Hey!
When I bought a refurbished MSI GS63VR, I set aside a good bit in hopes of upgrading to 'the best' M.2 drive and 2.5" drive. I went with a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro and a 2TB Seagate FireCuda. Last night I had some friends over and we played some couch multiplayer games using my laptop hooked up to the TV in my living room and it was rough.
I couldn't figure out what the deal was, the computer is always fairly snappy, but every game was really chugging that night.
Vagante, a game that's entirely 2D (with particle effects and lighting) would take a big dip in FPS every time we loaded a level. (I highly recommend that game if you like Spelunky-type games, BTW.) Like, it didn't make sense for an i7 and a 1060 to be dipping.
Then we played Death Road to Canada while waiting for the third & fourth to show up. Any time the game would go to change scenes or load a song or do just about anything that could be considered loading, it would literally "hang up" for seconds. Another 2D game with basic particles and lighting.
I was kind of baffled, never having had these issues on any computer I'd played the games on, including HTPCs and laptops with generally weaker hardware and no dedicated GPU.
The others showed up and we gave Vagante another run, still stuttery at the beginning of each level.
Then we played Gang Beasts, and I was like, "Surely I can crank this game up, the mobile 1060 has never failed to impress me!" But even getting to the Settings menu was noticeably rough. The character select menu kind of sucks in Gang Beasts (which is lame, because it used to be better? IMO) so two of us accidentally started a game without the rest. It was so choppy. I threw my friend off of an iceberg and went back into the settings to lower the graphical detail. It didn't make a difference... The game was just chugging along for quite a while. Eventually it improved, but any time we'd load a new level it would get stuttery again.
So, having had time to reflect upon the scenario, it seems pretty clear that the FireCuda was just not keeping up. And it seems to be significantly slower than any HDD I've used in recent memory.
I did download ~20 games in expectation of my friends coming over, and I'm sure this was a stressful use case for a hybrid SSD, but I was expecting the worst-case performance from the drive to be comparable to other HDDs I have used recently, just with the occasional upside of the drive having cached data helping out here and there.
Is there maybe a driver or a firmware I need to install to get the drive up to speed? Is this a drive that benefits from defragmenting? Any other things I could maybe try?
I know some folks around here have used the FireCuda and I believe I had a few recommend that I use it--@CubanLegend, don't you have one?
When I bought a refurbished MSI GS63VR, I set aside a good bit in hopes of upgrading to 'the best' M.2 drive and 2.5" drive. I went with a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro and a 2TB Seagate FireCuda. Last night I had some friends over and we played some couch multiplayer games using my laptop hooked up to the TV in my living room and it was rough.
I couldn't figure out what the deal was, the computer is always fairly snappy, but every game was really chugging that night.
Vagante, a game that's entirely 2D (with particle effects and lighting) would take a big dip in FPS every time we loaded a level. (I highly recommend that game if you like Spelunky-type games, BTW.) Like, it didn't make sense for an i7 and a 1060 to be dipping.
Then we played Death Road to Canada while waiting for the third & fourth to show up. Any time the game would go to change scenes or load a song or do just about anything that could be considered loading, it would literally "hang up" for seconds. Another 2D game with basic particles and lighting.
I was kind of baffled, never having had these issues on any computer I'd played the games on, including HTPCs and laptops with generally weaker hardware and no dedicated GPU.
The others showed up and we gave Vagante another run, still stuttery at the beginning of each level.
Then we played Gang Beasts, and I was like, "Surely I can crank this game up, the mobile 1060 has never failed to impress me!" But even getting to the Settings menu was noticeably rough. The character select menu kind of sucks in Gang Beasts (which is lame, because it used to be better? IMO) so two of us accidentally started a game without the rest. It was so choppy. I threw my friend off of an iceberg and went back into the settings to lower the graphical detail. It didn't make a difference... The game was just chugging along for quite a while. Eventually it improved, but any time we'd load a new level it would get stuttery again.
So, having had time to reflect upon the scenario, it seems pretty clear that the FireCuda was just not keeping up. And it seems to be significantly slower than any HDD I've used in recent memory.
I did download ~20 games in expectation of my friends coming over, and I'm sure this was a stressful use case for a hybrid SSD, but I was expecting the worst-case performance from the drive to be comparable to other HDDs I have used recently, just with the occasional upside of the drive having cached data helping out here and there.
Is there maybe a driver or a firmware I need to install to get the drive up to speed? Is this a drive that benefits from defragmenting? Any other things I could maybe try?
I know some folks around here have used the FireCuda and I believe I had a few recommend that I use it--@CubanLegend, don't you have one?
