Solid state drives (SSDs) have made significant advances since their introduction in 1991. The latest generation, PCIe Gen 5 SSD, boasts theoretical speeds of up to 32GT/s (gigatransfers per second) for NMVe, making it 100 percent faster than previous Gen 4 SSDs. Despite this, the actual gaming performance boost from a Gen 5 SSD is minimal at this time.
Why PC gamers don’t need a PCIe 5.0 SSD
The blazing-fast transfer speeds of a PCIe Gen 5 SSD do not significantly improve game load times compared to Gen 4 SSDs. Tests have shown that the difference in load times for games like Counter-Strike Global Offensive and Cyberpunk 2077 is almost negligible between Gen 5 and Gen 4 SSDs.
While Gen 5 SSDs excel in sequential read/write speeds for tasks like transferring files, the random read/write speeds that impact game loading times are similar between Gen 4 and Gen 5 SSDs. This discrepancy explains the minimal difference in game load times between the two generations.
Despite the potential speed benefits of Gen 5 SSDs in gaming, current software like Microsoft’s DirectStorage API has not been widely adopted by developers to fully utilize the technology. As a result, the actual impact on gaming performance is limited for now.
As developers continue to optimize games for SSD technology, the benefits of Gen 5 SSDs may become more apparent in the future. However, with the upcoming PCIe Gen 6 on the horizon and the additional costs of upgrading to Gen 5 SSDs, many users may choose to stick with their existing Gen 4 SSDs for now.
