ED on an NVMe drive

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Well just a quick one - if you happen to have an NVMe drive (PCIe) and you have enough space on it, try putting ED there.

The occasional stutters when coming out of hyperspace went from half a second (on the old SSD drive) to "barely noticeable". By that I mean I hardly notice it unless I specifically go looking for the stutter.

I know, this is a problem that FD still has to fix, but we can sort of workaround it...
 
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NW3

NW3
Good to know. I've been considering getting one, but the price is pretty steep, compared to standard SSDs. Rep++ for the tip.

It sounds like FD needs to preload anticipated assets while you're supercruising towards a station.
 
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Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
The extra bandwidth is great :D

Some of the stutter though, remains even with Elite on a RAMDrive. I'm convinced it's a network dependency that no amount of local storage bandwidth is going to be able to fix.
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Yeah NVMe PCIe drives are pretty expensive. But I bought one just because my motherboard has an M.2 slot for it :D

Also, don't get those NVMes for SATAs (even if they're advertised as M.2 slot)... they're basically not much better than standard SSDs which sell for cheaper. If you're going NVMe, go all the way for PCIes
 
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Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
FoxTwo said:
Yeah NVMe PCIe drives are pretty expensive. But I bought one just because my motherboard has an M.2 slot for it :D

Also, don't get those NVMes for SATAs (even if they're advertised as M.2 slot)... they're basically not much better than standard SSDs which sell for cheaper. If you're going NVMe, go all the way for PCIes
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Which make/model did you get?
When I built my new PC last year I was considering one of these but waited to see what the HD performance was like.
The HD's turned out to be very good for me so I didn't bother getting an NVMe SSD.
 

Dirtbird

D
Nick Sticks said:
Which make/model did you get?
When I built my new PC last year I was considering one of these but waited to see what the HD performance was like.
The HD's turned out to be very good for me so I didn't bother getting an NVMe SSD.
Click to expand...

A good entry level NVMe SSD is the Intel 600P. I have one of those in one of the systems I play ED in and it's great. Interestingly enough, that machine also has the fast domain logon I have ever witnessed.
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Nick Sticks said:
Which make/model did you get?
When I built my new PC last year I was considering one of these but waited to see what the HD performance was like.
The HD's turned out to be very good for me so I didn't bother getting an NVMe SSD.
Click to expand...

Mine's the Samsung 960 Evo (not Pro)... link here -> http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/ssd960.html. Fastest read/write I could find.

Also, I no longer even see the Win 10 logo. The PC goes from BIOS splash page to Windows desktop now. On the older SSD I still see the Win10 logo spin for a couple of seconds before going to desktop :D
 
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Crank Larson

Crank Larson
FoxTwo said:
Well just a quick one - if you happen to have an NVMe drive (PCIe) and you have enough space on it, try putting ED there.

The occasional stutters when coming out of hyperspace went from half a second (on the old SSD drive) to "barely noticeable". By that I mean I hardly notice it unless I specifically go looking for the stutter.

I know, this is a problem that FD still has to fix, but we can sort of workaround it...
Click to expand...

I guess your mileage may vary. I have a Samsung PCIe drive, and it didn't really make any noticeable difference to my previous drive (which was a Samsung Evo on SATA3). It may well also depend on your motherboard chipset, as my PCIe drive can't run at full speed due to the PCIe bandwidth. You need the really high end motherboards to take full advantage of the speed (foolishly I settled on an x99).
 

Lobey

Lobey
There's defn more to it than drive speed - I've never had a stutter of any kind in Elite on any of my desktops or laptops ever and I've been playing since Beta - they are all decent specs, but plenty of folk with similar have had problems, so there is something else or a combination of things at play here.
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Lobey said:
There's defn more to it than drive speed - I've never had a stutter of any kind in Elite on any of my desktops or laptops ever and I've been playing since Beta - they are all decent specs, but plenty of folk with similar have had problems, so there is something else or a combination of things at play here.
Click to expand...

True enough.

Personal experience tells me the stutters I am getting are due to loading assets. Otherwise the stutters won't be 2 - 5 seconds on HDD, half a second on SSD and near instantaneous on the M.2 drive.
 
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Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
CMDR Crank Larson said:
I guess your mileage may vary. I have a Samsung PCIe drive, and it didn't really make any noticeable difference to my previous drive (which was a Samsung Evo on SATA3). It may well also depend on your motherboard chipset, as my PCIe drive can't run at full speed due to the PCIe bandwidth. You need the really high end motherboards to take full advantage of the speed (foolishly I settled on an x99).
Click to expand...

Is that an Asus X99 motherboard?
If so which one - A / Deluxe etc.
I have the X99-A and the spec says it will do the M2-2280 NVMe at full speed.
You can't have anything in the PCIe x16_4 slot though as it shares bandwidth with M.2 x4.
 

Avago Earo

Banned
Avago Earo
I only built my first PC a couple of years back, so I'm still learning and this may be a dumb question. As far as I understand, unless you have a motherboard that supports an NVMe drive, the BIOS won't recognise it as a boot device. This being the case, would it still be possible to use an NVMe drive as a secondary drive on an older motherboard (in my case Asus Z87-K (Socket LGA 1150)) ?

Thanks in advance.
 

FoxTwo

FoxTwo
Avago Ero said:
... This being the case, would it still be possible to use an NVMe drive as a secondary drive on an older motherboard (in my case Asus Z87-K (Socket LGA 1150)) ?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I'm sure I have seen NVMe drives hooked onto a PCIe card-type thing you can purchase. Whether that can be seen as an OS drive, I dunno (but I doubt it). But you probably can use it just like any other drive if Windows can see it (with the proper drivers).

Something like this?

Dell-4x-m2-NVMe-Drive-PCIe-Card-600x374.jpg
 
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Avago Earo

Banned
Avago Earo
FoxTwo said:
I'm sure I have seen NVMe drives hooked onto a PCIe card-type thing you can purchase. Whether that can be seen as an OS drive, I dunno (but I doubt it). But you probably can use it just like any other drive if Windows can see it (with the proper drivers).

Something like this?

https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Dell-4x-m2-NVMe-Drive-PCIe-Card-600x374.jpg
Click to expand...

Cheers. I thought that was probably the case after reading up about it a while back, but I wasn't sure.
 

Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
Avago Ero said:
I only built my first PC a couple of years back, so I'm still learning and this may be a dumb question. As far as I understand, unless you have a motherboard that supports an NVMe drive, the BIOS won't recognise it as a boot device. This being the case, would it still be possible to use an NVMe drive as a secondary drive on an older motherboard (in my case Asus Z87-K (Socket LGA 1150)) ?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

This M2 PCIe card looks good:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Computers-Accessories/StarTech-x4-PCI-Express-PCIe-SSD-Adapter/B01FU9JS94

Just make sure your motherboard has a x4 PCI Express expansion slot free and is not restricted by any other internal boards that might share lanes with it.
 
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