Does The Speed Of Your SSD Matter In Gaming?

[@jwallner84]

Thank you, this was helpful for a build I'm working on.

[@adnelortiz]

Unless you do HEAVY data transfer loads, like editing videos or dealing with databases, most things will relate with your results.

[@ardithconley2628]

Drives with dram really helps with long transfers.

[@peteratkin3788]

Basically not worth it,if your on a budget or have the money elsewhere

[@KOT-ANGRY]

Agree 100%, because Sata ssd have the same gaming load speed as nvme and you will not feel the difference anyway ☺️!

[@AttilaM-p6x]

Thanks, great video!

[@feeterican]

Over the weekend I replaced my WD Black spinning rust drive with a Samsung EVO 870 on an old 4790K w/ 2080. Before playing CoD MW III and loading shaders would take around a half hour. Then when i got into a match the textures would take around 2 or 3 minutes to load while I was playing. Now, it only takes about 5 to 8 minutes to load shaders and when I get into a match all the textures are loaded. Just one of the benefits so far. I still need to try out Starfield. On the WD Black HDD that game just barely chugs along, just constant loading in game like ever 10 steps it would pause to load more stuff. This is just my old gaming PC that I haven't retired yet and use it for mostly checking online or watching videos when the computer room is occupied.

[@feeterican]

Oh yeah, I don't load any games onto the C: drive. I replaced the D: drive. The PC has always been on main boot SSD since the day I bult it back in '14.

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

The difference between a SSD and spinning rust is far larger than the difference between SATA SSD and M.2 SSD of any kind. The latency and access times you get with hard drives is just so incredibly large compared to a SSD. But as shown in this video the difference between SSD's are often minimal in practical use. I remember when a friend built a new computer and installed a M.2 drive for the first time. The boot time wasn't what impressed him, but when he copied a four GB file it was done so quickly he thought something had failed. Observe that it's not all that often most people copies gigabyte files, but for those working with high definition video or other work using large files a fast M.2 drive can make a huge difference. A lot of people look down on any storage using SATA, claiming that it's ridiculously slow. Sure it's slower than a fast M.2 drive, but for things lie basic OS use and surfing the web or even playing most games it's perfectly acceptable. And if you need real storage you can get huge HDD's that can stor immense amounts of data, just not do random access or huge file transfers quickly. Spinning rust can be used for backup, storing movies and such. These are not often moved or copied so the relatively low transfer speed doesn't really matter. Use spinning rust when you need a lot of storage that doesn't need blazing performance. Use SATA SSD's when there are not more M.2 slots available and you can't use a PCIe card to host more m.2 SSD's. It used to be that SATA SSD's were a lot cheaper than M.2 drives. This was pretty stupid as the drive enclosure of a 2.5" SSD is an added cost that M.2 drives doesn't have. I'm not sure about current pricing but as far as I know the price isn't a reason to go SATA instead of M.2 anymore. And of the types M.2 drives are just slightly faster, so if you can do so use M.2 and leave SATA for situations when you can't use M.2.

[@teojasper6358]

@@feeterican how about having 2tb in main drive C: and with a partition D: (on same main SSD) , will it affect anything in term of speed and boot?

[@jonathanwessner3456]

So, my sata ssd's for gaming were a great purchase. I have a gen 4 nvme running windows and often used programs, a gen 3 for my first game drive, and a sata ssd for the majority

[@computersrepaircotesaint-l7407]

Great informed video

[@CyberCPU]

Glad it was helpful!

[@real1092]

This video was both informative and funny to watch. Thanks for answer the my exact question😂❤

[@Papple476]

I know this isn't related to the video, but did Microsoft remove the option to switch to a local account on Windows 11? I tried to do it on my laptop and I was on the latest firmware. I was getting sick of all the Copilot stuff being shoved in my face, so I tried to switch to a local account since you need to be logged in with a Microsoft account to use it. When I went to switch to a local account in the "Your info" section of the accounts page, the button was gone and there was no mention of a local account anywhere in the settings. I ended up installing Windows 10, and it's a breath of fresh air.

[@dakbassett]

I'm so happy I recently subbed too you. Thank you for all the content. I have been started to binge your channel today.

[@gerowen]

3:59 With improvements that small over that long a period of time, if I had to guess it was probably more about latency than raw speed. The slower drives probably took a fraction of a second longer to retrieve the desired data than the faster ones. Just a guess.

[@PhilippeVerdy]

Gen3 vs Gen4 is not for games; it will jsut help you if you manage to perform large files operations, such as instantiating a new VM, or performing a system backup (which will be able to run in the background from a system snapshot, without interrupting you: backups will be automatable and you can keep performance on what you are doing, even if it requires some performances: a backup running while you play will no longer be sometinh to avoid; Wnidows will just wake up and use the extra resources, and will return to energy saving most of the time: the power of your PC will be instantly available only when you need it, and generally for a short time: you can then enable energy saving all the time, even when playing games, where most of the power will instead be used in the GPU, or in the NPU if the same uses it for AI or to improve the user experience by enhancing the resolution). It may also benefit to operations such as video editing and reencoding, where the contrainst is the I/O bandwidth to the storage and no longer the GPU capabilities. And you may need it if woring o, big datasets such as IA with huge data models, or for physics simulations., or for running a high performance database servers or mounting a server with many active user sessions, or when using many open tabs in a web browser, or when performing windiws system updates with less time to wait, or rebooting after a new system update, or to reduce the time needed to perform OOBE during installation of a major Windwos version...

[@TheodorosKosmidis]

The limiting factor is and will be the SATA lane speeds.

[@KN-592]

Storage pricing is so dumb high

[@CyberCPU]

Everything is dumb high right now. Inflation sucks. Hopefully it will get better eventually.

[@KN-592]

@@CyberCPU yeah like you said with the footlong subs 🥪

[@Maltojo]

Back in the 90's I paid $500 for 16 MB of Ram. Yes, that is MEGAbytes. I also paid the same for a 105 MB hard drive. We've come a long way!

[@KN-592]

@@Maltojo once money always money

[@kuoasify]

amazon had a 2tb WD black sn750 NVMe for $259 while the blue one was $220 since i agree prices on them are nuts

[@EvolvedWizard]

I'd like to see this test run with Space Marine 2 or any game that states it requires an ssd, especially for hitting a certain frame rate.

[@spook1614]

Heat is another factor too.

[@chemicallust77]

If it's strictly a gaming system, I think a good reliable SATA SSD would be fine...but if it's a multi purpose system that's used for mostly productivity during the week with some gaming during the weekends, the higher I/O drives would definitely make more sense...the faster you can save and load CAD files and video editing stuff the better

[@lindah6954]

You didn't tell us the read and right speed of the Gen 3 and the Gen 4. The Gen 3 or 4 part don't matter if the Gen 3 is rated faster.

[@GA-br8wj]

Short an long answer, YES

[@picnicsinspace198]

My TAKEAWAY from this is that...I should go buy an 8TB NVME M.2 W.D Black drive for wayy wayyy WAYYYYYYYYY BETTER performance in all aspects of gaming. Other than that, a regular ole platter HDD will be best for everything besides games. Thanks you for the great video stranger

[@NTPTM]

Hej, thanks for the video, love it! Take care and have a lovely day, or as we say in Swedish: ha en härlig dag!

[@garth448]

Cough, you won't see many improvements unless you get an ssd WITH DRAM if the nvme is cheap it more than likely will not have DRAM and you absolutely will not notice any benefit but once you have your OS on an gen 4 nvme WITH DRAM you can't go back...BTW 90% of nvme ssd's on the market do NOT have DRAM 🎉

[@stealthhunter6998]

Why do u say that? What does the DRAM do? I’ve been trying to see if there is more to ssds than just loads up thing faster. Ik that sounds stupid but open world games in UE5 have tons of traversal stutter between load zones I guess u could call them on the map. Wanted to know if it helped with that. Dead space remake, same issue on every door u open.

[@ford1546]

if your SSD is fast, the rest of the system must also be able to process data just as quickly. otherwise you will not experience this speed. even if I measure relayift's high ssd speed, things can go slowly such as extracting zip files or copying

[@BraedenOfRhea]

There is one more outlier that I would like you to be aware of games that were ported over from the PS5 like ratchet and clank Can't heavily be dependent on an ssd loading them from a hard drive can almost make them unplayable In certain parts

[@Alan-rt3se]

Where I've noticed a huge difference between SATA and NVME drives is when I back up my boot drive to a backup drive. In other words, a large file transfer of maybe 400 GB. Transferring a file of that size to a SATA drive just crawls along at a snail's pace, whereas it moves much faster if you are transferring to an NVME drive. But I agree that the difference between Gen 3 and Gen 4 is not that great, and Gen 5 is a total waste of money at this time. At least in my opinion.

[@765outdoors]

I used to have a HDD for games, battlefield 4 stuttered ALOT. Just going to a sata SSD fixed that. Going above that I don’t think it will matter alot

[@ardithconley2628]

Not knocking your testing but I wonder if your m.2 drives had DRam on them. I have found that makes a difference in mainly long reads and writs. The look really fast and drop to almost floppy drive spead with out the dram. With dram even slower drives in the long run are faster due to they do not drop off.

[@sporadicentertainment9253]

I’ve got the Samsung 980 Evo Pro 1TB and there is a firmware update for it to increase performance.

[@teojasper6358]

how about loading in application, like photoshop and others?

[@doityourself3293]

Your testing is flawed because windows compressions only allows 1 CPU thread to decompress / compress when loading and running games. Windows compression is the bottle neck of loading games and running speeds in games. Windows compression only allow 1 thread no matter how many cores you have. Love your stuff - your really good and you help a lot of people.

[@Ancientreapers]

Before I watch the entire video I'm only 4 seconds in, the short answer is yes. Faster is always better as long as it doesn't compromise date integrity and lifespan of the hardware. That applies to any hard drive or hardware in general. I recently decided to use my 1 tb platter hard drive to install all my games on instead on just using the 1 tb NVMe with just 1 or 2 games. I noticed game loading speed differences right away. No Man's Sky takes twice as long to load. Other games I notice the lag in loading assets and such in region changes, compared to the NVMe. But it's a compromise. NVMe drives are solid state drives, they have a much shorter lifespan than tradition hard drives. The more you read and write to them, the quicker you reach their read/write cycle lifespan. One of the reasons I chose to put the games on the traditional hard drive. I still have a couple of hard drives going back to the 90s, 00's and 2010s. They were all used on the daily and believe it or not they still work fine. (BTW I have the NVMe 970 EVO Plus read/write speeds up to 3,500/3,300 MB/s for my main boot drive).

[@GA-br8wj]

As long as you leave at least a 10% of the ssd empty (at all times) it will outlast any of your mechanical drives for a lot of years, the empty space covers for possible losses in the drive due to use, if you make your ssds full they will fail. Having in mind that first you bought some decent ssd.

[@CyberCPU]

SSDs don't really have a shorter lifespan anymore. That was true when they first started coming out but wear leveling technologies have gotten so good that most SSDs will last just as long as a spinning disc.

[@Ancientreapers]

@@GA-br8wj Correct. The main reason I switched the games and other data to the other 1tb hard drive. I was cutting it very close to that 10%. I had a 125 gig of free space on it. Now it's comfortable at 300 gig free space. When I put this computer together back in September 2022, I didn't know that about NVMe M.2 and having to leave a certain amount of free space. I just happened to be watching a random tech video not long after and it was mentioned and I looked into a bit more. The average person doesn't know this because it's not readily available information. It should be. As a side note, the motherboard is all Gen 4 but I went with the Gen 3 NVMe for the price and reasons in the video. Not much a difference really for the extra money of the Gen 4 at the time.

[@Ancientreapers]

@@CyberCPU Time will tell. Always good to have important files on different media backups anyway.

[@_laid_]

you should do Winaero Tweaker for win 11

[@UnbridledWhims]

I wonder if your CPU bottlenecked the load times

[@PATR0PY]

Only reason I'm looking forward to Gen 5 is to get Ge4 down to a fair price. Actually I only have 1 slot available capable of gen5 speed but probably reserving for a 4tb gen4 on special. I wonder if in the near future with Aí implementation in CPU might bring up the use of the full speeds of gen4/5, .. Thanks for the video.

[@napoficial7123]

What matters in gaming is to be good, have skills to play. I was Red redemption I #1 in PS3 with an old tube tv, a broken controller with cable and 1 Mb internet, while in USA they had 50 or 100 mb a better tv and modified controllers, scripts for lagswitch and stuff. So, you need skills, a good brain and practice, at least 8 hours playing, my best trying was playing in private with cheaters. Just that. Cheers mate

[@LaZd-]

Considering your comment ignores the basic concept of the video? I don't think you have a good brain. Also, scripts for lagswitch? You had a broken controller with bad internet but all Americans has 50 or more? (Which is a flat out lie by the way.) Also red dead redemption 1? What a great example for a multiplayer game ,(sarcasm) considering you are trying to compare internet speeds, which is irrelevant if you aren't playing multiplayer. I've got brain damage from the amount of blatant stupidity from this comment. Lmao. Cheers bud.

[@Chevytrucker2]

i guess sony has figured out how to utilize the nvme ssd to its full potential load times are practically non existent and can swap between games seamlessly

[@CyberCPU]

I believe Sony uses direct storage. There's only a few games that have had this implemented in Windows.

[@Chevytrucker2]

@@CyberCPU idk I've got a cloud storage for the game saves as well not sure how they use that because it's also on the console, the only game I've found that takes forever to load is the crew 2 but I believe it uses its own servers to communicate with the game data that's on the SSD, can't play it offline at all

[@Empire24453]

I also use Gen 3 M.2 drives based on motherboard support. End of the day Gen 4 is faster however you aren't going to see much in terms of gaming XD 1secs faster, I'm not going to kill over it for extra costs. I use Samsung 970 EVO Plus in my system, 1TB and 2TB the rest is state, that being said might have to consider replacing my 1TB m.2 with a bigger drive XD

[@AugustoV8Cesar]

MAKE A VIDEO COMPARING ''POWER SAVING'' POWERPLAN WITH ''BALANCED'' POWERPLAN

[@billmckinzie]

what is your view of Beelink SER8 Mini PC as a gaming pc

[@TheLifeOfaBichon]

I have four nvme drives. My OS WIndows 11 Pro is on a Corsair 2TB nvme PCI 5.0 drive in a PCI E 5.0 slot. All my games are also on the same type of exact model drive 2TB size just not on the OS drive also in a PCI E 5.0 slot. Both my PCI 5.0 nvme drives are directly wired to the CPU. Every single game loads including Cyber Punk 2077 at just 5 seconds the level loads. Then all the games are fully playable. Even better my two Corsair nmve pci 5.0 Pro 700 drives. Feature Direct Storage Technology. If you have a Direct X 12 Ultimate video card, Shaders 6.0, and the newest builds of Windows 10 & 11. How it works is, it loads the game from the pci 5.0 nmve, to the system RAM then to the GPU/Video RAM. It bypasses loading to the CPU. Diablo 4 has direct storage support. Diablo 4 loads levels in just 3 seconds. Then fully playable. It's not just always about read and write speeds. It's also about system architecture. I image file my OS 250GB installed data. In just 1 minute and 40 seconds it's done a full disk backup. I re-installed Windows 11 Pro the first day I got my PC in just 1 minute and 50 seconds to then finish the process booting the OS from the nvme. i full disk encrypted 2TB my OS with AES-NI CPU hardware acceleration. In only 17 minutes, 2TB was fully encrypted.

[@MrAlaverge1]

can you do a video explaing why a game might close randomly. This has been happening to me with the latest windows updates and maybe gpu driver. not sure, i had that issue with intel cpus and bios update fixed it but the issue has returned

[@engulfinglightning98]

PC need direct storage implementation, only 2 or 3 games have it...

[@CyberCPU]

Direct storage works with Gen 3 devices as well.

[@K31TH3R]

In games that do have Direct Storage support, going from a budget tier NVME to a top tier NVME does reduce loading time, but the difference is usually something like 7.2 seconds from click-to-gameplay on the top tier drive, versus 9.4 seconds click-to-gameplay on the budget drive. So while the difference might be +23%, with the load time already being so quick, the cost difference between a budget and top tier drive just doesn't make sense, at least not right now. Things may change in the future, but I imagine it will be at least a few more years before a Gen3 NVME is any kind of severe inconvenience.

[@engulfinglightning98]

@@K31TH3R totally, i have the most cheaper kingston ssd (nv2 gen4, but it is like 3500mb/s read speed) and it works perfect, didnt have any problemas whit any game. The only thing , ofc, is the life time, for now it has 2 years and in programs like crystaldiskinfo, his healt status is good haha

[@MrFacepeel]

faster nvme only helps if your running out of ram in system

[@lindah6954]

SSD speed only matters in boot up and loading games. I'm using a WD 2tb SSD 7300 in my gaming rig. From pushing the power button, It's on under 4 seconds.

[@jordan-mn6yy]

What is the slowdown like when youre using the m.2 slot that shares lanes with the cpu and all the other m.2 slots are also occupied including the gpu slot.

[@jordan-mn6yy]

Does it go from x4 to x2? At that point youre not getting full gen4 speeds? But if thats true will it still be as fast and stable as gen3?

[@Chilledoutredhead]

I know the answer yet I still watched. Lol Should have tested a direct storage game.. if you have one 🙂

[@supernova8962]

on your ad...how can i download office 2021 ? can you send a link

[@jaimecosta2966]

I personaly spend less as possible never by the latest hardware and as long as it works great... i am using lga1151 cor i 7 with 32GB and two ssd mve and a 1051 4GB grafic card... and tour vídeos i now hace windows 11 installed and office 2016 license from your sponcer wish you well

[@jmonkey1111]

15-ef2040tg

[@TheTechJunkDrawer]

I did not know da dude from ZZTop makes tech videos too! Love your Music & Tech Vids! lol, joking aside, I was wondering what the differences would be side by side.

[@jmonkey1111]

@CyberCPU Do you have any videos on how I can keep from opening my laptop (running 3 screens) everytime I need to power it on? Wake on lan isnt an option for me. Hp says their dock won't wake my hp. Can't find wake by usb. Should I just build a thin shim to reach the power button? Am I out of options? Help CPUCYBER dude.

[@jmonkey1111]

HP15-ef2040tg

[@RaymondSwanson-u9y]

The biggest bottle-neck is actually windows dumping existing memory to swap files, loading game files into memory, and alerting the game that the load is completed. In my opinion, anyways. Don't forget that loading ram is slower than reading nvme's.

[@CyberCPU]

I don't think I agree with that. The synchronous read speed of a Gen 4 SSD is around 7Gbs. However, the system this test was done on uses DDR5 6000 which has the ability to read and write at 70Gbs. Even if we were to only count the GBs/per core, this system uses a Ryzen 5 7600 6 core CPU that will have 12Gbs memory bandwidth available to it. It easily beats the speed of the SSD.

[@mentalplayground]

Brand of NVME will matter more. Gen3 numbers are off by 1 GB+ in your testing.

[@CyberCPU]

These numbers are based on the drives I'm using. Yes, brand matters. That's what these brands were able to do.

[@shuntao3475]

Until games all support Direct Storage, games will not see huge difference. Developers need the game to play on all platform, Direct Storage been out for a couple years now, so its still 1-2 years away till we see universally support.

[@samanthagriffinv2.08]

This proves my statement that a sata ssd is more then good enough for 99% of people

[@mr_whatszittoya]

haha those bots that comment after 3 min for a 9 min video :P

[@uhohwhy]

sata ssd is all you need

[@dakbassett]

On Forspoken the difference is noticeable...too bad I am the only one who plays this game lol 😢

[@CyberCPU]

I don't even own it. 🤣😂😅 I hear it's one of the only games that supports direct storage. I was considering buying it just so I could do direct storage tests.

[@dakbassett]

​@@CyberCPU Too be fair with my 5600x and 6700 xt build. It doesn't effect in-game performance over a sata ssd really. FPS, View distance and other measurables are the same. Load screens however are significantly better. 10sec or more in some cases. Thank you for the reply and Merry Christmas!

[@NoEgg4u]

Something else is bottle-necking the load times. When an NVMe drive can read 7 GB/s, and takes 48 seconds, then that would mean that 3.3 TB of data could have loaded. Clearly there was not 3.3 TB of RAM in our host's computer. Even the SATA SSD took 50 seconds, and could have loaded 25 GB during that time. So why the huge discrepancy between the wildly different speed of the SATA drive, compared to the NVMe drives, and yet almost identical loading times? There was probably STEAM related tracking, permission checking, and who knows what else going on with STEAM's servers. My money is on our host's computer being at the mercy of STEAM's servers that resulted in our host's computer spending most of its time snoozing while STEAM's network of servers were grinding data.

[@CyberCPU]

The top speed only applies to synchronous reads and writes. Loading a game is going to be random read and writes. There might be a spikes of synchronous reeds with large files but most of it will be random. Unfortunately the random read and write speeds are much closer matched.

[@NoEgg4u]

@@CyberCPU I would like to see the timings with a mechanical hard drive. A mechanical hard drive will be light-years slower with random reads and random writes, compared to SSDs. If a mechanical hard drive posts game loading times that are in the neighborhood of the SSD's results, then the bottle-neck would have to be on STEAM's end.

[@jordan-mn6yy]

If the bottleneck is an online server like steam the discrepency between the test results would be more wildly varying. Its like when you load a website sometimes it can be quicker and other times slower, and its not bc of your device or internet speed.

[@politicallyincorrect4452]

Also depends is it on board memory or HOMB memory, why do people always skip that part?

[@CyberCPU]

I have no idea what that even is. I even googled it with no results. What's HOMB memory?

[@politicallyincorrect4452]

@@CyberCPU Sorry I meant HMB or DRAM-less ssd's, it was a mistype...

[@axemanracing6222]

Still playing on SATA SSD lol

[@jarnovilen5259]

You also have to remember the issues with FAST SSD:s: They DO need cooling, adequate heat sink etc. They will wear out FAST if not cooled and will also loose the performance very quickly when stressed since the controller will start throttling. So in a gaming / internet surfing rig the Gen 3 basic SSD is a very good choice as is a basic level Gen 4 SSD. Buying a expensive and very fast SSD just doesn't make any sense. But if you do heavy or professional video editing etc. THEN you NEED a couple of very fast SSD:s, at least one for OS and one for data. In gaming PC:s many use one smaller NVMe SSD and one big SATA SSD, since the price difference was very big a couple years ago and the difference is negligible in gaming. Nowadays that is not wise anymore since the proces are roughly the same on SATA and basic NVMe SSD's but if you have a large SATA SSD lying around that is very much useful for games drive still today.

[@mr_whatszittoya]

i just wanna add that i had to turn "Enable write caching on the device" off otherwise my steam would download the games ultra slow and sometimes even stop. you could make a video about that i figured that out a lot later after having that issue

[@srvuk]

On planet earth, none of these time differences mean a thing. 2 microseconds is 100% more than 1 but in practical human terms, irrelevant. So a couple of seconds extra loading time extra is not going to induce rage, or a couple saved being of life saving proportions.

[@DavidNationSr]

i have new news u may not be awatre of.......the new canary builds will NOE run ob pc's that don't have TPM 2.0

[@mrgeebee1622]

Minimal improve/cost.

[@Rulle666]

So $15 in SSD isn't a lot of money, but $15 in food is?!🤔

[@thecolombian7536]

Considering a carton of eggs is like $4, yes

[@WilliamHollinger2019]

$15 for food should be $5.

[@jimdavis6833]

You are comparing a one time buy to a weekly expenditure. Your tunnel vision is on full display.

[@Typhon888]

$15 for 1 sandwich.

[@CyberCPU]

Correct. I used to be able to go to Subway for my whole family and spend about $30. Today it's closer to $70. That's a pretty big jump that's only taken place in the last few years.

[@hamadax97]

NVME is overrated. Old good sata is the best ;)

[@allcore5172]

Nice, copying jay saying you have bills to pay for ads

[@CyberCPU]

Doesn't everyone have bills to pay? I've been saying that for a few years. It's kind of a common problem most people deal with. 😂😅🤣

[@FLY0.8]

5th comment

[@williamtopping]

Affiliate links = Advert Even if the guy claims it isn't, doesn't mean it's not. People have amazing capacity to fool themselves, in order to fool others.

[@CyberCPU]

Can you explain to me what an affiliate link is? What makes you think a direct link to Amazon is an affiliate link? What specific part of the link is an affiliate link. For one there is nothing wrong with using affiliate links but if you're going to accuse me of something at least know what you're talking about. I don't have an Amazon affiliate account. I've tried to sign up several times and they deny me. So the links in the description are simply for people's convenience.

[@snake2106]

even a SATA ssd performs well in latest games lol