Game really demands an SSD

[Kleerex]

So, I REALLY tried to make game run on an HDD without stutters, and failed. Game engine tries to preload as much as it can into RAM and VRAM, and HDD just couldn't handle such workload without stutters.

Here are solutions that I could think of if you really want to keep using that sweet HDD:

1) buy another HDD of the exact same size and make a RAID0 or RAID1 array. This will speed it up significantly without sacrificing available disk space. If you have a slow 1 TB HDD, a RAID0 array with another 1 TB HDD would yield you nearly 2 TB of disk space operating at SATA SSD speed.

2) if you are on an Intel platform, get an Optane module. it would operate as a HDD cache and speed things up significantly, eliminating stutters.

3) get an SSD. Honestly, a cheap SATA SSD would do, and you would get improved performance in many other games as well.

HDDs are just too slow for games these days. Get on with times, save yourself a lot of angry posting on forums.

[Alan J T]

Originally posted by frognik:

Running off an external USB 3.0 SSD and have no stutters at all.
Loading time is decent too.

I moved mine from my Normal Steam Library Drive a 5 TB External on to my M.2 WD Blue 1TB SSD Drive and it helped a lot, Page File is also on a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2 SSD. Normally it is not a problem but this game brings all kinds of weirdness.

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by Sheogorath:

HDDs are just too slow for games these days. Get on with times, save yourself a lot of angry posting on forums.

I am sorry but this is false. Both consoles sell with the current "standard" mechanical HDD. If they were not capable of playing the titles on console they would not be used.

HDD & SSD access times only affect loading times and texture streaming. And since Windows uses a shared memory pool for the GPU system, it can easily stream textures to reserved memory and then in to GPU memory completely negating any access time issues. Unless you have a mechanical HDD from 20 years ago, then access time is irrelevant to frame rates.

What has a much greater effect is GPU memory. The more GPU memory you have the more it can cache data without needing HDD access.


TLDR; HDD wont affect frame rates or "hitching". It is a red herring.

[Engels78]

I have all my current playing games on SSDs (as they got cheaper I bought second SATA SSD and now also M2 SSD, so I have now 3 SSDs 😁 )! I did it after I played Battlefield 4 with friends and they were already playing when I was waiting 5 minutes to load map! After changing to SSD, load time became faster than me going to fridge to take a beer! 😛

[Alan J T]

Originally posted by Engels78:

and they were already playing when I was waiting 5 minutes to load map! After changing to SSD, load time became faster than me going to fridge to take a beer! 😛

That sound like a bad thing

[Kleerex]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

HDD & SSD access times only affect loading times and texture streaming. And since Windows uses a shared memory pool for the GPU system, it can easily stream textures to reserved memory and then in to GPU memory completely negating any access time issues. Unless you have a mechanical HDD from 20 years ago, then access time is irrelevant to frame rates.

What has a much greater effect is GPU memory. The more GPU memory you have the more it can cache data without needing HDD access.


TLDR; HDD wont affect frame rates or "hitching". It is a red herring.

Excuse me, but this is not true. I did move game back and forth between HDD and SSD, the difference is visible. Not just in this game but many others as well. Assassin's Creed Origins benchmark stutters on HDD but not on SSD (though game yields ~25% performance boost on HDD for some weird reason). Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order cutscenes stutter on HDD but not SSD. Even putting pagefile on NVMe SSD doesn't help. Stuttering disappears if benchmarks are repeated several times because Windows reads data from RAM cache instead of HDD. This is why I finally ditched HDD and am only using SSDs now. HDDs are great when storage capacity matters, but they are causing issues in games because pretty much every modern game engine is streaming assets on-the-fly, even in non-open world games. Not just textures but also high-resolution geometry and sound.

HDD doesn't just affect loading times in this game. Since this is a console port, many things are tied to framerate, and sudden framerate drops cause crashes. You can tell if, say, streamers on Twitch are running game from HDD if their game crashes during the cutscene where Teersa tells Aloy that the mountain is her mother. They then restart game, and it does not crash anymore because data is now read from RAM cache instead of HDD. I believe that high framerate can also crash the game. It's not the only reason for crashes, but it can atribute to many cases.

[Arc]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

HDD & SSD access times only affect loading times and texture streaming.

Assets (meshes, LOD, etc.) are streamed in/out just as well fyi.

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

TLDR; HDD wont affect frame rates or "hitching". It is a red herring.

A TL;DR would be that you do not understand the difference between framerate and frametime :3

A TL;DR would be that slow harddrive will bottleneck render thread and dip frametime in a game heavily reliant on asset streaming therefore "hitch" the game !

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by Arc:

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

HDD & SSD access times only affect loading times and texture streaming.

Assets (meshes, LOD, etc.) are streamed in/out just as well fyi.

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

TLDR; HDD wont affect frame rates or "hitching". It is a red herring.

A TL;DR would be that you do not understand the difference between framerate and frametime :3

A TL;DR would be that slow harddrive will bottleneck render thread and dip frametime in a game heavily reliant on asset streaming therefore "hitch" the game !

Asset and mesh streaming is also handled by Windows "shared memory" pool to the GPU's dedicated memory. I did not feel the need to get extremely specific.

Unless an HDD is outdated by over a decade it will not "bottleneck" the render thread (lol), bad memory management and threading will cause much more "stalls" / "hitches" that are not access time related but system management issues (ie the code utilising the hardware properly and at best performance).

This is why we have compression systems which are designed to reduce drive access times and storage sizes considerably. SSD are great, and I have one myself. But it is NOT a requirement for stable or high framerates in HZD. Especially as this game is a PS4 port that runs on a PS4 HDD.

Claiming that it somehow now requires an SSD to run properly is completely wrong.

[Arc]

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

.. bad memory management and threading will cause much more "stalls" / "hitches" t...

Yes, under very specific condition in a very specific game that has this issue indeed.
There are more games stressing the hell out of I/O than this example.

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Claiming that it somehow now requires an SSD to run properly is completely wrong.

The PC port may be suboptimal and there are differences between PS4 and PC code and settings also.

Running arbitrary framerates is something that will suffer from certain issues when locked 30FPS with 33.3ms budget will not show at all.
You will notice 33+ms spike every n-frames on 16.6ms game (60FPS) any day, but you may not notice 35+ms spike every n-frame on 33ms budget (30FPS).

[Engels78]

Originally posted by Alan J T:

Originally posted by Engels78:

and they were already playing when I was waiting 5 minutes to load map! After changing to SSD, load time became faster than me going to fridge to take a beer! 😛

That sound like a bad thing

Yeah! Less frags for me!!! 😈

[CCore]

A lot of games require an SSD to not be absolutely garbage in terms of their loading. I remember back when I had a HDD, and played GTA, the map would constantly pop in and out when I was driving fast across the map. It wasn't like my specs weren't enough to run the game, just that I had the game on an hdd.

SSD's are getting cheaper every year. I don't even have a HDD in my PC anymore, cause I mainly use it for gaming.

[AoD_lexandro]

Originally posted by Arc:

There are more games stressing the hell out of I/O than this example.

On that I do not disagree. FS2020 is just one example that will stress a modern SSD due to the huge amount of data and asset streaming from the web. Though I think you would agree, these kinds of games are designed with better hardware in mind than a PS4 currently has, which is our "baseline" here (if you follow).

Originally posted by Arc:

Originally posted by AoD_lexandro:

Claiming that it somehow now requires an SSD to run properly is completely wrong.

The PC port may be suboptimal and there are differences between PS4 and PC code and settings also.

I make allowances personally for sub-optimal performance when its a new release. Though what we are seeing here imo is a complete lack of experience and leadership with the port release. The issue currently with the game is not access times related but bad hardware utilisation, and implementation "issues" with Dx12.

The OP's point was that this game is demanding in I/O access. That is simply not true.

[Gwynbleidd]

Originally posted by asusexcite:

Originally posted by Arc:

*laughs in cheap NVMe*

this. ^^

bless crucial

[Salamand3r-]

Originally posted by Sheogorath:

1) buy another HDD of the exact same size and make a RAID0 or RAID1 array. This will speed it up significantly without sacrificing available disk space. If you have a slow 1 TB HDD, a RAID0 array with another 1 TB HDD would yield you nearly 2 TB of disk space operating at SATA SSD speed.

Games typically need improved random seek time as opposed to sequential read/write (although open world games can be dependent on both).

RAID on consumer hardware generally makes random seeks even slower, although it can approximately double sequential.

Not the best option.

[Dude Guyman]

This game "demands an SSD" dedicated for the swap file alone. Seriously, and then it is going to thrash it so hard it will take 80% of the life time off the thing. This game should be pulled from the store until fixed.

[Chetter Hummin]

Originally posted by Sheogorath:

So, I REALLY tried to make game run on an HDD without stutters, and failed. Game engine tries to preload as much as it can into RAM and VRAM, and HDD just couldn't handle such workload without stutters.

Here are solutions that I could think of if you really want to keep using that sweet HDD:

1) buy another HDD of the exact same size and make a RAID0 or RAID1 array. This will speed it up significantly without sacrificing available disk space. If you have a slow 1 TB HDD, a RAID0 array with another 1 TB HDD would yield you nearly 2 TB of disk space operating at SATA SSD speed.

2) if you are on an Intel platform, get an Optane module. it would operate as a HDD cache and speed things up significantly, eliminating stutters.

3) get an SSD. Honestly, a cheap SATA SSD would do, and you would get improved performance in many other games as well.

HDDs are just too slow for games these days. Get on with times, save yourself a lot of angry posting on forums.

no. ssd will only make load screens shorter. wont affect shutters. Hdd load is under 10% at all time while running the game. Sell you imbeciles ideas elsewhere.