Carfax83

The issue has been solved. The source of the problem was Windows itself, specifically the Creators spring update! After clean installing Windows 10 Fall update, the issue has been completely fixed, and Witcher 3 plays buttery smooth on my 960 Pro the way it should have from the get go! Microsoft admitted that in certain games and applications, the Creators Spring update could cause stuttering and lag, though they never specified what caused this to occur. Well whatever it was, it has been completely and totally fixed with the Creators Fall update. So if your games are stuttering and you can't figure out what the cause is, try updating or clean installing to the latest Windows 10 Creators fall update!

It's probably running in AHCI mode then. Were you able to verify whether your drives were using SATA 6Gb/s? Check using something like Crystal Disk info.

Aggressive LPM support is there, and it's already disabled. Now click on SATA Controllers for your Kingston SSD and HDD and make sure they're both on AHCI. Then save and reboot. When you're in Windows, make sure that you're running at SATA 6Gb/s.

Go into your UEFI and make sure that the SSD and HDD are using AHCI and not IDE, and that aggressive link power management is disabled.

The only way that's going to happen is if your motherboard supports NVMe protocol. So what you need to do is make sure the latest UEFI is installed, and probably contact Asus to get verification as to whether your motherboard actually supports NVMe. It might, but most likely not.

OK it turned out I hadn't figured it out. The problem is still there! I'm starting to believe it's the game itself. The Witcher 3's 3D engine asset fetching algorithm is definitely single threaded, and it's very slow compared to AAA engines like Frostbite 3, UE4 etcetera. So I think it's having a problem with the NVMe protocol, which loads much larger chunks of data (in parallel if the engine supports) at a slower pace. I would really love it if someone with the Witcher 3 installed on an NVMe drive could test it out for me!

PCIe is the interface, and NVMe is the protocol. They aren't the same thing. Also, while it could work as a storage drive, I don't think the drive would be bootable because it doesn't support NVMe. So you should consider what you're going to do with the drive, ie will you install Windows on it? Because if that's what you want to do, it's probably not going to work.

Well I don't know about wise, but SSDs are certainly buyable second hand provided they were taken care of. I've sold a few of my old ones myself on Craigslist, and one of the things I did was to mention that the drive had been secure erased, which means that all the data on it was destroyed and completely unrecoverable. Also, I posted a pic of the drive with Samsung Magician which shows how much writes the drive had, and that it was in good condition. I checked the link and I didn't see that the seller had posted a picture of the drive's Samsung Magician readout, so I would definitely inquire about that before even considering buying it.

Are you making sure that your SSD is connected using PCIe 3.0 4x? Also, make sure that only your primary boot drive and nothing else. Also if it's taking a long time to boot, I doubt it's heat related. Heat related issues would likely show up in something with more continuous or extended I/O workloads like gaming rather than just booting up.

It's funny you should mention that R3ep3r. At first I thought the problem was exactly because I was running an AV, specifically Norton Security. While Norton is actually fairly light on resources considering how much protection it offers, it's still very noticeable to me when it comes to performance between having it on and off. In the end I decided to delete Norton, because I had been thinking about going AV free for a while anyway as I don't really think I need it anymore. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that I finally found the problem! It was the damn INDEXING SERVICE that was running during the game that was causing it to stutter. Let me explain. My dumbass self followed some of the advice online about SSD optimization, and one of them was to turn of indexing. So I disabled the drive indexing for C:\, but I forgot to disable the Windows Search service as well. So what I think was happening, was that Windows was trying to index my files over again during the gaming sessions, thus causing the stuttering. Now why it would do this when I specifically disabled indexing on C:\ is anyone's guess. All in all, it was really stupid and the only reason why I figured it out is because I remembered that indexing was enabled on my 850 pro, but disabled on my new 960 pro. Anyway, I decided to just leave indexing enabled and I re-enabled it on C:\, because when you think about it, it's not necessary at all for indexing to be disabled on modern SSDs. I'm just glad I finally figured it out, as it was driving me nuts!

Hey, thanks for the prompt replies guys. I checked the temps with AIDA 64, and nothing appears to be out of order. As of now, the idle temp is 36c, which is very low. I have two fans pointed directly towards the 960 Pro so I definitely don't think it's overheating. Also, other games don't exhibit this behavior from what I've seen. Other games I've tried are Doom, Batman Arkham Knight and Mass Effect Andromeda. Full specs: Intel 6900K @ 4.2ghz TridentZ 32GB DDR4 3400 CL15 Asus X99 AII with UEFI 1701 NVidia Titan Xp Samsung 960 Pro 1TB Windows 10 Pro x64 with Creators update Antec 1200w HCP The only anomaly is that the Witcher 3 seems to be accessing the drive much more than it should. Like I said, when I'm in Novigrad (specially near the Portside Gate and entering the City, the HDD activity light is basically blinking non stop, even if Geralt isn't moving. When I played in the same area on my 850 Pro, I didn't get nowhere near that level of stuttering or HDD light activity, especially after the game had cached the assets into RAM. Also, I am running the latest UEFI bios for my motherboard. I am especially interested to see if anyone with a Samsung Pro or Evo that has the Witcher 3 installed can test it for me. Here is what I did to test: 1) Start Geralt at the Portside Gate fast travel sign, and enter the City with Geralt running. There is always a lot of stutter in this area because the game's streaming algorithm is so slow and the game also compiles shaders on the fly. So while I do expect some stutter, I never thought it would be to the extent that I'm witnessing it with my 960 Pro. If someone with the game can replicate what I'm seeing, then I will know it's the game and not the drive.

Hello, newbie here I'm hoping someone can answer my question regarding my Samsung 960 Pro 1TB. First off, here are my specs as I know it would be helpful in diagnosing my problem: Intel 6900K Asus X99 AII 32GB DDR4 3400 Titan Xp Windows 10 Pro I recently bought a Samsung 960 Pro 1TB model to replace my 850 Pro 1TB that I've been using for the past few years. Everything went smooth during the installation, and Samsung Magician recognized that my 960 Pro was connected using PCIe 3.0 4x like it's supposed to. I also have the latest Samsung NVMe drivers, 2.2 installed. Regular day to day performance as far as boot up time and loading applications is faster than it's ever been thanks to the new SSD, and my synthetic benchmarks are all in order and appear normal. Anyway, I've noticed that I'm getting a lot of stuttering in the Witcher 3. Witcher 3 is no longer a smooth game, and the storage access light on my case continually lights up like a fricking Christmas tree when Geralt is moving, especially in highly populated areas like Novigrad. I know it has something to do with the drive, as I still have my old 850 Pro with a full Windows 10 install plus all the games. So I reinstalled the 850 pro, keeping the same UEFI settings and confirmed that everything was back to normal ie no stuttering. My question is, have any other NVMe owners noticed this? Or have I made some mistake with the setup as this is my first NVMe drive? Another possibility that I've thought of is that it's possible that since NVMe is a relatively new I/O protocol, the vast majority of games' asset loading is probably still optimized for slower protocols like SATA. Any help or advice would be much appreciated thanks!