Need M2 for gaming system?

[Djang0 1]

Considering a 250GB Samsung 960 Evo PCIe M2 SSD and a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo SATA SSD for my next system, but I wonder if the M2 is overkill???

Q1) Does the additional speed of the M2 drive offer any useful practical advantage over the SATA SSD for simming (or is it literally just going to be the load times)?

Q2) With this setup which drive should I put the OS on for better overall system performance?

[OneWhoKnocks53 51]

It will equal shorter boot times (if OS) and shorter loading times.  There is no other gains in-sim that I can recall.  I would keep the larger sata ssd for the Sim due to growing add-on size and use the m2 for OS.

[Patriot3810 182]

an m.2 is not overkill, i have 2 480gb patriot hellfires in raid 0, i get 6,000 mbps read and 3500mbps write, it's loads everything lightning fast including p3d 4 and x-plane 11, if you run alot of other games and software it's well worth it.

[vp49p3 216]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 7:43 PM, Patriot3810 said:

an m.2 is not overkill

+1

[Djang0 1]

On 6/26/2017 at 0:43 AM, Patriot3810 said:

an m.2 is not overkill, i have 2 480gb patriot hellfires in raid 0, i get 6,000 mbps read

Hmm... what do people think would give the best flightsim performance:

1) OS + flightsim on one M/B RAID0 array with 2x M2

2) OS + flightsim on one M/B RAID0 array with 2x SATA SSD

3) M2 for OS + M2 for flightsim

4) SATA SSD for OS + SATA SSD for flightsim

5) M2 for OS + SATA SSD for flightsim

6) SATA SSD for OS + M2 for flightsim

???

 

[vortex681 806]

11 hours ago, Djang0 said:

Hmm... what do people think would give the best flightsim performance

If you mean performance "in flight", then it generally doesn't make much difference.  As as already been stated, an SSD will significantly reduce program and flight loading times (whether it's M2 or SATA) but will make little difference to FPS.

Having the OS and sim on the same SSD is only a problem if you're short of space. The old advice about having the sim on its own drive really only applied to HDDs were fragmentation of the files could slow things down.

If you really want the very high performance then you obviously need an NVMe M2 SSD, but they can cost up to twice as much for the same capacity. If you're moving a lot of files regularly (especially very large ones) you'll certainly see a difference with an NVMe M2 drive. But for most day-to-day use it's hard to justify the extra cost.

On 26/06/2017 at 0:43 AM, Patriot3810 said:

... i have 2 480gb patriot hellfires in raid 0, i get 6,000 mbps read and 3500mbps write

But that ultra high performance is as a result of your RAID 0 configuration. As a single drive, even according to the Patriot site, the OP would only see about half the read performance (which would still be very fast, of course) - https://patriotmemory.com/product/hellfire-m-2-solid-state-drives/.

If you definitely want the fastest at any cost, then an NVMe M2 is the way to go (but check that your MB will take it). For the average user, IMHO, NVMe SSDs are overkill, not to mention very expensive - I'd rather have 2 much larger capacity SSDs than 2 faster, but much smaller, drives.

[davidzill 8]

Does M2 SSD PCIe raid0 slow FSX performance? Other than load times, which are already extremely fast with your run of the mill SATA SSD, is there any in-sim performance increase, I.e. FPS/ less stuttering?

[vortex681 806]

6 hours ago, davidzill said:

Other than load times, which are already extremely fast with your run of the mill SATA SSD, is there any in-sim performance increase, I.e. FPS/ less stuttering?

If you mean comparing a RAID 0 setup to a single SATA SSD, then I can't say for certain as I only use a single drive. However, the general consensus of opinion (reinforced by my own experience) seems to be that SSDs don't noticeably improve in-flight performance. Stuttering is unlikely to be caused by the type of drive you're using.

When I installed my first SSD, it felt like a new system - Windows loaded in a fraction of the time and opening programs and games was significantly faster.  Game performance is much more dependent on the type of CPU and GPU and the amount/speed of RAM you use.