Testing SSD speed impact on gaming performance across 11 titles

Based on the provided text, here is a summary of the SSD performance testing results:

Overview of SSD Performance Testing

The article tests the performance of SATA SSDs against various PCIe generations (3.0, 4.0, and 5.0) across different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, 2160p) for several games, including 007 First Light, *F1 25, and *Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Key Findings on Utilization:
None of the tested SSDs reached 100% peak utilization, and the average utilization remained extremely low across all scenarios.

General Performance Consistency:
Across the majority of games tested, SATA SSDs delivered comparable performance to PCIe SSDs, indicating that for most workloads, there was no meaningful advantage in performance between the drive types or generations.
All tested drives ultimately showed identical performance when under I/O activity from these games.

Performance Specific to Games

1. Streaming Systems (007 First Light):
The new real-time level streaming system in 007 First Light (using the Glacier engine) was found not to place a heavy burden on storage devices.
Overall, the game’s I/O activity did not stress any SSDs significantly.

2. High-Speed Driving (*F1 25):
The game exhibited higher peak bandwidth than other tested games, but it was not enough to truly stress a SATA SSD.
All drives performed consistently under this demanding workload.

3. *Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (Nuanced Results):
This title showed more nuanced results regarding loading times and framerates related to portal sequences:
At 1080p and 1440p, the SATA SSD resulted in slightly higher average framerates and 1% lows because slower loading increased time spent inside portals.
However, at 4K resolution, PCIe SSDs delivered better 1% lows.
Outside of these specific sequences, there was no measurable performance difference between the drives.

Final Verdict

The author concludes that:
For the vast majority of games tested, a SATA SSD delivers comparable performance to PCIe SSDs.
Only two titles (Forspoken and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart) showed measurable performance differences between SATA and PCIe SSDs.
In Forspoken, moving from a SATA SSD to any PCIe SSD resulted in an improvement in 1% lows.