Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I run the game off a Samsung 850 Evo SSD so my load times are ok, but we always want more speed, right?

My question is: does anyone run the game from an M.2 drive? And if so what are your load times like? The NVMe versions of the M.2 have insane speeds and I've had my eye on one for a while, just waiting for the price to drop.
But as ED is an online game, I'm wondering if there might be a network bottle neck like I seem to remember there was in either GTA or Max Payne a few years back.

There are definitely network bottlenecks.
Not just with load times but also directly affect FPS, at least when in wing I can assume I loose about 10fps give or take.

This is also entirely out of our hands and due to server responses, I am on a 300/300 connection and I still often get slightly better performance in solo than mobius.

As for actual load times I find it to not really be a huge deal, I have the game on a regular storage drive atm and have tested in my ssd as well, and any difference was negligible if any at all.

TorTorden wrote:As for actual load times I find it to not really be a huge deal, I have the game on a regular storage drive atm and have tested in my ssd as well, and any difference was negligible if any at all.

So if there's not much difference between those two, I doubt very much an even faster drive will make any real difference.

Yeah I suspect the game makes a server call and this takes long enough to wash out any and all benefit from faster storage, regardless of mode of play.

RD-83 wrote:

I'n running 2 x 500GB m.2 SSD (Crucial MX200) in Raid 1 (Mirror) for the OS and ED.

Win 10 OS loads in 2 seconds after BIOS.

Effect on game seems negligible (was on WD Black HDD), as others have said, network performance seems to be the deciding factor unless your drives are really really slow, but the WD Black's are not slow themselves.

Darwin wrote:

RD-83 wrote:

I'n running 2 x 500GB m.2 SSD (Crucial MX200) in Raid 1 (Mirror) for the OS and ED.

Win 10 OS loads in 2 seconds after BIOS.

Effect on game seems negligible (was on WD Black HDD), as others have said, network performance seems to be the deciding factor unless your drives are really really slow, but the WD Black's are not slow themselves.

Are these the NVMe, super fast PCIe ones?

RD-83 wrote:Are these the NVMe, super fast PCIe ones?

SATA III 6.0 Gb/s

555 MB/s sequential read
500 MB/s sequential write
100k random read IOPS
87k random write IOPS

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/storage-ssd-mx200

RD-83 wrote:

Darwin wrote:

RD-83 wrote:

I'n running 2 x 500GB m.2 SSD (Crucial MX200) in Raid 1 (Mirror) for the OS and ED.

Win 10 OS loads in 2 seconds after BIOS.

Effect on game seems negligible (was on WD Black HDD), as others have said, network performance seems to be the deciding factor unless your drives are really really slow, but the WD Black's are not slow themselves.

Are these the NVMe, super fast PCIe ones?

No. SATA. EDIT: I mean AHCI (can be PCIe or SATA interconnect).

The main benefit of PCIe w/NVMe is not transfer rates, but access. SATA, like ATA and every storage technology before it, is based on the old IBM PC-Winchester ST506 interface, completely linear commanding and queuing. NVMe finally brings ROM addressing to NAND EEPROM, as it should be.

This means files are accessed simultaneously. That's the major advantage with NVMe using anything, especially PCIe.

I cannot speak Greek

thebs wrote:

RD-83 wrote:

Darwin wrote:No. SATA.

The main benefit of PCIe w/NVMe is not transfer rates, but access. SATA, like ATA and every storage technology before it, is based on the old IBM PC-Winchester ST506 interface, completely linear commanding and queuing. NVMe finally brings ROM addressing to NAND EEPROM, as it should be.

This means files are accessed simultaneously. That's the major advantage with NVMe using anything, especially PCIe.

Still want one but dont really need one.