I'm building my first PC mainly for AAA gaming, but current SSD prices mean I can't afford a 2TB PCIe 4.0 drive. A 2TB PCIe 3.0 SSD and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD cost about the same. The PCIe 3.0 option I'm considering is a Gigabyte 2500E, while the available PCIe 4.0 models are similarly priced. How noticeable would the performance difference be in real-world gaming, especially for loading times, and is the extra storage more valuable than the newer interface?
4 Answers
The difference will probably be measured in seconds at most, and often less than that. Games generally don’t benefit much from the higher sequential speeds advertised by PCIe 4.0 drives. A decent 2TB PCIe 3.0 SSD is a better value than being limited to 1TB.
Don’t judge the drives only by PCIe generation. Check whether they use TLC or QLC NAND, whether they have DRAM or a good controller, and look at sustained write performance and reviews. A well-built 2TB PCIe 3.0 model can easily be preferable to a low-end 1TB PCIe 4.0 model.
Go with the 2TB drive. For gaming, PCIe 3.0 is already fast enough, and moving to PCIe 4.0 usually has little to no effect on frame rates or typical loading times. The extra capacity will be much more useful for large AAA games.
For a gaming-focused build, the 2TB Gigabyte option should be perfectly adequate unless the 1TB drive is a significantly better-quality model. PCIe 4.0 can matter for specialized workloads, but it generally won’t provide a meaningful gaming advantage over a good PCIe 3.0 SSD.
Exactly. Two drives with the same PCIe rating can perform very differently, so the specific models and their endurance matter more than the generation number alone.