NVMe M2 drive in which motherboard lane?

[Guest2]

The X570 motherboard I have has 3x M2 slots

M2_1 (CPU) PCIe 4.0 x4
M2_2 (PCH) PCIe 4.0 x4
M2_3 (PCH) PCIe 4.0 x4

I currently only have 1 2TB NVMe drive, a Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280.
It states 'M.2 PCIe Gen3 x 4 Interface. PCIe 3.1 Compliant / NVMe 1.3 Compliant'

This was going to go into M2_1

I think i'll grab a 'Sabrent 500GB Rocket Nvme PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280' for the OS as it's only £100, use my 500GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD as its backup and sell the other SSDs

It states on the Sabrent 500GB drive
'NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 Interface. PCIe 4.0 Compliant / NVMe 1.3 Compliant. '

Should I put the quicker OS drive in M2_1 or the larger 2TB drive which has games library installed? I'm guessing it wont make much of a difference but is it best to have the direct access from CPU to OS or CPU to games?

 

[EsaT]

There's no sense in expensive per GB drive for Windows.
Being basically loading of hibernation file its starting doesn't generate much IOPS load.
Neither does it need transferring such huge amounts of data that even NVMe would make much difference over SATA:

 

[Guest2]

Why does it still take so long for Windows and games to load on PCIe 4.0? Not so much windows but with 5GB/sec read time surely games should load almost instantly

 

[EsaT]

Why does it still take so long for Windows and games to load on PCIe 4.0? Not so much windows but with 5GB/sec read time surely games should load almost instantly

Because drive isn't the bottleneck, but all that game engine initialiazing etc.

 

[Guest2]

but all that game engine initialiazing etc.

What is the bottleneck then? What hardware does 'game engine initialiazing etc.' take place if it's not HDD/SSD or CPU?
Also, i believe the use of 'etc.' if often by people who do not know what else is being replaced by etc. It gets used far to much were I work, usually by people who talk out their behind. Best just saying 'I don't know'

 

[EsaT]

What is the bottleneck then? What hardware does 'game engine initialiazing etc.' take place if it's not HDD/SSD or CPU?
Also, i believe the use of 'etc.' if often by people who do not know what else is being replaced by etc. It gets used far to much were I work, usually by people who talk out their behind. Best just saying 'I don't know'

Obviously game engine initiliazing involves use of CPU. (which always uses also RAM)
Other thing games do during load is decompressing game assets or at least opening "archive" files containing all data of some game object.
HDDs have sucktastic seek and random access performance and hence loading single bigger file per game object is lot faster than possibly many dozens smaller files.

Hyped fast game load up of coming consoles is based on saving game state as hibernation file.

 

[Guest2]

OK, so games need to be properly developed with hardware advances. Makes sense
New games (that are well made) running on nvme storage, fast ram and multi core cpu along with gpu direct access to storage should almost load instantly

 

[EsaT]

New games (that are well made) running on nvme storage

Hard to call Modern Warfare well made for such insane space hogging...
https://www.pcgamer.com/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-no-longer-fits-on-a-250gb-ssd/
Definitely could use some compression...
I mean even graphics card's themselves compress data like textures to save both VRAM and bandwidth.

Heck, compressing textures during loading into GPU memory is probably one step happening during game load up.
And probably use "asymmetric" compression with algorithm designed to trade compressions speed for compression efficiency and fast decompression/random access capability.

 

[Guest2]

Hard to call Modern Warfare well made for such insane space hogging...
https://www.pcgamer.com/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-no-longer-fits-on-a-250gb-ssd/
Definitely could use some compression...
I mean even graphics card's themselves compress data like textures to save both VRAM and bandwidth.

Heck, compressing textures during loading into GPU memory is probably one step happening during game load up.
And probably use "asymmetric" compression with algorithm designed to trade compressions speed for compression efficiency and fast decompression/random access capability.

Where did i say modern warfare was well made?
Old article anyway, you can now install warzone / modern warfare / single player or co-op by itself. Mines about 170gb (warzone and mw)
It could be better optimised though im sure

 

[Rom]

Wondering this myself. If its better to have main drive on CPU lane, on PCH lane.

I would guess CPU, as PCH is just another step for it.

 

[EsaT]

Wondering this myself. If its better to have main drive on CPU lane, on PCH lane.

I would guess CPU, as PCH is just another step for it.

Chipset adds little bit of latency.
Though in home use that wouldn't likely show in anything.