Storage drives are one of the basic components of consumer electronic devices, especially computers. Storage units affect our daily lives in many ways; The most important of these factors is read/write speeds.
In recent years, hard disks have begun to be replaced by much faster solid state drives (SSDs) as primary storage. The world of technology has come of age, so to speak. While SSD technologies continue their rapid development, we started to see speeds of up to 14 GB/s with the latest PCI Express generations.
If you are considering buying an SSD, you should definitely do some preliminary research. In this context, when you take a look at the technical specification page of a product, you have definitely come across the read/write speeds. Although there are many different factors, read/write performance is the main thing we need to pay attention to.
Today we will explain what the faces we mentioned mean. What do these numbers mean and do they make a difference on our computer?
A standard HDD could reach read/write speeds between 80 and 160 MB/s. SSDs, which take the first seat in computer cases, can start from 320 MB / s and reach speeds up to 14,000 MB / s. Although we are talking about speeds around 320 MB/sec, even low-end SSDs now reach 450-500 MB/sec.
A higher read/write speed is always smoother. However, unless you regularly move (or edit) large documents, you won’t notice much of a performance difference. At least this is generally valid in games and operating system usage.
Read/write speeds are measured in MB/s and often GB/s. SATA SSDs usually have 550 MB/s read and 500 MB/s write speeds. PCIe NVMe SSDs are in a completely different league. Today, while Gen4 drivers are pushing 7000 MB/sec, Gen5 drivers can go up to 14,000 MB/sec.
Now let’s get to the details. We wouldn’t be wrong if we say that read/write speeds are the primary measure of the performance of an SSD. Reading speed shows how quickly information is accessed from a driver, that is, how quickly the data is read. For example, if you are trying to open a single document that is several gigabytes in size, an SSD with a higher read speed can open the document faster. It helps improve the boot time of the computer as it takes less time to read the large documents required to load the operating system.
Writing speeds indicate how quickly information is recorded, that is, written, to the driver. You most often encounter write speed when trying to copy a document from one position to another. If these documents are very large, you’ll see a timer showing how long the transfer will take. The higher your reading speed, the shorter it takes to copy.
Read/write speeds are divided into sequential and random speeds. Ordered faces are valid when accessed documents are in a certain order. Random read/write speeds are used to measure the time it takes to access non-sequential documents. As an additional note, sequential faces are much higher than random faces.
For basic things like gaming, web browsing, and streaming, 500 MB/s read/write speeds are sufficient. In other words, these rates are quite sufficient for individuals who do not always work with documents. If you carry large documents on a daily basis, deal with video/photo editing and play large-sized games that benefit from SSD speed, we recommend switching to an NVMe drive with high speeds to make your life easier. If you ask about speeds, you should at least take a look at products that can reach speeds around 2500 MB/sec.
You will feel huge differences when switching from a mechanical hard drive (HDD) to an SSD. These differences range from Windows boot times to copying documents from one place to another, from navigating the operating system to games. This is because mechanical hard drives have moving sectors that limit how many reads/writes they can do per second. There is no such problem with SSDs, so switching from a hard drive to any SSD affects almost everything from A to Z.
On the other hand, we cannot say the same thing for different SSD types. Of course, you can feel these differences at reasonable workloads, but you won’t see this difference over multiple missions.
If you regularly handle large documents (e.g. saving and editing long 4K images), the extra read/write speed performance can be a huge benefit. Frankly, we do not even stress the SSD in daily work. If you are one of these types of users, you can turn to SSD models that have higher capacities and can maintain read/write speeds in long sessions, instead of very high performances.
An SSD contains a relatively small number of faster cells used as buffers in addition to the “normal” cells. During a read/write process (such as copying a large document) the capacity may be full and then the speeds may decrease. A driver who can always provide high performance can copy documents without reducing their speed.
DRAM in SSDs
While mechanical hard disks store information on a rotating platter, SSDs work with cells. In SSDs, data is written directly to flash memory cells known as NAND flash. All information stored on an SSD is always moved from one cell to another to ensure that no single memory cell is worn out due to excessive reading and writing of data. This is a necessary way to increase the longevity and reliability of the driver, but how do you know where the ever-moving information is stored?
SSDs keep a virtual map of all your information, keeping track of where each document is stored. In an SSD with DRAM, this information map is stored in the DRAM chip, which works like a very fast cache. When you want to open a document, your computer can directly access the DRAM on the SSD to find the document quickly.
In SSDs without DRAM, the information map is stored on NAND flash, which is much slower than DRAM. Solid state drives are faster than hard drives in any case, but DRAM-enhanced SSDs always have an advantage.
Before getting into the subject, let’s point out that, in general, SSDs do not affect performance in games much. This is especially true in older games. If we talk about loading times, there are no big differences between a standard SATA SSD and a high-speed M.2 NVMe SSD. When we compare HDD and SSD, SSD should definitely be preferred.
On the other hand, read/write speed is very important in some games, especially new generation games. Such as games that are large in size, have large skins and require long waiting times. We can say that SSD performance is much more important in consoles compared to computers.
High read speed on storage drives provides faster loading times, smoother scene transitions and a more convenient overall gaming experience, while high write speed allows players to save their games faster.
High-speed NVMe SSDs open games a little faster (the difference may be larger in some games) and also load scenes faster in the middle of the game. These advantages become even more valuable as game developers design games optimized for SSDs and create more immersive gaming environments with more suitable graphics.
You can check the manufacturer’s spec sheet to find the read/write speeds of your SSD. Let us state from the beginning that these faces are the “maximum” faces offered “theoretically”. So you won’t be able to capture the faces you see advertised in every workload.
If you want to test the speeds yourself, you can use CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD software on Windows. We can recommend Blackmagic speed test software for Mac and dd disk utility for Linux.
The software is completely free and very easy to use. First of all, before starting the test, we make sure that there is no random process using the disk in the background. Additionally, you may observe small differences in values for each test performed.
CrystalDiskMark
First, let’s download and install the CrystalDiskMark software from this link. When we open the software, we select the disk we want to test (F:), the number of times the disk will be tested during the testing phase (5) and the size of the test file (1GiB). You can change the values as you wish. Then, let’s click on the “All” option and wait for the tests to finish. If you wish, you can test the maximum charges with the sequential read/write test by simply clicking on the “Seq Q32T1” option.
When the test is completed, the reading and writing values appear.
AS SSD Benchmark
With this link, we download and launch the latest version of the software. Afterwards, we select the disk we want to test (F:) and the number of times (5) the disk will be tested in the test stage. Here you can mark values such as 4K, 4K 64 Thread test and access time if you want to see them. We select the Sequential (Seq) option and start the test with the Start button.
At the end of the test, we reached the highest reading and writing values.
SATA
We can say that SATA is the most used contact type today. This contact type is divided into three types: SATA I, SATA II and SATA III.
Connection Type | Value | Top Speed |
SATA I | 1.5Gbps | 150MB/s |
SATA II | 3.0Gbps | 300MB/s |
SATA III | 6.0Gbps | 600MB/s |
M.2 SATA
Connection Type | Value | Top Speed |
M.2 SATA | 6.0Gbps | 600MB/s |
M.2 NVMe
Connection Type | Value | Top Speed |
M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 | 32Gbps | 4000 MB/s (Usually 3500 MB/s) |
M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 | 64Gbps | 8000 MB/s (Usually 7000 MB/s) |
M.2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 | 128Gbps | 16,000 MB/s (Usually 14,000 MB/s) |
Connection Interface
SSDs use NVMe or SATA protocol to communicate with other parts of the computer. The SATA interface is lower than NVMe because with NVMe we can reach the high speeds that we can reach with PCIe contact.
M.2 is actually one of the form factor types. You can find both NVMe M.2 and SATA M.2 SSDs on the market. Sometimes in product advertisements or specification pages, the words “M.2 SSD” can be used to indicate the NVMe drive and “SATA SSD” can be used to indicate the presence of a 2.5-inch form factor SSD. In other words, they do not specifically mention the much faster NVMe drivers. As a result, do not give credit to such expressions. Instead, look at the specifications to get an idea of the approximate speed of the storage drive in a laptop or desktop computer.
Data Transfer Speeds and Performance
Both products can be M.2 type, but NVMe drives are always faster than SATA drives. So what’s the reason for this? Transfer speeds are much higher due to the use of the PCIe connector and the PCIe bus on the motherboard. However, the support of the NVMe driver and motherboard is also important: PCIe 3.0, PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 technologies are very different in terms of data transfer.
The difference will vary depending on the workload. However, NVMe stands out very strongly in workloads where we need to manage more than one large document, such as file transfer or image editing.
You should use whichever NVMe version your motherboard supports. Especially if you want to do heavy productivity work or play next-gen games using DirectStorage and NVMe.
PCI Express
The maximum speed for an NVMe PCIe 3.0 (Gen 3) SSD is up to 3,500 MB per second, while an NVMe PCIe 4.0 (Gen 4) SSD can reach up to 7,500 MB per second. Of course, there is no rule that every product you purchase will reach the maximum speeds we mentioned.
Manufacturers often list on their pages the theoretical speeds that can be expected from a particular model. For example, a product that advertises maximum speeds of 7.5 GB/sec may run at much lower speeds when copying documents. It is best to test independent benchmark results. From time to time, we share detailed performance results of SSDs on Technopat.Net. If you cannot find a review of the work you are searching for, Technopat Sosyal is always at your service.
SATA
SATA SSDs generally reach speeds around 500-550 MB per second. As we just said in the M.2 section, performance may vary between models. In fact, if you buy one of the unknown SSDs on the market, you may encounter unexpected results.
Although it is much slower compared to NVMe drives, the difference is night and day when compared to SATA HDDs. The 7,200 RPM hard disk drive can reach up to 160 MB per second, which is very low compared to SSD.
Should NVMe SSD be purchased instead of SATA? Although NVMe is always faster, you may not always feel this difference. For example, if you are just playing games, there are no big differences except for certain games and scenarios. Additionally, if you do not use your computer for images and photography or do not always copy documents, you may not notice much difference. However, the advantage will be tangible, especially when uploading or copying large documents.
Prices
As you all know, the faster the SSD, the higher its price. 2.5 inch SATA SSDs can sometimes be cheaper than M.2 models, but most of the time the prices are close.
However, the prices of NVMe SSDs vary widely. The price of two different PCIe 4.0 SSDs may vary depending on the NAND chips used, the controller, the presence of DRAM or not, and other factors. Additionally, someone may present much higher rates than someone else. When it comes to PCIe versions, newer version SSDs are more valuable.
Form Factor
M.2 NVMe SSDs are often used in laptops and ready-made desktop computers. In terms of size, 2280 type drivers are common. SATA SSDs can come in 2.5″ or M.2 form. If your laptop has a spare M.2 slot, you should definitely check whether it offers NVMe support before purchasing a drive. If you are going to buy SATA M.2, there is no need for NVMe support.
M.2 NVMe | M.2 SATA | 2.5″ SATA | |
Speed | PCIe 3.0: up to 3500 MB/s PCIe 4.0: up to 7500 MB/s PCIe 5.0: up to 14,000 MB/s | Up to 550MB/s | Up to 550MB/s |
Form Factor | M.2 U.2 PCIe card | M.2 | 2.5″ |
Pros | High performance | Ideal for small-space computers and laptops with M.2 ports | Successful in terms of price/performance |
Cons | Quite expensive | Often slightly more expensive than 2.5″ SATA SSDs Low speeds compared to NVMe SSDs | Low speeds compared to NVMe SSDs – Disadvantaged in terms of cables and space occupied |
Purpose of usage | Laptops and desktops focused on high performance | Mid-segment laptops and desktop computers | Budget-oriented mid-range laptops and desktops |