Upgrade RAM or to M2 SSD?

[Jennifer "JJ" Jareau]

Hi community,

actually i'm using about 100 MODs and 7000 assets.

Savegame takes up to 10 mins to load.

RAM is nearly full after load (2GB left) and 70 GB are used for swap file (dynamic size) in my SSD.

The FPS are around 30.

I want a smoother performance in terms of loading and playing. So what i can do? Upgrade the OS disc to an M2 SSD or upgrade my 16 GB RAM (DDR4 3000 Mhz) to 32 GB? Maybe someone has an advice for me.

And no i don't want to delete some assets at the moment, because i'm building some very detailed californian cities and i need them in the moment. So no complains about that, i just need some tips which will boost the game.

Thanks in advance.

[Verullus Forgefire]

An Upgrade to a M2 SSD is not going to make that a big difference if you are having a normal SSD. Buying ram will also not give you a big speed update, it will just give you more space for more asset's.
I would rather consider to clean up in your asset list.

[Jennifer "JJ" Jareau]

As written i don't want to clean up my asset list in the moment.

While loading the savegame cities skylines does load 70 GB from asset folder into swap file, so my thoughts told me an m2 will speed up the load time a lot (600 MB / s vs 2 GB / s)...

[leftbehind]

M2 SSD will reduce time taken to load a save, depending on what your current HDD type is. If you already use an SSD of some kind, you probably won't gain much.

More RAM will reduce the amount of disk swapping that's needed, which in turn will reduce load times.

Neither will help much with frame rate (the game engine itself is the main bottleneck in that respect).

I assume you are using Loading Screen Mod which drastically improves loading speed and reduces RAM consumption...

[Verullus Forgefire]

You didn't tell how old you SSD was. 😉

[Jennifer "JJ" Jareau]

MY SSD is an Samsung EVO, one year old.

Already using Loading Screen Mod.

[leftbehind]

You'll get some speed boost with an M2 (they are very fast, speaking form personal experience!) but IMO you'd probably get more overall benefit from extra RAM, not just for loading C:SL but for all apps.

If you are always going back in to same game, you can potentially cut some time by using the following mods:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675213439
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1733593614

[Jennifer "JJ" Jareau]

Already using NoIntro-Mod, i will try the second one. Thanks for the recommendations

[leftbehind]

BTW you can also get big speed gains on loading saves by ditching mods that iterate and/or modify network prefabs (so mods like Road Options (Color Changer++), NeXT2, MOM, etc). Each of those can add 2+ minutes to the load time without adding much to the game.

[Jennifer "JJ" Jareau]

Yeah i know, but modifying networks is very important for detailling a realistic cali city.

[MarkJohnson]

More RAM will help for this game the most as it tries to load everything in RAM.

at 70GB of RAM usage, you'd need 64GB. Minimum 32gb.

First, try increasing the page file to 96GB? If it's on auto, it takes longer to load as Windows has to resize the page file all of the time and it can take forever to load.

M.2 NVME SSD will have little impact over impact over normal SSD.

As for more FPS, it is designed to be around 30fps zoomed in a busy intersection no matter your rig. If you are below that, you may need to remove mods that affect FPS like AI and graphic mods.

At 7,000 subscriptions, you likely are only going to use a few hundred. It would be cheaper, easier to unsubscribe many of them, or at least disable them until you need them. If disabled, they won't use so much RAM anyway.

[Rena]

More RAM will be a huge help. This game uses a lot of RAM, especially when you have a ton of assets. And any extra RAM that isn't in use, the OS will use for file caching, so it speeds up disk access too.