NVMe Gen 4 for gaming 2022?

[AGTDenton]

The final part I need to buy for my new system, whilst I also wait for a never appearing AIO, is an nvme drive for gaming.

With Microsofts DirectStorage coming to Windows, is Gen 4 now potentially worth it?
All the reviews I've found that compare Gen 3, Gen 4 & SATA SSDs suggest not, but none factor in DirectStoarge.
In fact a few reviews show the SATA SSDs beating nvme which I wasn't expecting.

Is anything else around the corner enough to tempt me to spend the extra £50 on Gen4 now or shall I just go with Gen 3 and forget about it until there are enough benchmarks.


My current pick of the bunch is this Crucial P3
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-PCI...dp/B0B25MJ1YT/

[kalniel]

DirectStorage works on gen 3 as well, so I don't think 4 is going to be anything close to a must have. But as for something that actually lets you see a difference.. we don't know! Have you got something to get by with until there is a use case for gen 4?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I got a Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB myself because it has impressive TBW,and the FireCuda 530 follows in its footsteps. The Crucial P3 is QLC and DRAMless and also has low TBW. The Samsung 980 Pro 2TB was only £150 recently:
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sam...amsung-4000445

[[GSV]Trig]

Gen 3 is plenty fast.

I was amased when I went from decent spinner to SSD, the difference, even on SATA was out of this world...

Sadly, even though the numbers suggest nvme's are much faster than SATA SSD's the difference is nowhere near as noticeable...


I'd say just get 2 drives, one for OS, one for game library...

[AGTDenton]

DirectStorage works on gen 3 as well, so I don't think 4 is going to be anything close to a must have. But as for something that actually lets you see a difference.. we don't know! Have you got something to get by with until there is a use case for gen 4?

I can certainly get the PC built with OS once I get the AIO. I bought a small 512GB Samsung Pro for the OS when they briefly came up on offer. Annoyingly I was building another system at the same time, I wish I'd had the foresight to get the 2TB as well. I wanted to get the first system stable first as it was replacing my very old storage server.

I got a Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB myself because it has impressive TBW,and the FireCuda 530 follows in its footsteps. The Crucial P3 is QLC and DRAMless and also has low TBW. The Samsung 980 Pro 2TB was only £150 recently:
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sam...amsung-4000445

Wow yeah that TBW for Crucial is very low!
Good spot on the QLC & DRAM too, I note manufacturers make this info difficult to find.

I can certainly hold on for a couple of weeks so I've put trackers on a few drives, I'll check Hot UK throughout the week as well.


Just realised the dreaded Black Friday is next month, price rises incoming no doubt

[DanceswithUnix]

I'd say just get 2 drives, one for OS, one for game library...

I have one drive for Linux and one for Windows, which is sort of the same for me

But back to the original question, I don't think we can really know yet though you can perhaps take some clues from the games consoles.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/...g-performance/

So it's been shown on a PS5 that a cheapish SN750 SE results in a small increase in load times and no change during gameplay. Short article so worth a read, though if you are like me then your games are pretty much all downloaded onto wherever they will always be stored so the benchmarks for moving games around don't count.

OFC PCIe gen 5 is now here, so I guess Gen 4 is the new Gen 3. Perhaps that will drop prices soon.

[Marcvs]

Currently gen 3 is plenty, but you an pickup a 980 Pro 2TB on the cheap right now (plus cashback from samsung)

[AGTDenton]

I got a Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB myself because it has impressive TBW,and the FireCuda 530 follows in its footsteps. The Crucial P3 is QLC and DRAMless and also has low TBW. The Samsung 980 Pro 2TB was only £150 recently:
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sam...amsung-4000445

Currently gen 3 is plenty, but you an pickup a 980 Pro 2TB on the cheap right now (plus cashback from samsung)

Thanks, not sure why HotUK claim that offer has expired, but it lasts until 25th October. I didn't initially look any further until going to CCL and seeing they still have it as a valid offer.

So I've gone with the 980 Pro 2TB from CCL - the current Amazon Direct price is more expensive by £15 or so.
Amazon sellers are not supported in the deal.

https://www.cclonline.com/mz-v8p2t0b...-m-2-2280-2tb/


The Samsung offer details are here, if anyone wants to take it up on one of the items:

https://2021.samsungpromotions.claim...ck/en-GB/terms

Just have to hope the onboard motherboard heatsink is enough for this and I have cooling in the right areas...

[AGTDenton]

So I've gone with the 980 Pro 2TB from CCL - the current Amazon Direct price is more expensive by £15 or so.
Amazon sellers are not supported in the deal.

https://www.cclonline.com/mz-v8p2t0b...-m-2-2280-2tb/

Since buying earlier, the CCL price has gone up by £10, so there's less of a difference

[Marcvs]

Ye I picked mine up for £220 a drive + 80 cashback so Im pretty happy

[AGTDenton]

Ye I picked mine up for £220 a drive + 80 cashback so Im pretty happy

Very good price. Mine was at £254 + £80 back, which I'm ok with considering pricing is so erratic now. It was at the price I was willing to pay.
Though I haven't had the confirmation email yet.
Of course I'd not read the instructions until after I built the system. They wanted a picture of the drive that I'd already installed underneath the GPU .