[SOLVED] NVME vs SATA for gaming and video editing

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
View: https://youtu.be/4DKLA7w9eeA


I've always known that these more expensive options for storage weren't "necessary" for the average consumer, yet I constantly have seen people on this forum opt for NVME storage when offering up recommended builds for people when doing a PCPP list.

Yes, the drive is faster, but..... It's not always necessary and it's a gross mis allocation of funds for the average consumer, and such drives are better suited for appropriate use cases that you can see effective returns from when using a faster drive.

What are your thoughts?

Let's discuss.
 
Solution
Obviously when it comes to the larger capacity options you get whatever is cheapest.

What I was saying was in regards to selecting a more expensive NVME option compared to SATA when at lower capacities when it's just going to be used for a couple of games and mostly as a boot drive and apps.
I just feel like I constantly see people selecting the drives and claiming it's because it's somehow worth it over a $30 250gb SATA SSD.

Especially when someone wants help budgeting out a build that's $1k or less and performance from CPU, RAM, and GPU are gonna be far more important than a more expensive SSD and opting for a more budget friendly $30-35 250GB SATA drive and the $50 Seagate barracuda compute 2TB drive is a much better allocation of...

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Don't need Linus to 'prove' this. This has been a known thing forever.

No, it is NOT a "need". Witness my drive selection below, in my sig.
The 1TB 660p was added simply because it was a 1TB solid state drive for $88, July 2019.

In gaming, the difference between NVMe and SATA III SSD is minimal to zero. You might get a 1 second faster level load time.
vs a much larger difference coming from a spinning HDD to any solid state.

However, given a near zero price difference between a 1TB Samsung 860 and a 1TB Intel 660p or Crucial P1...recommending the NVMe options is pretty easy.
 

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
Obviously when it comes to the larger capacity options you get whatever is cheapest.

What I was saying was in regards to selecting a more expensive NVME option compared to SATA when at lower capacities when it's just going to be used for a couple of games and mostly as a boot drive and apps.
I just feel like I constantly see people selecting the drives and claiming it's because it's somehow worth it over a $30 250gb SATA SSD.

Especially when someone wants help budgeting out a build that's $1k or less and performance from CPU, RAM, and GPU are gonna be far more important than a more expensive SSD and opting for a more budget friendly $30-35 250GB SATA drive and the $50 Seagate barracuda compute 2TB drive is a much better allocation of funds than a $100 1TB NVME and the argument that gets made is because NVME is just somehow "better" and worth sacrificing capacity and money for it.

I especially see people who try to build a $600 rig and decide that a $100 NVME is better than $40 480GB SATA SSD and end up dropping the CPU or GPU down a peg for it.

I wasn't arguing that NVME is more expensive or not worth in regards to a 1TB option as that specific capacity has seen great competition on pricing, just lower capacities and the foolish sacrifices that are made for NVME event at the 1TB option when you could still load games off a 7200rpm drive just fine is my peeve.

Cuz I mean sure, an SSD is faster, but not so much faster or worth that you should sacrifice for it when on a tighter budget.
 
Solution

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
a $30 250gb SATA SSD
...should not be considered. That is, at best, a second rate drive.

There is such a thing as 'too cheap'.
I would not recommend or build a system without a SSD of sufficient size and quality.
And the good things about drives, you can add another one in a few months.
Good SSD now, a 2TB spinning drive in a couple of months.

And not every system is 'games only'.
 
I find it interesting he states that it doesn't matter for gamers - which is valid - and then doubles down on DRAM-less being potentially slower than a HDD. There is truth to that - I don't recommend DRAM-less drives for any serious system - but usually the "any SSD is an upgrade" crowd likes to defend DRAM-less drives in the context of at least gaming. Furthermore, the DRAM-less WD SN550 (for example) actually does pretty well thanks to the NVMe protocol, which kind of shows that there are advantages over AHCI (in the context of SATA SSDs). He also brings up other conditions, such as fuller-drive performance, but doesn't really get into the impact that and things like SLC cache design have on the user experience. In a previous video he had no issue calling QLC and the 660p "worse" in many cases, despite the fact it was often significantly cheaper than good SATA drives. So nobody should jump to conclusions after watching this video. He's saying any SSD will give you good gaming performance, which is true, but I don't think that was ever in doubt.