Question If Mobo is PCIe 3.0, just buy PCIe 4.0 NVMe here forward?

Sugar Kaine Mostly

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Jun 19, 2015
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So most NVMes are downgradeable, and you only get the top speed of your default PCIe hardware, but are there any trending rules with cost vs performances? For example, are most buyers of PCIe 3.0 boards getting PCIe 4.0 NVMes for future swap out?
 

Colif

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The speed difference between 3 & 4 is only really noticeable on benchmarks so if you thinking of getting one now, you don't lose a lot getting pcie3. Might be cheaper too.

The faster the drives get, the less noticeable the difference from previous ones. Its only the jump from hdd to ssd that was noticeable, rest are less obvious.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/794578/should-you-buy-a-pcie-gen-3-or-gen-4-ssd.html

I am not sure of trends, I have a pcie4 mb with a pcie3 drive, so if anything I went backwards.
 
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Sugar Kaine Mostly

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Jun 19, 2015
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The speed difference between 3 & 4 is only really noticeable on benchmarks so if you thinking of getting one now, you don't lost a lot getting pcie3. Might be cheaper too.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/794578/should-you-buy-a-pcie-gen-3-or-gen-4-ssd.html

I am not sure of trends, I have a pcie4 mb with a pcie3 drive, so if anything I went backwards.

Thank you sir Colif. There’s a sale at my local PC shop for a 1TB 980 Pro at the same price as the 1TB 970 Pro. Which one should I get? I heard great stuff about previous gen NVMEs from Samsung, but I don’t follow such stuff. Which one would you go for?
 
There’s a sale at my local PC shop for a 1TB 980 Pro at the same price as the 1TB 970 Pro. Which one should I get?
If your motherboard supports PCIE 3.0 only, then 970 PRO is better than 980 PRO (miles better).
It has better endurance ratings. MLC vs TLC NAND chips.

980 PRO is more like 970 EVO - just with PCIE 4.0.
This is one of those situations, when higher product version actually makes the product worse than previous version.
 
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So most NVMes are downgradeable, and you only get the top speed of your default PCIe hardware, but are there any trending rules with cost vs performances? For example, are most buyers of PCIe3.0 boards getting PCIe 4.0 NVMes for future swap out?
Can't really generalize like that, it's just case to case for type of usage and certainly type oh NVME drive. There are some with and some with RAM cache where speed is same but ones without cache perform poorly as OS/boot drives. (True for all disk drives)
In general, PCIe v3 drives are somewhat faster on PCIe 4 interface if you look at benchmarks.
Largest perceptible difference was when changing HDD to any SSD, after that perceptible difference gets much smaller. On the other hand there are some benefits of faster drives. less load on the whole system and if any consequences it lasts shorter time. Most of those benefits can be seen on slower systems with little RAM as OS uses disks as a cache.
PS.
PCIe v5 is practically already here with even faster speeds and PCIe v6 standards already settled, anything you get now is (soon to be) obsolete.
 
With a few exceptions, it's worth getting a Gen4 drive from here on out. Why? Those drives get the newer controller and flash tech first. 12nm controllers are 176L flash, for example, are widely used on Gen4. It's not a huge leap over what Gen3 can do for most people but the market is moving that way. Also, a Gen4 drive will maintain these benefits over a Gen3 interface in most ways (power efficiency, TLC/native speeds, random performance, etc).

970 PRO vs 980 PRO is a stranger question because the former is 2-bit MLC (DLC) which isn't offered anymore (aside from use in Kioxia's new XL-Flash 2.0 for SCM, I guess). However, consumer usage often benefits more from a SLC cache anyway. The SLC cache on the 980 PRO, especially on a Gen4 interface, will likely outperform native MLC (which has no SLC caching) for general usage. The 970 PRO would be better for very select workloads.