How does an m.2 nvme ssd improve loading times instead of a regular sata ssd?

[Snowwie]

I use now a Samsung 860 EVO 1TB ssd for Windows and also most of my games, including Cities Skylines. This drive rates at 95,000 IOPS (Input/Output Operation Per Second). With 64GB of ram and a 6 core i75820k processor and a GTX 1080Ti GPU I am not so worried about that hardware. So, when looking at the specs of an m.2. Samsung 970 EVO nvme drive (which will work on my Asus-X99 main-board) it has 500,000 IOPS. My guess is that with loading times it all depends on how fast a drive can read all these little files, these assets the game needs to start. Those can go in the thousands with most of us. I can also get the 970 EVO Plus, which will do 600,000 IOPS, but I think that is overkill and not worth the extra 40 euro's. But in reality, would the 5 times more IOPS speed of the NVME drive be noteworthy noticeable during map loading in Cities Skylines? I had an Samsung m.2. 950 Pro drive before, but sold it because it became too small, and back then the 1TB version was too pricey, and because I did not noticed any much difference under Windows I stuck myself back to a regular 1TB sata ssd. But with this game I am now inclined in buying an m.2 drive again.

The main question is: Does an increased amount of IOPS make the game load (much) faster?

[Pirazel]

I doubt you will notice a improvement. I have a m.2 nvme ssd and I would recomend it over a sata ssd, but do not buy a new ssd just for cities skylines if you already have a 960 EVO.

[MarkJohnson]

The notice isn't very measurable. Even a hard drive is not very noticeable. i.e. my laptop HDD loads 35 assets per second, my sata 3 SSD about 100 per second, and nvme about 300 per second.

What takes most of the time is exceeding your RAM limit. Windows virtual memory takes over and manipulates the page file to give you more memory. It is not good at it and becomes slow from auto-management of the page file. Windows starts out small, then keeps making it bigger and bigger. This constant reallocation is slow when it does it constantly. Plus the overhead of the game itself, then compiling mods on top of that, etc.

Here's a Microosoft article on it's issues with virtual memory/page file/swap file:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4055223/memory-allocation-errors-can-be-caused-by-slow-page-file-growth

[Snowwie]

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

The notice isn't very measurable. Even a hard drive is not very noticeable. i.e. my laptop SSD loads 35 assets per second, my sata 3 SSD about 100 per second, and nvme about 300 per second.

What takes most of the time is exceeding your RAM limit. Windows virtual memory takes over and manipulates the page file to give you more memory. It is not good at it and becomes slow from auto-management of the page file. Windows starts out small, then keeps making it bigger and bigger. This constant reallocation is slow when it does it constantly. Plus the overhead of the game itself, then compiling mods on top of that, etc.

Here's a Microosoft article on it's issues with virtual memory/page file/swap file:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4055223/memory-allocation-errors-can-be-caused-by-slow-page-file-growth

I have my page file fixed at a very small size, between 1GB, minimum and 3GB, maximum, forcing Windows to utilize my 64GB of ram to the maximum. The game seldom exceeds 30GB. Only with very big cities it touches the 30GB, so I am not so worried about the amount of ram. Maybe ram speed is a key, it runs at 2,133Mhz, in dual channel mode (I have 8 sticks of 8GB running in quadruple mode,). As far I can tell RAM Speed is more than enough in my situation.

[ChickenTacos]

The assets load relatively quick (a few seconds), it's the rest of the game that takes a while to load up for larger cities. Textures, geometry, etc.

[Snowwie]

I made a little error in my TS, I don't have a Samsung 960 Evo Sata ssd, but an 860 Evo.

[Foulcher]

It will change almost nothing, this is not even a bottleneck.
The only bottleneck in this game is the game itself

[ChickenTacos]

Originally posted by Foulcher:

It will change almost nothing, this is not even a bottleneck.
The only bottleneck in this game is the game itself

If they make a 'Cities: Skylines 2', utilizing Unreal Engine would be nice.

[Snowwie]

Originally posted by Foulcher:

It will change almost nothing, this is not even a bottleneck.
The only bottleneck in this game is the game itself

I do not totally agree, you are sometimes better off with a QUAD core processor at 4Ghz than a HEXA core processor at 3,3Ghz. Since this game will not see more than 4 cores.

In theory if you had an OCTA core you could use "set affinity" to shut down half of the processors, then overclock the other remaining 4 processor, but since the other 4 are disabled you have less heat production, so a stable faster overclock should be possible, in theory.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Snowwie:

Originally posted by Foulcher:

It will change almost nothing, this is not even a bottleneck.
The only bottleneck in this game is the game itself

I do not totally agree, you are sometimes better off with a QUAD core processor at 4Ghz than a HEXA core processor at 3,3Ghz. Since this game will not see more than 4 cores.

In theory if you had an OCTA core you could use "set affinity" to shut down half of the processors, then overclock the other remaining 4 processor, but since the other 4 are disabled you have less heat production, so a stable faster overclock should be possible, in theory.

Actually the game uses a full 8-cores (or 4-core/8-thread CPUs) to 100%. It's been tested many times.

A 4-core/4-thread processor will max out early and will benefit from an overclock since it can't fully utilize all of the threads.

[Snowwie]

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

Actually the game uses a full 8-cores (or 4-core/8-thread CPUs) to 100%. It's been tested many times.

A 4-core/4-thread processor will max out early and will benefit from an overclock since it can't fully utilize all of the threads.

You mean a 4 core processor with 8 threads, that's the maximum the game can utilize.

Of course if you have a hexa or even octa core processor it can help a little bit because you still have Windows on the background doing it's things. Services which are running, virusscanners also and maybe a few update services as well. So that 'workload' can be taken by the extra processors CS does not use.

[ChickenTacos]

Keep your in-game LOD under control and things run significantly faster.