Yeah, it is a nice deal for the 980 Pro. Albeit to make full use of it, one needs a M.2 PCIe 4.0 slot on their MB. As rough orientation, AMD had support for PCIe 4.0 SSDs starting with the 3rd-gen Ryzen, and Intel with the 11th-gen Core CPU (/Intel 500 series chipsets). So everything older than that (3 years with AMD and less than 2 years with Intel), it is not likely to fully support a PCIe 4.0 SSD. One can still use it with a M.2 PCIe 3.0 slot, but it will cap at the PCIe 3.0 speed.
For me this issue was one of the reasons why I went with AMD this time (having upgraded from a DDR3 rig), specifically with a X670E MB, which has a Gen5x4 M.2 slot, and 3 more (the 4 of which are actually running out for me, having two filled, a 3rd reserved for Gen5, and for the 4th hoping that manufacturers realize that there is a demand for high-capacity SSDs even if at Gen3 speed, such as the Crucial P3 4TB, but a bit cheaper).
Intel is still lagging behind in that regard, with Raptor Lake's PCIe 5.0 lanes limited to 16 - meaning that if one goes for a high-end Z790 and then wants to make use of the M.2 Gen5 slot, that cuts the GPU slot to x8... which is still plenty of bandwidth for current GPUs, effectively like PCIe 4 x16, but not necessarily much future-proof.
In any case, if one considers upgrading with a tight budget, I would say that is worth looking for something which has Gen4 M.2, as it is a nice boost. And 1TB may not sound much, but e.g. Steam lets one move the installation folder of games easily. So alongside a storage drive, one can have more than 1 TB of installed games, while not missing out on that boost and then another boost with DirectStorage, for whichever gaming mood of the week.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram