External SSD warning

[zanity]

Many people tried running Starfield from their external USB SSD drives, and had terrible results. Well here's a possible answer.

 

On AMD AM4 motherboards, some have long noticed strange issues with USB behaviour on occasion. Today I discovered that an external SSD drive completely malfunctions on some of the USB ports, but works fine on others. The malfunction is NOT in correct reading and writing, but the speed and consistency in which either happen.

 

It is of great significance that CrystalDiskMark, the industry standard way of checking the performance of drives, found no issue with the 'bad' port. But the USB port is bad in ordinary file access.

 

On the bad port, the SSD freezes for many seconds after a burst of reading- you can imagine what this would do to Starfield's performance. Now as it happens, I run the game fine from an NVMe device, which at first had serious issues down to starfield's unstated use of DirectStorage having problems with my NVMe driver- I had to regress to the generic MS driver to get Starfield to run properly.

 

So I haven't run Starfield from any external SSD, BUT my experience would directly explain why certain people had issues when they tried to do so.

 

Remember, Beth has issued ZERO guidance on the matter, and forums are full of fools who tell those with problems that they shouldn't have installed the game on an HDD (which they didn't and stated they didn't in their OP, which so many fools can't even be bothered to read before they reply).

 

Anyhoo, if your USB SSD seems to be playing up, try switching it to another port, especially those ports on the backplane on the back of your case. And to make things STRANGER, my dodgy USB 3.0 ports work fine with other external SSD storage. It must be down to the driver chip in the SSD enclosure.

Edited September 28, 2023 by zanity

[HeyYou]

I have found that external drives, while theoretically just as fast, if not faster... than those plugged into SATA ports, aren't..... :D It has been my experience that internal drives are consistently faster than USB...... Most boards these days have provisions for one, or more... NVME drives right on the board itself, which is the ideal solution....

[niston]

Well, for one:

 

SATA 3.0 Max Transfer Rate: 600MB/s

M.2 NVMe Max Transfer Rate: 4000MB/s (PCIe 3.0) to 5000MB/s (PCIe 4.0)

 

Accordingly, an internal SATAIII SSD will absolutely lag behind an M.2 NVMe one - Even if the M.2 happens to be externally attached via USB 3.2 SS+ (assuming cabling and M.2/USB conversion adheres to specs, of course).

[zanity]

Sigh- two replies that utterly miss the point.

 

NO-ONE needs someone to point out the NVMe interface is faster. No-one. Literally no-one. So you score ZERO clout points by a post saying this- this forum ain't Facebook or any other for clout social network swamp.

 

Those with reading comprehension would have spotted the point of my post- namely different USB 3 ports on one's PC may have different abilities, despite in theory supposedly being part of the same standard.

 

Actual USB standards, down to the involvement of Intel, are terrible. Many people may not know that simply switching the USB port used by their external SSD will radically change its read behaviour- because that fact is not obvious. Starfield doesn't need a high speed NVMe drive, but it does need a low latency device with fast continuous reads. The latency is actually the BIGGER issue, since the in-game delays will 'feel' the latency one-to-one. Indeed many people have an issue where Windows puts their flash drives to sleep if not used for a little while- and the wake-up latency can be 5 seconds or greater.

 

Starfield uses DirectStorage without telling people (down to the PR disaster of DS in Forspoken). DS just doesn't play well with many systems, and Beth was too dumb to test the DS speed on a given install, and fall back to normal direct file access if the DS was reporting issues (like with my NVMe drive when using its correct drivers rather than the generic Windows ones).

 

AMD systems in particular seem to have strange issues with some of their USB ports (which is what I experienced). Debugging issues in Windows can be a VERY complex problem. Beth should already be telling its customers with known issues to install default NVMe drivers, or try swapping an external device to another port. Actual correct solutions to actual known potential issues.

 

"Get an NVMe", as a solution, is as lame as "get a bigger PSU" (which fools used to think, and some still do, fixed every PC problem) or "buy a 4090". Steam surveys prove that the majority of gamers game on very low end systems (largely thanks to Nvidia, and their terrible consumer practices). The SteamDeck proves that most games can be given adequate performance with sufficient knowledge- tho of course, like a console, that device has fixed hardware. Most Starfield gamers will NOT be using an NVMe. So they need advice on how to ensure they get the best possible experience on the hardware they do own.

Edited September 29, 2023 by zanity

[HeyYou]

Sigh- two replies that utterly miss the point.

 

NO-ONE needs someone to point out the NVMe interface is faster. No-one. Literally no-one. So you score ZERO clout points by a post saying this- this forum ain't Facebook or any other for clout social network swamp.

 

Those with reading comprehension would have spotted the point of my post- namely different USB 3 ports on one's PC may have different abilities, despite in theory supposedly being part of the same standard.

 

Actual USB standards, down to the involvement of Intel, are terrible. Many people may not know that simply switching the USB port used by their external SSD will radically change its read behaviour- because that fact is not obvious. Starfield doesn't need a high speed NVMe drive, but it does need a low latency device with fast continuous reads. The latency is actually the BIGGER issue, since the in-game delays will 'feel' the latency one-to-one. Indeed many people have an issue where Windows puts their flash drives to sleep if not used for a little while- and the wake-up latency can be 5 seconds or greater.

 

Starfield uses DirectStorage without telling people (down to the PR disaster of DS in Forspoken). DS just doesn't play well with many systems, and Beth was too dumb to test the DS speed on a given install, and fall back to normal direct file access if the DS was reporting issues (like with my NVMe drive when using its correct drivers rather than the generic Windows ones).

 

AMD systems in particular seem to have strange issues with some of their USB ports (which is what I experienced). Debugging issues in Windows can be a VERY complex problem. Beth should already be telling its customers with known issues to install default NVMe drivers, or try swapping an external device to another port. Actual correct solutions to actual known potential issues.

 

"Get an NVMe", as a solution, is as lame as "get a bigger PSU" (which fools used to think, and some still do, fixed every PC problem) or "buy a 4090". Steam surveys prove that the majority of gamers game on very low end systems (largely thanks to Nvidia, and their terrible consumer practices). The SteamDeck proves that most games can be given adequate performance with sufficient knowledge- tho of course, like a console, that device has fixed hardware. Most Starfield gamers will NOT be using an NVMe. So they need advice on how to ensure they get the best possible experience on the hardware they do own.

Swing and a miss.

 

You seem to have missed my point completely. An internal drive will ALWAYS be faster than an external. Period.Yes, even an NVME external. Trying to run a game like starfield from an external drive might "work", for certain values thereof, but, if yer gonna spend the money, do an internal drive. You'll be happier.