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waway625

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Aug 9, 2015
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Hi. I have (according to steam subscribed items) 1349 mods and assets and my Cities skylines is installed on my Samsung 850 EVO SSD

loading times is horrible still at 9 minutes (timed via stopwatch)
Anyone familiar with SSD tech? would upgrading to a faster, m2 nvme SSD help?

Say I purchase a Samsung 960 Evo M2 , how much faster loading times can I expect?

rest of specs

5820k
16Gb
GTX970 ~~ GTX1080ti soon
 

jak1up

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"1349 mods and assets" it's amazing that it loads at all.... I have the 850 EVO, with only a few mods and load times are long, the 960 may help a little but the more assets the game has to load the longer it takes...not sure with "1349" to load if any thing would help... that said what speed is your RAM & your CPU and how much RAM does your GTX970 have?
 
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metacritical

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1349 mods and assets isn't a lot. plenty of people with weaker systems that this have a good 1000 more
 

waway625

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Aug 9, 2015
133
229
"1349 mods and assets" it's amazing that it loads at all.... I have the 850 EVO, with only a few mods and load times are long, the 960 may help a little but the more assets the game has to load the longer it takes...not sure with "1349" to load if any thing would help... that said what speed is your RAM & your CPU and how much RAM does your GTX970 have?

I got 1349 based on my subcribed workshop items "Showing 1-10 of 1349 entries"
my 5820k runs stock at 3.4Gbz
RAM is at 2400Mhz on XMP profile
GTX970 is on stock

would it be realistic to expect a massive loading time improvement if I buy a 960 M2 NVME? Like from 9 minutes to say 5?
 

ByLeven

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I can't really answer the SSD question, but I have 1200+ mods/assets, and it takes about 7.5 minutes to load. I use EVO 840, which is probably slightly slower than the 850. Load times most likely vary depending on what types of assets we subscribe to. It is also possible that the OP's SSD is curbed by either a slow cable or connected to "slow" sata port on the mainboard, and thus underperforming perhaps? I don't know.
 

ByLeven

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Wish we could have and administer different "load outs". That we could easily change what assets to load or exclude, depending on what sort of city we're working on. That we could organize assets into themes, that could quickly be mixed, matched or excluded. Somewhat like the building themes editor "in-game" (Which might actually be a mod, not sure).
 
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MarkJohnson

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I have an Intel 400GB NVMe drive on my X99 MB (m.2 32Gb/s) It says it gets 2,000 MB/s on benchmarks. But I haven't noticed any improvement. I didn't get the stopwatch out or anything. I don't think the speed scales well with small files. Only very large files can attain that kind of speed. Our smaller ones spend too much time finding files, opening files, closing files, check for errors, etc

My New rig didn't have an M.2 like I assumed, so my el cheapo Adata 480GB Sata III loads up almost 1,000 assets in around 3 minutes. My assets are mainly growable if that matters much.

Check your nboard. I think only Asus/ASrock offered the x4 (32Gb/s) speed m.2, everyone else only had the 2x (10Gbps) speed versions. So make sure the SSD matches the motherboard. I guess you could get the faster one and use it on the next upgrade. A new board is comming soon. The 299X.
 

alphaprior

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1126 mods & assets starting a new game or loading my current new game takes about 3.15 minutes.
I have M.2 nvme drive where game and mods are but I use no swap file, 32GB RAM are more than enough, game max has used so far was around 11GB.
From what I read here seems my rig is fast enough so I don't complain however I expect loading time will increase as my city gets bigger.
 

metacritical

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you should turn on swap file as the game is liable to crash more frequently without one. doesn't matter how much RAM you have, it seems the game needs one to be more stable.
 

waway625

Second Lieutenant
Aug 9, 2015
133
229
I can't really answer the SSD question, but I have 1200+ mods/assets, and it takes about 7.5 minutes to load. I use EVO 840, which is probably slightly slower than the 850. Load times most likely vary depending on what types of assets we subscribe to. It is also possible that the OP's SSD is curbed by either a slow cable or connected to "slow" sata port on the mainboard, and thus underperforming perhaps? I don't know.

I just realized its installed on my older Crucial M4 SSD. Ill try to transfer it to my 850 evo and if it improves loading time a bit, then I will buy the 960 evo M2 Nvme
 

waway625

Second Lieutenant
Aug 9, 2015
133
229
I have an Intel 400GB NVMe drive on my X99 MB (m.2 32Gb/s) It says it gets 2,000 MB/s on benchmarks. But I haven't noticed any improvement. I didn't get the stopwatch out or anything. I don't think the speed scales well with small files. Only very large files can attain that kind of speed. Our smaller ones spend too much time finding files, opening files, closing files, check for errors, etc

My New rig didn't have an M.2 like I assumed, so my el cheapo Adata 480GB Sata III loads up almost 1,000 assets in around 3 minutes. My assets are mainly growable if that matters much.

Check your nboard. I think only Asus/ASrock offered the x4 (32Gb/s) speed m.2, everyone else only had the 2x (10Gbps) speed versions. So make sure the SSD matches the motherboard. I guess you could get the faster one and use it on the next upgrade. A new board is comming soon. The 299X.

My mobo is an Asus x99-a/usb 3.1

does this mean anything?
1 x M.2 Socket 3, , with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (Support PCIE SSD only)
32Gb/s ultrafast M.2 x4
 

waway625

Second Lieutenant
Aug 9, 2015
133
229
So I transferred Cities skylines from the Crucial M4 SSD to the Samsung EVO 850 and cut loading time by 1 and a half minute
I guess faster SSD helps so I will get the M2 nvme then
 

MarkJohnson

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My mobo is an Asus x99-a/usb 3.1

does this mean anything?
1 x M.2 Socket 3, , with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (Support PCIE SSD only)
32Gb/s ultrafast M.2 x4
I haave the same booard as you

It supports the X4 ssd
 

Photonic210

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On a Sandisk Ultra II 960 GB SSD. My loading times are around 8:30 with 1366 subscribed items.

PC specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5 4690K
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC m8
RAM: Some random Mushkin 8 GB RAM
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2 TB
Storage: SanDisk Ultra II 960 GB
 

MarkJohnson

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so m2 nvme doesnt make loading like 2x faster? Cos If that the case, id rather get a 1Tb SSD than a 500Gb m2 for about the same price

No, not even close. what takes so long is the opening and closing of files, checking for errors, and that is a slow process. Especially doing it thousands of times. If the workshop items could be merged into a single file, then it go go significantly faster.

Maybe I'll put my old system back together and run some tests.

EDIT:
I just ran my loading screen mod times. on my Adata SSD I get 2:20 minuites, while my Intel NVMe x4 drive only got 2:15 minutes.

So it is within margin of error and not really any improvement.
 
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