NVMe SSDs are the fastest storage solution you can use in modern computing. Not only that, they are compact, slim, and do not require additional power or data cables. Their storage capacity is continuously increasing while prices are decreasing. Even better, if your PC or laptop was purchased within the last year or two, you likely already have an NVMe SSD.
So, what is NVMe? How is it different from SATA or M.2 SSDs? How fast can NVMe really be?
We’ll answer these questions in this article and explain why you might be playing all your games on NVMe in the future.
The Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) technology is an interface that uses the PCI Express protocol to access data from non-volatile storage devices like SSDs, far surpassing the speed of SATA drives using the AHCI standard. It was developed to take advantage of the higher bandwidth and lower latency of the PCI Express protocol, which is traditionally used for graphics cards, sound cards, and high-speed network interfaces.
Before the introduction of NVMe, SSDs and mechanical hard drives used the SATA interface. However, due to the performance limitations of this communication standard, SSD performance hit a bottleneck, necessitating a new interface. Initially, developers bypassed this bottleneck by directly inserting SSDs into PCI Express slots, but they used non-standard specifications.
With NVMe, a unified standard was established for all manufacturers. Today, most modern NVMe SSDs use the M.2 form factor. This is an interface that connects to the motherboard, which typically has one or two dedicated slots—or you can use a PCIe expansion card with its own M.2 slot.
This design comes in various drive sizes, but the NVMe SSDs discussed in this article are all based on the M.2 specification.
Before NVMe, SATA technology was the mainstream storage technology, achieving significant progress over several generations. However, it encountered a bottleneck with the SATA III generation, with a maximum throughput of only 600 MBps. In contrast, third-generation PCI Express drives can reach speeds of up to 1000 MBps per channel. A typical NVMe SSD uses four PCIe channels, meaning potential performance could increase by over 12 times.
Since then, PCIe 4 and PCIe 5 NVMe SSDs have been introduced, offering up to 14,000 MBps in sustained read/write performance, though this may not always reflect real-world usage. For now, the fastest NVMe SSDs only offer a slight improvement over slower NVMe SSDs, and the improvement over SATA SSDs is also not as dramatic.
However, they are indeed faster, so if you want the shortest game load times and the fastest system boot times, the latest generation of NVMe SSDs can meet that need. More importantly, games that utilize the DirectStorage API for faster load times and reduced texture loading will require NVMe SSDs to fully take advantage of this feature. At the time of writing, only a few games support this function, but this may change in the coming years.
Similarly, if you want to upgrade or expand storage for your PS5, you’ll need a PCIe 4 SSD that can deliver up to 5500 MBps of sustained read/write performance.
Another major advantage of NVMe SSDs over SATA drives is their smaller size and simpler structure. They plug directly into the motherboard slot without needing any additional cables. They also consume very little power, though high-end models may require some passive cooling to prevent controller throttling.
That’s not necessarily the case. For any PC still using a mechanical hard drive as a boot drive or game drive, the most important upgrade is any type of SSD. SATA SSDs are much faster than spinning disk drives, and now the price per GB is very close, so there is almost no reason to use hard drives anymore (unless for long-term, large-scale storage).
However, if you want to reduce game load times and prepare for DirectStorage games, then at least a third- or fourth-generation NVMe SSD is ideal. More affordable lower-capacity drives, like 512GB and 1TB, are now almost comparable in cost to SATA SSDs. They are also smaller, lighter, and can be easily installed in almost any device. If you’re adventurous, you could even install a larger SSD in your Steam Deck.
Adding an additional NVMe SSD is also a great way to expand storage for your PC or laptop. Most modern PCs have one or more slots for NVMe SSDs, and you can insert one into a native slot or use a PCIe expansion card to install them. Even so, this is still much simpler than finding a mounting point for a SATA drive and connecting it to power and SATA cables.
No. Although NVMe SSDs are fast, they are still only a fraction of the speed of modern DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Even if you have a fast NVMe SSD, you still need to ensure you have enough memory to run the applications and games you want to use.
That said, if your system memory is insufficient, it will rely on the SSD to make up for some of the shortcomings, and in this case, the system won’t stall like it would with an old SATA SSD or mechanical drive. NVMe SSDs do contribute to the responsiveness of modern PCs by accessing data more quickly, but they cannot replace fast memory.
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