3 ms·

1. "people who are well-off might have NVMe SSDs, but most people are using much lower specs than that" 2. "even taking NVMe SSDs to be the minimum, even the

by paulmd 5y ago

1. "people who are well-off might have NVMe SSDs, but most people are using much lower specs than that" 2. "even taking NVMe SSDs to be the minimum, even the people who do have them usually can't afford to allocate up to 250GB for a single game, let alone when a shitty patching system requires double that to apply a patch". it's certainly a step forward as far as loading technology, don't get me wrong, but it's not about people with low-spec systems at all, you need NVMe as a minimum ask for this, and you need quite a bit of it.

dspillett 5y ago
NVMe is a cheaper upgrade than others a gamer on a budget might consider, especially if building a new machine instead of prolonging the life of a new one. Many motherboards support it a little extra cost to those that don't and the drives themselves can be little or no more expensive than SATA SSD units (quick check: known name 1TB NVME unit for inside £70, few SATA units are even that cheap, similarly similar pricing between the types at the ½TB mark too). Not sure where you are getting 250GB for a single game from (~70 I mentioned, IIRC MSFS is ~130) but that supports my point more than counters it: if you might shoot through areas quickly and want high-res textures to be constantly available (a low fast tour of a significant area?) with the amount of RAM on the recommended minimum cards (4GB, minimum minimum being available in 2GB models) and the recommended minimum system RAM (16GB, required minimum being 8) then getting data from disk to the GPU as quickly as possible might be more beneficial than having more RAM for cache, or more CPU cores, etc. Yes, a well off gamer with a huge 8K screen who can afford to be scalped for a top-of-the-line GFX card is going to benefit from this, but so could many others. The performance difference between NVMe and SATA SSDs is nothing like that seen between more traditional drives and SSDs, contrary to what much breathless marketing text will exclaim, but as there isn't much of a cost difference maybe this sort of direct transfer feature will change the value for money dynamic a bit more.

by paulmd 5y ago

dspillett 5y ago

NVMe is a cheaper upgrade than others a gamer on a budget might consider, especially if building a new machine instead of prolonging the life of a new one. Many motherboards support it a little extra cost to those that don't and the drives themselves can be little or no more expensive than SATA SSD units (quick check: known name 1TB NVME unit for inside £70, few SATA units are even that cheap, similarly similar pricing between the types at the ½TB mark too). Not sure where you are getting 250GB for a single game from (~70 I mentioned, IIRC MSFS is ~130) but that supports my point more than counters it: if you might shoot through areas quickly and want high-res textures to be constantly available (a low fast tour of a significant area?) with the amount of RAM on the recommended minimum cards (4GB, minimum minimum being available in 2GB models) and the recommended minimum system RAM (16GB, required minimum being 8) then getting data from disk to the GPU as quickly as possible might be more beneficial than having more RAM for cache, or more CPU cores, etc. Yes, a well off gamer with a huge 8K screen who can afford to be scalped for a top-of-the-line GFX card is going to benefit from this, but so could many others. The performance difference between NVMe and SATA SSDs is nothing like that seen between more traditional drives and SSDs, contrary to what much breathless marketing text will exclaim, but as there isn't much of a cost difference maybe this sort of direct transfer feature will change the value for money dynamic a bit more.