SSD or NVME for different game types?

[PeterX7]

I would like to know if there is a difference between putting a game (that has thousand of txt files like EU4, HOI4) on an NVME drive instead of a sata due to the better reading speeds? Or fil sizes and quantity doesnt matter really?

 

I have a samsung 970 evo plus and a 860 evo.

 

Thanks for the answers

[berberries]

putting it on the faster drive should get you slightly faster game loading times.

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can test it your self, but the general consensus is that ssd speed doesn't affect game load time much, but high performance drives will be a bit faster.

 

With most ssds the drive stops being the limiting factor for game load time and your waiting on other things.

[mariushm]

I doubt it would make a difference.  Most text files will be cached in ram after the first time they're read.

nvme drives will have higher iops, which can affect how many random files can be read at the same time , in parallel, but a game will rarely do that, most files are read from disk in sequence.

[NewMaxx]

I've tested Clausewitz-engine games (as you list) on my SSDs and found that load times work on a strange principle. Namely, you want the game on a separate drive from the OS, but it doesn't much matter what kind of drive. Has to do with the preparation of small files off the OS drive (Users folder). Having a faster OS drive can improve the load time but having the game on that same drive will increase load times. Yes, I've tested this. I had it load as fast on a HDD (yes, mechanical) as NVMe - the speed is limited by the OS files, and moreover having the game on the OS drive made is slower than a HDD. (the game I tested here was HOI4 - tracking the I/O, it seems bottlenecked by files in Users that are generated on startup)

 

But more generally: depends on the game. Unity-engine games, for example Pathfinder, Pillars of Eternity, etc., can find some benefit on NVMe (up to 15% in my testing). Online games also can sometimes benefit. I would say the majority of games see little to no benefit, however. I think this might change in the future as the upcoming consoles are designed to leverage NVMe for game loading. As for now, the best indicator does tend to be low queue depth 4K read performance - which is why Optane leads the way, followed by SMI-based drives, with E12-based falling behind. But these differences are small and even DRAM-less drives (like the SN550) can load fast under the right circumstances (general read performance), since you're bottlenecked elsewhere. 

[Delicious Cake]

From my experience, the software-side bottleneck in clausewitz games during loading is when its parsing the text/script file data, particularly if you're running mods. This is because the game engine has to check, merge and/or overwrite a lot of scripting code into memory (sometimes several times over if there's a lot of duplicated instances), which means the single-thread CPU performance is the most likely bottleneck with most of pdx's current 1st party games in every aspect.

[NewMaxx]

Definitely. I've always seen improvement with it when moving games off my primary drive, but it ultimately has a bottleneck there, it's just a wait condition when it's on the same drive. In any case - depends on the game, the engine, many factors, but I think for the most part any SSD will be plenty fast.

[PeterX7]

Thank you for the replies and thank you NewMaxx for your in depth guide.

[NewMaxx]

3 minutes ago, PeterX7 said:

Thank you for the replies and thank you NewMaxx for your in depth guide.

Not much of a guide, just saying that it differs from game to game and engine to engine, but for the most part there's not a huge difference. I'd say 5-15% is a reasonable range for titles that are impacted. Certain engines like Clausewitz and Unity have unique factors that impact it - as Delicious Cake stated above, the former is bottlenecked at CPU (and many games are) for loading, my particular issue with it is because of a wait condition (which might even exist anymore). Also I definitely saw improvements with NVME on many Unity-engine titles, and certainly many online games. But it's not a huge difference usually. Haven't a separate drive for games is also usually unnecessary with SSDs, I stated HOI4 as an exception due to its unique engine.

[PeterX7]

14 hours ago, NewMaxx said:

Not much of a guide, just saying that it differs from game to game and engine to engine, but for the most part there's not a huge difference. I'd say 5-15% is a reasonable range for titles that are impacted. Certain engines like Clausewitz and Unity have unique factors that impact it - as Delicious Cake stated above, the former is bottlenecked at CPU (and many games are) for loading, my particular issue with it is because of a wait condition (which might even exist anymore). Also I definitely saw improvements with NVME on many Unity-engine titles, and certainly many online games. But it's not a huge difference usually. Haven't a separate drive for games is also usually unnecessary with SSDs, I stated HOI4 as an exception due to its unique engine.

How about games with large data files for eg Total War Warhammer 1 and 2?

 

Also do you think there could be a noticable performance from upgrading  a 9600k to 9900k (single core should be the same but my hoi4 friend told me that ryzen 3. gen improved performance compared to 2nd gen  (he went from 2700x to 3800x)

[NewMaxx]

Games are all about reads and generally not in a way any specific SSD will be be bound. There are plenty of videos showing off load times side-by-side if you're curious. Yes, Zen 2 (3xxx) has better IPC and higher SC boost than the 2nd generation.