SSD vs M.2 For Game File

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I am wondering if people think an SSD will be fast enough to load the game or if an M.2 would be better. Both are reasonably priced these days. I have an M.2 for my boot drive and an SSD for most of my games but I have thought about getting a dedicated drive for the game. Plugging either in would be easy. Thoughts? Thanks Choombas!
 
I have 4TB of HDD space, a 3TB HDD and a 1TB HDD. While I'm sure the other two options would make loading faster, loading any game on my PC doesn't take particularly long anyway and at the cost to storage space ratio I currently rather stick with HDD. I personally dont feel like the cost for whatever speed increase I'd get is worth it yet.
 
I have 4TB of HDD space, a 3TB HDD and a 1TB HDD. While I'm sure the other two options would make loading faster, loading any game on my PC doesn't take particularly long anyway and at the cost to storage space ratio I currently rather stick with HDD. I personally dont feel like the cost for whatever speed increase I'd get is worth it yet.
I didn't swith to an SSD until 2 years ago and most things were fine. I did notice a big difference when playing DX:MD during the loading of the different parts of Prague: the subway rides/walk. 7TB is a lot of storage, I usually uninstall a lot of games I don't intend to play anymore, at least the big ones.
 
They are all SSDs.
M.2. is the type of physical port. There are NVME & SATA M.2 SSDs.

Your question is - SATA vs NVME SSDs

Sata SSDs are good enough. I imagine in the years to come the higher transfer rates of NVME will be better utilized by games.
Id take 2tb of SATA SSD over 1TB of NVME. If cost same, go with nvme.
 
They are all SSDs.
M.2. is the type of physical port. There are NVME & SATA M.2 SSDs.

Yup.

M.2/2.5'' = form factor
PCIE/SATA = bus interface
NVME = protocol

Unfortunately, these terms are often used interchangably when they should not be. Case and point, there are m.2 form factor SATA drives using AHCI (have an ancient kingston m.2 fitting this description in an old rig myself). They have correspondingly lower transfer speeds. But... both NVME drives and SATA drives are, strictly speaking, SSD's.

In terms of performance.... I'd expect the difference between a HDD, SATA SSD and "NVME" SSD to be dependent on the software (game) itself. Since a lot of games are still designed around the lowest common denominator, or spinny boy HDD's, SSD's don't tend to be fully leveraged. It wouldn't surprise me if the difference becomes more relevant in the near future.

Very little difference if any. Hell... according to this, Shadow of the Tomb Raider loads faster on SSD than M2.

A video pretending to show performance differences without even indicating the drives being used. That's cute.
 
A video pretending to show performance differences without even indicating the drives being used. That's cute.
What's cute is the video description...

SSD M.2 - Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB
SSD SATA3 - Samsung 860 Evo-Series 500GB
HDD - Western Digital Blue 7200rpm 1TB

...along with the rest of the specs. ;)
 
What's cute is the video description...

SSD M.2 - Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB
SSD SATA3 - Samsung 860 Evo-Series 500GB
HDD - Western Digital Blue 7200rpm 1TB

...along with the rest of the specs.

Ah, I just assumed they weren't provided due to watching the video through your link. Since they're not in the video itself. My bad :).
 
I didn't swith to an SSD until 2 years ago and most things were fine. I did notice a big difference when playing DX:MD during the loading of the different parts of Prague: the subway rides/walk. 7TB is a lot of storage, I usually uninstall a lot of games I don't intend to play anymore, at least the big ones.
I've been contemplating getting an SSD but it's on the end of the list of parts I want atm. The only reason I'd get it is specifically for games like DX:MD and Cyberpunk, given how expensive it is over HDD. I generally cant justify the price of an SSD to myself for the advantages it does bring, hence why it's at the end of my parts wishlist, but I have been considering it
 
I've been contemplating getting an SSD but it's on the end of the list of parts I want atm. The only reason I'd get it is specifically for games like DX:MD and Cyberpunk, given how expensive it is over HDD. I generally cant justify the price of an SSD to myself for the advantages it does bring, hence why it's at the end of my parts wishlist, but I have been considering it
Same here. My friend built himself a new PC earlier this year, so he gave me his 128 GB SSD and 1.5 TB HDD - the former is my system drive, the latter is, well, for the rest of my stuff. I am impressed by the speed of my OS now, but one thing for sure, newer games occasionally stutter for... a sec or something? Maybe even less. It is insignificant to me, so I won't bother for a long while now.

Really wonder how Cyberpunk 2077 is going to behave.
 
there is a software update coming to Direct X in the next few months that will give the GFX card direct access to the storage that should finally make the speed count at least somewhat.
 
Same here. My friend built himself a new PC earlier this year, so he gave me his 128 GB SSD and 1.5 TB HDD - the former is my system drive, the latter is, well, for the rest of my stuff. I am impressed by the speed of my OS now, but one thing for sure, newer games occasionally stutter for... a sec or something? Maybe even less. It is insignificant to me, so I won't bother for a long while now.

Really wonder how Cyberpunk 2077 is going to behave.
Yeah, SSD is a hard sell for me at the moment. I also watched that video posted above and compared the HDD boot time to my own boot time and by jesus mine is so much quicker than the video makes it out to be. The loading speed really isnt enough of an upgrade to me to pay the extra cost. I'm in the same boat as you, I would upgrade to get myself a 1 TB HDD if it became worth it, e.g. transfer speeds with GPU accessing storage and improvement of performance on games.
 
Ditched all my mechanical drives this week in new PC. All now SSD and M2, hope this is going to make a real difference.
 
NVMEs are a little bit faster but Sata SSDs generally (currently) have a longer lifespan so I would choose SATA, just be wise to pick a good brand with quality components and nice specs.
 
Thanks for all the great replies. The required specs may be released this friday so we'll see how big the game is hopefully!
 
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