Just realized PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 makes almost zero difference for gaming right now

I was building a new rig last month and kept seeing people swear Gen4 SSDs are a must have. So I grabbed one and ran some real world tests against my old Gen3 drive from 2019. Call of Duty on the Gen4 loaded 2 seconds faster out of 45 total. That's like 4% difference. Most games won't even hit Gen4 speeds because they aren't optimized for it yet. Have any of you tested this yourself or am I missing something?

2 comments

2 Comments

cole_hall19d ago

Your mileage may vary for sure but honestly I think people get too caught up in the hype of new hardware. A 2 second difference in load times is basically nothing when you're already waiting 45 seconds. Maybe in another 3 or 4 years when games start actually using DirectStorage properly Gen4 will matter more, but right now it feels like spending extra money for bragging rights more than real performance. Just my two cents though, I've seen some benchmarks where a few open world titles do load noticeably faster on Gen4, but that's more the exception than the rule.

james_butler18d ago

And if you're just gaming, that Gen3 drive will still feel snappy for years, so don't sweat the upgrade.