On 1/8/2023 at 11:39 PM, RobJC said:

When i decided to read this thread i had no idea what was going to come out of it. Out of curiosity i decided to run some benchmarks, and to my surprise my m.2 ssd wasn’t performing well at all. First I discovered that the PC builder i bought my computer from did not install the storage controller for my SSD. I installed it but found that performance was only a little better. Then i ran across a tool that told me i was running my m.2 ssd using 2 pcie lanes instead of 4. And that caused me to move my m.2 SSD to a different spot on my motherboard. My SSD performance went from 1400 to 2200 (read speed) and MSFS is now incredibly light and smooth. It is like a strain on my system was lifted. These pc builders. Jeez. 
 

One more observation. Even when my fps dips below 30 it is still buttery smooth. 

Hi, I'd like to know what program you used to do this ssd test. I too have two 980 pros and I'd like to know if whoever made my pc put them in the right place to make the most of them. Today I'll test with the Windows task to see what it reads when loading msfs, but then I'd like to do the same test as you. Thank you very much

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/download-samsung-magician-4-5.html

Samsung Magician 

 

27 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/download-samsung-magician-4-5.html

Samsung Magician 

 

Ok very Thanks Mawgan! Later when i go to pc, i try to do this test and see what appens see the situation of my m2. 

Thanks 

43 minutes ago, Stefano88 said:

I'd like to know if whoever made my pc put them in the right place to make the most of them

Usually the slots closest to the CPU are best but consult your motherboard manual to be sure.

27 minutes ago, JSmith2112 said:

Usually the slots closest to the CPU are best but consult your motherboard manual to be sure.

Thanks for the info! I have the mb Z790 tomahaw d5 with two 1tb 980 pros on it. The shop where I bought the pc from put everything together for me, so I can only wish that they put everything together in the best and most efficient way possible! Honestly, I'm not able to figure out if he put everything together in the best way. For my mb it says this:

Do you happen to understand anything about it? Or after I launch the Samsung app, is it easy to tell if they are doing right or in the best possible way?

Thank you JSmith 

Stefano

 

2x PCI-E x16 slot Supports x16/x4 1x PCI-E x1 slot PCI_E1 PCIe 5.0 supports up to x16 (From CPU) PCI_E2 PCIe 3.0 supports up to x1 (From Chipset) PCI_E3 PCIe 4.0 supports up to x4 (From Chipset)

4x M.2 slot M.2_1 (From CPU) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 , supports 22110/2280/2260 devices M.2_2 (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 , supports 2280/2260 devices M.2_3 (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 / SATA mode, supports 2280/2260/2242 devices M.2_4 (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 , supports 2280/2260/2242 devices 7x SATA 6G port

4 minutes ago, Stefano88 said:

Thanks for the info! I have the mb Z790 tomahaw d5 with two 1tb 980 pros on it

Your best performing slot will be M.2_1 (it should be the slot right below the CPU) which is directly routed to the CPU, this is where I would install the boot drive for Windows. The other slots use the Z790 chipset as an intermediary. It looks like all your slots support PCIe 4.0 x 4 which should be fine. For the second 980 I would use the M.2_2 slot but beware! - Don't go changing your 980s around or you may find that your system won't boot and fixing this can be a real headache.

The Samsung app has a benchmark feature where you can check performance. I'd expect that you would see pretty similar figures from both drives.

1 hour ago, JSmith2112 said:

Your best performing slot will be M.2_1 (it should be the slot right below the CPU) which is directly routed to the CPU, this is where I would install the boot drive for Windows. The other slots use the Z790 chipset as an intermediary. It looks like all your slots support PCIe 4.0 x 4 which should be fine. For the second 980 I would use the M.2_2 slot but beware! - Don't go changing your 980s around or you may find that your system won't boot and fixing this can be a real headache.

The Samsung app has a benchmark feature where you can check performance. I'd expect that you would see pretty similar figures from both drives.

Thank you, you were very kind to give me this explanation! Today, as I get home, I do the test and see what numbers come out. By chance, with this Samsung program, does it also say where the m2s have been connected? However, I put the OS on m2 C, so I think m2 is the one closest connected, while the msfs is on m2 D which I think is the one a little further away from the CPU. Anyway I'm curious to see what numbers will come out. Thanks again for the explanation, we'll update later...

8 minutes ago, Stefano88 said:

By chance, with this Samsung program, does it also say where the m2s have been connected?

Magician does not show where the drive is connected but it does report the connection protocol -> click on Drive Details and look at Interface to see it.

To see where your drives are connected you can go to the firmware settings of your motherboard. My board is MSI as well but is a Z690 Pro. The drive connections are shown under the advanced settings (press F7 if necessary) under storage.

It's been a while since I've looked at Magician. It actually has an impressive amount of information reporting features now.

I have my Samsung 960 drive as my Windows drive and have FS2020 on another drive and the rolling cache on yet another drive.

Sorry about my lack of response all, been very busy at work on  afternoon shifts, so not had time to do anything, weekend here soon, and I shall be doing a LOT of tinkering. Refreshing Windows installation for start, Checking out what's slowing down all my SSD storage ( My MSFS is on an M.2 drive ) but windows etc is on SSD and that drive is running stupidly slow for some reason, hoping these things have a knock on effect and I start seeing much better frame rates and smoothness in MSFS.  

Thanks again for all the amazing suggestions and help. What a great Flight Sim Community we have. 

All the very best to you all. 

Rob 'Blodhemn' Engvikson

46 minutes ago, BlodhemnUK said:

Sorry about my lack of response all, been very busy at work on  afternoon shifts, so not had time to do anything, weekend here soon, and I shall be doing a LOT of tinkering. Refreshing Windows installation for start, Checking out what's slowing down all my SSD storage ( My MSFS is on an M.2 drive ) but windows etc is on SSD and that drive is running stupidly slow for some reason, hoping these things have a knock on effect and I start seeing much better frame rates and smoothness in MSFS.  

Thanks again for all the amazing suggestions and help. What a great Flight Sim Community we have. 

All the very best to you all. 

Rob 'Blodhemn' Engvikson

Windows on a M2 will surely speed some things up.

Also you might have lots of processes running in the background.

A clean Windows install might help,

50 minutes ago, BlodhemnUK said:

Sorry about my lack of response all, been very busy at work on  afternoon shifts, so not had time to do anything, weekend here soon, and I shall be doing a LOT of tinkering. Refreshing Windows installation for start, Checking out what's slowing down all my SSD storage ( My MSFS is on an M.2 drive ) but windows etc is on SSD and that drive is running stupidly slow for some reason, hoping these things have a knock on effect and I start seeing much better frame rates and smoothness in MSFS.  

Thanks again for all the amazing suggestions and help. What a great Flight Sim Community we have. 

All the very best to you all. 

Rob 'Blodhemn' Engvikson

Rob, did you check out this post in this thread: 

I, like you was really disappointed in  the performance of my 4080. This post solved it for me.

On 1/10/2023 at 2:52 AM, JSmith2112 said:

Your best performing slot will be M.2_1 (it should be the slot right below the CPU) which is directly routed to the CPU, this is where I would install the boot drive for Windows.

I have my one installed 2TB m.2 NVMe drive installed in that slot and have OS and MSFS and all else on it--still have well over 1Tb free.  I use the lower slot for periodic cloning of the other one as it's easy to get to, below the GPU.  Here is my disk I/O benchmark--good enough:

Write speed: 1919.45 MB/s
Copy speed: 1779.27 MB/s
Read speed: 1713.39 MB/s

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Noel said:

Here is my disk I/O benchmark--good enough

I think much of the delay time in FS2020 loading is due to waiting on the servers. Drive performance shouldn't really be an issue unless you're using an actual hard drive.

Drive performance also has zero impact on FPS unless you are severely RAM limited and your system has to start using the page file.

26 minutes ago, JSmith2112 said:

I think much of the delay time in FS2020 loading is due to waiting on the servers. Drive performance shouldn't really be an issue unless you're using an actual hard drive.

Drive performance also has zero impact on FPS unless you are severely RAM limited and your system has to start using the page file.

I fully concur and this is why for people who have sufficient storage as I do there is little to no need to split the OS and MSFS install between drives.  All on one drive, and one drive for all....nope, not a Q-anon nutball 😜

Edited January 12, 20233 yr by Noel