▷ Is it good to use a ssd nvme for gaming?

NVMe SSDs are the fastest and most advanced on the market, making them the preferred mass storage medium for the most demanding users, including gamers. However, are we so sure that an NVMe SSD is a good idea for gaming? Or is it better to opt for a cheaper alternative?

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Is an NVMe SSD worth playing or is it better to go for a cheaper SATA III

SATA III SSDs are generally recommended for video game fans, and there are a few compelling reasons for this. The first and most important reason, of course, is the price. NVMe SSDs are priced fairly high, especially for higher-capacity models, which are a must-have for gaming these days when all AAA titles have an install size of about 50GB or more. This high price makes us lose an important part of the budget just on the SSD. The Samsung EVO 970 500 GB costs around 160 euros, while a 500 GB SATA III SSD can be found already below 90 euros.

As we can see, the price difference is very significant, since for little more than the cost of a 500 GB NVMe SSD we can buy a 1 TB SATA III model, which will give us a great capacity to be able to install all our games preferred. You can also invest that difference in money in another component, for example, a more powerful graphics card, or a more advanced processor that will last you longer.

The biggest benefit of using an SSD in video games is related to a reduction in load times. Loading screens happen when the game in question is loading the assets stored on your hard drive to create the virtual world in which the game takes place. The faster the hard drive, the shorter the load time, although you have to see what the difference is really between an NVMe SSD and a SATA III.

The reason why SSDs reduce load screens significantly, is their higher data transfer speed makes work much faster than HDD or mechanical hard drive. This transfer rate is even higher on NVMe drives, but this doesn't really count in actual load times because they are already too fast.

For example, suppose an HDD creates a 5-second loading screen for a game. This can be tedious in games like RPGs where you have to go through multiple loading screens in a single mission. An average hard drive has a read speed of around 125 MBps. A SATA III SSD reaches approximately 500 MBps or more. That's a four-fold speed boost, which reduces the load time by 5 seconds / 4 seconds = 1.25 seconds.

An average NVMe drive has a read speed of 2 GBps or 16 times that of the hard drive. The loading time for the game would now be 5 seconds / 16 = 0.32 seconds approximately. This means that the reduction in load time that occurs in the transition from a SATA III SSD to NVMe is less than a second, something almost negligible.

SSDs do not affect game FPS

Many users believe that games will run faster if a high-speed SSD is used, but this is not true as the only difference is in load times. Once the game data has been loaded, no further information needs to be extracted from the disk except for small pieces of data from time to time, therefore even with a hard drive with a reading speed of 125MB / Yes, you will be able to run The Witcher 3 or even Battlefield V, perfectly fine once it has gone through the loading screen. FPS is affected by many components: the processor, the graphics card, RAM, etc., but not by storage.

FPS enhancements come primarily from better graphics cards, which will be able to render images faster to draw game assets faster, and from more powerful processors, which will be able to handle the GPU API and other data seamlessly. RAM has an influence on FPS, but you will practically only notice it in case it falls short. In other words, as long as you have enough RAM, it won't improve performance by adding more.

The following Techspot tests confirm that 8 GB of RAM is enough to play smoothly.

RAM performance in GTX 1060 video games
	4GB	8 GB	16 GB
Assassin's Creed: Origins	71 FPS	76 FPS	76 FPS
Battlefield 1	98 FPS	101 FPS	102 FPS
Call of Duty WWII	51 FPS	57 FPS	57 FPS

Final word and conclusion about NVMe or SATA III SSD to play

The conclusion is clear, if you are going to use your PC to play it is better to choose to purchase an SSD based on the SATA III interface, as you will hardly notice a difference in the loading times of the games. This will allow you to invest more money in the graphics card or the processor, the most important elements when influencing the performance of a modern game.

We recommend reading our post on the best SSDs of the moment SATA, M.2 NVMe and PCIe

This ends our article on NVMe or SATA III SSD to play, remember that you can leave a comment if you have something to contribute.