Dual NVMe possible without lag? Best storage solution?

shen.matt92 · Nov 7, 2018

So I recently got an i9-9900K and RTX 2080 TI and a new 16GB 4600MHz RAM kit along with a ASUS Maximus Hero XI Z390 which I have NOT yet put together. I'm 26 and currently am jobless and bought all this on credit because I'm really passionate about computers. I'm a huge gamer. I felt the need to first say this because my point is I don't have the money to keep trying new stuff and really need to make everything work first try, so please only answer if you really have the know how and experience.

SO my current setup has two Samsung 970 NVMe. Boot disk is 250GB and data is 500GB. I didn't know until recently that the PCH only has x4 bandwidth, and the NVMe slots go through the DMI/PCH. The 970 EVO has a read of 3500mb/s. So I assume they will just be limited to 2000 mb/s each or x2 each which is still really fast. Is that correct?

Anyway, I've been noticing this very strange problem. Previously, I had one 1TB 970 EVO with everything on it. Windows, games, apps. Then I heard it's not good to have Windows and games on one drive. So I got two drives, the 250 and 500 NVMe. Recently after switching to dual drives, I've some stuttering in game cutscenes, specifically Mortal Kombat X. The parts where they banter right before fighting.

I've used single drive for 6 months, and never any issues. I first started using dual drives about a month ago, but didn't re-install MKX until a few days ago when I noticed the issue. Now, again, for six months I've been playing this game on single drive there's been zero issues. So at this point top suspect is the dual NVMe which may be causing too much bandwidth traffic?

But theres more. I uninstalled the game and moved it over to my Windows drive, and the problem still persisted. If the dual drives is to blame, why would it still be happening when the second drive is not being used?

I looked up the issue and someone said its memory leaking and is caused by hardware monitoring software like GPU-Z. Coincidentally, I did recently install GPU-Z at around the same time as MKX. But even after removing it, I still notice the issue sometimes. It only happens about once every 5 or 10 times I play.

So my final question is, if it is the drive setup to blame, what is the hands down best storage solution? Should I do NVMe as boot, then SATA SSD as storage? Or could I keep dual NVMe but just need a slower NVMe, for instance I know Crucial, Kingston and Inland and possibly ADATA make 1.2-2gb/s NVMe so as to stay under the x4 PCH limit.

Would that make any difference? Or is simply using two NVMe, regardless of speed, cause traffic period? Is that even the problem? I might take my issue to my local PC store techs, but it's unlikely they've encountered this specific issue with this specific game.

QwerkyPengwen · Nov 7, 2018

what motherboard do you currently have that you are putting these two NVMe's inside of to test?

Dugimodo · Nov 7, 2018

The only issue with a single drive for windows and games is that it's harder to back up, that's it.
Can't offer anything helpful about the rest of your question though sorry.

shen.matt92 · Nov 7, 2018

QwerkyPengwen :

ASRock Z370 PRO 4

rest of specs
8700k
16gb g skill xmp 3000mhz
1080 ti @ 1936mhz

QwerkyPengwen · Nov 7, 2018

you've made sure you are on latest BIOS update?

TJ Hooker · Nov 7, 2018

I didn't know until recently that the PCH only has x4 bandwidth, and the NVMe slots go through the DMI/PCH. The 970 EVO has a read of 3500mb/s. So I assume they will just be limited to 2000 mb/s each or x2 each which is still really fast. Is that correct?

They only really have to share the bandwidth if they're both being accessed at the same time. And you'd only ever get that 3500 MB/s with large sequential transfers, probably in benchmarks. So basically the only time you'd probably see a bandwidth limitation is if you're doing large sequential copies from one drive to the other. Having to share PCH bandwidth is not what's causing your issues.

Then I heard it's not good to have Windows and games on one drive.

There's nothing wrong with having Windows and games on the same drive.

Best option would probably be to do a clean install of windows and games on the 500 GB NVMe drive. Could keep the 250 for extra games/storage. Or you could sell it and put it towards paying off your credit card. And then take a hard look at your spending habits.

shen.matt92 · Nov 8, 2018

TJ Hooker :

I didn't know until recently that the PCH only has x4 bandwidth, and the NVMe slots go through the DMI/PCH. The 970 EVO has a read of 3500mb/s. So I assume they will just be limited to 2000 mb/s each or x2 each which is still really fast. Is that correct?

They only really have to share the bandwidth if they're both being accessed at the same time. And you'd only ever get that 3500 MB/s with large sequential transfers, probably in benchmarks. So basically the only time you'd probably see a bandwidth limitation is if you're doing large sequential copies from one drive to the other. Having to share PCH bandwidth is not what's causing your issues.

Then I heard it's not good to have Windows and games on one drive.

There's nothing wrong with having Windows and games on the same drive.

Well I forgot to mention I have a lot of savings and I make monthly payments on time. I didn't mention that I attempted manually OC my CPU for the first time. My PC booted to desktop and most games ran fine so I thought I did it successfully. Thing is, I can't remember if it was before or after the MKX install. I'm seriously going to start documenting my every move because I seem to encounter new issues every week, sometimes daily. But lets go back to the NVMe. So having two 3500mb/s Samsung 970's, will that limit both to x2 or 2000mb/s automatically or will they struggle to read quicker and cause traffic? Even if they read at x2 each and abide by the bandwidth limit, is traffic still possible somehow? I guess what Im trying to say is, despite abiding by the limitation maybe just the fact two are being used point blank will mess things up. I could go the safe route and just use SATA. But it just doesn't make sense to use SATA with a 9900K and 2080 TI. Premium parts deserve a premium drive. Damn, I didn't think of this until now but maybe I should just pretend build a system on Maingear, Falcon Northwest, ibuypower, digital storm, etc and just see what options they give for storage. They seem to know what theyre doing. I know for sure Im definitely not doing ssd+two mechanical 3.5 drives in raid.

shen.matt92 · Nov 8, 2018

my quote looks messed up but my response is the bottom paragraph there

TJ Hooker · Nov 8, 2018

If you're trying to access both drives at the same time, I very much doubt it assigns exactly 2 GB/s (~PCIe 3.0 x2) to each and keeps them separate. My guess is that the PCH would rapidly switch between accessing the two drives. Either way, the PCH is designed to access and multiplex between many different peripherals, it shouldn't have any issues doing so.

And as I said, there are very few cases where you're going to have heavy I/O on both drives simultaneously, and even if you do there's a good chance you're not going to hit the DMI bandwidth limit anyway. Also, as an FYI, SATA drives also share the same DMI/PCH bandwidth as NVMe drives.

I'll also add that regular desktop use and gaming get virtually no benefit from NVMe drives vs a good SATA SSD. Just get a single SSD (NVMe or SATA, doesn't matter) big enough to hold your OS and whatever games/applications that you want faster load times on, and then get and HDD to store whatever else you have where speed doesn't matter.

As an aside, if you have lots of savings then why buy this stuff on credit and pay interest?

shen.matt92 · Nov 8, 2018

TJ Hooker :

Well I'm trying to build my credit. Plus I live rent free at a condo owned by my dad haha. But yeah to be perfectly honest it might've been the CPU overclock. Like I said, I don't remember which happened first, the stutter or the OC. But knowing me I wouldn't go and wonder and search up the issue if I'd just OC it. It would've been obvious that a poor unstable overclock caused the issue. I did notice in CPU-Z my clock speed was fluctuating between 800MHz-4600MHz even when I just booted to Windows and was doing nothing. I kept messing around with "fixed vs auto voltage" and turned BCLK adaptive volt on. My first overclock. Coincidentally, I increased my GPU memory speed from 5508 to 6000, and then I hear on Steam forums its caused by memory leaking. But you're probably right, it must not be caused by dual drives since when I switched the game to my OS drive it still happened. I recently switched back to EZ OC and deleted techpowerup software and so far I haven't seen the issue.

You said you doubt the 970 EVO NVMe are running each at x2. And I understand although they're rated 3500 mb/s they'll never operate at even close to that speed when gaming. So if I got two drives rated x2 each, it basically would make no difference vs the 970 EVO's because they both would never reach even 2000 mb/s or x2. But would most likely stay within the limit of SATA, around 600?

TJ Hooker · Nov 8, 2018

I'd revert all BIOS settings to stock (removing any auto OC/EZ OC as well) and see if your issue persists.

I'm saying that whether you have two x4 drives, two x2 drives, two SATA drives, some combination of those, or just a single SSD (NVMe or SATA), it's not going to make any significant difference. You might shave a couple seconds off boot time and maybe a second here or there on application load times with a fast NVMe drive, that's it. Most of the use cases where a fast NVMe drive would really shine are kind of niche (large sequential file transfers/copies, decompressing large archives, etc). It's not going to result in any difference in FPS.

FYI, you don't have to pay interest to build credit. You could pay for something with a credit card and immediately pay it off (or just pay your balance in full when your statement comes) and build credit just as well.

TJ Hooker · Nov 8, 2018

MERGED QUESTION
Question from shen.matt92 : "x4 NVMe with SATA SSD ok?"

shen.matt92 :

Dude, the answer to your question isn't going to change by asking it again.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3818068/dual-nvme-lag-storage-solution.html

The option that results in the fastest performance of both drives would be two x4 drives. DMI bandwidth should not be an issue, because as I said in the other thread it's very unlikely you'd ever have a case where you're pushing 2+ GB/s on both drives simultaneously. And even if it was, it'd still be the fastest options: there's never going to be a situation where having two x2 drives is faster. Or one x4 or x2 drive and one SATA drive. Although again, as I said in the other thread, there's going to be no real world difference between any of those configurations for what you're using it for.

USAFRet · Nov 8, 2018

1. You're way overthinking this.

2. Please keep this convoluted storage idea in one thread.
Thanks.

shen.matt92 · Nov 9, 2018

TJ Hooker :

Well thing is I'm kind of in a race against time here. I wanted to try stuff out, so my current motherboard and hard drive setup I got from Amazon since they have a really lenient return policy. And today is the last day to return the items so I can finally setup my i9-9900K rig with my ASUS Maximus. I apologize for the redundant thread. When I like some thing I tend to want to know every thing about it and get extremely hungry. But in case I change my mind upon learning new information, I don't want to keep returning things to my local PC store and really want to make the best decision.

So I think I'm going to do an Intel NVMe as my boot which has a read of 3100 mb/s then a few Intel SATA 545 SSD for storage. So my final question is, is it better to do all SATA? There won't be an imbalance of some sort having a 3100 mb/s boot drive and only 600 mb/s storage? Should I RAID 0 the SATA's?

USAFRet · Nov 9, 2018

shen.matt92 :

No, there won't be an "imbalance".
A lot of systems have an NVMe or SATA III SSD for a boot drive, and then 1 or more HDD's for 'data'. That is a far greater speed diff than what you're looking at.

And no, do NOT do a RAID 0. At all.

TJ Hooker · Nov 9, 2018

Your current configuration of two x4 NVMe drives is as fast as it gets.

shen.matt92 · Nov 9, 2018

TJ Hooker :

Okay, I guess I'm really starting to be convinced NVMe isn't necessary. NVMe wasn't designed for gaming, kind of like Xeon CPU's with three times as much cache as gaming CPU's weren't designed for gaming. Is that a correct analogy? And what about recording games? Since NVMe write times are faster, wouldn't it be better to record to an NVMe? I wonder how the performance would be affected with these combos.

1) SATA SSD storage for games, record onto that same drive.
2) SATA SSD, record onto NVMe
3) NVMe storage for games, record onto itself or another NVMe

There can't be zero difference between those. I remember using FRAPS a long time ago and recording hit fps performance hugely. I'd imagine with a write speed 3x faster than SATA that'd be eliminated as long as you have a good multi core CPU like mine, i7-8700K.

TJ Hooker · Nov 9, 2018

I don't think recording would be an issue for a SATA SSD unless you're recording 4K RAW or something. Even an HDD would probably be OK for 1080p encoded with a typical bitrate.

A very common setup is having 1 SSD (SATA or NVMe, but as you now understand NVMe costs more for little performance gain) and one or more HDDs. The SSD contains your OS, frequently used applications, and maybe a few games that you're currently playing (with the SSD sized accordingly). Then an HDD(s) big enough to hold everything else. I'd probably have the game on the SSD, and record to the HDD.

There can't be zero difference between those. I remember using FRAPS a long time ago and recording hit fps performance hugely. I'd imagine with a write speed 3x faster than SATA that'd be eliminated as long as you have a good multi core CPU like mine, i7-8700K.

The performance impact was probably a result of the increased load on the CPU that comes from encoding the video, not because of storage bandwidth. You can get around this with a CPU with lots of threads/core (which you have), or by using recording software that allows you to used the dedicated hardware encoder in your GPU.

Dual NVMe possible without lag? Best storage solution?

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