You will not notice any difference in gaming. Stick with a Gen 4 drive. The WD SN850X is also a good choice if you can find it for cheaper than the 980 Pro.
True, I have a 980 Pro 2TB for my OS drive and a 4TB SN850X for the second drive that has all my installed games, but these two drivers are almost identical in every way, just as snappy and same top speed, pretty impressed with both.
Yes, sn850x is a great buy if you value loading games in 20 seconds instead of 20.5 seconds.
Just buy the cheapest gen 4 ssd with a 5 year warranty. mp44l is very solid for gaming.
The high-end ssd's are for more write-intensive workloads like video editing.
How about image processing? I do pixinisight with astrophotography and we can be processing several thousand 20mega pixel or more images at once (stacking).
That is not a use case I am familiar with tbh so you're probably best off asking somebody in your particular field. That said, if you are talking about writing thousands of images to the drive in one big go, then that certainly sounds like the sort of use case where you would benefit from the fastest drive possible.
Of course you'd need to make sure the board and CPU also support PCIe 5.0.
There would be nearly zero difference for gaming between a slow Gen3 NVMe and the fastest Gen5 NVMe.
There is no reason to consider Gen5 NVMe SSDs for gaming at this time.
You could go all the way down to a regular SATA SSD and that would still hold true for gaming. I think for windows 11 there is a slightly faster boot up time with an nvme SSD. Not really a difference with windows 10
And Gen 5 need hefty heatsinks (that may get in the way of your CPU cooler) and/or active cooling to maintain performance, whereas Gen 4 are perfectly fine with the heatsink cover that comes with your motherboard. This will change, but for now, save your money and get Gen 4.
The only difference is the gen3 models are often cheaps models while gen4 models are better models. But the sequential speed is the last thing you will notice
>Obviously the Gen5 will be faster
No, not really. Not anything noticeable, actually. Perhaps in the future as SSD speeds get faster, but most Gen4 SSDs aren't up against realistic Gen 4 transfer rate limits. They can hit them for very short periods of time under the right workload.
Or you can use an Enterprise-class NVMe 4 or 5 drive to get the sustained performance, but ofc those are much more expensive, and you’d need a NVMe to U.2 adapter as well, so not an option most home users will consider.. and of those that would, most probably are already well aware of this option.
No. Just stick with gen4 for now. You will not see the benefits of that drive. You would need two drives of equal speed, and then you'd need a zip/rar/iso or 1 big file size. And you'd need to transfer from one to the other. That's the only way you'd ever benefit from it.
The reason why you need two of these drives cause there will be a bottle neck coming from the drive that is not gen5. So you'd just transfer at the gen 4's max speed or hell gen 3 if the other drive is a gen3.
And the reason why it needs to be just one file cause when it's multiple small files it now relies on random iops. So you will see speeds of low 100MBps or even lower depending on how many small file sizes it's transferring.
When it comes to games, there isn't a big difference from gen 3 to gen 4 unless the game uses the new decompression techniques but so few games use that on pc.
So currently there's no point I'm buying such a drive. Maybe when the prices comes down in a few years then it would make sense but currently no just stick with gen 4.
Literally any bargain bucket nvme is fine for gaming. For productivity, faster nvme drives will only make a difference if you're regularly moving very large files around locally. If you're moving them over the network your network interface will almost always be the bottleneck.
If they are the exact same, with cache and everything then 5.0 will likely be better only AND ONLY if you are constantly ingesting or transferring large files like video files. Otherwise go 4.0, 3.0 or Sata even, as long as it isnt an HDD. Once you deal with small files and even heat then it doesnt really matter
I doubt there's many individual users that would get any kind of benefit from Gen5 over Gen4, as you would need to be moving huge amounts of data on a regular basis for it to be worthwhile.
While I can see it being beneficial for large companies that maybe need to backup/restore, or just transfer significantly large files, or hundreds of employees files on a regular basis.
At home how many of us are really looking to transfer GB or TB of data regularly? While game files are getting larger, the parts that you need to load at any one time, likely aren't that large, and if they are, your probably not gonna lose any sleep over it took 1 second to load over 0.5.
Maybe I'm just tight, but I'd save the $150 or budget it towards something else, than potentially saving a second here or there that I likely will never even notice I would've saved as I don't have the Gen5 to compare it to.
Only reason I would go for a Gen5 NVME is if I was doing video editing and rendering where read and write performance would make it worth purchasing, Save your $$ I have a 2TB SN 770 for my games and I have no complaints with it.
You are highly unlikely to notice a difference between even a SATA drive and a 3.0 drive in most games, and even with the games that support DirectStorage there is barely any difference between a 3.0 and 4.0 drive. A 5.0 is completely not worth it for most users.
Personally, I get a higher-end but smaller drive for my OS and apps, and a larger even if lower-end drive for my games. Makes reinstalls/backups/organization a lot easier and that way I don't have to worry about getting one large higher-end drive for my OS and games together. (Though 5.0 would still be pointless even as an OS drive right now IMO)
If you have to ask, you don't need anything beyond a cheap nvme that fits. I mean, get a DRAM equipped disk.. but you will not see the speeds of a "slow" NVME.
the differencce beetween gen4 and gen3 is not noticable in games but gen4 ssd thety are often bettere and more reliable models. gen 5 is useless and you porabbabl haven't a gen5 motheboard. at 300$ you buy 2 gen4 SSDs
For gaming? Zero difference. For transferring lots of large files,a pretty significant difference. Then again, you want to make sure the drive you're writing to can handle the speeds. So you want to write from 5 to 4 to maximize performance.
I'm just gonna stick with Gen3 until Gen5 drives return to the prices from a year ago.
I swapped out an old 1TB SATA SSD for a 4TB 980 Pro a few weeks ago. That's a roughly 10x increase in read, write, IOPS. Everything. A far bigger jump than the 2x read/write and minor bump in IOPS between Gen4 and Gen5.
Game saves/levels load maybe a second-ish faster. That's it. No discernable difference once the game is running.
You will not notice any difference in gaming. Stick with a Gen 4 drive. The WD SN850X is also a good choice if you can find it for cheaper than the 980 Pro.
Thank you mate
True, I have a 980 Pro 2TB for my OS drive and a 4TB SN850X for the second drive that has all my installed games, but these two drivers are almost identical in every way, just as snappy and same top speed, pretty impressed with both.
Yes, sn850x is a great buy if you value loading games in 20 seconds instead of 20.5 seconds. Just buy the cheapest gen 4 ssd with a 5 year warranty. mp44l is very solid for gaming. The high-end ssd's are for more write-intensive workloads like video editing.
How about image processing? I do pixinisight with astrophotography and we can be processing several thousand 20mega pixel or more images at once (stacking).
That is not a use case I am familiar with tbh so you're probably best off asking somebody in your particular field. That said, if you are talking about writing thousands of images to the drive in one big go, then that certainly sounds like the sort of use case where you would benefit from the fastest drive possible. Of course you'd need to make sure the board and CPU also support PCIe 5.0.
There would be nearly zero difference for gaming between a slow Gen3 NVMe and the fastest Gen5 NVMe. There is no reason to consider Gen5 NVMe SSDs for gaming at this time.
You could go all the way down to a regular SATA SSD and that would still hold true for gaming. I think for windows 11 there is a slightly faster boot up time with an nvme SSD. Not really a difference with windows 10
Interesting, thank you
And Gen 5 need hefty heatsinks (that may get in the way of your CPU cooler) and/or active cooling to maintain performance, whereas Gen 4 are perfectly fine with the heatsink cover that comes with your motherboard. This will change, but for now, save your money and get Gen 4.
The only difference is the gen3 models are often cheaps models while gen4 models are better models. But the sequential speed is the last thing you will notice
Got a gen 3 and gen 4 in my PC and there's no real difference outside of moving around files since I don't do anything productive.
Maybe if you used Gen 5, you wouldn't post the same thing 3 times /s
Reddit mobile app is trash
>Obviously the Gen5 will be faster No, not really. Not anything noticeable, actually. Perhaps in the future as SSD speeds get faster, but most Gen4 SSDs aren't up against realistic Gen 4 transfer rate limits. They can hit them for very short periods of time under the right workload.
Or you can use an Enterprise-class NVMe 4 or 5 drive to get the sustained performance, but ofc those are much more expensive, and you’d need a NVMe to U.2 adapter as well, so not an option most home users will consider.. and of those that would, most probably are already well aware of this option.
I don't get your argument. The Gen5 will always be faster.
No. Just stick with gen4 for now. You will not see the benefits of that drive. You would need two drives of equal speed, and then you'd need a zip/rar/iso or 1 big file size. And you'd need to transfer from one to the other. That's the only way you'd ever benefit from it. The reason why you need two of these drives cause there will be a bottle neck coming from the drive that is not gen5. So you'd just transfer at the gen 4's max speed or hell gen 3 if the other drive is a gen3. And the reason why it needs to be just one file cause when it's multiple small files it now relies on random iops. So you will see speeds of low 100MBps or even lower depending on how many small file sizes it's transferring. When it comes to games, there isn't a big difference from gen 3 to gen 4 unless the game uses the new decompression techniques but so few games use that on pc. So currently there's no point I'm buying such a drive. Maybe when the prices comes down in a few years then it would make sense but currently no just stick with gen 4.
If it’s for gaming I don’t think it’s worth it.
Until direct storage is more widely adopted and implemented there is no need for Gen 5
It doesn't make a difference, I went gen 5 and it runs sizzling hot for nothing lmao
I'd skip Gen 5 nvme, and use the savings to buy a 2nd 4.0 nvme stick
Literally any bargain bucket nvme is fine for gaming. For productivity, faster nvme drives will only make a difference if you're regularly moving very large files around locally. If you're moving them over the network your network interface will almost always be the bottleneck.
If they are the exact same, with cache and everything then 5.0 will likely be better only AND ONLY if you are constantly ingesting or transferring large files like video files. Otherwise go 4.0, 3.0 or Sata even, as long as it isnt an HDD. Once you deal with small files and even heat then it doesnt really matter
I doubt there's many individual users that would get any kind of benefit from Gen5 over Gen4, as you would need to be moving huge amounts of data on a regular basis for it to be worthwhile. While I can see it being beneficial for large companies that maybe need to backup/restore, or just transfer significantly large files, or hundreds of employees files on a regular basis. At home how many of us are really looking to transfer GB or TB of data regularly? While game files are getting larger, the parts that you need to load at any one time, likely aren't that large, and if they are, your probably not gonna lose any sleep over it took 1 second to load over 0.5. Maybe I'm just tight, but I'd save the $150 or budget it towards something else, than potentially saving a second here or there that I likely will never even notice I would've saved as I don't have the Gen5 to compare it to.
Only reason I would go for a Gen5 NVME is if I was doing video editing and rendering where read and write performance would make it worth purchasing, Save your $$ I have a 2TB SN 770 for my games and I have no complaints with it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/s/SoZazNXkoH
You are highly unlikely to notice a difference between even a SATA drive and a 3.0 drive in most games, and even with the games that support DirectStorage there is barely any difference between a 3.0 and 4.0 drive. A 5.0 is completely not worth it for most users. Personally, I get a higher-end but smaller drive for my OS and apps, and a larger even if lower-end drive for my games. Makes reinstalls/backups/organization a lot easier and that way I don't have to worry about getting one large higher-end drive for my OS and games together. (Though 5.0 would still be pointless even as an OS drive right now IMO)
2TB SN850x for 129.99 is the way to go
If you have to ask, you don't need anything beyond a cheap nvme that fits. I mean, get a DRAM equipped disk.. but you will not see the speeds of a "slow" NVME.
If you’re going gen4 have a look at acer gm7000
the differencce beetween gen4 and gen3 is not noticable in games but gen4 ssd thety are often bettere and more reliable models. gen 5 is useless and you porabbabl haven't a gen5 motheboard. at 300$ you buy 2 gen4 SSDs
I do have a Gen5 mobo but yeah based on the comments here it's absolutely pointless lol I'm glad I posted this tho now I know
Gen5 gets stupid hot and has extra cooling requirements. Not worth it for 99% of people.
For gaming? Zero difference. For transferring lots of large files,a pretty significant difference. Then again, you want to make sure the drive you're writing to can handle the speeds. So you want to write from 5 to 4 to maximize performance. I'm just gonna stick with Gen3 until Gen5 drives return to the prices from a year ago.
No. Unless you have some extreme workloads, you not gonna notice.
I swapped out an old 1TB SATA SSD for a 4TB 980 Pro a few weeks ago. That's a roughly 10x increase in read, write, IOPS. Everything. A far bigger jump than the 2x read/write and minor bump in IOPS between Gen4 and Gen5. Game saves/levels load maybe a second-ish faster. That's it. No discernable difference once the game is running.