NVME2 Gen 5 - Windows or DCS?

[Mr_sukebe]

I’m currently in the process of buying components for a new PC base unit.

The x670e motherboard that I’m looking at supports x1 gen 5 PCIE NVME drive, and a further three Gen 4 NVMEs.

I already have a a Samsung 990 pro (gen 5) and 980 (gen 4), both of which are 2TB in size.

My initial intent was to put DCS on one of them and Windows on the other.

Thoughts?  Options that spring to mind:

- Windows and DCS on the same Gen 5 drive

- windows on the Gen 5 and DCS on the gen 4

- DCS on the Gen 5, windows on the gen 4

My guess is that as DCS addresses some pretty damn big texture files, that Option 3 would be most appropriate, as whilst Windows gets a slower drive, that hopefully most of what it needs will be in RAM by the time that DCS is loaded.

Any views/experiences?

 

[TKhaos]

DCS on the Gen 5 and Windows on the Gen 4 is what I would personally do, they are the same drives I have got with an additional 5 SSD.

Windows still runs fine on HDD and SSD so no problem on a Gen 4 PCIE NVME.

Edited July 27, 2024 by TKhaos

[kksnowbear]

30 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

- Windows and DCS on the same Gen 5 drive

- windows on the Gen 5 and DCS on the gen 4

- DCS on the Gen 5, windows on the gen 4

NO! (Never, if you have the option of multiple drives at all)

No! (The OS doesn't require and won't benefit much at all from the extra speed, now or in the near future when storage performance will almost certainly be different).

Yes! (Puts the best performance where it's most needed)

In that order

26 minutes ago, TKhaos said:

DCS on the Gen 5 and Windows on the Gen 4 is what I would personally do, actually what I personally do

This.  Me, too.  Crucial T705 for 'performance games' (like DCS/flight sims).  OS/boot volume on a 980 Pro 500G.  (Other crap on various other drive types/speeds)

Edited July 27, 2024 by kksnowbear

[TKhaos]

7 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

NO! (Never, if you have the option of multiple drives at all)

No! (The OS doesn't require and won't benefit much at all from the extra speed, now or in the near future when storage performance will almost certainly be different).

Yes! (Puts the best performance where it's most needed)

In that order

This.  Me, too.  Crucial T705 for 'performance games' (like DCS/flight sims).  OS/boot volume on a 980 Pro 500G.  (Other crap on various other drive types/speeds)

 

I use my Samsung 990 PRO exclusively for DCS, normally I would have used the 980 as another gaming drive but chose Windows as I do a lot of video/audio/image editing with large files. All my other gaming stuff runs off SSD's and never have any issues.

[Mr_sukebe]

Thanks for confirming, much appreciated!

[kksnowbear]

On 7/27/2024 at 10:45 AM, TKhaos said:

I use my Samsung 990 PRO exclusively for DCS

OIC...I thought you were saying you already had DCS on a Gen5 drive.

I personally always use the fastest possible drive in a system for the most demanding games, and (generally) the next fastest drive for the OS, leaving 'non-performance' games (PvZ AoE etc lol) on a SATA SSD or even a conventional HDD (though my own machine is all solid state now).

Gen5 drives already perform better than Gen4, and even though performance limitations exist in current technologies/methods, it will absolutely be different in the very near future.  Already happening, and in fact, growing.  The difference in Gen3, 4 and 5 drives will actually be proportional to their speeds.

People who insist Gen4 is just as good (or Gen3, as if) are basing their opinion on outdated, flawed technology that doesn't take advantage of faster drives' speeds, thus creating a playing field that isn't even close to level.  It favors the slower, outdated methods and technology, which needs to change - and is changing, right now.

And I recently saw a Gen5 drive the same exact capacity as a Gen4 drive, for $20 more (see image below).  So the argument about cost being double (or whatever) is not valid.  Same capacity for $20 more and 66% faster?  No brainer.

Plus, that's not even the fastest Gen5 drive you can get now, either - so the argument that the drives aren't using the full Gen5 bandwidth?  Wrong.  My T705 uses more of it's available Gen5 bandwidth than many other top-name brand Gen3 or Gen4 drives do (the Samsung 990 Pro uses slightly more of it's PCIE 4.0 bandwidth, and a 980 Pro actually uses *less* than the T705 does).

Bandwidth usage as a percentage of max theoretical by bus/Gen:

The *only* drives that use more possible max bandwidth than the T705 are a Samsung 990 Pro and a WD SN850X (which is practically the same as the T705).

If someone has a board that supports Gen5 drives, it also inherently means they've paid a considerable amount of money for newer tech (and, presumably, a GPU that's reasonably matched)...doesn't make any sense at all to have invested that kind of money in a top-end system, just to cheap out trying to save $20 by giving up *half* the performance you paid for a motherboard to support.

Recent prices:

 

Edited August 5, 2024 by kksnowbear

[TKhaos]

4 hours ago, kksnowbear said:

OIC...I thought you were saying you already had DCS on a Gen5 drive.

I personally always use the fastest possible drive in a system for the most demanding games, and (generally) the next fastest drive for the OS, leaving 'non-performance' games (PvZ AoE etc lol) on a SATA SSD or even a conventional HDD (though my own machine is all solid state now).

Gen5 drives already perform better than Gen4, and even if performance limitations exist in current technologies/methods, it will absolutely be different in the not-too-distant future.  Already happening, and in fact, growing.  The difference in Gen3, 4 and 5 drives will actually be proportional to their speeds.

People who insist Gen4 (or 3, as if) is just as good are basing their opinion on outdated, flawed technology that hobbles faster drives' speeds, thus creating a playing field that isn't even close to level.  It favors the slower, outdated methods and technology, which needs to change - and is changing, right now.

And I recently saw a Gen5 drive the same exact capacity as a Gen4 drive, for $20 more.  So the argument about cost being double (or whatever) is not valid.  Same capacity for $20 more and 66% faster?  No brainer.

And that's not even the fastest Gen5 drive you can get now, either - so the argument that the drives aren't using the full Gen5 bandwidth?  Wrong.  My T705 uses more of it's available Gen5 bandwidth than many other top-name brand Gen3 or Gen4 drives do (the Samsung 990 Pro uses slightly more of it's PCIE 4.0 bandwidth, and a 980 Pro actually uses *less* than the T705 does).

 

No, I was refering to the OP Gen 4/5 question. I've got the Samsung 990 PRO with Heatsink PCIe 4.0, they do the 990 as a Gen 5 but it's an EVO not a PRO and is slower than my PRO which is why I never bothered changing to it, the one I've got does me fine. When I do upgrade if Samsung haven't got anything decent out I will go for something similar to yours.

I like the T705 its fast and used Crucial stuff since the 80's but probably be later in the year before another upgrade. The Sabrent Rocket 5 is impressively fast and around the same price as the T705 but then it's so fast you really need to fit a heatsink and fan to it because it produces so much heat.

I never really understand people that spend a hugh amount on hardware then won't spend an extra little bit getting something better. I just built a system for someone and I suggested they spend an extra £30 for the next CPU up but they didn't want too

I've had all SSD's in mine for years, when they first came out I had one as my main drive and kept the 4 HDD for other stuff, then over time I just replaced the whole lot and use the HDD as backup drives. 

There is a setting in Samsung Magician to make full use of the drive, little bit off putting though when you click on it and the first thing is displays is a box saying it will void the warranty

Edited July 27, 2024 by TKhaos

[Aapje]

30 minutes ago, TKhaos said:

I never really understand people that spend a hugh amount on hardware then won't spend an extra little bit getting something better.

Companies have a strategy of giving you something a bit better if you spend more, but if you keep doing that, you spend way more. So I can see drawing a line somewhere.

[TKhaos]

10 minutes ago, Aapje said:

Companies have a strategy of giving you something a bit better if you spend more, but if you keep doing that, you spend way more. So I can see drawing a line somewhere.

Yeah I normally research and decide based on knowledge and years in the business. I've advised clients before to drop to down to a certain processor because the extra £50 isn't justified for the gain you get by having the latest model, bit like I always advise if someone wants Nvidia and nothing else getting the RTX 4080 over the RTX 4090 at half the price.

I know what you mean though they like to dangle the carrot because often you will end up buying a load of stuff you didn't really need. If people give me a budget for a system build I will stick to it or try to get under it but also suggest alterations to what they want which will give them more value for money.   

[Mr_sukebe]

On 7/27/2024 at 4:13 PM, kksnowbear said:

OIC...I thought you were saying you already had DCS on a Gen5 drive.

I personally always use the fastest possible drive in a system for the most demanding games, and (generally) the next fastest drive for the OS, leaving 'non-performance' games (PvZ AoE etc lol) on a SATA SSD or even a conventional HDD (though my own machine is all solid state now).

Gen5 drives already perform better than Gen4, and even though performance limitations currently exist in current technologies/methods, it will absolutely be different in the not-too-distant future.  Already happening, and in fact, growing.  The difference in Gen3, 4 and 5 drives will actually be proportional to their speeds.

People who insist Gen4 is just as good (or Gen3, as if) are basing their opinion on outdated, flawed technology that doesn't take advantage of faster drives' speeds, thus creating a playing field that isn't even close to level.  It favors the slower, outdated methods and technology, which needs to change - and is changing, right now.

And I recently saw a Gen5 drive the same exact capacity as a Gen4 drive, for $20 more.  So the argument about cost being double (or whatever) is not valid.  Same capacity for $20 more and 66% faster?  No brainer.

And that's not even the fastest Gen5 drive you can get now, either - so the argument that the drives aren't using the full Gen5 bandwidth?  Wrong.  My T705 uses more of it's available Gen5 bandwidth than many other top-name brand Gen3 or Gen4 drives do (the Samsung 990 Pro uses slightly more of it's PCIE 4.0 bandwidth, and a 980 Pro actually uses *less* than the T705 does).

Bandwidth usage as a percentage of max theoretical by bus/Gen:

The *only* drives that use more possible max bandwidth than the T705 are a Samsung 990 Pro and a WD SN850X (which is practically the same as the T705).

If someone has a board that supports Gen5 drives, it also inherently means they've paid a considerable amount of money for newer tech (and, presumably, a GPU that's reasonably matched)...doesn't make any sense at all to have invested that kind of money in a top-end system, just to cheap out trying to save $20 by giving up *half* the performance you paid for a motherboard to support.

Recent prices:

 

 

 

Sorry, I'm a bit confused.  You've mentioned that the Samsung 990 Pro is faster than a T705.  I thought that the 990 Pro is Gen 4 (it is on your table).

[kksnowbear]

2 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Sorry, I'm a bit confused.  You've mentioned that the Samsung 990 Pro is faster than a T705.  I thought that the 990 Pro is Gen 4 (it is on your table).

Hi, sorry if it wasn't clear:  Yes, the 990Pro is Gen4, and it is definitely not faster than the T705   If I've said something to the contrary I'm not aware of it - please point me in that direction.

The table is showing how much of each PCIe version's bandwidth is actually used by the drives, as a percentage.

It has been stated that one problem with new Gen5 drives is that they aren't using the full bandwidth of the slot, so they're not all that much faster than Gen4 drives.  This is completely wrong, and my table was intended to show this with factual data (some people here on this forum seem to only know what they read in reviews, without understanding or testing the actual hardware first hand, as I typically do).

Of course, you do have to consider that not all Gen5 drives are the same, any more so than all Gen4 or Gen3 drives.  For every PCIe revision, there are drives that perform closer to the max bandwidth of the slot, and those that perform at a lesser speed.  Nothing at all new about that, and it absolutely doesn't mean that all Gen5 drives don't 'live up' to the speed of the slot.  This was more accurate when Gen5 drives first came out, a fact which so-called "reviewers" just couldn't wait to complain about - but those days are behind us. 

The table shows how much of the available bandwidth each drive uses - and should illustrate then that the T705 uses just as much of it's (Gen5) bandwidth at 92.06% as most any other drive of their respective, available bandwidths (more, actually) - one exception being a 990 Pro, which uses 94.58% of it's available bandwidth (on a PCIe 4.0 slot).

The 990 Pro uses slightly more of it's max available (PCIe 4) bandwidth - but that's still only about half the T705's available PCIe 5 bandwidth.

The T705 is still almost twice as fast as the 990 Pro in terms of read speeds.  The 990Pro is limited by the Gen4 bus bandwidth to a max of around half the T705.

I hope that clarifies things.

Edited August 5, 2024 by kksnowbear

[Mr_sukebe]

Certainly does, thanks for the clarity.

How does that translate when used with DCS?

[kksnowbear]

On 8/5/2024 at 11:24 AM, Mr_sukebe said:

Certainly does, thanks for the clarity.

How does that translate when used with DCS?

It's a good question...a little tricky to answer; not quick because there's a lot to consider, but I'll try to make sense.

I figured out basically three use cases:

1. If your current platform doesn't support Gen5 *and* you don't plan on changing any time soon, then it doesn't matter.

2. If your current platform doesn't support Gen5 and you *do* plan on changing it, *but* intend to reuse drives you already have, then it doesn't matter.  That said, I'd suggest that when you do change, you go with a platform that supports Gen5.  You can reuse your current drives, and still upgrade to Gen5 later if you're not ready right away.

3. If your current platform doesn't support Gen5 and you *do* plan on changing it, *and* plan to buy new drive(s) at or about the same time, then - especially given the prices I cited earlier - it would certainly seem to make zero sense to go backwards to Gen4 or anything else.  $20 more for a 2TB drive that's 66% faster?  No-brainer.

(NOTE: The prices at Amazon have since changed [of course]...but they were exactly as I said for a good while around when I posted that info - and, of course, they'll change again.   When you're trying to get good deals, you do have to be patient and watchful).  In any event, the argument that Gen5 storage costs twice as much as Gen4 (or whatever other ridiculous figure) is also not necessarily true.  I can assure you I didn't pay anywhere near twice what (good) Gen4 drive costs for the three Gen5 devices I've owned.

Anyway, that should cover the various use-cases.  Two where it doesn't matter at all, and one where it wouldn't be smart to buy anything *other* than Gen5 storage if your board supports it.  So you do the math.  Also: The AM5 CPUs support it anyway, and if you're buying one of them, it would seem a waste not to take advantage of it.

As for the actual impact of going to Gen5 from 4 (or 4 from 3):

There are storage technologies already being used, in an increasing number of games, that can actually take advantage of Gen5 drives' speeds to improve gaming performance - and I'm NOT just talking about load times, either.  It has already been shown that games which support the newer technologies perform better (yes, higher FPS) with faster drives.  Gen5 better than Gen4, and Gen4 better than Gen3.

Up until not long ago, storage technology just wasn't designed to take advantage of faster drives.  This didn't matter for the longest time, because the drives weren't fast enough to matter themselves (think about older, SATA drives - even SSDs).  But, more recently, storage technology has jumped from 7x faster, to 12x faster, all the way to 25x faster than SATA.  In the past 10 years, storage speeds have nearly doubled, twice (and were already 7x faster than SATA).

But the problem was that while the storage was getting faster and faster, it was still being utilized by the system in very inefficient ways - and this is still largely true today.  The way storage is used has failed (horribly) to 'keep up' with the speeds that storage is now capable of.

As an example: Imagine building a very fast car, many times faster than the car you currently drive.  The problem is, if the roads aren't suitable to driving that fast, your new, much faster car is going to be held back.

Again, the technology that benefits from faster speeds is already present in a number of current games.  So the 'roads' are ready...well, some of them.  There's the problem: So far, only a few games support this newer tech; or, in my car example, only a few of the roads have been updated to allow high speed driving.

DCS, regretfully, isn't updated yet. But, for a number of reasons, I think it will be.  In fact, I think it's reasonable to assert that *all* new games will eventually support this newer tech - but, like with most advances in technology, whether older games support it really depends on a lot of things.

But as far as DCS goes I think it'll be supported based on a few things.  DLSS and MT: Both these newer methods/technologies have now been incorporated into DCS by ED.  They both required a considerable amount of work to put in DCS, and both are still evolving (and will continue to do so).  ED has clearly demonstrated a commitment to putting updated features into DCS, and when it comes to performance increases, the players are always on board.

Also, If I'm not mistaken, ED has committed to incorporating support for Vulkan - and Nvidia has now built RTXI/O support into Vulkan.  I believe it's been (incorrectly) stated elsewhere on this forum that DirectStorage requires DirectX12 and therefore DCS won't have it - but that doesn't seem accurate since 2022 as per https://www.techpowerup.com/301147/nvidia-brings-the-benefits-of-directstorage-1-1-to-vulkan-under-its-rtx-io-brand

There is real, concrete benefit to these new storage technologies, and not just faster loading.  I think evidence suggests that we'll be looking at some type of implementation in DCS, in the near future.

Sorry for the length but I hope that answers your question clearly, and welcome any questions.

Edited August 6, 2024 by kksnowbear

[Mr_sukebe]

I don't have the platform yet, but will have in the next week.  Just trying to understand whether to buy the T705 in the near future.

As the primary reason is for DCS, guess I'll wait.

[kksnowbear]

17 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

I don't have the platform yet, but will have in the next week.  Just trying to understand whether to buy the T705 in the near future.

As the primary reason is for DCS, guess I'll wait.

Indeed, if you're among those who can reuse storage for now, nothing wrong with waiting out pricing.  You're more or less in Case #2 above.  I would say that whether you should consider a T700 or 705 in the 'near future' will depend on what it's worth to you (and what 'near future' means to you lol).  TBH, if you can find prices like I showed above, once you have the new platform then I can't imagine it's a good idea to go backwards and buy Gen4 storage new when much better performance costs not much more.  But of course, that depends on price.  I still have two Gen4 drives on my X670E board that I use plenty, in addition to two Gen5 drives.  Depends on the usage.

I do still maintain that there is already improvement in DCS (and any game) from faster storage, but the 'forum experts' get all in an uproar at the mere suggestion - which I find interesting, as apparently none of them actually have Gen5 drives and thus can't possibly have tested it first hand...and even if they did, their answer will always be it's "not worth it".

Factually, what is 'worth it' is entirely and irrefutably up to the guy paying for it.  The three Gen5 drives I've owned were absolutely "worth it" to me.  If I see a $20 bill laying on the ground and I stop to pick it up, it's "worth it".  If Bill Gates stops what he's doing to pick up $20, he's probably wasting money and/or time lol  By it's very nature, "worth" is always relative.

Those 'experts' typically only consider performance has improved if FPS is higher, which is completely misguided and inaccurate of itself.  There is much more to performance in a gaming computer than sheer stupid frame rates.

Edited August 6, 2024 by kksnowbear