I'm a little confused by the speed gains with a gen 4 vs a gen 3 m.2. Most YouTube reviews tend to be focused more on gaming or speed of loading the OS.
I'm currently have large 3d files, around 2gb in size. Would I see much of an improvement in speed saving that size file in a gen 4 or should I just go with a gen 3?
Most drives state a write speed that should save that size file in less than a second, is this correct? Or is it also software dependent?
Auto save goes off every 5 minutes, and I try to save often on top of that, so even a few seconds difference would be enough. I was saving to a external Samsung T5, but that was talking too long. So swapped to saving on the OS drive, a Samsung 970 Evo. But it's small and fills up quick, and I'd rather save the work to a non OS drive. My MB has a spare m.2 gen 4 slot, that is not directly connected to the CPU but still should benefit from a gen 4 drive in right?
Thanks.
Will also depend on your motherboard as well as the data source (presumably open projects in RAM). Most M.2 Gen4 slots have to be CPU direct for any measurable benefit. Chip cost may also be a big difference between each generation.
You likely won't see any improvement if you are CPU bottlenecked i.e. your program is processing the data and doing incremental saves, versus a whole file replacement. Hard to tell without actual testing of your file and programs in-situ.