> Maybe the NVMe read times are as/more significant than memory size increase

This was the most impactful upgrade/breakthrough for me. The first time I put even a SATA SSD in my PC at home I was completely blown away. It still blows my mind somewhat the amount of compute I have sitting on my desk though, both in terms of memory and CPU/GPU power, but that move from spinning rust to solid state was huge.

Then Apple did to me again with the M1 launch and NVMe speeds that made swapping nearly imperceptible.