[SOLVED] Boot load times are the same after upgrading from WD Blue Sata SSD to Black NVME SN850x

[Dave Thompson]

Hello

Should I be noticing faster boot up times and also loading times for games? Spent almost £100 on this drive (WD Black SN850x) and I am not noticing a difference compared to the WD Blue Sata SSD, and it's a bit sad. It's supposed to be Gen4 and superfast, so why am I feeling so disappointed? Copying from and to the drive I get about 2gb/s, but I am not sure how to properly test it. Bios and Dashboard tests are all fine, but if this is as good as it gets, I regret spending so much on it.
I even had to boot into safe mode to get my cloned OS to boot the first time. It's on "Disk 4"

Thanks for advice.

R5 3600
B550 Aorus Pro (Installed on top M.2 slot)
16 Gb Fury

 

[rgd1101]

what about doing using app or playing game?

do you use your computer just for booting?

 

[USAFRet]

Changing to a 'faster' SSD has little effect on overall boot time.

Copying to and from that new shiny drive depends on the speed of the other drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Watch these:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9LyNXpsOo

 

[Dave Thompson]

do you use your computer just for booting?

Thank you for making me laugh considerably. Needed that.
Yes, I belong to a club where we line up our PCs and have speed-booting competitions. 😂

I only installed the drive today, and can't try out games as the replacement fans I ordered for my noisy GPU were dead on arrival. New ones arriving tomorrow. (I ran Subnautica for 2 minutes and it went up to 90c and throttled. Won't do that again.)

So, thanks for the links to those videos, but it's a very different story to what you see in reviews and WD adverts. "Insane speeds" they say. I really thought it was going to make things twice as fast (at least) as the Blue Sata, but I was wrong. I didn't need to buy this drive. I hardly ever need to transfer loads of data, and I would need two NVME drives to enjoy that speed anyway!! Oh well, it's in the computer now so it's done. I would be grateful though if you know of an easy way to test it and make sure it performs as it's supposed to?

I had it in my head that I paid about £30 for the Blue a few years back, but I just checked and I paid £70 for the 500gb version. I think I was confusing it with the Intergral V-series 240gb SSD which was great value at £22!

Thanks for replies and laughs

 

[USAFRet]

I would be grateful though if you know of an easy way to test it and make sure it performs as it's supposed to?

CrystalDiskMark

So, thanks for the links to those videos, but it's a very different story to what you see in reviews and WD adverts. "Insane speeds" they say.

Yep.
But the only number they quote is the Sequential speed. That HAS basically doubled between generations.
Thats what sells drives and gets clicks on articles.

But that is not where our data lives or what we do with the PC's.

Once we moved from HDD to any SSD, we're deep into diminishing returns.

You tell the difference between 10 seconds (HDD) and 1 second (SATA SSD)
But can you really tell the difference between 1 second and 0.5 seconds?

The main benefit of the SSD vs HDD is the near zero access time. No waiting on the spinning platter.
But that exists across all SSD types.

 

[Dave Thompson]

CrystalDiskMark


Yep.
But the only number they quote is the Sequential speed. That HAS basically doubled between generations.
Thats what sells drives and gets clicks on articles.

But that is not where our data lives or what we do with the PC's.

Once we moved from HDD to any SSD, we're deep into diminishing returns.

You tell the difference between 10 seconds (HDD) and 1 second (SATA SSD)
But can you really tell the difference between 1 second and 0.5 seconds?

The main benefit of the SSD vs HDD is the near zero access time. No waiting on the spinning platter.
But that exists across all SSD types.

I was shocked to see only 1 second difference in the loading of games in those videos. Sometimes we notice things that aren't true, like someone on youtube loading a game extremely quickly, but in reality, they edited it.
Yes, I suppose it's nice that I can unplug my HDD now, as I dislike the sound as much as the slow speed. I now have 3 SSD drives that I can juggle and will be just fine. It's not as pricey as I thought, but having upgraded my mainboard, of course I needed to buy a Gen4 drive!

Cheers for your help.

 

[DavidLejdar]

The videos are over 2 years old, with a CPU from back then, and with software not necessarily optimized for such drives. Times have been changing a bit since then. See e.g.:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/resources/ssd-improves-gaming-experience.html
which at the bottom mentions how development of games is moving towards using NVMe as standard.

In other words, when one does just some browsing and playing of older games, then there sure isn't a visible boost to performance by using NVMe over SATA SSD. But when interested in newer games, then some bandwidth of 300 is getting dated.

 

[USAFRet]

The videos are over 2 years old, with a CPU from back then, and with software not necessarily optimized for such drives.

Do you have any more recent tests like this? I'd absolutely be interested in seeing them.

 

[Dave Thompson]

I ran CrystalDiskmark and the R/W speeds were spot on (+7gb/s) . Shame the promises of "insane lightning speed for gamers" doesn't transfer to actual everyday usage like loading times. Live and learn, and certainly feels like dishonest marketing. Maybe I will see more benefits over time.
Upgrading my PC has been quite stressful, and it's taken me weeks to iron out the little issues.