PCIe 3.0 vs 4.0: How To Pick An NVMe SSD
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- When it comes to buying an NVMe SSD there are two options right now: PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0. What do the different generations of PCIe mean? In this video Gordon walks your through the differences between gen 3 and gen 4 so that you can pick the best SSD for your needs.
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I wasted money on an expensive Gen 4 NVMe drive, I can't tell the difference between it and the Gen 3 drive I had. Everything loads about the same. Performs great in benchmarks.
큰 파일 복사할 일 없으면 사지 말라니까. 근데 큰 파일 복사할 때는 차이가 크다니까.
It's more noticeable in the smaller repeating jobs...copying and saving lots of files for example. Back ups are a little quicker...etc
Gen 3 and Gen 4 only difference is in sequential read and write, but as we know for the performance random read and write matters, so it is very useless for those who are already using Gen 3 SSD, because there is no change in nvme protocol.
Wait for Gen 5 with NVMe 2.0 if these two come together then it will be great else Gen 5 is also useless like Gen 4.
Kinda odd he spent nearly 4 minutes talking about the difference between Gen 3 and Gen 4 and not once mentioned most computers a year or older don't even have a PCIe 4 interface and won't benefit from having a PCIe 4 NVMe when their computer only supports PCIe 3. Might want to mention that, its kinda important when plunking down the dough.
Imagine being this brain dead lol. The videos a VS. Hence the extreme amount of time spent comparing the items. If you can't use it then watch anyway for the future... Or not.
money talk
You mean Motherboard
Ditto. Could not agree more…
thank you for saving me 4 minutes
Important to note is that the CPU must also support gen-4, if it only supports gen-3, then even with a gen-4 ssd you will only get gen-3 speed.. And, also your motherboard needs to support gen-4.. So, both motherboard and CPU must support gen-4 in order to get the top speed..
Thank you. My question is answered. :)
And how do I know ?
@@Tuborgsefu Specs..
My motherboard had 2 slots but one supported gen 4. Considering the prices of gen 4 and the fact I'd have to upgrade to an 11th gen CPU to use the lane I just went with gen 3. It's fast enough for my workflow and copying large folders is still very quick. Obviously load times are blazing fast as expected.
To get that actual Gen4 speed while copying large files you would need another part with similar speeds or you will be limited to the speeds of whatever source/target you are copying from or to.
Yep. And the main reason touted is gaming which doesn't even use SSD asset reading yet anyway. (the high speed part here being the GPU that's reading the file).
Most people can’t even tell the difference between SATA SSDs and PCIe drives
For me, it’s more about everything besides raw speed
Does it have a DRAM cache? Is it sufficient size? I choose m.2 drives for cable management reasons and the small price premium
For laptops, pick the most efficient drive to save battery
For everyone else, pick whatever drive is cheapest at the correct capacity with a DRAM cache
Nothing else really matters
Absolutely. I went with a hybrid drive when SSDs were new, knowing the prices would drop. Now my 2TB hybrid is mass storage, (old Star Trek etc.) Then I went to SATA and noticed the difference there, but when I upgraded to Samsung 960EVO NVMe I never noticed any difference.
I did notice that it's PCI express and NVM express; express express!
Even sata to nvme you didn't notice anything?
@@Kelthor85 Nope. Streaming anime, playing World of Warcraft and other low impact games, watching RUclips etc. no noticeable difference. But big difference when I switched from HDD to SSD Sata.
@@Kelthor85 I’m sure I could if I had the two systems side by side but other than that, not really
Facts..my Asus Tuf 550 plus comes with 2 m.2 heatsinks so with 2 SK Hynix 2tb it's more than enough to operate with great cable management
DirectStorage was supposed to be packaged together with Win11, as an enticement to get people to upgrade. The fact that it is horribly delayed seems to hint that improvement to games load time is minimal at best, considering how fast NVMe drives are today.
NO.
DirectStorage isn't aimed at game load times (though it can help a lot). It's a fundamentally different paradigm. For example, in SKYRIM you select a DOOR to go into a house. The game reads the ASSET file for that house. The assets are bundled together to save space. So you have to decompress that file, then do all the calculations to setup the rendering etc before you see anything... but... with DirectStorage you can read the assets directly, unbundled so you can draw what you see with so little time you don't have loading waits. If I'm standing in the middle of that house then the assets for the wall/furniture etc I'm looking at have been read from the SSD and are in VRAM... if I start to TURN around then the assets I'm about to look at get read "just in time" and the rendered just in time.
a) if you require a fast SSD then you limit the people that can run the game
b) thus this is mostly about the PS5/XBSS consoles (and PC ports)
c) PS4/XBONE consoles have a huge user base still thus a main reason asset streaming isn't used much yet
So again, it's not about "load times" really. You may want to actually read up on how this all works.
When loading games... Most of the delay is not disk speed.. But decompressing files. The delay is more cpu bound.
true Hardware unboxed did a video on SATA ssd's and nvme ssd's and all load times were the same except very slow for HDD's.
Basically until the first game with DirectStorage or similar is released then just about any SSD (even DRAM-less) should be similar to other SSD's for gaming. It's fine to plan for DirectStorage but since a game needs to be written to support it, it's pretty much a non-issue... and even then game devs won't release a game that suddenly REQUIRES a fast SSD to work... they'll either start releasing games optimized for SLOWER SSD's to start or they'll allow the asset folder to simply be copied to system memory (i.e. DDR4) and read from there... I'd bet anything we won't suddenly start seeing PC games that REQUIRE a fast SSD to run.
DirectStorage will solve this. Also if you use a SSD for a very old game like GTA 4 you still notice the difference in load times vs HDD which the game would have been coded for at the time. So disk speed still does have a huge influence, but currently we're not noticing too much difference now.
What I am hearing is unless your in a use case scenario where you sit in office all day transferring files all day, you should save 50 dollars and go with PCI Gen 3.
Time is money.. my PCI 4.0 drive...in a PCI 4.0 system...is saving me precious time. That's worth the extra cash...
Plus...saves upgrading later on.
Most people aren't going to be able to tell the difference between a Gen3 and a Gen4 drive in most things. Hell, there are people that probably can't tell the difference between a SATA SSD and a Gen3 drive. Granted, not all NVMe drives are created equal. And that might change drastically once direct drive access starts to find it's way into games. However, in professional workloads, the difference can become more apparent. Take scrubbing through a timeline while editing. MASSIVE difference going from a HDD to an SSD. A BIG difference going from SATA to a Gen3. And a noticeable difference going from a Gen3 to a Gen4 drive.
Does this happen even on a week cpu? In other words, should I upgrade my CPU or my storage first? I'm curious because I'm considering getting the framework laptop and even though I don't do a lot of video editing, I dabble occasionally.
@@MrGamelover23 I would imagine if it has an m.2 slot that's Gen4x4, and the CPU supports it, the CPU wouldn't bottleneck the drive... if that's what you're asking. Though I would say, regardless of what video editor you're using, I'd rather use a SATA SSD or a mid grade Gen3 NVMe drive to edit off with a stronger CPU than a weaker CPU with a Gen4 drive. The Gen4 drive won't make up for the lack of CPU power doing a lot of things in the editor.
@@TheGameBench that answers both of my questions, thank you. I think I'll get the Gen 3 drive then, the framework laptop already has abysmal battery life, Gen 4 isn't worth the extra power draw.
@@MrGamelover23 I'd invest your time and money in building a new PC with Gen 5.0 components...a laptop just doesn't compare to a proper rig. Timeline dragging for me is now buttery smooth...even in OpenShot
4 is more than 3, so go for Gen4... that's the general rule you wanted to give... However, bearing in mind most high performance Gen4 (let alone the forthcoming Gen5) can only offer those huge speeds for a few moments at a time before they get so hot they need to throttle back anyway to under Gen3 top-performers speeds without a proper heatsink/cooler and most laptops don't support M.2s with heatsinks, after all only some come with a metal slab/cover you could turn into a heatsink, the gen4 benefits can be reaped only in short bursts before the physics force the drives to slow down so as not to cook the silicon ;) That is why the gen3 to gen4 disparity in laptops is less visible than on desktops that can sustain full loads for hours at a time at the 7GB/s sequential throughput levels. In daily use, on average, what users could feel is the reduction of latencies achievable by good SSDs, regardless if they're PCIe3 or PCIe4 or even SATA interfaced... Of course the best latencies in a storage device can be obtained on the NVDIMMs with 3DXPoint, but it's going to be detectable over regular NVMe M.2s in workloads typical desktop users cannot achieve. Maybe if 3DXPoint was further developped to allow the sequential bursts that rival Gen4s and expected Gen5s whilst maintaining the 10 times or lower latencies and still offered in M.2 format, that tech would have been the choice for everyone, but as it stands, going the Gen4 might only be the better choice due to bursty options and possible improvements in the controllers and attached DRAM modules for marginally improved random access/write usage patterns at next to same prices as the Gen3s...
Thanks.
Until I can actually notice a difference in game performance, or load times, for the price is just not worth it for me. I'll hold on to my gen 3 SSD, until prices come down.
My new MSI-TITAN Laptop can take 4x SSD's (1xGen4 and 3XGen3's)... my wallet is scared to death!
SK Hynix bought the Intel SSD side of the house. So now you have to download the Solidigm software for the intel NVME SSD's.
Directstorage was supposed to come last winter. We still have no games that support it and the only benches we've seen showed barely any difference gen on gen. I was planning on completely rebuilding my pc for Directstorage but if it doesn't come with real measurable results by the time next gen gpus and cpus release this fall, I'm very likely sticking with my gen3 system.
Directstorage did come, but it's still a tool that has to be integrated into the GAME. It's of no use for CURRENT games. The only way it even MATTERS to you in the slightest is if you buy a game that has this integrated, AND if the game runs better than it would without it.
It's not even worth thinking about until a game you plan to buy is RELEASED... and when I say "than it would without it" I mean that SSD assets streamed to the GPU (SSD-to-GPU) can be accomplished by first copying the SSD assets to system memory so that they are still streamed in-game and on-the-fly... here's how I see it working:
1) PC game starts, and checks if your SSD is fast enough
2) IF SSD speed greater than "x" then read direct from SSD
3) IF SSD speed less than "x" but system memory is greater than "y" then copy asset folder to system memory
4) load game level
SEE! So in theory a game designed for SSD asset streaming doesn't even need an SSD. All you need is enough system and/or video memory to hold these assets. (It might seem like we already do things this way but we don't. I really hope that DirectStorage REQUIRES the game to have the option of copying to System and/or Video memory pools. What's more expensive? Going with 32GB of system memory which you might have already or requiring the game to be on a fast SSD?)
Why would you change the drive anyway? Gen 3 will work for DirectStorage.
@@portman8909 and Ray tracing works on a 1080. Working and being good at it are two different things. I was expecting that gen4 will give me better ds. I'm not going to bet on it tho
@@ivandimitrov7994 Eh, no…. GTX doesn’t have dedicated RT cores like RTX so take a much bigger hit.
Gen 3 NVMe is officially supported by Microsoft for DirectStorage. There will benefit as gen 3 still has so much read write headroom.
@@ivandimitrov7994 Ray Tracing doesn't work on a 1080. Idk who told you it does but they're wrong.
We need faster random times and QD1. Affordable Optane type drive would be a real upgrade.
No, you need software that actually benefits from faster drives.
Replace the main SSD in most gaming/workstation computers with the fastest in the World and very few people would notice a difference.
@@photonboy999 I play games everyday, cut videos almost everyday. I can see the speed of nvme pcie3. Too bad I bought 970 evo when it was expensive january 2019. Today for the same price u get double the size.
Excellent info answered all of my questions.
1:40 Should be mentioned for people to be careful just because the label on a drive says "gen4" doesn't mean it will reach those speeds. I'm checking my favorite hardware site and I see a lot of speed differences in drives labeled gen4.
Was checking 1TB gen4 prices and cheap ones at 50/60€($53/64), only go to 3500MB/s. For one that goes to 5000MB/s the price is 87€/$93. Finally for one reaching the speeds stated in the video I would have to pay 110€/$117.
2:00 i was gonna say, i dont think a gen 4 is gonna reduce your bootup time etc by 50% in the real world, and in a lot of scenarios the gen 3 is so faar already that the difference might be practically negligible.
Both use same slot? I have gen3 512gb. and thinking up gen4 1tb.
Will it fit? They use same connection?
I also have ryzen 5 3500u processor. Hopefully it will work 🤷♂️
Thank you
Even tought(at least where I live), gn3 and gn4 are selling for the same price, so if you want just a bigger ssd go for it.
About the fit, you can see the sizes supported in your motherboard M.2's interface specs. For example: "CPU: 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support)". You can see the supported sizes in " type 2242/2260/2280". This means 22mmx42mm, 22mmx60mm, 22mmx80mm. Just check the specs of the drive you want to buy, but I think any motherboard supports the 3 sizes.
Keep in mind it is not worth for you to upgrade for a gn4 with the same size as your current drive. Your ryzen is 3.0 processor.
Hello, I currently have an Asus Z690 Motherboard with 12th gen i7 and 32gb ddr4 memory that has Four PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots and one of them currently have the Samsung 980 Pro SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe as my Primary drive for Windows 10 and I am thinking about installing Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe Interface PCIe 3.0 x4 as my Gaming Would this lower my speed from my primary drive (PCIe 4.0)? Is it ok to add a 3rd gen as a secondary drive without losing speed on the primary? Please let me know or anyone? Thanks and Happy New year 2023...
did you got the answer
Nope
@@Moto_Rid3r you n mee have the exact same configuration. im gonna populate my 3 m.2 slots with 970 evo plus 2tb soon.
1 purely for os.
1 for games
1 for downloading editing stuff
Yes you should be fine.
A 50% difference in file copy speed (or whatever percentage) might not matter much if it translates into seconds more or less.
I'm running a gen 4 so I'm now waiting for the gen 5.
Floppy Is the future.
And what benefit do you actually have currently over GEN3?
Not gaming. Backups are essentially background tasks. A few video editing tasks at specific times MAY benefit from high speeds but the use-cases that aren't synthetic are currently not many.
@@photonboy999 Why not gaming? You don't play? On the games I play it makes a difference. I'm pretty much always the first one loaded in.
@@photonboy999 I boot W11 in 2 seconds with a gen 4.
@@nerdwwii8081 Must be nice, my pcie 3 970 evo boot windows in 20 seconds since january 2019.
Its BEAUTIFUL!!! my heart just skipped a BEAT!!!
there is a big difference with DCS! DCS is working with huge files including modules that are 50GB or larger!
So if I understand this right, in summary, if your motherboard has (or you are buying a new one) always use gen 4?
Seems it’s better in all ways but price?
Even a Gen 4 pro version in a v3.0 will add massive IOPS. I did the with an evo vs pro Samsung. A Gen 4 in a Gen 3 will help.
Exactly.
So it doesn't have to do with the x4 , weather you buy PCI'e gen 3 or PCI'e gen 4
which one should i buy if i want to use it as an external drive for my M1 MAC.
Will a Gen4 NVMe make any difference in an Optiplex 5050 w/ an i5-7500 CPU? I'm thinking the PC isn't new enough to see any benefit from a Gen4 over Gen3 drive?
3:29 .. i thought someone calling me from far, had to pause for a moment .. came from music -_-
Where is the Performance??? I can't feel it!
I just have one question and concern. Will my old gen 3 device work in a new motherboard thats only gen 4? I don't care about slow times will it work is the important question😊
So I read that you can use a Gen 4 SSD to replace your Gen 3 SSD and still run smoothly. Is this true?
Gordon i threw a gen4 sp drive in my gen3 laptop now the bus is maxed out read and writes went from 1600 to 3200 in some of the speed test
Is this a question?
Just curious because this is expected to happen. It's a waste of money to put a GEN4 drive into a GEN3 laptop. You are limited by the GEN3 controller. Max throughput is just under 4GBps but how much data can actually be copied varies by multiple other factors. So somewhere between 3 and 4GB per second makes perfect sense.
Talk about heat generated causing thermal throttling. That's more important to gamers when choosing an SSD card.
I have a Beelink Ser5 mini PC Ryzen 5 gen 3 5600H. It came with a Kingston NVMe 500gb M.2 slot. CAn I use a gen 4 in that slot? Newbie here. I want a faster drive for gamin.
These backwards compatible ?
I like Gordon, for some reason he seems very trustworthy
It's the glasses 🤓
Where can I get your shirt? I want it bad...
How do you know or check whether your laptop is gen 4 compatible?
It says pci.e4 compatible it's motherboard/cpu thing not not just one thing.
My laptop accepts PCI express M.2 (2242 or 2280). Is the motherboard compatible with a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD?
This doesn't provide much clarity. We require additional information. The numbers 2242 and 2280 indicate the length and width dimensions of the M.2 size factor. To offer accurate guidance, it's essential to specify the laptop model you're referring to.
@@syafiqzaidi246 I have sorted it now. Thanks for your input.
I have experienced PCI 3.0 M.2 speeds on a brand new PCI 4.0 system...during photo processing the system was surprisingly slow....disappointingly so.
I realised that I'd bought the wrong M.2.
Now I've just ordered the PCI 4.0 equivalent (same brand, aize) and am really curious to see how much difference it makes in a real world every day test.
Result?
@@rswow I'd say that in real world use...I'm probably shaving off about 2-4 seconds per image process / save on average.
Times that by a thousand and it starts to add up! Yes...PCI 4.0 is faster...but not as much as I was anticipating. Expectations too high...but still extremely pleased with the results compared to an old PCI 2.0 system.
not me watching this thing cuz i accidentally bought a gen 3 1tb nvme to replace my gen 4 512 gb boot drive 💀
Can I use a 2280 m.2 in a 2210 slot ?
Yes, of cause, but not vice-versa.
GEN 3 is probably good enough for most people if you are not doing heavy work.
Gen 3 can still be good for workloads if it has DRAM.
I have gen 3 pcie 970 evo. Its old now almost 4 years. If im building a new pc I wont be using Pcie3 anymore.
It's just awesome
I can read and write😁
Fast forward 5 months. Intel is already talking about having pcie gen 5 out mid 2023. lol.
Intel is out of ssd Business. Some other manufactors release their first gen5 ssds this month.
PS5 only support Gen 4.
and only certain Gen 4 with 5600 Read or faster.
What a load of... I always enjoyed passion of Gordon, but this is inexcusable misinformation. Yes theoretical speed of Gen 4 is higher than Gen 3, but its also a theory.
Yes, You will benefit dealing with large or enormous files IF destination is capable of copying/writing/moving at same speed and there is no overhead between drives which always is present.
Sequential speed of 5000MB/s+ means nothing for normal users which don't operate at QD=32. 7000MB/s+ is only for Power Point slides.
Who will benefit from Gen 4 (or 5): live video processing/recording on vast scale, servers, datacenters, bigdata, particle physics and math labs of various kinds, databases, backup solutions. Something which will hammer the drives with 3 dozens of tasks at once, not a gal/guy which play a game in her/his living room.
Who will benefit from Gen3 basically everybody who is on old HDDs or even SATA SSD and doesn't belong to the category above. One advantage which Gen 3 still holds is you can still get MLC 970Pro drives. MLC NVMe is basically indestructible for life unlike TLC,QLC (and incoming PLC) crap which rarely lasts the warranty period. Plus Gen.3 drives are much, much cooler than higher generations which (controllers) output massive amount of heat. Gen.3 was happy at 7-8W peak. now double that for each next generation. That's why Gen5 will come with Noctua NH-15D to keep them in check. ;)
Advertising from SK-Hynix to force people into Gen4 which they in 99.99% of cases don't need. Don't believe a word of this ad or you'll regret it and waste money.
Another thing is gen 3 will also benefit from Microsoft's DirectStorage technology. Provided you have a DirectX 12 Ultimate GPU not just DX12.
i hv asus tuf z690 wifi d4 motherboard. i wana populate my four m.2 slots .
which one i shud buy among 2tb 970 evo plus, 980 pro or 990 pro
CAN YOU LOSE THE BACKGROUND MUSIC
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY PC IS 'GEN 4 READY? WHATS ALL IM TRYING TO FIND OUT WHY WILL NOBODY SAY
Just ask. Make/model?
Look at the motherboard information, also if your cpu supports gen 4