The 14,000 MB/s Illusion

Gen 5 NVMe SSDs have dominated the market in 2026, advertising massive sequential read speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s. But does this actually translate to faster game load times? The short answer is: barely.

Real-World Game Loading

In benchmarks across heavily demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield, a premium Gen 5 SSD loads levels only about 0.5 to 1.2 seconds faster than a high-end Gen 4 drive. The bottleneck is no longer the drive's sequential speed, but game engine decompression and random read performance.

DirectStorage 1.2 Impact

Even with Microsoft's DirectStorage API enabling GPU decompression, Gen 4 drives are more than capable of feeding the GPU fast enough. Gen 5 currently provides rapidly diminishing returns for pure gaming.

Pricing in Saudi Arabia

A 2TB Gen 5 SSD typically costs around 1,200 to 1,500 SAR on Amazon SA, whereas a top-tier Gen 4 2TB SSD (like the Samsung 990 Pro or WD SN850X) costs around 650 to 800 SAR. You are paying practically double for no visible gaming benefit.

Verdict

Do not buy a Gen 5 SSD for a gaming-only PC build in 2026. Save that 600 SAR difference and upgrade your GPU tier instead. Only video editors working with raw 8K footage will benefit from Gen 5 speeds.