Z690-A Pro DDR4 and M.2 NVME

[KripTed]

I'm not too sure what's going on here. But my games seem to stutter when using the M.2 drive. When using my SSD plugged into SATA it's working fine. For example on Warzone 2.0. The game didn't stutter once on my Sata SSD. Switched it back to my M.2 SSD and it stutters. I tried different slots. Originally it was in the M_1 slot and it had tiny micro stutters. I moved it to M_4 and the stutters were increased. Is this due to the board and the slots being faulty? Maybe an update will fix it? Or is it the M.2? Other M.2 NVME's had this problem as well.

 

[doug.hogart153b02d9]

FWIW, M.2 slot 1 uses lanes from CPU and is PCIe 4.0. Slots 2-4 use lanes from chipset but differ in that slot 3 is PCIe 3.0 while the other two are PCIe 4.0, and the 3&4 slots can also be SATA rather than just NVMe. You probably should list more details such as your graphics card (and slot?) and your M.2 drive (helping others know whether it is 4.0 or 3.0).

Sorry I am not a gamer and can't help with your specifics.

 

[plutomate]

Did you monitor the temperature of your M.2? Also make sure you remove the protective film from M.2 heatsink.
Which SSD you use btw?

 

[KripTed]

FWIW, M.2 slot 1 uses lanes from CPU and is PCIe 4.0. Slots 2-4 use lanes from chipset but differ in that slot 3 is PCIe 3.0 while the other two are PCIe 4.0, and the 3&4 slots can also be SATA rather than just NVMe. You probably should list more details such as your graphics card (and slot?) and your M.2 drive (helping others know whether it is 4.0 or 3.0).

Sorry I am not a gamer and can't help with your specifics.

It's a Samsung 980 Pro. I was using the M2_1 slot which uses lanes from the CPU and it seems worse than putting it in M2_4 slot which uses the chipset but also at 4.0x4 according to the manual.

"M2_4 slot (From Z690 chipset)
Supports PCIe 4.0x4
Supports SATA 6Gb/s
Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280 storage devices"

Here are my specs:

i7-12700k
Samsung 980 Pro
WD Blue 3D SSD
32GB RAM (4000MHz) G.Skill Trident Z RGB
MSI Ventus 3X 3080 12G
MSI Z690-A Pro DDR4
Windows 11 22H2

So far it's in the M2_4 slot under the GPU and so far I haven't noticed any hitching or stuttering on Warzone 2.0. I'm not sure. I started thinking it was because of being on DDR4 and not DDR5.

Did you monitor the temperature of your M.2? Also make sure you remove the protective film from M.2 heatsink.
Which SSD you use btw?

The temps are about 40c according to Samsung Magician. I've removed the protective film from the M.2 Heatsink. I have two SSD's. One's an M.2 and one is a normal SATA SSD. Samsung Pro 980 and WD Blue 3D.

EDIT: Nvm. It still does it. It's worse after restarting shaders. I think it's a shader cache/optimization/compiling problem.

 

[doug.hogart153b02d9]

Windows 11 22H2
It's worse after restarting shaders. I think it's a shader cache/optimization/compiling problem.

Remembering that I am not a gamer and don't have graphics card, in recent days there was news about some stuttering problem fixed by KB5020044. It might be in "preview" and it might be the thing that was in the news weeks ago about GPU performance debugging features.

 

[KripTed]

Remembering that I am not a gamer and don't have graphics card, in recent days there was news about some stuttering problem fixed by KB5020044. It might be in "preview" and it might be the thing that was in the news weeks ago about GPU performance debugging features.

I'll look into that. I did see something when I googled it. Maybe I'll see if I can get my hands on it and test it out or something.

However, yet again. When throwing the game on the SATA SSD the stutters are basically non-existent. For example in Warzone 2.0. When dropping into the city after jumping out of the plane and falling. When you see the ground more, it has to load textures and etc. When it does this, it stutters bad on the M.2. On the SATA SSD it's barely noticeable but it does happen. This is after uninstalling and reinstalling. So this must also be a shader problem. However the M.2 still has stutters periodically throughout the game. So far the regular SSD hasn't. So either it's Windows and the way it interacts with the M.2 or these M.2's are just bad products and normal SSD's are the way to go.

What I'm going to try on my next days off is to install Windows 11 on the SATA SSD and see if the problem persists. If so, then this must mean it's a Windows issue, right? Lol.

 

[doug.hogart153b02d9]

Sorry but as I've said I am not a gamer and don't use graphics cards. If it were me, I would be trying to figure out the NVMe situation rather than messing around with SATA. NVMe and SATA have differences both in hardware and in the OS code (drivers). No idea how different programming might be, whether it is optimized somehow, etc. I'd be searching internet for things like Warzone 2.0 and NVMe or stuttering or textures, noticing whether there are fairly recent reports and on multiple types of hardware, what they are doing about it, etc. I might also be using some non-gaming i/o test tool to verify for myself that the drives are working like I expect outside of games, etc. On the Samsung Magician, have you tried the different setting for Full Performance Power Mode (or not)?

 

[KripTed]

Sorry but as I've said I am not a gamer and don't use graphics cards. If it were me, I would be trying to figure out the NVMe situation rather than messing around with SATA. NVMe and SATA have differences both in hardware and in the OS code (drivers). No idea how different programming might be, whether it is optimized somehow, etc. I'd be searching internet for things like Warzone 2.0 and NVMe or stuttering or textures, noticing whether there are fairly recent reports and on multiple types of hardware, what they are doing about it, etc. I might also be using some non-gaming i/o test tool to verify for myself that the drives are working like I expect outside of games, etc. On the Samsung Magician, have you tried the different setting for Full Performance Power Mode (or not)?

Yea, that was the first thing I did on Samsung Magician.

I'm trying to get that KB update and see if it fixes the issue.