Can a SSD be too fast for RW?

[meonia]

On my previous computer I had a couple of hard drives and a 2 1/2 inch SSD. Railworks was installed on the SSD and every thing was tickety-boo, the sim ran like Swiss clockwork ... well sort of! Naturally I dreamed of the day when everything was even faster and eventually the day came when I could realize my dream. Be careful of what you dream of!

Three months ago I got one of the latest motherboards. The new SSD's are like the SIM cards you put in your iPhone/Android and slip into a slot on the motherboard. They happen to be ten times faster than the older 2 1/2 inch SSD's. Now for an RW that loads in seconds and transits from one scenery tile to the next without stuttering, lags or crashes due to the speed the scenery items are loaded. I had another thought coming!!!

Crash, crash, crash. The crashes come must faster, that's the only thing that sped up. Instead of stuttering and lag it's crash. I fired up RW on the older computer and it runs beautifully so its not the route or scenario. It appears RW needs time to load stuff and it doesn't like being hurried ... go figure! Now the new computer sits idly bye whilst I'm back playing on the old computer.

Be warned, I think a SSD can be too fast for RW.

Mike.

[CapitolLimited]

Sounds like something wrong with your SSD. I have RW installed on mine, and it loads buttery smooth and very fast.

[RichyV]

No, the data will only be 'pulled' when it is called for by the application. It can't read too fast, so there's something wrong with that install.

The M2's are FAR from 10x read speed of a traditional SSD also I'm afraid... Even the Pro-spec PCI-E versions aren't that fast!

[gptech]

M.2 is not a *new* standard for SSDs, but a new type of interface that SSDs, along with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules (to name but 2) can take advantage of. There is no difference in the underlying technology of the SSD storage itself.
To focus purely on the use of SSDs with the M.2 interface, by bypassing the SATA controller and 'plugging' straight into the PCI-E 2 bus using 4 lanes. an SSD can theoretically achieve a maximum throughput of 2 GB/s, over 3 times faster than SATA III (600MB/s)

It starts getting complicated now: if you try using a PCI-E only drive in a SATA only socket (or vice-versa) it won't function properly.

As Richy has written, NO drive will push data to a requesting application, the application pulls the data; that data is loaded into RAM so the *speed* of the application isn't a factor (even if it exists)

What motherboard, what drive, and what mode are you using?

[meonia]

GPTech wrote:

What motherboard, what drive, and what mode are you using?

Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake Quad-Core 4.2 GHz LGA 1151 91W BX80677177700K Desktop Processor.
ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero Z270 LGA1151 DDR4 ATX Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200)
2 X Samsung 960 EVO 500GB PCle M.2 Internal SSD MZ-V6E500BW
NVidea GeForce GTX-1080-8G Turbo.

I am not overclocking this game.

I'm not sure what you mean by "mode". If it's game mode in RW I crash a lot in all settings except "Lowest". I also crash a lot when I switch from Edit to Drive. Its barely more than a virgin (verified) Railworks with the route I've created (Glorious Devon). I have absolutely no problems with the route and scenarios in my older computer up to "High" setting.

Mike

[Rogge]

Sounds like a bad install or a hardware issue. This is not related to a SSD that is too fast.

I have a system disc similar to yours in my computer and TS never crashes and sometimes i see a slight stuttering when loading tiles. See the attached image for my disc speeds.

[gptech]

OK, that combination should work nicely in either M.2 socket, as long as that socket's underlying operational mode is set to match the SSD.
The manual will detail the default mode of the socket, and how to change it---if needed of course, it may say it's an automatic switch. Motherboards all tend to have slightly different ways of going about things, so I can't give any definitive advice/instructions regarding just where in the BIOS options it's squirreled away.
As you've 2 M.2 drives in there, are you running them in RAID?

[peterfhayes]

Speed will also depend on the.M2 ssd is using NVMe.
Relative speeds

M.2 Drive Throughput by Connection.... Theoretical Maximum Throughput ....Est. Real-World Maximum Throughput
SATA III ........................................6.0 Gb/s (750 MB/s) .....................4.8 Gb/s (600 MB/s)
PCI-E 2.0 x2 ..................................8 Gb/s (1 GB/s) ...........................6.4 Gb/s (800 MB/s)
PCI-E 2.0 x4 ..................................16 Gb/s (2 GB/s) .........................12.8 Gb/s (1.6 GB/s)
PCI-E 3.0 x4 ..................................32 Gb/s (4 GB/s) .........................31.5 Gb/s (3.9 GB/s)

I don't have similar figures for NVMe .M2 SSD's.
In theory the "retrieval speed" of the SSD could have some bearing on TS crashing - because maybe hard page faults would appear quicker and if there were enough - TS would crash. But that is conjectural theory - I have never experienced a TS crash using a SSD (now 3+ years).
pH

[gptech]

Its barely more than a virgin (verified) Railworks with the route I've created (Glorious Devon)

Just for the sake of completeness, try one of the routes that ship with the game.