Should I wait for next gen ssd?

[Pc Conquistador]

I have a gigabyte z170m-d3h motherboard with pcie gen 3 slots. I want to get a Samsung 960 evo ssd or it's sucessor. I am assuming the 970 evo (or whatever the next gen would be called) would be using pcie 4. Would I see any significant benefit from waiting for the next generation even though I have pcie gen 3?
Tldr: Should I wait for the successor of 960 evo ssd even if I have an old mobo?

Edit: Many of you are saying that the sis little difference in most applications. I plan to be using the ssd for gaming and 4k video editing. Does that change anything?

 

[Supahos]

There's very little consumer benefit from a 850evo to a 960 Evo. It honestly can't be markedly faster for everyday tasks

 

[Herc08]

I honestly don't think PCIe 4.0 is coming out to the mainstream anytime soon. The boards that are out now, are quite fine. Also, don't think you will seed a siginifcant speed increase over the 850s. To save money, I would go with the 850s, but if you want that clean look, then the 960 would work as well.

 

[geofelt]

pcie gen 3.0 really applies to graphics cards.
Today, even a top end card shows little loss on even older 2.0 slots.
Not an issue.

The big value of a ssd comes from the low latency, more than the sequential speeds.
And for that, there is not a lot of performance difference between the best and the also rans.
From that point of view, there is little value in waiting.

If you want, any of the pcie m.2 devices will have about 4x the sequential performance of a stock 2.5" ssd.
They will need pcie x4 which you have.

I do think the next gen will have much faster low latency. Perhaps an order of magnitude better.
That would be an Intel Optane device, or the rumored Z-SSD from Samsung.

FWIW, I replaced a 2.5" SSD with a Samsung 950PRO pcie m.2 device.
The only place where I noticed a big difference was in virus scans which were blazing fast.
Not a big value in the change.

 

[photonboy]

Faster SSD's have rapidly diminishing real-world benefits. Not worth worrying about.

Part of the reason is that much of Windows and programs ends up sitting in your system memory (DDR3/DDR4). Once your computer has booted up you really don't access the SSD very often.

 

[Supahos]

I'll put it this way u quit Skyrim after one quick play through years ago before I had a SSD. Now I love the game with my 850evo. I don't even run across towns anymore I can fast travel a few hundred yards faster than I can run it. Made the game awesome.

 

[photonboy]

I'll put it this way u quit Skyrim after one quick play through years ago before I had a SSD. Now I love the game with my 850evo. I don't even run across towns anymore I can fast travel a few hundred yards faster than I can run it. Made the game awesome.

Me too. Makes a big difference for this game, and any game with constant loading points.

I didn't mention that though, because the question was about "next gen SSD" which as I replied is rapidly diminishing returns.

Intel OPTANE is also very interesting though very few people have motherboards that support it. It can add some benefit to a system that already has an SSD too, though most of the benefit is too having only an HDD. (if I had a relative with a new PC with 1TB HDD then in a year or so I might just slap in a 32GB Intel Optane drive rather than deal with cloning it to an SSD etc. you literally just plug it in and it works).

Intel OPTANE works better in part because you can change bits faster rather than erase entire blocks. Even though SSD's can copy LARGER FILES fast, smaller files can still be relatively slow. Ever wonder why an HDD can take 15 minutes to do something fairly minor in terms of total write? Sometimes that's the reason. And Intel Optane can reduce that even further, which includes boot times.

*None of this changes my advice to just get a quality, non-Pro SSD like Samsung 960 EVO for the average person.

**VIDEO EDITING is more complicated. It varies depending on the program. You need to look at what FILE SIZES you are working with, and where your bottlenecks are during different stages of production. Is the CPU the bottleneck? Often it is (though at times it may only be able to use a few cores so it can be VERY HARD TO TELL where the bottleneck is).

Sometimes you may benefit from 2xRAID0, but mostly the SSD (like games) is about moving the video file into fast, system memory where you can then work on it.

It's also good to have sufficient DDR3/4 system memory. Remember, you may be spanning different versions (as you edit) such as the original, and different layers etc. So a 10GB video might need 64GB to prevent slowdowns.

You really need to figure out how to analyze where the bottlenecks are.
1) CPU (Task Manager.. again, core usage can be problematic but 100% CPU usage means only one thing. CPU bottleneck.)

2) Memory (Task Manager... monitor the history whilst editing. If you have 32GB, and never to above 22GB usage then it's pointless to get more memory. If you get pop-ups because it's getting near 30GB you need more memory or else it's going to start swapping to the SSD and/or HDD depending on how things are setup.)

3) GPU (various ways to analyze GPU usage, though this too can be complicated.)

and so on.