star citizen ssd versus nvme can you run on a hard drive no get rid of that throw in a bin
destroy it we're gonna do some quick tests we're gonna get into the menu then into the
game then fly around a bit and then run around laureville okay here we go so all three drives
running at the same time loading into the game as you'd expect the hard drive is going to be slow
the mv me and the ssd basically trade blows so you could run this a few different times and
they're pretty much the same one might be faster one time one the other
different things going on in the background and your computer might just affect that but yeah
as you can see they're pretty much the same bang on into the game in about 29 seconds so they get
we've got to speed it up for the hard drive uh it is this is going 10 times fast 10 times faster
than it would do and it's not fun it's not pretty you really hit 2 minutes 12. not great you don't
want to be playing on that you don't want to be loading in on that it's just not much fun so the
next one is to just now get in game from the menu into game so just spread it up here just to keep
it as quick so about the same about a minute for the mv nvme and the ssd and again the hard drive
not having a lot of fun here now we're not really looking here at uh numbers uh fps or anything like
that because star citizen is so server dependent it just there isn't any point like you could run
do loads and different runs but you're completely dependent on the server so as we get into the next
couple of runs it's not it's just not about the fbs so you're looking more for hitches you're
looking for smoothness i think when it comes to this so five minutes nearly six minutes bang on
basically six minutes terrible right here's where it actually gets okay so we're in space
uh outside everest harbor and basically in space when you've you've not got a lot going on you're
not in a city the hard drive isn't isn't bad it's fine like on the star citizen website you've got
uh on the rsi website you've got they strongly recommend a hard drive and i don't know if i agree
with that but basically it's it is just about playable on some occasions so we sped up here
but watch here this is this is a kind of what's about to come massive hitch on the
hard drive that as you uh as the game loads in eye to the moon so now into laureville
and this is where it really doesn't go well so the ga yeah the two on the left they just load
in the hard drive on this occasion just it just doesn't load in for ages so the actual character
assets haven't loaded in uh and it's just a waiting game basically where are they going to go
again server performance is massive here so the the nvme which i totally can't say that
the the door here the elevator door just didn't open for ages so you'll see that i
nearly actually shut it down and started to run again but we'll pause those two there
and just wait for the hard drive to to kind of catch up so eventually it loads in and
there you go this is why you should not be anywhere near hard drive you'll see as soon
as basically just we could have just ended it here the it's just hitch after hitch after hitch
stuttering all the way through basically and it's just no fun and to be honest it actually plays
worse than it looks like it looks it looks bad but actually when you're playing you're expecting the
movement it's pretty disorienting it's not great so i just i just think if you've got a hard drive
and you're playing this game of hard drive you're really you're not doing yourself any clubs just
just get an ssd and we'll talk about that in a minute but yeah you like see you there
the actual it just takes a while to load in there and it's just continual hitches
it's not to say that the other two drives don't occasionally have hitches and stutters
especially kind of in the bigger areas uh cover cities and the landing zones so i think uh the
ssd there's a couple coming up maybe in a minute and the end there's one for the ssd and the nvme
definitely also has one that comes up another one there see there so they're not perfect but it is
complete uh night and day compared to the hard drive so there's another one for the hard drive
and it's just no good and i think now that the price of an ssd is so low like they're
so cheap it's crazy you could you don't even really have to get a high performing ssd
any any old one will be 100 times that's probably bad maths but a lot better than a hard drive so
yeah we'll get onto the other two in a minute but basically
if you've got a hard drive just by buying an ssd that's basically the scenario here it's
just no it's just no good for this game so yeah hard drive just don't bother the other two well
it's pretty close uh at this stage at this point in development there's not a whole heap of
difference between an ssd and an nvme that there just isn't i i would say in my experience the nvme
feels smoother but maybe that's just because i bought one and i thought well i'm just it's
placebo effect and i i just willing it to be better i don't think there's much difference
that's not to say that it that won't change as development goes on but i don't know i don't
think i'd run out and definitely buy one at this point that said this is an nvme on pci
3.0 so it's not the quickest out there today it's a samsung 970 evo so it's a quick one but it's
that's not the fastest option you've got the octane stuff from intel and also now you've
got the pcie four stuff on the new riser motherboard so this isn't a perfect test
there may be ways to speed up but again we're so realistically early on in development starters and
the whole thing that everybody says don't buy a pc now for starters and it just which is still
was true so just a quick look at amazon here and straight away you've got a good ish cheap uh ssd
and and yeah it's not gonna be the fastest thing out there but it's gonna be a lot better than a
hard drive so if you are in that space where you you're still chugging along on a hard drive just
get yourself on amazon or whatever you wanna buy things and just get just do it do yourself a favor
it's 2020. it's the worst year imaginal imaginable and basically nobody deserves on top of everything
else that's been going on to be still running on a hard drive hopefully that was helpful if you
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