New System Planning SSD

[Blaunarwal]

Hi

I'm planning a new system for P3D4 and looking at available hardware I got aware, there is a rather new interface for SSDs, called M.2. So the ASUS ROG Strix Z390 board has two of them. It's possible to buy M.2 SSDs in sizes up to 2 TB.

At the moment I have a SATA III SSD for the OS and use a SATA III raid of two conventional HDs for P3D4. Flying into an area with a large city or airport always stopps the sim for a few seconds to load the scenery. My HDs aren't the fastest, about 150 MB/s each, so I get about 300 together. Newer drives get 25% more. But I think it's still not fast enough compared to SSDs starting at 600 MB/s for old ones. The M.2 connected Samsung 970 EVO reads at 3500 Mb/s.

For me it looks obvious to put P3D4 on a M.2 SSD is the fastes solution in respect to loading times. So my question now is, shall i buy two such SSDs, one for the OS and one for the sim, eg 500 GB and 2 TB or have you other ideas how to improve loading times? The drives cost about $145 and $568. I could of course save one drive and set two partitions for each and keep one interface empty for later expansions.

Another problem is the texture loading. I have acutally a fast GTX 1080 with 8GB memory which gives outstanding performance. But when I switch views and look around AI airplanes and sometimes buildings are black untextured for a moment before the textures load. What are good hardware measures to overcome this. Or is it a simple setting I had to change?

Looking forward to your thoughts and opinions.

Regards

Dan

[downscc]

Hi Dan:

The M.2 form factor has been around a few years and is more of a form factor specification although it does move the I/O device off the SATA ports to the faster PCIe lanes. I have a NVMe SSD in the M.2 forum factor that I use for system drive and P3D. All scenery and addons for P3D are on a second SSD that is in a SATA port.

Study your options carefully, most second M.2 ports come at a price in that if used then some of the PCIe or SATA slots are no longer available.

[Blaunarwal]

Study your options carefully, most second M.2 ports come at a price in that if used then some of the PCIe or SATA slots are no longer available.

Hi Dan

Thanks for this advice. I will check the board I'm intended to buy. So that's a point for using only one M.2 Drive, the larger one. I'm not sure, if the OS has to be that fast. A normal SATA III SSD should do it too.

When looking at complete systems for Gamers or Flightsim, they usually only use a small SSD for the OS and have a conventional HD on SATA III. The don't even use a RAID to improve performance, although a good 1TB HD isn't very expensive.

Dan

[jpfx]

I have two m.2s on an asus board. you will probably find that both can run full speed but for one you must not plug anything into SATA socket(s) that are on the same chain. if you're not using SATA drives then it won't be an issue. if you have SATA drives also then the motherboard manual will tell you what sockets to avoid (SATA 5&6 on your motherboard).

[Blaunarwal]

Ok, I ordered 1 M.2 drive (2 TB) now and will use this for OS and on a second partition P3D4. The rest of programs and data comes on SATA drives. Thanks for the info jpfx!

[downscc]

Ok, I ordered 1 M.2 drive (2 TB) now and will use this for OS and on a second partition P3D4. The rest of programs and data comes on SATA drives. Thanks for the info jpfx!

Why a partition? My OS and P3D share the system drive.... just don't use the default Program Files path. I use C:\P3D\P3Dv4 as the simulator path.... makes it easy to change out to v5 when it comes.

[Blaunarwal]

I just want the things sorted. OS on one drive, the sim on another. It's easier to have the overview and to renew the OS if necessary. I have to admit, i didn't had to do this the recent years.
On the other Hand, i have a minimum size for the OS partition and therefore loose some valuable space.

I have my new system now and it works fantastic. I got a 8 core i9 9700K. For about 200 bucks more I even had gotten a 10 core CPU with a more capable MB. But the 8 core is already much better than my 4 core i3770K I used before. Even at 3.6 GHz, it's way faster than before and of course also the new SSD is part of the excellent performance. The system stays very cool so far. I look forward to my first PMDG 737 flight with the new system. First I have to add some sceneries again.

[fleng200]

I have P3D on a separate M2 SSD, but the sim still pauses when loading some new scenery. This a P3D system behaviour that the fastest HD’s cannot smooth out. P3D software should be changed to load smaller parts of scenery before this behaviour will vanish.

[downscc]

I have P3D on a separate M2 SSD, but the sim still pauses when loading some new scenery. This a P3D system behaviour that the fastest HD’s cannot smooth out. P3D software should be changed to load smaller parts of scenery before this behaviour will vanish.

The pause, or long frame as many call it, is not due caused by your storage drive. In most cases the speed of an old HDD is enough for P3D scenery where the only penalty is longer loading times. It will not cause long frames.

Your assertion that P3D should change the software is partially correct, it has nothing to do with small parts or big parts but I believe has more to do with the rendering of the objects, which takes much longer than retrieving the bgl code for the object, is single threaded and I am hopeful that P3Dv5 (if there is one) will have a new rendering engine. Regardless, it is not a minor fix.

[Blaunarwal]

I just made the experience, with the new 8 core cpu (i9 9700K), it's an advantage to set affinitymask again. I now have 255 set, so it uses all cores. Before with my old 4 core cpu (i7 3770K) it was better to not set AM. The OS is still available for inputs. I thought about trying 254 to leave the last core unloaded but that's not needed so far.