I think I just went overboard with M.2 SSD

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robertlein88

Jun 22, 2018
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About 2 months I bought a new PC and I have 2 storage units. I'm running windows 10 on a Samsung 970 EVO 250GB M.2 SSD. I also bought a 500GB M.2 SSD (the same brand) which I use for storage for mainly games, thinking this must reduce loading times immensely, not thinking of bottlenecks.

I feel I just went overboard If I'm being honest with myself now. I don't feel the M.2 reduces loading times much compared to a 860 EVO SSD which I used on my previoius rigg. Anyone got some thoughts and tips on this?

I'm currently wondering about selling my 500GB 970 EVO and buying either a 500 / 1 tera 860 SSD instead too save money or to get more space.
 
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USAFRet


Yes, most people have too high expectations of "OMG Fast!" with NVMe drive.
They are indeed really fast for some things.
Game level loading times, not so much.
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jay32267

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Mar 16, 2017
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I don't have an NVMe, so I can't speak from personal experience....but I've read that you don't see a huge improvement with NVMe or SATA in games which is why I've not switched yet.

If I read it was going to get me significant speed.....I would have switched already.
 
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dshort01

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Feb 14, 2006
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Interesting question. I know M.2 is the newest trend and the small form factor is nice. However, I don't what the interface is (never looked into it). I just assumed it was a sata interface but could be pci or a proprietary thing. I don't know. I see these used in laptops a lot and they go ultra cheap in terms of specs. It is just food for thought. I don't have a definitive answer.
 
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CRO5513Y

CRO5513Y

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Mar 15, 2017
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If an M.2 SSD is not NVMe it still uses the SATA bus and therefore limited to the same speed as it's SATA counterparts. Take the WD Green for example, the SATA and M.2 version perform almost identically. As for the speed question, outside of heavy workloads and synthetic tests/benchmarks you won't notice a whole lot of difference with average boot and game load times. As someone with both a good SATA SSD and NVMe. The NVMe scores wayyy faster in benchmarks but game load times between the two are hardly noticeable excluding Star Citizen which is a pretty extreme game with load times. M.2 SSDs are still pretty convenient for having no cables (direct to the Motherboard) but other than that i wouldn't be too concerned about moving from a 500GB NVMe to 1TB SATA if you need the space and mostly just Gaming. Hope this helps! :)
 
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robertlein88

Jun 22, 2018
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The drives uses the Samsung NVMe Driver, or so it says when I use the Samsung Magician Software. I also am able to test the write/read speeds and they match the specification for the storage units in the software. As far as I know everything is set up correctly in BIOS as well.

I think I just might had too high of expectations coming from SSD drives to M.2 drives.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Yes, most people have too high expectations of "OMG Fast!" with NVMe drive.
They are indeed really fast for some things.
Game level loading times, not so much.
 
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