NVM Express cards?

[Duck Twacy]

Does anyone have an NVMe in their system, and are they really faster than a high end computer with lots of RAM and a good CPU?

[iceman1980]

They are very fast and only matter to games which try and do asset paging. It depends on what you use an NVMe drive for. They make good NAS write-caches and favour raw I/O speed however with the newest generation cards they generate a lot of heat (PCI-E 4.0). Also they have very low latency, but most games that are built correctly will asset page ahead of time, being contextually aware of what will be needed as the next part of the map loads.

Star Citizen asset pages a lot. So it will definitely be of a benefit in that game.


To explain exactly what NVMe is NVMe or non-volatile memory express is a standard where using flash memory coupled with a high speed bus connection such as multiple PCI-E lanes to result in a high speed data interconnect between storage and the motherboard it achieves this by using either x2 PCI-E lane connection or a 4x lane connection resulting in the PCI-E bandwidth per lane * number of lanes in bandwidth.

This in turn allows either very large files to be moved with ease or, to minimise latency between the system drive and applications. In terms of boot speed NVMe drives are actually no faster than a conventional SATA III (6Gbps) SSD and they SATA models are cheaper.

NVMe also have a lot of short comings, it cannot be connected to long cables. However there is a drive standard that is NVMe but better in the corporate sector called U.2 simply put this is an NVMe drive thats able to be connected to long cables and is in every way superior to standard NVMe. Why is there a benefit with U.2 think about being able to place NVMe drives in a separate bay to keep them cooled.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

I got rid of my 2.5" and 3.5" drives in favour of two NVMe drives, also means I got rid of power and data cables.

[iceman1980]

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

I got rid of my 2.5" and 3.5" drives in favour of two NVMe drives, also means I got rid of power and data cables.

In RAID 0 I'm guessing? you are asking for trouble

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

I got rid of my 2.5" and 3.5" drives in favour of two NVMe drives, also means I got rid of power and data cables.

In RAID 0 I'm guessing? you are asking for trouble

No.

[iceman1980]

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

In RAID 0 I'm guessing? you are asking for trouble

No.

Why do you need NVMe anyway?

@OP this should answer your question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3AMz-xZ2VM

NVMe drives will also reach a peak write speed and taper-off they get hot quickly.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

No.

Why do you need NVMe anyway?

I don't, nobody does but that's irrelevant. It was an aesthetic choice, the removal of unsightly drives and cables.

[iceman1980]

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Why do you need NVMe anyway?

I don't, nobody does but that's irrelevant. It was an aesthetic choice, the removal of unsightly drives and cables.

They thermal throttle.

[Duck Twacy]

Interesting. Thanks for the rundown. I built a new rig a couple of years back, and it has a slot for an NVM card. I didn't know what it was for, and thought it was for some kind of remote control addon.

... I don't know. I've got a GTX1070 that has 8gigs onboard, and 64 gigs for my system ... I'm wondering if I really need or would benefit from one of these things. On Insurgency Sandstorm I'm usually the first to load up and render into the gameworld as is. Do I really need to beat that speed?

I'm thinking everyone is going to have to upgrade to this, and they'll become standard at some point.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

[iceman1980]

Duck Twacy の投稿を引用：

Interesting. Thanks for the rundown. I built a new rig a couple of years back, and it has a slot for an NVM card. I didn't know what it was for, and thought it was for some kind of remote control addon.

... I don't know. I've got a GTX1070 that has 8gigs onboard, and 64 gigs for my system ... I'm wondering if I really need or would benefit from one of these things. On Insurgency Sandstorm I'm usually the first to load up and render into the gameworld as is. Do I really need to beat that speed?

I'm thinking everyone is going to have to upgrade to this, and they'll become standard at some point.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

If you don't do anything either I/O or latency heavy no it would be a waste of money. I'm currently planning out a FreeNAS built but will use a small NVMe drive for write-caching. This will reduce the latency between the NAS drives and the network. And I'll maybe look at a U.2 in future.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

I don't, nobody does but that's irrelevant. It was an aesthetic choice, the removal of unsightly drives and cables.

They thermal throttle.

Sure, if you hammer them hard alot but most people don't read or write large amounts of data to their disks all the time so thermals are not really an issue.

[iceman1980]

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

They thermal throttle.

Sure, if you hammer them hard alot but most people don't read or write large amounts of data to their disks all the time so thermals are not really an issue.

Hence my point you don't need an NVMe and it's a waste. You'll barely reach 1-5% of utilization.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

Sure, if you hammer them hard alot but most people don't read or write large amounts of data to their disks all the time so thermals are not really an issue.

Hence my point you don't need an NVMe and it's a waste.

I guess that's your opinion which your entitled to.
People have disposable income and spend it on things they don't need all the time, doesn't make it a waste imo.
I use my PC daily so the drives are being used all the time so are not being wasted at all.

[iceman1980]

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Hence my point you don't need an NVMe and it's a waste.

I guess that's your opinion which your entitled to.
People have disposable income and spend it on things they don't need all the time, doesn't make it a waste imo.

It's not an opinion it's an objective waste.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

I guess that's your opinion which your entitled to.
People have disposable income and spend it on things they don't need all the time, doesn't make it a waste imo.

It's not an opinion it's an objective waste.

It is your opinion, I use mine everyday so they are not being "wasted".

[iceman1980]

Spec_Ops_Ape の投稿を引用：

Adaptive の投稿を引用：

It's not an opinion it's an objective waste.

It is your opinion, I use mine everyday so they are not being "wasted".

Objective facts:

1. You own a 2TB NVMe drive for data
   
2. You don't use it for either the latency nor the speed.
   
3. You are not a video-editor nor photographer doing large batch processing of images
   
4. You are not a corporation using the drives to improve write-cache performance for VM heavy workloads where latency can cause churning. As in database performance, Active Directory or other services that benefit from NVMe
   
5. NVMe latency makes little difference to game performance, except only in games that perform heavy asset-paging of large data blocks (non-sensible)
   
6. NVMe drives will generate more heat than SATA SSDs because in terms of "efficiency" they are less efficient and convert more energy to heat.

Therefore it is not an opinion and based on objective analysis it is both a waste of money and waste of an asset. Opinions are subjective with no supporting evidence to that opinion objective analysis removes the emotional factor and feelings involved with decision making.