PCIe 4.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 SSDs: Latest drives from Corsair, Sabrent and Gigabyte tested

[Julio Franco]

High performance storage is in transition as the industry is beginning to adopt the PCIe 4.0 standard. In this roundup, we'll be taking a look at the new Corsair MP600, Sabrent Rocket and Gigabyte Aorus SSDs, all new PCIe NVMe 4.0 drives pitted against the excellent Samsung 970 Pro SSD and Intel's top of the line Optane SSD 905P.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1893-pcie-4-vs-pcie-3-ssd/

 

[Soulburn74]

Until there are pcie 4.0 Optanes and Samsung's, I'd say the jury is still out..... once you benchmark these two things, then we'll have an apples to apples samsung pcie3 vs 4, and Optane pcie 3 vs 4 tests.... and I look forward to when this happens!

 

[BSim500]

Some feedback to the reviewer - I'd really like to see real-world tests become the "standard" rather than being relegated to just "the last tests we did..." The only thing I learned from this is what I already guessed in advance - the real-world "gap" still ends up far, far smaller all around than what the theoretical sequential read speed saturation charts suggest to the extent the PCI-E 3.0 Samsung beats out every PCI-E 4.0 SSD tested in game-launch times. It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

 

[QuantumPhysics]

When I buy SSD, I'm striking the best balance I can get between price and storage capacity.

As of 2019 September, 1TB of QLC SSD storage is about $100 and 2TB is about $200.

I have my eye on Microcenter who has an intel 2TB 660p m.2 for $179 which would be perfect for my gaming laptop.

For my desktop I can choose either a Crucial or Samsung model for just $199 -$229.

I haven't bought another SSD yet because Black Friday is right around the corner and I'm sure I'll save $20 - $30 by waiting.

I haven't seen any software that truly demands more performance.

So why pay for all this high speed SSD performance if I needn't?

 

[trparky]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

 

[kludj]

Some feedback to the reviewer - I'd really like to see real-world tests become the "standard" rather than being relegated to just "the last tests we did..." The only thing I learned from this is what I already guessed in advance - the real-world "gap" still ends up far, far smaller all around than what the theoretical sequential read speed saturation charts suggest to the extent the PCI-E 3.0 Samsung beats out every PCI-E 4.0 SSD tested in game-launch times. It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

Agree on all counts. The file size curve looks dramatic, but as typical use charts show, the differences would probably not be noticeable between drives in these charts for consumers; they're all basically comparable, so it comes down to price and max capacity. The jump from HDDs to SSDs was pretty dramatic, but cutting a folder transfer time from 60s to 45s has negligible value to me. That said, and as you point out, I wouldn't be upgrading from a 970, I'd be upgrading from an aging SATA-connected 1TB 850, so being able to directly compare something in that range would be much more useful (of course, as is, I can look up old charts in another tab and look back and forth, but this is not as convenient as it could be).

 

[VinnyC]

*optane is slowest in nearly all benchmarks* "Optane is the king of productivity" am I missing something?

 

[SethNW]

Personally I believe there is little point in overspending for high end SSD for good 80% of people. Unless you need it g or work, which benefits from best quality SSD, or you do huge sequential file copies or run server or run a lot of virtual machines which will use SSD at same time,... then sure, if you do those, get Samsung SSD or PCI-e SSD where it makes sense. But in everyday use differences are marginal. Most stuff you copy is from or to slower medium, so those big sequential reads and writes don't help, like with game installs. And most of everyday stuff and game loading is just bunch of random reads and writes of small files with queue depth of 1 and thread count of one. Sure you get queue depth of 2, if you run two launchers and they both are updating and you have very fast internet. But you will need a lot more than that to get to big advertised numbers of queue depth of 32 and thread count of 4, because that is what servers do.

So for majority, either SATA SSD or something cheap like Intel 660p 1TB+ make a lot more sense, even at 200USD you will notice size difference between 2TB 660p and 1TB faster NVMe a lot more than speed difference. Yes 660p has cache that shrinks from 140GB to 12GB for 1TB model, but that is plenty for everyday use and at 1TB or even bigger at 2TB, is not a problem outside heavy work related workload. Also yes, it has 200TBW rating, but for everyday use, this is not a problem, I am gamer, have 2SSDs, OS and gaming, in 3 years with all updates, my TBW is 20TB, if I sum both drives up. Plus TBW is just guaranteed, drive will survive more. Just saying.

 

[SethNW]

Personally I believe there is little point in.. .

Just to add, fast cache is not as much of an issue, because controller is smar enough to move data from cache to slower QLC, unless you are copying one huge file. Which won't be an issue for most people even after cache shrinks as you fill the drive. This is only worry if you do ton of writing for work or write huge files.

Also game loading is not sequential read, those big files you see are huge archives, so that is also equivalent of random small reads. Plus with CPU also having ton of work, NVMe just doesn't make that huge difference

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

Why pay for speed you dont need?

I have a first gen NVMe drive, a samsung 950 pro. I also have a 2TB crucial MX500 and a 512 GB MX 300. According to synthetic benchmarks, the 950 pro is substantially faster then either crucial drive in reads, writes, and IOPS.

IRL, you cant tell any difference. Games took just as long to load with NVMe as they did with the crucials. Windows booted a whole 1 secod faster (yippee). File transfers were all limited by external media; most USB 3 flash drives cant keep up with a good sata III drive, external HDDs obviously are much slower, and external NASs are limited by either the gbE interface or USB 3, or their internal drive speed.

NVMe has amazing transfer speeds to another NVMe drive, and is useful for apps like photoshop and video editing sotware where RAW files get larger by the day. For most consumers, there is 0 advantage, even today, for going NVMe over Sata, so why spend $25 more for pointless bragging rights? That $25 can buy faster RAM, a better CPU cooler, or a AIB version of a GPU, all of which would provide tangible results, OR could be used to get a larger capacity drive instead.

 

[cliffordcooley]

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

When I get a system that supports NVMe as a boot drive. I will consider NVMe over SATA. Until then I will only consider SATA.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

Why pay for speed you dont need?

I have a first gen NVMe drive, a samsung 950 pro. I also have a 2TB crucial MX500 and a 512 GB MX 300. According to synthetic benchmarks, the 950 pro is substantially faster then either crucial drive in reads, writes, and IOPS.

IRL, you cant tell any difference. Games took just as long to load with NVMe as they did with the crucials. Windows booted a whole 1 secod faster (yippee). File transfers were all limited by external media; most USB 3 flash drives cant keep up with a good sata III drive, external HDDs obviously are much slower, and external NASs are limited by either the gbE interface or USB 3, or their internal drive speed.

NVMe has amazing transfer speeds to another NVMe drive, and is useful for apps like photoshop and video editing sotware where RAW files get larger by the day. For most consumers, there is 0 advantage, even today, for going NVMe over Sata, so why spend $25 more for pointless bragging rights? That $25 can buy faster RAM, a better CPU cooler, or a AIB version of a GPU, all of which would provide tangible results, OR could be used to get a larger capacity drive instead.

Sata's becoming obsolete, not as fancy as nvme is. It's like PCI sound card, which is still good to hear, but dudes just can't put it in every new motherboard. Although a proper Sata drive may have better thermals, that's another pro to the list of yours.

I'm still using Corsair F120 built around the 1st gen SandForce controller, since 2010. What a change of feeling it was. I don't expect anything near to that even when upgrading to last gen $400 hardware.

 

[arrowflash]

I wouldn't trust a single bit of my data with any SSD that needs a huge heatsink not to burst in flames and even then, still needs throttling ocasionally. And it baffles me that anyone would trust them, while paying a premium for that.

Standard high-end SATA SSDs already offer more than enough speed and I feel my data is safer with them.

 

[Badelhas]

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

When I get a system that supports NVMe as a boot drive. I will consider NVMe over SATA. Until then I will only consider SATA.

Are you saying we can't have a NVMe drive for our windows 10 main drive?

Also, the reviewers here on techspot never answer questions or communicate with any of the person who post the the comments, why is that?
I agree that a Sata drive should be included and that, as with the "best x570 motherboards" article it should be said that it's not worth it to invest in any of these drives since in real world everyday tasks we won't see any noticeable differences.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Are you saying we can't have a NVMe drive for our windows 10 main drive?

What I'm saying is my system (2nd Gen Sandy Bridge) is getting to be considered old and will not boot to NVMe drives. So until I upgrade buying NVMe for the moment would be pointless.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Looks like another reason not to bother with X570 MB's if you are getting Zen 2, PCI-E 4 is of no use at this stage and Sabrent looks ridiculous. Really didn't expect to see such high temps form PCi-E 4. The tests didn't delve into power usage, something Anandtech examines closely. No doubt they are much higher than PCI-E 3 drives, combine that with X570's higher power draw all in an era when we should be going in the other direction.

 

[Aus spot]

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

When I get a system that supports NVMe as a boot drive. I will consider NVMe over SATA. Until then I will only consider SATA.

Are you saying we can't have a NVMe drive for our windows 10 main drive?
.

No they are saying why bother with a sata when the price difference is so small

 

[Danny101]

I would often run virus scans, sector scans, and defrag. Which is why I generally cap hard drives at 500GB, since these maintenance procedures takes so long. Only with SSD's, that I am willing to consider the larger drives. Sure, I can now skip the defrag runs, but with garbage collection, SSD's still run a comparative process. I do have one HD that is 1TB but it's only for archive purposes. To defrag or scan that seems like it would take 3 damn days. In summary, it's the speed of SSDs that allows me to even consider multi-terabyte drives. For the foreseeable future , I am content with SATA SSDs as long as they keep shoring up the reliability, longevity, and speed of those drives. The current crop of CPUs, GPUs, subsystems, and software aren't necessarily bottlenecked by them as they were by hard drives.

 

[Aus spot]

I would often run virus scans, sector scans, and defrag. Which is why I generally cap hard drives at 500GB, since these maintenance procedures takes so long. Only with SSD's, that I am willing to consider the larger drives.

While what you say is very correct, if you run them overnight and regularly there's next to no downtime. Even my 10tb drives don't take 3 days and they don't get defragged often. I'm currently running about 100tb and those processes don't detract even on an old system.

 

[mbk34]

With HDD it made a noticeable difference having a faster drive. With SSD I just don't think it makes any difference, certainly not enough to pay a premium for it. Just for comparison I tried timing the boot time on my little Surface Go laptop and at 37 seconds it's not much slower than what you're getting with your fancy set up.

I suppose the one noticeable difference we'll see is that older SSD might become cheaper.

 

[m3tavision]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

Why pay for speed you dont need?

I have a first gen NVMe drive, a samsung 950 pro. I also have a 2TB crucial MX500 and a 512 GB MX 300. According to synthetic benchmarks, the 950 pro is substantially faster then either crucial drive in reads, writes, and IOPS.

IRL, you cant tell any difference. Games took just as long to load with NVMe as they did with the crucials. Windows booted a whole 1 secod faster (yippee). File transfers were all limited by external media; most USB 3 flash drives cant keep up with a good sata III drive, external HDDs obviously are much slower, and external NASs are limited by either the gbE interface or USB 3, or their internal drive speed.

NVMe has amazing transfer speeds to another NVMe drive, and is useful for apps like photoshop and video editing sotware where RAW files get larger by the day. For most consumers, there is 0 advantage, even today, for going NVMe over Sata, so why spend $25 more for pointless bragging rights? That $25 can buy faster RAM, a better CPU cooler, or a AIB version of a GPU, all of which would provide tangible results, OR could be used to get a larger capacity drive instead.

NVMe drives have no power and no data cables... and are substantially faster throughput. Why not spend $20 more..?

So, unless you are starving for a meal, then I see no reason in not choosing a NVMe. Unless it is a junk drive, holding media for storage.

 

[johnw06]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

granted this is starting to drop... but the price point of hardware raid/ redundancy that isn't as inefficent as mirroring and or host cpu dependent was one argument for sata. im pretty sure as of last week I noted there was a pci-e card offering some system independent features (and multiple NVMe connections) for under 150 but I didnt look into it in depth. last time I did the price point was stupid high/worse than six intel x25m - g2 and lsi sas raid card in like 09 (that was a fun build lol)

 

[johnw06]

I would often run virus scans, sector scans, and defrag. Which is why I generally cap hard drives at 500GB, since these maintenance procedures takes so long. Only with SSD's, that I am willing to consider the larger drives. Sure, I can now skip the defrag runs, but with garbage collection, SSD's still run a comparative process. I do have one HD that is 1TB but it's only for archive purposes. To defrag or scan that seems like it would take 3 damn days. In summary, it's the speed of SSDs that allows me to even consider multi-terabyte drives. For the foreseeable future , I am content with SATA SSDs as long as they keep shoring up the reliability, longevity, and speed of those drives. The current crop of CPUs, GPUs, subsystems, and software aren't necessarily bottlenecked by them as they were by hard drives.

just to be clear... you arnt occasionally defraging your ssds for what ever reason are you? can skip it... isnt necessarily knowing how terribad that is for the longevity and useless performance wise.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

Why pay for speed you dont need?

I have a first gen NVMe drive, a samsung 950 pro. I also have a 2TB crucial MX500 and a 512 GB MX 300. According to synthetic benchmarks, the 950 pro is substantially faster then either crucial drive in reads, writes, and IOPS.

IRL, you cant tell any difference. Games took just as long to load with NVMe as they did with the crucials. Windows booted a whole 1 secod faster (yippee). File transfers were all limited by external media; most USB 3 flash drives cant keep up with a good sata III drive, external HDDs obviously are much slower, and external NASs are limited by either the gbE interface or USB 3, or their internal drive speed.

NVMe has amazing transfer speeds to another NVMe drive, and is useful for apps like photoshop and video editing sotware where RAW files get larger by the day. For most consumers, there is 0 advantage, even today, for going NVMe over Sata, so why spend $25 more for pointless bragging rights? That $25 can buy faster RAM, a better CPU cooler, or a AIB version of a GPU, all of which would provide tangible results, OR could be used to get a larger capacity drive instead.

Sata's becoming obsolete, not as fancy as nvme is. It's like PCI sound card, which is still good to hear, but dudes just can't put it in every new motherboard. Although a proper Sata drive may have better thermals, that's another pro to the list of yours.

I'm still using Corsair F120 built around the 1st gen SandForce controller, since 2010. What a change of feeling it was. I don't expect anything near to that even when upgrading to last gen $400 hardware.

Show me a motherboard without SATA. Even most laptops still have SATA, those that dont are typically thina nd light models you are not going to take apart anyway.

Just like how USB 3.0 is "going obsolete", SATA will stick around for a LONG time. I feel perfectly comfortable sating SATA will still be found on mainstream motherboard a decade from now, as will USB 3.0.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It would also be nice to see a budget SATA drive (eg, 860 EVO / MX500) included for reference for obvious reasons (they make up the bulk of SSD sales and it's more likely that someone who's outgrown an old 850 EVO will be looking to upgrade than someone who bought a 970 PRO 6 months ago).

When you can get an NVMe SSD for often $15 to $25 more than the SATA equivalent SSD here in the states, it doesn't make much sense to get the SATA version of the SSD. A year or two ago you were paying a premium for NVMe SSDs. Today? Not so much.

Why pay for speed you dont need?

I have a first gen NVMe drive, a samsung 950 pro. I also have a 2TB crucial MX500 and a 512 GB MX 300. According to synthetic benchmarks, the 950 pro is substantially faster then either crucial drive in reads, writes, and IOPS.

IRL, you cant tell any difference. Games took just as long to load with NVMe as they did with the crucials. Windows booted a whole 1 secod faster (yippee). File transfers were all limited by external media; most USB 3 flash drives cant keep up with a good sata III drive, external HDDs obviously are much slower, and external NASs are limited by either the gbE interface or USB 3, or their internal drive speed.

NVMe has amazing transfer speeds to another NVMe drive, and is useful for apps like photoshop and video editing sotware where RAW files get larger by the day. For most consumers, there is 0 advantage, even today, for going NVMe over Sata, so why spend $25 more for pointless bragging rights? That $25 can buy faster RAM, a better CPU cooler, or a AIB version of a GPU, all of which would provide tangible results, OR could be used to get a larger capacity drive instead.

NVMe drives have no power and no data cables... and are substantially faster throughput. Why not spend $20 more..?

So, unless you are starving for a meal, then I see no reason in not choosing a NVMe. Unless it is a junk drive, holding media for storage.

Because, as I said, it doesnt provide any real world performance. Why waste $20 on a useless e-peanor extension rather then using it to get a bigger capacity drive? As a reminder, all that extra throughput makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER in real world usage. I could get a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive now to replace my 950 pro, would do anything for me, so why waste the money?

It isnt just "the poors" that consider these things. I am by no means poor, but I'm still not gonna waste $20 here, $15 there, ece just for some meaningless numbers. Wasting $20 every time you upgrade for some extra e-cred is how you establish wasteful behaviour, and that can lead to you being poor in the long run.

I'm not even sure where you got the "unless you are starving for a meal" line. Unless you are in the 1%, you have a budget for this stuff. The VAST majority of PC builders out there have a budget, and wasting $20 makes a difference, unless your budget is pushing $5-6K for a gaming machine.

I mean, no power/data cables? That's totally worth spending more $$$ on something completely pointless /s.

On newegg, at time of writing, the samsung 970 evo plus 1TB will run you $219, a 2TB $481; the 1TB crucial MX 500 will cost you $109, and the 2TB crucial $224. 1TB PCIE 4.0 drives are going for $229-259. So for the price of NVMe, you can get a SATA drive with double the capacity for a cheaper price (far cheaper for same capacity), an advantage you can actually make use of, instead of just bragging rights on a forum with anvil benchmarks. Unless you are buying with daddie's money, most builders would go for the SATA version instead and spend the rest of that $$$ on a better GPU/CPU/memory/ece.