Is there much real world performance difference between Sata 6gbps and NVME SSDs?

[cbdeakin]

I've always brought Sata SSDs in the past, due to lower price, compatability with all motherboards and price.

The motherboard I'm going to buy has a NVME on it, so it seems like something worth considering.

In what situations would an NVME SSD drive be significantly faster than a Sata 6gbps SSD?

[Jonj1611]

In what situations would an NVME SSD drive be significantly faster than a Sata 6gbps SSD?

None that you would notice

[cptwhite_uk]

I do feel there is a definite improvement generally, game loading times (PUBG for example) seem measurably quicker. I think it also depends on the rest of the system to benefit for the speed increase. I think the form factor (ease of install, no wires) is the main improvement, and I'd pay the little bit extra for that. There's some good deals in the Bargains section I've just posted.

[Saracen999]

There can be a significant improvement in performance, but I would agree with the above "None that you would notice" conclusion in most situations.

It might be a trite answer, but the simplistic answer is if you had a situation where it would really be beneficial, you'd probably already know about it because you'd have a bottleneck.

So when? Well, I'd suggest very high transaction rate databases accesses, queries etc., doing very fast, very small and especially read-oriented transactions such that you are saturating Sata SSDs.

Another place might be cache-ing for a NAS but only if you are driving it hard enough for that same sort of issue to arise.

In most situations, and for most uses, and especially in consumer situations, I think "Not that you would notice" covers it. oh, and it also depends on that actually being the bottleneck. If something else is even slower, it'll make no perceivable difference at all. It's the "weakest link in the chain" principle.

[Jonj1611]

There's some good deals in the Bargains section I've just posted.

There are indeed, thinking about the 480gb ssd just to move some steam games off the spinning hard drive, can then remove that drive from the system

[Duckboy79]

I felt the difference going from a Sata 840 evo (540~Mbps) to a M.2 NVMe WD Black SN750 (2240~Mbps) using an old Z77 + 3770k 16gb ram (modded Bios), loading times, snappiness, data transfers = big difference, but then I'm really sensitive to this sort of stuff, some people, maybe even most, might not notice it at all.

[cbdeakin]

Yes, I'd expect it to help with single large file transfers, due to higher read/write speeds. Are the 4K transfers much faster on NVME drives, vs sata drives?

[Saracen999]

I felt the difference going from a Sata 840 evo (540~Mbps) to a M.2 NVMe WD Black SN750 (2240~Mbps) using an old Z77 + 3770k 16gb ram (modded Bios), loading times, snappiness, data transfers = big difference, but then I'm really sensitive to this sort of stuff, some people, maybe even most, might not notice it at all.

Which, of course, raises another issue - what difference is there, in the OPs situation, in :-

- the speed of the SSDs themselves,
- the Gen and width of the PCIe lanes, etc.
- are the lane or lanes shared, and with what?
- How many SSD's? (4 RAID'd drives can saturate more than one single drive)
- etc.

To assess NVMe v SATA, you really have to try to isolate all other factors. Otherwise, it's hard to be sure what is providing the speed increase. And, M.2 or U.2?

[watercooled]

I've always brought Sata SSDs in the past, due to lower price, compatability with all motherboards and price.

The motherboard I'm going to buy has a NVME on it, so it seems like something worth considering.

In what situations would an NVME SSD drive be significantly faster than a Sata 6gbps SSD?

It depends what you're doing, but generally no for everyday use. Not as much as the specs would have you believe anyway. IO is often not the limiting factor regardless of SSD interface.

Check some proper benchmarks (not just some Youtuber running Crystaldisk) to see whether the difference would be relevant to you, for example TPU run some "real-world" storage traces to compare how long actual activities take on competing drives. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/w...-tb-ssd/8.html

That's not to say there aren't some bad drives. The 870 QVO for example (not to be confused with the totally different and very good EVO drives) looks decent in quick synthetic benchmarks but is pretty horrific in proper benchmarks, and it's not even especially cheap! There's just no reason I could understand someone buying it over a similar priced competitor's drive. The title of this review is noteworthy! https://www.techpowerup.com/review/s...-870-qvo-1-tb/

On a more subjective level, Linus tried them side-by-side to see if people could actually tell the difference. Draw your own conclusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

Having said all that, the price difference between SATA and NVMe is often fairly small so you may consider going with an NVMe drive regardless.

My personal stance though, is I'll avoid any QLC NAND drives wherever possible - there is no price point where I think they are a better option than their TLC NAND competitors. Some disagree, but that's my stance on the matter. The drawbacks in terms of endurance, sustained performance, etc are too great to be worth the microscopic cost difference.

[Duckboy79]

Which, of course, raises another issue - what difference is there, in the OPs situation, in :-

- the speed of the SSDs themselves,
- the Gen and width of the PCIe lanes, etc.
- are the lane or lanes shared, and with what?
- etc.

To assess NVMe v SATA, you really have to try to isolate all other factors. Otherwise, it's hard to be sure what is providing the speed increase. And, M.2 or U.2?

True this^^^

But I'm guessing they are talking general Sata SSD to m.2 NVMe SSD, which in my case made a bit of a difference, not massive but more than enough to notice, add in the fact m.2 drives are dam cheap these days it makes sense to get one for the OS rather than use 6gb Sata anyway.

[Saracen999]

....

But I'm guessing they are talking general Sata SSD to m.2 NVMe SSD, which in my case made a bit of a difference, not massive but more than enough to notice, add in the fact m.2 drives are dam cheap these days it makes sense to get one for the OS rather than use 6gb Sata anyway.

I would guess so, too. The OP did ask, though ....

In what situations would an NVME SSD drive be significantly faster than a Sata 6gbps SSD?

It's also worth noting that neither SATA SSDs, nor NVMe drives, or even HDDs, are a generic, homogenous group. There are cheap, medium and expensive drives which, at least up to a point, tend to reflect the tech in them. There are also drives optimised for cost, drives optimised for performance (like those Blacks), and even drives optimised for random-read, rather than balanced read-write (including NAS drives and many/most enterprise class drives) so even "expensive" doesn't necessarily mean best for a given situation. Sometimes, depending on the type of usage, a cheaper drive will be a better (and faster) bet than a more expensive drive optimised for some completely different usage case.

Tricky, innit?

[[GSV]Trig]

I went from a spinner, to an SSD and was blown away by the speed difference, the move from SSD to NVMe wasn't anywhere near as noticeable, and, unless you had 2 identical machines side by side, you wouldn't notice it either in most everyday usage scenarios.

[cbdeakin]

You can buy a 1tb NVMe SSD for about £80 now, they've really come down in price since last checked. Basically the same price as a Sata 1tb drive, at least for a cheap model.

You'd expect an upgraded version of Sata to be introduced in the next few years, combined with USB 4, these external enclosures would probably be as fast as internal NVME drives. Or, is there some special advantage conveyed by NVME tech?

Further thoughts - I wonder if Microsoft will enable Widows 10 installs on very high speed external drives in the near future?

I bought a crucial BX500 2tb not long ago (it was pretty cheap) to install games on, and it doesn't come with DRAM. It comes with a software feature that allows ~4gb of system RAM to be used an alternative (cache) to DRAM that comes with most SSDs.

I enabled it, and it worked really well at first, when I checked it in the AS SSD benchmark program, the results were actually much faster than other equivalent drives, apparently. After a while, the results were worse than with the cache disabled. I assume this has something to do with filling up 1tb of space on the drive??

It will be interesting to test this feature with DDR4 RAM (currently on DDR3).

[ik9000]

Nvme uses the pcie standard I think so it's a different beast. I don't think there will ever be sata 4. Last I read development of any further iterations was dropped. Happy for that to be incorrect though. It would be good to get more fast headers vs just 2 nvme etc.

[Duckboy79]

I would guess so, too. The OP did ask, though ....
It's also worth noting that neither SATA SSDs, nor NVMe drives, or even HDDs, are a generic, homogenous group. There are cheap, medium and expensive drives which, at least up to a point, tend to reflect the tech in them. There are also drives optimised for cost, drives optimised for performance (like those Blacks), and even drives optimised for random-read, rather than balanced read-write (including NAS drives and many/most enterprise class drives) so even "expensive" doesn't necessarily mean best for a given situation. Sometimes, depending on the type of usage, a cheaper drive will be a better (and faster) bet than a more expensive drive optimised for some completely different usage case.

Tricky, innit?

Well that was my point, it is noticeable, will "everybody" notice it?, it depends on what they are doing and how sensitive they are, but in general, using an m.2 NVMe as an OS drive will help and will "feel" better.

[Duckboy79]

Nvme uses the pcie standard I think so it's a different beast. I don't think there will ever be sata 4. Last I read development of any further iterations was dropped. Happy for that to be incorrect though. It would be good to get more fast headers vs just 2 nvme etc.

Yeah, but there's still a long way to go before Sata dies out, I love having 6 Sata ports + 2 m.2 slots!