Agent-A01:

The issue is not that. It's due to several reasons. Most game files are packaged into certain formats that are composed of many small files. Since most assets aren't large contiguous files, there is not much benefit from M.2. M.2 is much faster on sequential/write IOs but not much faster if at all on small file IOs, i.e. 4k and less. A lot of those budget NVMe M.2s are actually slower in small IOs and have poorer read/write latency which is why they can be slower than a fast regular SATA drive such as an 850/60 PRO/evo. Only the top M.2s are really good in smaller IOs, i.e new 970 Pro/evo can do >70mb/s 4k random and top SSDs are around 40-50 max. Those will do better than most SSDs, not the budget M.2s.

Would you say that the Crucial MX500 M.2 is a budget one? I currently have too many small SSDs and needed one that is bigger. Today I have: 1 x Samsung 840 EVO 256GB SSD (Origin, Uplay) 1 x Samsung 850 EVO 256GB SSD (OS) 1 x Corsair Force 3 128GB SSD (Battle.net) 1 x Crucial MX500 500GB M.2 (Steam) I wanted to replace the 840 EVO and the Corsair for one more MX500 M.2 and was considering 860 EVO M.2 (30€ more than MX500) or even the 960 EVO M.2 (70€ more). I personally feel that the MX500 does a good enough job and has not really felt a difference between that one and the 840 EVO or perhaps even the 850 EVO. Specs say the MX500 has 95k IOPS (4kb random write) 90k IOPS (4kb random read) 860EVO has 98k IOPS (4kb random write) and 88k IOPS (4kb random read).

sverek:

Nice, I would like to have M.2 for my primary OS drive. Should be fun to build Zen2 with it.

OS is waste of space 🙂 I have windows on oldest and smallest SSD. I do keep it free of game installations to have smaller full backups. Anything of importance should stay from OS drive, so in case you need to do reinstall, you do not have to waste time or accidentally lose something. And as such M.2 of larger capacity used by OS and heavily shared by all kind of data/applications will come to bite owner into ass one day.

Humanoid_1:

That is good to hear. I made a decent effort to find the article I mentioned, but came up empty. The selection of modern games he tested did not scale at all well from SATA to high performing NVMe M.2 drives sadly. I did find another game that showed some decent improvement though: CoD Infinite Warfare: WD Red Pro 4TB = 53 secs Cruciak MX 300 525GB = 25secs Samsung 960 EVO 500GB = 11secs It sounds from what you are reporting that more games are getting better coded to take advantage of the speed offered by modern M.2 drive, makes me feel much better about the future 🙂 As an aside, I did learn something interesting though: Games showing a steady 60fps, but running off a HDD will repeat frames (hitching) while waiting for map/wolrd data to load. As a test of this in an fps game they timed running from one side of a map to the other, the HDD was a full 5 seconds slower than the game run on an SSD.

Speaking of cod infinite warfare, is texture @high the max setting?

typhon6657:

Don't do it. I've tried loading time on games like Fallout 4 with a 5TB HDD vs SSD vs raid SSD vs 950 pro. The best loading times were the 950 pro but compared to SSD and the raid 0 SSD it was only a few seconds. The 5TB drive was only about 5 to 10 seconds max slower vs 950 pro. Other games it was usually 2 to 5 seconds slower for the HDD vs SSD. If your on a tight budget then go with a $60 Segate 2TB drive or just get a 500gb SSD if your game library is not that big.

Just for my boot drive. My storage drive is a Toshiba 2tb drive.

Fox2232:

OS is waste of space 🙂 I have windows on oldest and smallest SSD. I do keep it free of game installations to have smaller full backups. Anything of importance should stay from OS drive, so in case you need to do reinstall, you do not have to waste time or accidentally lose something. And as such M.2 of larger capacity used by OS and heavily shared by all kind of data/applications will come to bite owner into ass one day.

That's the idea to get 128GB of M.2 for OS and frequently used programs like browsers, discord, etc... I currently use old n good cruical 64GB SSD drive for OS. I already have Evo 850 500GB for games.

Netherwind:

Would you say that the Crucial MX500 M.2 is a budget one? I currently have too many small SSDs and needed one that is bigger. Today I have: 1 x Samsung 840 EVO 256GB SSD (Origin, Uplay) 1 x Samsung 850 EVO 256GB SSD (OS) 1 x Corsair Force 3 128GB SSD (Battle.net) 1 x Crucial MX500 500GB M.2 (Steam) I wanted to replace the 840 EVO and the Corsair for one more MX500 M.2 and was considering 860 EVO M.2 (30€ more than MX500) or even the 960 EVO M.2 (70€ more). I personally feel that the MX500 does a good enough job and has not really felt a difference between that one and the 840 EVO or perhaps even the 850 EVO. Specs say the MX500 has 95k IOPS (4kb random write) 90k IOPS (4kb random read) 860EVO has 98k IOPS (4kb random write) and 88k IOPS (4kb random read).

Crucial is a higher-tier SSD, shouldn't be noticeably slower than say an 860 PRO in most cases. Of course there are specific scenarios where the 860s will smoke an MX500 but those are not common workloads. I'd say it's close enough to not matter for most. I also would not pay any attention to rated IOPS and all that; those aren't realistic real world measurements. Always check reviews where they test it in different workloads. Btw, 840 EVO should go in the bin; those drives have bad TLC NAND where overtime voltage shift causes data degradation which reduces performance by a lot.

Agent-A01:

Crucial is a higher-tier SSD, shouldn't be noticeably slower than say an 860 PRO in most cases. Of course there are specific scenarios where the 860s will smoke an MX500 but those are not common workloads. I'd say it's close enough to not matter for most. I also would not pay any attention to rated IOPS and all that; those aren't realistic real world measurements. Always check reviews where they test it in different workloads. Btw, 840 EVO should go in the bin; those drives have bad TLC NAND where overtime voltage shift causes data degradation which reduces performance by a lot.

Good to hear that I made a decent choice. I'm not too picky by the way, I'm just happy that it's quiet and faster than a HDD. Ok, regarding the IOPS, I just added them since it was the only statistics I could find. Sounds like this measurement is as useless as dBA for fans 😀 About the 840 EVO, I was supposed to sell it to a friend for a couple of euros 🙂 Guess I'll won't do that if you think it's that bad. Although I could do a performance test and see. Samsung Magician didn't report any problems last time I checked.

Netherwind:

About the 840 EVO, I was supposed to sell it to a friend for a couple of euros 🙂 Guess I'll won't do that if you think it's that bad. Although I could do a performance test and see. Samsung Magician didn't report any problems last time I checked.

All 840 evos have that issue. Performance degrades over time. I believe to combat that issue, newer firmware shuffles data around periodically

Something must be going on as I just picked up the new Adata xpg SX8200 after reading the review for the 480GB for just 130 British Pounds which is around $170...I had to grab it as the price was low and first thought they had just made a mistake but it is the right price and it is no slouch at 3200 read and 1700 write and 310K/280K IOPS random 4K read/writes...so I can only believe that SSD/NVMe prices are dropping fast. Forgot to mention it comes with a heatsink as well...

Humanoid_1:

That is good to hear. I made a decent effort to find the article I mentioned, but came up empty. The selection of modern games he tested did not scale at all well from SATA to high performing NVMe M.2 drives sadly. I did find another game that showed some decent improvement though: CoD Infinite Warfare: WD Red Pro 4TB = 53 secs Cruciak MX 300 525GB = 25secs Samsung 960 EVO 500GB = 11secs It sounds from what you are reporting that more games are getting better coded to take advantage of the speed offered by modern M.2 drive, makes me feel much better about the future 🙂 As an aside, I did learn something interesting though: Games showing a steady 60fps, but running off a HDD will repeat frames (hitching) while waiting for map/wolrd data to load. As a test of this in an fps game they timed running from one side of a map to the other, the HDD was a full 5 seconds slower than the game run on an SSD.

It is worth noting though...since i now only have 90 gig available of the 478 gig total my 960pro has slowed in read access time and now sits around 1800mb/s seq read but i have a 960evo 512gb i picked up for £145(light use) on the way just for my most used games.