Is PCI-E 4 really necessary?

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

Hi,

I found a deal and just bought a kingston 1TB NVME SSD (Model SNVS/1000G)

I saw that it's PCI-E Gen 3.

Does that really make any difference for SSD's? Plenty of headroom in bandwidth - no?

 

My motherboard is in description, X570s. It does support PCI-E Gen 4, for M.2 SSD's:

 

 

1 x M.2 connector (M2A_CPU), integrated in the CPU, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2280/22110 SSDs:
AMD Ryzen™ 5000-Series/3000 Series Processors
support SATA and PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSDs

[Needfuldoer]

Gen4 is theoretically faster, but Gen3 SSDs can still be plenty fast.

[Tan3l6]

In regular usage no difference at all if the NVMe 3.0 or 4.0 drive.

Though the chosen SSD is quite slow considering 3.0 NVMe drives.

[Tetras]

The difference is very small, mainly noticed when copying large volumes between drives. That drive isn't great though (at least on paper, actual hardware is variable), which might be noticed more easily than the PCI-E version.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

I found this video on youtube. 
In some games there is apparently a few seconds of difference in loading times. 
But it's more between 3 and 5. 
Nothing I can't live without

 

 

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

Even better video, comparing different PCI-E vs SATA (My current setup)

So I'll get a nice little boost, but nothing dramatic.

 

 

 

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

I solved my own problem lololol. 
But thanks a lot for the input guys. You basically said the same as I found out in the video.

[Tan3l6]

The real life tests tend to vary.

Spoiler

Difference - it's really marginal at best. Much higher price and needed extra cooling is not worth it to go 5.0. But 4.0 SSDs cost almost as much as 3.0's.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

13 minutes ago, Tetras said:

The difference is very small, mainly noticed when copying large volumes between drives. That drive isn't great though (at least on paper, actual hardware is variable), which might be noticed more easily than the PCI-E version.

Well it isn't the best, but it's only 43$ usd unopened, 1TB NVME M.2 I'll take it.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

Well it isn't the best, but it's only 43$ usd unopened, 1TB NVME M.2 I'll take it.

thats a good deal even if the drive is slow and you wont notice it for the most part especially for just running windows or games or basically anything non storage intensive

 

reason youd get a gen4 is because theyre similarly priced to gen3 ssds though you wouldnt want a trash lowend one like the p3 plus or whatever other dramless gen4 if a dram gen3 is at a similar price, but if we are talking 10$ extra for a high end dram gen 4 over a dram gen 3 then obviously go gen 4 cause its just better value, this is if you dont neccesarily need a high speed drive

 

if you actually need the speed then youd go for a gen5 something like a crucial t700/t705, no dilly dallying with a 990 pro thatd get blown out of the water by a gen5 ssd while paying a ton extra over any other high end gen4 due to branding

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

17 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

thats a good deal even if the drive is slow and you wont notice it for the most part especially for just running windows or games or basically anything non storage intensive

 

reason youd get a gen4 is because theyre similarly priced to gen3 ssds though you wouldnt want a trash lowend one like the p3 plus or whatever other dramless gen4 if a dram gen3 is at a similar price, but if we are talking 10$ extra for a high end dram gen 4 over a dram gen 3 then obviously go gen 4 cause its just better value, this is if you dont neccesarily need a high speed drive

 

if you actually need the speed then youd go for a gen5 something like a crucial t700/t705, no dilly dallying with a 990 pro thatd get blown out of the water by a gen5 ssd while paying a ton extra over any other high end gen4 due to branding

I think running windows off of this one and general other software, it won't matter for me
I mean my game drive is a 4tb harddrive

[OrdinaryPhil]

SSD speed is not bottle-necked by the PCI-E spec.

The difference between a fast NVMe and a slow NVMe drive comes down to to the flash medium (BiCs vs NAND), the availability of DRAM cache, and the controller.

BICs tends to be a smidge faster than NAND and is more durable, but NAND has been around longer and has more mature controllers from companies like Samsung and SK Hynix. For my money, the SK Hynix Platinum is the best NVMe using NAND. It's fast and efficient. The WD SN850x is the best SSD using BICs. Also fast and very reliable.

The single best indicator of drive performance is DRAM cache. Drives that include DRAM for caching purposes have vastly higher random IOPS, which is noticeably faster. Not having DRAM means that the drive controller is either writing directly to the NAND which is slower than DRAM - or it is using your system DRAM as cache, which adds a lot of latency (relative).

This is only discussing "standard" drives using TLC NAND or BiCS. Using budget mediums like QLC will radically lower performance as well.

[kokosnh]

5 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

BICs tends to be a smidge faster than NAND and is more durable, but NAND has been around longer and has more mature controllers from companies like Samsung and SK Hynix. For my money, the SK Hynix Platinum is the best NVMe using NAND. It's fast and efficient. The WD SN850x is the best SSD using BICs. Also fast and very reliable.

The single best indicator of drive performance is DRAM cache. Drives that include DRAM for caching purposes have vastly higher random IOPS, which is noticeably faster. Not having DRAM means that the drive controller is either writing directly to the NAND which is slower than DRAM - or it is using your system DRAM as cache, which adds a lot of latency (relative).

This is only discussing "standard" drives using TLC NAND or BiCS. 

I have so many question about every sentence, and evry point you made in this text.  It's so inaccurate, and vague... 

But yes, the most important for the SSD is the controller (its architecture, and if it has DRAM) and NAND (it's type, architecture and speed). 
The PCIe standard in itself, has little difference for normal OS use, you wouldn't notice if your hi end OS drive was running on PCIe 3.0, or PCIe 4.0.

The NV1 is just slow and there are multiple hardwear versions of it even DRAMless QLC ones. It's not that it's PCIe 3.0, NV1 is on budget parts, and has low relative performance, that will tank in any have use, even windows update may be slow. 

On 6/10/2024 at 3:05 PM, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

Well it isn't the best, but it's only 43$ usd unopened, 1TB NVME M.2 I'll take it.

better SSD starts from 65$, so it's relatively a good buy for 1TB NV1, if you need it now, and speed is not a priority. 

But it's good deal, because price has risen considerably, not long ago (october 2023) you had SN580 1TB for 39$ on amazon.com (seller amazon.com).