use it.
 

So any speed will be fine? My entire rig is in my signature if you need that.

[Akira Shimazu]

for game? not much different.
people usually build faster storage because they have to transferred heavy files such as editing etc. wont do much in load games unless your type of person who loves moving around the game files. how's P1 price? much popular. 
or you can save money by going SSD for Boot and HDD for game files.

[will0hlep]

5 minutes ago, Leyf said:

So any speed will be fine? My entire rig is in my signature if you need that.

Well, an NVME won't make a noticable difference to gameplay in most titles over a SATA SSD, however it will decrease load times.

[SquintyG33Rs]

3 minutes ago, Leyf said:

So any speed will be fine? My entire rig is in my signature if you need that.

yeah... this might change in the future to be honest because few games use the tech at all for now. but right now even though synthetic benchmarks specifically targeting it show big differences in actual games it's less than 10% difference in transfer rates.
the engines aren't targeting using it exclusively so they still load assets in batches that aim to hide the associated lag spike even for people playing on hard drives.
So you're improving your experience in those games because you don't get the spikes at all. but those asset patches aren't continuous GB/s so even a "first gen" nvme drive that could "only" do 1500MB/s performs pretty much the same as a gen 5 10GB/s shiny new one.

[Leychee]

5 minutes ago, Wolfycapt said:

how's P1 price? much popular. 

Not in stock unfortunately. You think the P3 isn't a safe bet?

 

4 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

Well, an NVME won't make a noticable difference to gameplay in most titles over a SATA SSD, however it will decrease load times.

As long as it's as fast or slightly faster than my current SSD, I'm more than happy.

 

3 minutes ago, SquintyG33Rs said:

yeah... this might change in the future to be honest because few games use the tech at all for now. but right now even though synthetic benchmarks specifically targeting it show big differences in actual games it's less than 10% difference in transfer rates.
the engines aren't targeting using it exclusively so they still load assets in batches that aim to hide the associated lag spike even for people playing on hard drives.
So you're improving your experience in those games because you don't get the spikes at all. but those asset patches aren't continuous GB/s so even a "first gen" nvme drive that could "only" do 1500MB/s performs pretty much the same as a gen 5 10GB/s shiny new one.

Thank you for this explanation. I assume 3500MBps should be fine then.

As I said above as long as it's faster or equal to my current SATA SSD, I'm more than happy. I have 3TB, 2 I don't use since it's a very old HDD that's not even good for backups, and even though I have 1GBps internet it's still annoying needing to uninstall/reinstall games for that extra space.

 

Thank you all. Crucial P3 it is! Reviews are quite good and it's not crazy expensive.

[Akira Shimazu]

p3 is good. but p1 is cheap. but both great.