[SOLVED] Which SSD is the best for gaming?

[IDProG]

There are only three types of SSDs on the market: SATA SSD, PCIe 3.0 SSD, and PCIe 4.0 SSD.

I want to ask, which one is the best?

Now, before you answer anything, I will respond to some frequently told answers about this:
- "Just buy SATA SSD, it's the cheapest, and the load time increase isn't worth the price"
Okay, but that's because of one sad truth: PC doesn't really have any exclusives anymore (Half-Life: Alyx is just one out of seven years of PC not having actual AAA exclusives). This means that pretty much all AAA games on PC are ported from consoles. The games are optimized for consoles, we cannot deny that. Also, since consoles (before PS5) use SATA, games are only optimized for that interface. That's why in many videos about game load times, PCIe SSDs only feel like SATA SSD speed and are only a bit faster than SATA SSDs. That's because fast SATA SSDs can reach up to 550MB/s read speed, while SATA 3 interface has a maximum of 600MB/s (which is weird, because SATA 3 is 6Gb/s, which should translate to 750MB/s, because 1 Byte = 8 bit, BUT I DIGRESS).
Now that next-gen consoles use PCIe SSDs, we can expect an optimization for PCIe interface, dramatically increasing game load times.

- "We don't know what will happen in the future and we can't predict it. There is a chance that game load times will be exactly the same in the future"
The problem with this statement is that it's just kind of "denial". It's just a statement without any strong evidences to back it up. I can say the exact thing, but opposite, and completely render it irrelevant.
For example, "There is a chance that game load times will be exactly the same in the future". I can say the exact opposite and cancel it out, since there is no evidence that load times will be the same in the future. So please, don't use this exact statement. If you want to make a claim that game load times will be the same in the future, please back it up, because the proof that it won't is quite compelling.

Now, that those are out of the way, these are some SSD choices of each type:
(NOTE: READ/WRITE)

First, SATA SSDs.
For this type of SSD, I only choose 1TB or above storage, and only the cheapest (while still having decent speed), because usually, high speed SATA SSDs cost the same as budget PCIe 3.0 SSD, which absolutely kills the value of this SSD.
For reference, Crucial P1 costs $130.

1. Adata SU650 960GB | (520/450) | $115
2. Patriot Burst 960GB | (560/540) | $100

Second, PCIe 3.0 SSDs.
For this type of SSD, I am okay with purchasing 500GB variant, but I will be buying another 1TB or 2TB HDD if I buy the 500GB one.

1. Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB | (3500/3000) | $165
[+] Good value
[+] Fast
[+] Can be fit at the back of motherboard
[-] Weak sustained write performance (though this does not affect game load times)

2. Adata XPG Gammix S11 Pro 512GB | (3500/3000) | $80
[+] Good value
[+] Fast
[+] Heatsink
[-] Cannot be fit at the back of motherboard
[-] Weak sustained write performance

3. Patriot Viper VPN100 1TB | (3450/3000) | $135
[+] Great value
[+] Fast
[+] Heatsink
[-] Cannot be fit at the back of motherboard
[-] 3 year warranty
[-] Weak sustained write performance

4. Crucial P1 1TB | (2000/1700) | $130
[+] Good value
[+] Can be fit at the back of motherboard
[-] Slow
[-] Horrible sustained write performance (after degraded)

5. T-Force Cardea II 1TB | (3400/3000) | $170
[+] Good value
[+] Heatsink
[+] Fast
[+] Great sustained write performance
[-] Cannot be fit at the back of motherboard

6. Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB | (3500/3300) | $255
[+] Fast
[+] Great sustained write performance
[-] Extremely overpriced (in my country, Samsung SSDs are extremely overpriced. That's why I never buy Samsung SSDs ever. This is just for you who always say "Where is Samsung?" so that you can stop suggesting this to me)
[-] No heatsink for the price

Last but not least, PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
For this type of SSD, usually, the 500GB variants (if there are any in the first place) are only 33% cheaper than the 1TB, making the 500GB a dealbreaker for me. Also, keep in mind that I will be buying the SSD at the end of this year, so there are still possibilities of faster PCIe 4.0 SSDs in the 6 months range.

1. Corsair MP600 1TB | (4950/4250) | $260
2. Adata Gammix S50 | (5000/4400) | $265
3. Gigabyte Aorus 1TB | (5000/4400) | $300
4. Patriot Viper VP4100 1TB | (5000/4400) | $205
5. T-Force Cardea Zero Z440 1TB | (5000/4400) | $250

You can search each SSDs if you need more information.

Thank you for your help.

 

[USAFRet]

"I only choose 1TB or above storage, and only the cheapest "

There's the fail in this question.
We've read far more fails with ADATA and other cheap drives. You get what you pay for.

For a game drive, I'd rather buy a known good Samsung SATA III vs a NMVe second rate drive.

Buying at the end of the year?
Prices change. A LOT.
Do your research arounf Oct-Nov timeframe.

 

[IDProG]

Well, I'm just wondering about which one of the SSDs here you think is great for me.

By the way,

You get what you pay for.

Yeah, about that.

RTX 2080 Ti and Intel's 9th gen HEDT want to disagree with you.

This "you get what you pay for" statement died a long time ago. The statement is now used by companies to overprice their products.

There are lots of products that are very cheap and have so good quality that it feels like it's worth more than the price (lots of examples of this can be seen in cases and M.2 SSDs), and at the same time, there are lots of products that are expensive, but is just not worth the price (I just gave two examples).

BUT I DIGRESS.

Thank you for your answer. I appreciate it.

 

[USAFRet]

Of the devices you listed, I would consider only 2:
The Crucial P1 and the Samsung 970.

But that's just me.
Your opinions may differ.

 

[mdd1963]

The reviews of the PCI-e 4.0 drives (only pertinent for X570 boards anyway) showed them to occasionally actually have slightly lower sustained numbers than a 970 EVO or Pro in some transfer benchmarks, boot times, game level load times, etc...

If you can get a very good price on a Samsung 970 EVO or EVO Plus, ...hit 'buy now'; yes, it will cost more than a standard SATA SSD; if SATA drive is on sale, you can undoubtedly live with the 1 sec longer boot or shutdown times, and 1/2 to 1 second difference game level load times....

(Intel's 660P a few months back had staggeringly low/good prices, making SATA even a few dollars more expensive; 2 TB models for $225 is a great deal, rivaling the price of a 2 TB Crucial MX500....)

 

[IDProG]

Of the devices you listed, I would consider only 2:
The Crucial P1 and the Samsung 970.

But that's just me.
Your opinions may differ.

Why would you prefer those two instead of the others?

The reviews of the PCI-e 4.0 drives (only pertinent for X570 boards anyway) showed them to occasionally actually have slightly lower sustained numbers than a 970 EVO or Pro in some transfer benchmarks, boot times, game level load times, etc...

If you can get a very good price on a Samsung 970 EVO or EVO Plus, ...hit 'buy now'; yes, it will cost more than a standard SATA SSD; if SATA drive is on sale, you can undoubtedly live with the 1 sec longer boot or shutdown times, and 1/2 to 1 second difference game level load times....

(Intel's 660P a few months back had staggeringly low/good prices, making SATA even a few dollars more expensive; 2 TB models for $225 is a great deal, rivaling the price of a 2 TB Crucial MX500....)

The Pro is the one which has a pretty consistent sustained write performance. Even the EVO Plus (my country doesn't sell the EVO) suffers from reduced write performance.

My internet is only capable of 1.5MB/s download, so if I download games from Steam after I buy them, I won't feel anything major, even if write speeds dipped very hard. But yeah, sustained write performance is something to consider.

Unfortunately, Samsung drives are very overpriced here, and I just can't justify buying them.

Intel's 660p is interesting, but it competes with Crucial P1, and actually has terrible sustained write performance.

What do you think of the possibilities that games will be optimized by PCIe interface instead of SATA?

 

[digitalgriffin]

Why would you prefer those two instead of the others?


The Pro is the one which has a pretty consistent sustained write performance. Even the EVO Plus (my country doesn't sell the EVO) suffers from reduced write performance.

My internet is only capable of 1.5MB/s download, so if I download games from Steam after I buy them, I won't feel anything major, even if write speeds dipped very hard. But yeah, sustained write performance is something to consider.

Unfortunately, Samsung drives are very overpriced here, and I just can't justify buying them.

Intel's 660p is interesting, but it competes with Crucial P1, and actually has terrible sustained write performance.

What do you think of the possibilities that games will be optimized by PCIe interface instead of SATA?

You seem to be under the impression that games are optimized based on drive format of consoles. This is a mistake. They might compress the textures more to reduce load times and memory requirements but most of the delay comes from setting up the engine and shaders. A lot of code comes in il's or intermediate language. A lot of it is scripted. That means it has ti be translated into final assembly based on your hardware. So your load time is often cpu throughput limited.

I am not saying that the speed of storage retrieval is not important. It is hugely so. But the nature of the code and data really doesn't change from hdd and ssd. IOTW: you cant optimze data based on where its stored unless you are worried about data size. And that is independent of the tech used and more based on capacity. Making a data file smaller will likely only decrease load no matter if its ssd or hdd.

Next gen game consoles will not show load time differences between various drives when ported over to pc. A drive that is 15% faster now will continue to be 15% faster tomorrow no matter the code. Now you have to decide if that 15% is worth twice the price or more. (optane for example)

3d nand really helps increase speed but 4 bit cells really kill it and reliability when you fill them up. If I had a choice I would pick 3d nand tlc. Theres a few rare 2bit mlc drives available if you are looking for speed stability as the drive fills up. You will pay through the nose on them however and their storage capacity isnt as great as they have 1/4 the capacity per chip package.

 

[IDProG]

You seem to be under the impression that games are optimized based on drive format of consoles. This is a mistake. They might compress the textures more to reduce load times and memory requirements but most of the delay comes from setting up the engine and shaders. A lot of code comes in il's or intermediate language. A lot of it is scripted. That means it has ti be translated into final assembly based on your hardware. So your load time is often cpu throughput limited.

That I'm going to have to disagree.

Games prepare their engine and shaders when you start running the game.

When you load your game data, it's almost purely storage-based. That's why linear games with small maps like Resident Evil 2 Remake only require 2 to 3 seconds to load, while big map games require 20-30 seconds to load.

This is what I mean by "game load times". If you see comparisons in YouTube, you can see that PCIe SSDs only load slightly faster than SATA SSDs, despite theoretically being much, much faster. This is why people think that game load time is optimized on SATA interface.

 

[USAFRet]

This is what I mean by "game load times". If you see comparisons in YouTube, you can see that PCIe SSDs only load slightly faster than SATA SSDs, despite theoretically being much, much faster. This is why people think that game load time is optimized on SATA interface.

Not everything is centered around games.

In a LOT of use cases, PCIe SSD is only marginally faster than SATA III SSD.
Even though the big sequential number that everyone gloms onto is 3x or 5x faster than a typical SATA III SSD, that is not the number that actually counts.

 

[IDProG]

Not everything is centered around games.

In a LOT of use cases, PCIe SSD is only marginally faster than SATA III SSD.
Even though the big sequential number that everyone gloms onto is 3x or 5x faster than a typical SATA III SSD, that is not the number that actually counts.

True. PCIe SSD is only 1.5x to 2x the speed of SATA SSD most of the time.

However:

1. At some times (like moving files, file extraction, etc) actually provide expected faster speed on the PCIe SSD side (3 to 5 times).
2. SATA SSD costs similar (even the same for more expensive SATA SSDs) to PCIe SSD. That's not a good thing for SATA SSDs.

 

[digitalgriffin]

That I'm going to have to disagree.

Games prepare their engine and shaders when you start running the game.

When you load your game data, it's almost purely storage-based. That's why linear games with small maps like Resident Evil 2 Remake only require 2 to 3 seconds to load, while big map games require 20-30 seconds to load.

This is what I mean by "game load times". If you see comparisons in YouTube, you can see that PCIe SSDs only load slightly faster than SATA SSDs, despite theoretically being much, much faster. This is why people think that game load time is optimized on SATA interface.

As a programmer, and engineer have to disagree with you.

Game engines load, the il kicks in they compile and load assets and shader programs and compile some more. It's not a simple one step process.

Aside from making textures and scripts smaller, the only thing you could do to optimize a mechanical HDD is arrange the entire data in a sequential manner to which it will be likely accessed on the outer tracks. This reduces seek access times which are abhorrent on HDD. Unfortunately this is extremely difficult to do after a drive has been filled up. Especially with NTFS systems.

Next gen consoles in no way make your load times better for PC's. Consoles switching from HDD yes; PCs no. In fact it will likely get worse as games get more complex and bits per cell increase.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-gJRl6Fc4E

 

[IDProG]

As a programmer, and engineer have to disagree with you.

Game engines load, the il kicks in they compile and load assets and shader programs and compile some more. It's not a simple one step process.

Aside from making textures and scripts smaller, the only thing you could do to optimize a mechanical HDD is arrange the entire data in a sequential manner to which it will be likely accessed on the outer tracks. This reduces seek access times which are abhorrent on HDD. Unfortunately this is extremely difficult to do after a drive has been filled up. Especially with NTFS systems.

Next gen consoles in no way make your load times better for PC's. Consoles switching from HDD yes; PCs no. In fact it will likely get worse as games get more complex and bits per cell increase.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-gJRl6Fc4E

What of my points exactly are you disagreeing about?

Like I said, games prepare their engines and shaders when you launch them. When you load your game data, it's purely storage-based.
That's why Resident Evil 2 Remake only requires less than 5 seconds to load save file (even on HDD), but requires around a minute to launch.

 

[digitalgriffin]

What of my points exactly are you disagreeing about?

Like I said, games prepare their engines and shaders when you launch them. When you load your game data, it's purely storage-based.
That's why Resident Evil 2 Remake only requires less than 5 seconds to load save file (even on HDD), but requires around a minute to launch.

To quote your original post

. The games are optimized for consoles, we cannot deny that. Also, since consoles (before PS5) use SATA, games are only optimized for that interface. That's why in many videos about game load times, PCIe SSDs only feel like SATA SSD speed and are only a bit faster than SATA SSDs

Theres no such thing as building a game around the storage medium unless there is a size target. And Im saying thats a moot point between SSD and HDD anyway because smaller file sizes improve performance on both.

Will drives matter more in the future? Likely storage capacity will be more important. If you look at tye original xbox, xbox360, and xb1 they all had serious issues of running out of storage space well before the architecture was out dated.

Will nvme pcie 4 make a difference? Maybe. But not a huge one and things will get worse as bits per cell increase and games get larger.

Any way the video i posted should show you the differences in load times and should answer most questions you have about speed for a given tech.

The same channel also does the best samsung pro drive sata 3 vs a cheap nvme. The nvme wins but again the difference is marginal. And goodness help you if you run out of slc cache on either. But if we use slc on everything we would be back to 128GB drives. I do believe MRAM will replace it in the next couple years. You can use quantum spin to determine 1 or 0.

 

[IDProG]

Theres no such thing as building a game around the storage medium unless there is a size target. And Im saying thats a moot point between SSD and HDD anyway because smaller file sizes improve performance on both.

I never said that games were built based around a storage medium. No, not at all.

I said that games were optimized around a specific storage interface.

HDD and SATA SSDs are different storage mediums, but they use the same storage interface, which is SATA 3.

Last-gen consoles used SATA 3. Like I said, games are optimized around consoles, then are ported to PC.
(Ironic, they can save other platforms but not the one they made the games with)

Since games are optimized around consoles, and consoles use SATA 3 interface, it is a good possibility that games are optimized around such interface, too.

That explains why games get a huge boost (almost scalable to the read speed increase) with the change from HDD to SATA SSD, but not with the change from SATA to PCIe SSD.

This video showed that games for some reason didn't utilize drives' speed to the fullest (not even close). Granted, that was game launch time instead of game load time, where games loaded their engine and shaders, and most of the work was done by the CPU, but even when launching games, they still load lots of data from drives.

The same channel also does the best samsung pro drive sata 3 vs a cheap nvme. The nvme wins but again the difference is marginal. And goodness help you if you run out of slc cache on either. But if we use slc on everything we would be back to 128GB drives. I do believe MRAM will replace it in the next couple years. You can use quantum spin to determine 1 or 0.

Wrong. SLC cache only matters for sustained write performance.
Even if you run out of SLC cache, it won't affect game load times.

Game load times rely on read speeds.

But yes, running out of SLC cache is a problem if you move files between drives frequently.

 

[USAFRet]

That explains why games get a huge boost (almost scalable to the read speed increase) with the change from HDD to SATA SSD, but not with the change from SATA to PCIe SSD.

That difference is seen across all use cases. Not just games.

 

[IDProG]

That difference is seen across all use cases. Not just games.

I am well aware that the reason why faster drives aren't as faster than slower ones as their read speeds dictate is because the speed is bottlenecked by small files. Drives cannot read small files as fast as a big file with the same size.

But still, PCIe SSDs provide faster speeds, and they and SATA SSDs have similar prices.

So, what's the compelling reason to buy SATA SSDs instead of PCIe SSDs?

 

[USAFRet]

I am well aware that the reason why faster drives aren't as faster than slower ones as their read speeds dictate is because the speed is bottlenecked by small files. Drives cannot read small files as fast as a big file with the same size.

But still, PCIe SSDs provide faster speeds, and they and SATA SSDs have similar prices.

So, what's the compelling reason to buy SATA SSDs instead of PCIe SSDs?

Only very recently has there been some sort of price parity between SATA III SSD and NVMe SSD.
And then, only for the top price SATA and low price NVMe.

Samsung 860 EVO and Samsung 970 EVO, big price diff.

Samsung 860 EVO and Intel 660p, not so much diff. I have both. I got the 1TB 660p for less than a 1TB 860 EVO. On sale last July.

The reasoning behind previous comments about games being written and compiled for the SATA interface still eludes me.

 

[digitalgriffin]

So interestingly Moore's law just did an episode where he thinks Solid State Storage will be the savior of AMD's video game business and will be implemented in a new way on AMD's console video cards because of a slide Sony did. He cited AMD's SSG Vega card from a few years back as proof.

The original quotes and articles about speed improvements are comparing coming off mech HDD. So yes, obvious improvements will be there. But not because of some miracle technology, and not most certainly on a console. Let me explain:

AMD's hybrid video editing solution on the Vega bypassed the entire system because they put their own storage data bus on the GPU. Therefore avoiding all the complicated DMA buffering into slow system memory and then passing it over the bus. The editing software told the GPU (through a patch) to access the data directly on the card. In many ways this makes sense.

But again large part of game boot times come from the compilation of code. Loading of textures and shader code is a relatively small task. That said, one of the ways graphics driver code is optimized is keeping often used shader code on the host GPU. This way it doesn't need to be transferred back over the bus from the CPU/System memory. By putting an absurdly large flash memory onto the GPU, these types of shaders can be accessed directly, although they still aren't as fast of being in GPU memory directly. It does cut down on a lot of hand optimizations as everything can be stored.

That said, my prediction about performance and load times will remain relatively unchanged. Games will get more complex. Bits per cell will increase. 3D NAND layers will increase helping somewhat. SLC cache will become an ever smaller percentage of the drive. (Thus you will not see much improvement in load times. (Yes I realize Bits Per Cell only affect write speeds but with shrinking SLC's this could be a bigger issue than you think)

Fidelity improvement is a given. But it will be incremental as focus will be on Ray Tracing. This tech will advance slowly simply because it requires lots of transistors. There are no real shortcuts other than rough sampling with noise filtering. And direct reflections are real killers.

It's sort of like when XBox360 came out. It can do 1080p. "Yes, but actually no" It will be a long time before that is a reality with any kind of decent graphics.