Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Bill721

M.2 NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive

Recommended Posts

Does a M.2 NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive really make a difference in P3Dv4 or other flight simulators?  They are about $150 more expensive for a 1TB, and I'm just not sure if the cost is worth it.  

Anyone compared them in a flight simulator environment to see what the difference really is.

 

Thanks for your input.

Bill

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

For a 1TB what? sata ssd? convencional M2? Hdd?


Marques

Ryzen 7 7700x@5.4Ghz | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360| RTX 4070 ti | 32GB Ram @5600MHZ| Crucial MX 200 M.2 500GB |Crucial MX200 SATA 500GB | HTC Vive | XIAOMI 43" 4k TV | Acer Predator 27" G-Sync | AOC 32" Freesync

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, dmarques69 said:

For a 1TB what? sata ssd? convencional M2? Hdd?

I'm looking to purchase a SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 1TB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD).  

I'm wanting to know from some one that has tried both a SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 1TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD), and the NVMe drive type above to see if it really makes a big difference with flight simulators performance since the NVMe version is $150 dollars more and has a shorter warranty life.

To make it simple does faster disk read time make a big difference in Flight simulator performance?  I'm not sure if it does?

 

Thanks

Bill. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes they do make a difference not only for PD3 for anything else on your system.

Be sure to buy Samsung as they provide good drivers to exploit the technology capabilities of these devices.

Also to receive the full benefits you need windows 10.

Simbol 

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Have 2 m2 Samsung evos (1 for the os and 1 for my flight sims) and yes they are great. I also have evo sata ssds. They are quick and in throughput they are undeniably faster but in day to day use it’s not a night and day difference over a sata evo. Evos are among the fastest ssds anyway so it isn’t a huge jump from them. The m2s are stunningly fast when copying large items. I moved some large flightsim downloads (many GBs) around and they were truely amazing, even over my sata evo, until I got used to it. In day to day use though and boot up, flight sim loading (where it is thousands of small files rather than huge data throughput) it isn’t as noticeable if you already have a fast sata ssd. The jump from mechanical to ssd is huge, the jump from sata to m2 isn’t as great. I also did it so that my case is very minimal inside. 2 hardrives mounted on the motherboard with no cables at all really appealed to me.

It boils down to what level of pc do you want and how important is it to get the last few percent of performance. I’m very fortunate in that I can spend what I want on the latest hardware but honestly it is a lot more money to extract that last few percent of extra performance from each component. You could very easily look at my build and say it isn’t worth the extra cash for the performance increase over a slightly cheaper spec and it is hard to argue with that.

Chris

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I can only second what Chris said.

I'm running a Samsung Evo M2 SSD for my main FSX installation plus a conventional Samsung Evo SATA SSD for scenery. 

For me the performance improvement is noticeable but minor. The important thing is to avoid hard disks at all cost. Whether it's really worth to invest into M2 at 150$ more is questionable. I also did it just because I was curious to see how it's installed and how the connection works. It was a nice adventure, but I think for me the difference wasn't that big between the SATA and M2 versions.  

Best,

David

 


David

FSX User / Into Addons with deeper Systems Modeling / Love planes and airports and ATC

pf3-supporter.gif

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
7 hours ago, Bill721 said:

To make it simple does faster disk read time make a big difference in Flight simulator performance?

No. The difference is mainly noticable in loading times but not in performance, like in fps. The difference between a regular SSD and a NVMe when it comes to flightsims isn’t worth the extra 150 bucks imho.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have two Samsung M-2's (one NVMe format), one for Windows 10 (500GB) and one for FSX/P3DV4.1 (1TB).  When I first installed Windows 10, the install was superfast and I actually thought I had screwed something up but it installed correctly.  I only have them as they are the latest and greatest and I just built a new system and who would want those old SSD's on a new build?  :smile:  Makes me shiver.  Actually, I do have a couple of SSD's onboard and I have read the boot and game loading times are almost the same by a second or two but file transfers are over 2 times faster on the M-2's.  It was interesting installing them on the MB and fortunately my MB came with the extremely tiny screws that secures each M-2.  Not in the packaging that the M-2 came in so they will fit on any MB. 


Jim Young | AVSIM Online! - Simming's Premier Resource!

Member, AVSIM Board of Directors - Serving AVSIM since 2001

Submit News to AVSIM
Important other links: Basic FSX Configuration Guide | AVSIM CTD Guide | AVSIM Prepar3D Guide | Help with AVSIM Site | Signature Rules | Screen Shot Rule | AVSIM Terms of Service (ToS)

I7 8086K  5.0GHz | GTX 1080 TI OC Edition | Dell 34" and 24" Monitors | ASUS Maximus X Hero MB Z370 | Samsung M.2 NVMe 500GB and 1TB | Samsung SSD 500GB x2 | Toshiba HDD 1TB | WDC HDD 1TB | Corsair H115i Pro | 16GB DDR4 3600C17 | Windows 10 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have the 960 also.  For me I liked what seems a clean interface on the mobo.  For speed it is much the same as my previous Samsung SSD but relativity is hard to judge- no complaints.

Regards
bs


AMD RYZEN 9 5900X 12 CORE CPU - ZOTAC RTX 3060Ti GPU - NZXT H510i ELITE CASE - EVO M.2 970 500GB DRIVE - 32GB XTREEM 4000 MEM - XPG GOLD 80+ 650 WATT PS - NZXT 280 HYBRID COOLER

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My Spring 2016 build has an Intel NVMe 850Gb M.2 for the system drive.  It's fast and I've not had any problems with it over the past ~18 mos of near daily use all day.  As mentioned, stuff loads faster but don't look for performance improvements.

My strategy is to limit the system drive to only programs, program data, documents, etc.  Everything else such as scenery, non-system downloads, other data, goes on a 500 Gb data drive.  Finally I use a 3TB WD Black drive for backing all this stuff up.  Works well for me, strategy will vary with use.


Dan Downs KCRP

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Regarding P3D you won't see a real difference between a M.2 SSD and a "normal" SSD.

I also use a Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD and first had P3D on it. But when I reinstalled I installed P3D to a normal SSD due to capacity reasons. And there is no (noticable) difference at all.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 11/19/2017 at 9:21 AM, Jim Young said:

I only have them as they are the latest and greatest and I just built a new system and who would want those old SSD's on a new build?  :smile:  Makes me shiver.

LOL!

I'm at the beginning stages of putting together a PC for simulating flying and racing.

Would you see any tangible difference between a M.2 NVMe SSD and a SATA SSD at low altitude, supersonic speed over highly dense ORBX land area. An extreme example would be to slew from Los Angeles to San Francisco for example. I don't expect anybody to reconfigure their PC to conduct such a test, just wondering.

Hoping to avoid the shiver factor, JoeHassell.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The differences are at this link - http://www.userbenchmark.com/Faq/What-s-the-difference-between-SATA-PCIe-and-NVMe/105 .  You would not see any difference in any games, including P3D.  In your scenario there would be no difference other than my M.2NVMe would beat out a SATA or PCIe SSD by 1 nanosecond.  I'm pretty positive that would be the result with the M.2 as the clear winner. :blink:  I clearly see your point Joe and you are obviously right but I'm hoping that technology or drivers will increase the value of owning an M.2 in the future. 

 


Jim Young | AVSIM Online! - Simming's Premier Resource!

Member, AVSIM Board of Directors - Serving AVSIM since 2001

Submit News to AVSIM
Important other links: Basic FSX Configuration Guide | AVSIM CTD Guide | AVSIM Prepar3D Guide | Help with AVSIM Site | Signature Rules | Screen Shot Rule | AVSIM Terms of Service (ToS)

I7 8086K  5.0GHz | GTX 1080 TI OC Edition | Dell 34" and 24" Monitors | ASUS Maximus X Hero MB Z370 | Samsung M.2 NVMe 500GB and 1TB | Samsung SSD 500GB x2 | Toshiba HDD 1TB | WDC HDD 1TB | Corsair H115i Pro | 16GB DDR4 3600C17 | Windows 10 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...