How replacing my SSD improved my FPS in Hogwarts Legacy
When I started out playing Hogwarts Legacy, I was impressed with how much it required from my PC. I had a lot of FPS drops, especially when I was somewhere with a lot of texture.
My PC isn’t too bad. I built it myself, as it’s something I enjoy playing around with in my spare time on occasion. My specs before Hogwarts Legacy were:
- CPU
AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT - GPU
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6 GB - RAM
Kingston FURY Beast 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz - SSD
Samsung 860 QVO
So from first glanse, I’m passing the recommendation for the game with settings on High. Yet, I had continuous FPS drops, and could bare run it at a steady 60 fps.
That’s when I decided to have my Task Manager window and Hardware Monitor on, on my second screen. That’s when I realised my PC was using 100% of the SSD when playing the game. Not an issue I would have thought of, considering I had a my SSD with read/write speeds of 550/520 MB/s.
Apparently not enough for Hogwarts Legacy.
Switching from SATA to NVMe
The solution to my problem. Installing an M.2 drive.
M.2 SSDs and traditional SSDs are both solid-state drives, which means they have no moving parts and use flash memory to store data. However, M.2 SSDs are a newer form factor that allows for higher speeds and smaller sizes than traditional SSDs.
M.2 SSDs are designed to fit directly onto a motherboard, eliminating the need for cables and reducing the space required for installation. This makes them ideal for use in small form factor systems, such as ultrabooks, tablets, and other portable devices.
In terms of performance, M.2 SSDs can be faster than traditional SSDs. M.2 SSDs use the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) interface, which allows for much higher transfer speeds than the SATA (Serial ATA) interface used by traditional SSDs. NVMe can provide sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,500MB/s and 3,300MB/s, respectively, which is significantly faster than the sequential read and write speeds of up to 560MB/s and 540MB/s, respectively, for SATA-based SSDs.
In addition to faster transfer speeds, M.2 SSDs also have lower latency than traditional SSDs. This means that data can be accessed and transferred more quickly, resulting in faster boot times and improved application performance.
The result
After installing the M.2 my FPS stabilized. Graphics settings were tuned up to Medium, and I’m now running 60fps stable even in heavy battles and sceneries.
The performance difference between the M.2 NVMe and the traditional SSD was significant. Especially for a task that required a high transfer speeds and low latency, such as gaming.
Hope this will help someone else out there!