Discussion Gaming for the masses.

[iTRiP]

Since I have made the upgrade to multiple NVMe storage devices on my gaming pc, (C:\Drive being SAMSUNG 980 PRO 1TB, D:\Drive being WESTERN DIGITAL SN550 2TB) I've been searching, gathering and going ahead of installing more of the most loved games.

Most of the games that benefit from faster read and write speeds I have installed on my faster C:\Drive and left the rest witch I have tested to not suffer in performance on the somewhat slower but still very quick D:\Drive.

This is what my PC games setup looks like now, and I will be looking to further upgrade my storage space in the near future when more exciting games can be had and installed.

https://imgur.com/rV05KAs

For when I have downloaded and installed games I then go ahead and copy them onto my other storage spaces E:\Drive, F:\Drive, G:\Drive witch are now all still Seagate Barracuda's 2TB and they do copy a lot slower than the NVMe's but they have now for many years kept my data save even when I have to format my pc and reinstall everything anew witch now with this setup takes 26hours of time.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

were you wanting some feedback or had some questions regarding this setup or are you just sharing?
you have this listed as a discussion but don't seem to be actually asking anything or really leading any type of conversation.

what my PC games setup looks like now

your desktop icons seem to be quite a cluttered mess without much organization in relation to the games.
i found using the Start Screen in 10 helps a lot.
an old image of mine of an earlier setup:

are now all still Seagate Barracuda's 2TB

very large 2.5" SSDs are much cheaper these days and a much better option for game installations.
while the 2.5" SATA SSDs are still much faster than HDDs there is almost no discernible difference between them and even faster M.2 drives with games.

 

[CountMike]

Since I have made the upgrade to multiple NVMe storage devices on my gaming pc, (C:\Drive being SAMSUNG 980 PRO 1TB, D:\Drive being WESTERN DIGITAL SN550 2TB) I've been searching, gathering and going ahead of installing more of the most loved games.

Most of the games that benefit from faster read and write speeds I have installed on my faster C:\Drive and left the rest witch I have tested to not suffer in performance on the somewhat slower but still very quick D:\Drive.

This is what my PC games setup looks like now, and I will be looking to further upgrade my storage space in the near future when more exciting games can be had and installed.

https://imgur.com/rV05KAs

For when I have downloaded and installed games I then go ahead and copy them onto my other storage spaces E:\Drive, F:\Drive, G:\Drive witch are now all still Seagate Barracuda's 2TB and they do copy a lot slower than the NVMe's but they have now for many years kept my data save even when I have to format my pc and reinstall everything anew witch now with this setup takes 26hours of time.

May come as surprise to you but a lot setups are like that. OS programs and games installed on fastest disk while pure data including downloaded games on slower disk)s) with mechanical HDDs still leading in price. For games/programs it's better to be installed on fast disks, preferably NVMe but if you are running of space they can be installed on slower ones. In that case most programs/games will install some part on OS disk. One side effect of installing games on fast disks like NVMe is that they pose much less (than HDDs) load on whole system and larger games tend to access disk to get maps from disks, faster that happens, more smooth game gets to be.
IO for instance have 6 disks.
I x NVMe at PCIe x4 v3.0 500GB for OS and most important programs/games .
1x NVMe at PCIe x2 v3 1TB
1 x NVMe at PCIe x2 but v2 due to adapter to PCIe x4 slot.
2 x SATA3 SSDs 250GB each.
1 x HDD (WD BLue) 2TB
Each one has own purpose and HDD is for pure storage and backup.

 

[USAFRet]

As above, many systems are like this.

Not primarily game oriented, but my system has 6x SSD, all 1TB.
980 Pro - OS and applications.
Intel 660p - photo work.
Other SATA III SSD - CAD, video, games, random junk

Basically, each physical drive with its own purpose.

Backups and long term storage goes to the ~80TB in the NAS.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I've ultimately settled on this setup:

• 512GB NVMe SSD for the OS and my commonly used programs
• 2TB NVMe SSD for my games
• 1TB SATA SSD for my data

I used to use the SATA SSD for games but I swapped it out for the 2TB NVMe SSD simply because I wanted to reduce how many cable runs I needed in my computer, not really for performance reasons. I mean heck, this is what loading Red Dead Online looks like:

Even with an NVMe SSD, it still took over a minute to get into the game. And while you could attribute some of that to the game looking for a lobby, also note that the disk transfer rate didn't go up that high throughout.

 

[USAFRet]

And while you could attribute some of that to the game looking for a lobby,

If it is going online to look for a resource, that is the "problem".

 

[CountMike]

Longer time to start a game is not too important, what's minute or two if one is going to spend hours playing game ? What's happening during the game can ruin enjoyment if it stops or slows down while loading maps etc. With such high resolutions and large maps developers can't count on systems to have 64 or 128GB of RAM so often accessing disk only way.

 

[iTRiP]

Longer time to start a game is not too important, what's minute or two if one is going to spend hours playing game ? What's happening during the game can ruin enjoyment if it stops or slows down while loading maps etc. With such high resolutions and large maps developers can't count on systems to have 64 or 128GB of RAM so often accessing disk only way.

Quite true, the initial startup of a game isn't to important that it goes faster than expected as long as the gamer gets to see something being loaded and images or at least some intro scene coming into render speedily, besides that I have played around a bit with where on witch drive my game content plays from and the results are quite differentiating.

One of these is pc game called hitman, and with the latest version the size of the actual data that the game consist of is 3 times smaller than older versions (160GB compared to 60GB)
When the game first loads a mission, loading goes rather quick to get gaming, but now the thing that one does quite allot in this game if your playing towards certain goals and feats is saving and then when the the play progression does not suit the objective anymore, one has to load a save game to try and better on the play progression in order to reach said feat or goal.

Now having had this game (HITMAN) on my slower drive even thou its an NVMe severely lengthens this save game loading due to that the entire mission data is loaded up again from storage and thus I have opted to have a game such as this on my fastest drive instead for best performance and time saving while gaming.

Another game that has benefit over slower drive is F1, now this game is played in 2160p @ 120Hz and there is this very noticeable strain on the rendered scene (note, I'm not talking about lag or fps spikes or dips in fps) when going around the track fast, and then this strain in the rendered scene is just not there when the game data is played from a faster storage device.

Lastly one more thing I would say at this time is to avoid pc games that don't execute immediately once opened, but besides that one hardly sees them being the popular games now days, so quite easily avoided, suppose the dev's have learned from there past mistakes.

were you wanting some feedback or had some questions regarding this setup or are you just sharing?
you have this listed as a discussion but don't seem to be actually asking anything or really leading any type of conversation.

your desktop icons seem to be quite a cluttered mess without much organization in relation to the games.

very large 2.5" SSDs are much cheaper these days and a much better option for game installations.

Mostly just sharing gained knowledge and hoping somebody else takes the lead on what we can discus, but as you can see I derive my input text from feedback and time played with current setup.

Besides that, You mention that ordinary 2.5" SSD's with large size are becoming cheaper or more affordable, well that's not the case yet here in my country, but when they do I'll be surely looking seriously at replacing my mechanical drive with some large SSD's, I could surely greatly benefit from that additional copy speed.

My desktop Icons are placed according to the order in witch I play these games, and the apps in relation to the order they are installed (with download and setup time in mind) and having made a screen capture of a previous full install before formatting, thus being able to place the icons in the same order as what was pleasing to me before, after making a fresh install.

At this point I'm going to be needing a very much larger than 2TB's movies drive, mine is nearly full of only (1080p's), but for games backup my two 2TB's are not yet filling up, sitting at 1.26TB free and 967Gb's free, but regardless of the free space, like I have stated above they are going to be getting replaced.

Here is some more images:

https://imgur.com/3bJXpkA

With some more input we could discus more. (meanwhile I'm getting back into some game, this text is not moving at a fast enough fps)

 

[hotaru.hino]

When the game first loads a mission, loading goes rather quick to get gaming, but now the thing that one does quite allot in this game if your playing towards certain goals and feats is saving and then when the the play progression does not suit the objective anymore, one has to load a save game to try and better on the play progression in order to reach said feat or goal.

Now having had this game (HITMAN) on my slower drive even thou its an NVMe severely lengthens this save game loading due to that the entire mission data is loaded up again from storage and thus I have opted to have a game such as this on my fastest drive instead for best performance and time saving while gaming.

Did you measure the loading time for a save in-mission between the two storage drives?

It doesn't make sense to me that the game reloads the entire mission again, because all of the data it needs should already be loaded. Anything that's dynamic will just wait for what its state should be in from the save file.

Another game that has benefit over slower drive is F1, now this game is played in 2160p @ 120Hz and there is this very noticeable strain on the rendered scene (note, I'm not talking about lag or fps spikes or dips in fps) when going around the track fast, and then this strain in the rendered scene is just not there when the game data is played from a faster storage device.

That also doesn't make sense to me since the data for the entire track is likely loaded in RAM. Plus describing a "strain" isn't very helpful either. Either the frame rate has issues or it doesn't. And if performance in that regard is not affected, then storage has nothing to do with it.

Lastly one more thing I would say at this time is to avoid pc games that don't execute immediately once opened, but besides that one hardly sees them being the popular games now days, so quite easily avoided, suppose the dev's have learned from there past mistakes.

Games still don't.

The process of "loading" an application isn't simply moving data from storage to RAM. The program has to be initialized to get everything up and running, which means that the processor's performance is also responsible for how fast something loads. Asking applications to execute immediately once opened is like saying a computer should be in Windows the moment you turn it on from a cold boot. The only way you can get "instant" usability in an application is to save the contents of its RAM state and load it in whenever you want to launch it again.

If you're talking about some other feature, like automatically load the last save or something, then that's a convenience feature at best.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

Lastly one more thing I would say at this time is to avoid pc games that don't execute immediately once opened

why?
if you still enjoy a game why would the fact that it may take a few more seconds, or even minutes, than any other to initialize make any difference?

i've always had games that, usually when heavily modded, take a considerable amount of time to load maps or save states.
and others that may even take some amount of time to get to an opening menu.
why should one avoid those if they are still fun to play?

 

[CountMike]

Some games just take inordinate time to actually start to play. Some of my favorites are Brothers in Arms series and CoD WWII and all have a very long intros that are hard or can't skip. Far Cry seems to go forever with intro. Fast disk has no much influence on them.

 

[iTRiP]

Some games just take inordinate time to actually start to play. Some of my favorites are Brothers in Arms series and CoD WWII and all have a very long intros that are hard or can't skip. Far Cry seems to go forever with intro. Fast disk has no much influence on them.

Exactly what I'm talking about, just a personal opinion for me to stay away from such games, ( having a fast pc and then to sit and wait for an pc game to finally get into the game part of an game is not something I'm going to fly with and neither should anybody else) comparing to games that don't have such oddities it's really not necessary to design a pc game that way .

why?
if you still enjoy a game why would the fact that it may take a few more seconds, or even minutes, than any other to initialize make any difference?

i've always had games that, usually when heavily modded, take a considerable amount of time to load maps or save states.
and others that may even take some amount of time to get to an opening menu.
why should one avoid those if they are still fun to play?

Besides what I am saying above about this, I believe this, but if a game is modded now that is up to the gamer and longer loading is surely wasn't part of the default design of the game.

Did you measure the loading time for a save in-mission between the two storage drives?

It doesn't make sense to me that the game reloads the entire mission again, because all of the data it needs should already be loaded. Anything that's dynamic will just wait for what its state should be in from the save file.


That also doesn't make sense to me since the data for the entire track is likely loaded in RAM. Plus describing a "strain" isn't very helpful either. Either the frame rate has issues or it doesn't. And if performance in that regard is not affected, then storage has nothing to do with it.


Games still don't.

The process of "loading" an application isn't simply moving data from storage to RAM. The program has to be initialized to get everything up and running, which means that the processor's performance is also responsible for how fast something loads. Asking applications to execute immediately once opened is like saying a computer should be in Windows the moment you turn it on from a cold boot. The only way you can get "instant" usability in an application is to save the contents of its RAM state and load it in whenever you want to launch it again.

If you're talking about some other feature, like automatically load the last save or something, then that's a convenience feature at best.

Neither does it makes sense to me either that this is how a game such as hitman is affected by the type of storage that it is played from ( confirmed and test on my 980 PRO vs SN 550)

Thing ( calling it: "strain") for now, that's noticeable when playing F1, is a sure fact even thou I cant completely explain what it is that's observed effecting gameplay when played from a slower storage. But going into further detail, running F1 on my different storage devices and comparing performance of not only the observed gameplay but also the actual gaming result of playing. ("might be all in the mind", knowing that the game is running on faster or slower storage hardware).

Of course ( keeping in mind that I have noticed such things even when changes made where games are running from witch storage device, faster or slower with the exact same processor in every instance)

 

[iTRiP]

With some more input we could discus more. (meanwhile I'm getting back into some game, this text is not moving at a fast enough fps)

Besides that, It's good to know everybody is still here and willing to help sort things out if I where to have some sort of issue, witch at this point I don't and gaming on the pc is going smooth as ice.

"Performing well in a pc game, knowing that utilized hardware and player input combined result in enjoyment"

 

[hotaru.hino]

Neither does it makes sense to me either that this is how a game such as hitman is affected by the type of storage that it is played from ( confirmed and test on my 980 PRO vs SN 550)

Thing ( calling it: "strain") for now, that's noticeable when playing F1, is a sure fact even thou I cant completely explain what it is that's observed effecting gameplay when played from a slower storage. But going into further detail, running F1 on my different storage devices and comparing performance of not only the observed gameplay but also the actual gaming result of playing. ("might be all in the mind", knowing that the game is running on faster or slower storage hardware).

Of course ( keeping in mind that I have noticed such things even when changes made where games are running from witch storage device, faster or slower with the exact same processor in every instance)

Unless you have some data to back up any perception of "betterness", I think placebo is having an effect here more so the performance of the storage drive.

 

[Eximo]

There are certainly games that will take advantage of direct storage access and need the faster speeds to decompress assets before loading them into VRAM. I can see some games taking advantage of that in a small way. And the likely reason your one game has shrunk in size is due to compression.

I'm waiting out the prices a little longer, but will probably re-build my HTPC around a smaller chassis and get all SSD storage. When I exhaust the 2TB in my gaming rig, 4TB drives should be cheap enough.

Though Mini-ITX motherboards are annoyingly expensive. Way more than the class of CPU I plan to get.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

having a fast pc and then to sit and wait for an pc game to finally get into the game part of an game is not something I'm going to fly with and neither should anybody else)

this just doesn't make sense.

if a game is exceptionally fun but may take a bit longer to startup or for user profiles to load that doesn't make the game any less fun.

if someone has some type of anxiety disorder where they can't sit still and wait for a minute or two then they could easily just execute this game or user profile/save state, do something else for this short time, and play when it's loaded.

the way you explain this sounds like even if it may only take a couple minutes to drive somewhere people should avoid going there until an instantaneous personal teleportation device has been developed.

 

[iTRiP]

this just doesn't make sense.

if a game is exceptionally fun but may take a bit longer to startup or for user profiles to load that doesn't make the game any less fun.

if someone has some type of anxiety disorder where they can't sit still and wait for a minute or two then they could easily just execute this game or user profile/save state, do something else for this short time, and play when it's loaded.

the way you explain this sounds like even if it may only take a couple minutes to drive somewhere people should avoid going there until an instantaneous personal teleportation device has been developed.

Not to that kind of extent would say avoid something like this, but before I had faster storage I thought that these so called long to get gaming games where executing lengthily because of my inadequate hardware.

Now I just totally avoid games that have any symptoms like this (just poor game engine development probably) because I know I don't have inadequate hardware anymore for the time being.

To me how well a game's engine executes and then runs adds to the enjoyment of the product, and is a basic requirement for a pc game to be kept and repeatedly replayed.

Unless you have some data to back up any perception of "betterness", I think placebo is having an effect here more so the performance of the storage drive.

Unfortunately I don't have any data to prove, besides having a direct performance stats comparison of a Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe Vs a Western Digital SN550 2TB.

I know this setup isn't ideal yet, and to have better performance I would have to again upgrade my storage once I have some funds available for this purpose.

Maybe replacing the WD SN550 2TB with a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB in the future.

See I was gifted the WD drive, so going with it for now, at least this drive is still quite fast, and has hugely helped with install time and copying, moving data, but it doesn't have quite the advantage the Samsung has in my pc.

Getting back to my gaming now, thanks for all the input.