SSD Handling for best performance

[Celestiale]

Hey folks,

 

I just got myself a Samsung 990 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD just for DCS in order to increase performance.

Now I wonder what I have to do to get the best performance out of it. Is it enough to copy the game folder, or do I also have to move the save folder to the new SSD? Does it make a difference in terms of performance if I transfer the supporting applications (SRS, Simshaker, TrackIR) to the new SSD?

 

Thanks, infos are much appreciated

[LucShep]

Opinions vary and there is no "absolutely right" or "absolutely wrong" aproach.
We're not yet at a point where games like DCS can overload an NVME. 

On most cases, moving the entire DCS installation folder to the new separate driver location will more than suffice.
Leaving the programs (SRS, Simshaker, TrackIR, etc) and DCS save folder in the main drive.

That said, you may also want to move the DCS saves folder to the new separate NVMe as well.
This is more involved but, if you want to experiment with it, you can do that by using symbolic links for folders (SimLinks). 
Once done, the shaders compiling, user mods and various configs and logs can (somewhat) benefit, space and speed wise, by being in the faster, separate drive.

[petsild]

 

Hi,

what LucShep writes here is very useful, I use, for example, Temp dcs located originally in AppData.

[Celestiale]

Thank you LucShep, this seems like a good method, guess I will use the soft link for that. 

[Magnate]

I've just - this morning - cloned my C drive, where DCS lives, from a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M2 SSD to a 4TB 990 Pro.

Using the Samsung Data Migration tool the whole process took under an hour - including unplugging and then reconnecting a million USB peripherals.

My sole reason for doing this was a lack of disk space, and I hadn't given any thought to performance issues. However, the first time I fired up DCS I immediately spotted improvements in ground textures. Or, in fact, it was actually an inappropriate upgrade in textures in the form of trees and shrubs dotted across one of the circular fields which you see in the Gulf and Sinai maps. Obviously centre pivot irrigation systems won't work if you've got trees in the field, but this was clear evidence that more detail was being rendered as a result of the improvement in read speed from the new hard drive.

Since I wasn't actually looking for performance improvements I didn't record FPS before the transition, but the framerates I'm getting now are certainly very acceptable to me, ranging from 50 to 70 FPS in low-to-mid level ground attack missions across a range of maps. My system is an i7 processor with 4090 card and Pimax Crystal.

 

Using the Open XR toolkit I have the Crystal resolution set to 3700 x 4380 (down from the default 4354 x 5154) and find this gives an excellent balance of performance and looks, but I may tweak this up now to perhaps 3800 initially and see whether the faster read speed will support this without any degradation in performance.

 

Anyway, bottom line: if you're looking for a new SSD and can't decide Evo or Pro, the Pro is significantly better in DCS from what I've seen.

 

[kksnowbear]

4 hours ago, Magnate said:

My sole reason for doing this was a lack of disk space, and I hadn't given any thought to performance issues. However, the first time I fired up DCS I immediately spotted improvements in ground textures.

...this was clear evidence that more detail was being rendered as a result of the improvement in read speed ...

Imagine that.

Clear, first hand evidence that better drive performance absolutely can result in better gaming experience - and that's even when coming from one of Samsung's own very capable PCIe 3.0 drives.

Let the haters and naysayers go on all they want about how one PCIe 3.0 drive is good enough for the entire system (OS and games), and how faster drives do nothing for gaming performance aside from "faster load times".  After all, they've been saying that for decades now, even as both empirical and anecdotal evidence show otherwise.

There is an ever-growing body of substantial evidence to show that is an inaccurate assessment.

While more conservative configurations (i.e. single and/or slower drives) may be considered adequate (by some), they simply cannot yield the increased performance that multiple and/or faster drives can.  This is due to physical factors related to the various drive types/arrangement, which are well-documented for decades now.

Edited June 5, 2024 by kksnowbear