Hi everyone,
One quick question on my side. I have 512 GB SSD only for OS and MSFS, yet with add-ons and the latest updates of MSFS, the size is already big therefore I can’t use the benefits of the cache.
I was wondering if I choose a folder to cache in another local disk say D: and play the game in my local disk say C: ?
Thanks a lot, any help is appreciated!
You can point the cache to whatever path you want. The type of physical media it is doesn’t really matter at all.
That said, the idea of a cache is to have FAST access. Saving it to a mechanical drive that’s 5 to 15 times slower than an SSD is not doing you favours. It may be faster than what you can download the data at (depending on your Internet speed), but would still benefit from being on fast storage.
@Crunchmeister71 many thanks for the detailed explanation!
Then maybe another follow up question, if you were in my situation, would you do it or leave it as it is ?
In short, yes; that’s what I have.
The sim is installed as per the default, on C which is a 500GB SSD. The content is on D which is a 1TB HD. I could’ve put the cache there too, but I had another 500GB HD lying around so I used that.
Works perfectly.
It depends.
If I was running out of space on my SSD and had slow internet, then I’d definitely put it on the HDD.
If I was running out of space on my SSD but had fast internet, I wouldn’t use any cache at all
Or realistically in my own situation, if I was running out of space on my SSD, I’d buy another SDD or replace the existing one with a larger capacity model. But this is coming from the guy with a pair of 1TB NVMe and a 4TB SATA SSDs in his system. I realize this isn’t a realistic solution for everyone.
I can already hear the gasps, but I have been running MSFS of a HDD since day one. Did some comparisons with a friend that has almost the same system but has three SSDs. ONLY measurable benefit was in initial load times and menu navigation. Once in the cockpit we could not find any differences.
The only deciding factor to truly consider is, longevity. If you decide to move your cache to a HDD you will be greatly increasing the R/W cycle on that HDD. An SSD does not care how often you read from it, only degrades with writes, and then not enough to to shorten it’s life less than yours. If you fly primarily in the same area then the sim is just reading data after the initial cache and it will do that long after MSFS is off the market.
An HDD on the other hand gets old fast with multiple R/W cycles. It doesn’t care if you are just reading or not. Every access degrades it. Lots of flying will result in the death of that HDD long before MSFS is ready for the heap. So ask yourself this. Is the life of that poor HDD worth the space gained on the SSD? Is there maybe some other ‘stuff’ that could be stored on the venerable old HDD that only needs occasional access, that would open up some elbow room on the SSD?
Certainly don’t disagree. Loading times will be the biggest advantages of an SSD. With a SATA SSD, you’re looking about up to 5x faster than an HDD. With NVMe, you’re looking at 15X or more. In flight after all that loading is done, it should have zero impact.
EIther way, the cache location shouldn’t matter. The fastest source is always the most optimal, but it doesn’t mean that a slower HDD will harm cache performance. It’s likely as fast or faster than most users’ internet connection, and will have lower latency.
Personally, I don’t use the rolling cache at all. I manually cache areas I fly over regularly and disable the rolling cache altogether. I have gigabit internet. I don’t need it.
Used to be the same. Came to the conclusion that since Asobo has stated from day one that the sim was designed to run with a scenery cache and their best performance and quality is achievable with the default cache, why fight it. I also have stupid fast internet, but my small mind took the, “designed to run from a cache”, to mean…
If the steps are even remotely correct then it would stand to reason that caching will save steps. Doesn’t cost me anything other than some extra wear on the HDD, which doesn’t owe me any cycles anyway. Plan is to replace them with SSDs as they give out.
Prior to SU4, I would get horrible, constant stuttering with rolling cache on. My performance was still poor without it, but much of that constant stutter was alleviated. And I could consistently reproduce it on my end. Others reported the same.
SU4 brought a lot of “stealth” fixes that were network related. It fixed the live weather only on first flight bug. It also fixed the super slow update downloads many people were having. After SU4, I haven’t been able to see a noticeable difference in performance with it enabled or disabled. So based on that, I choose to preserve the write cycles on my SSDs and not use it. I only use manual cache for a few large areas I fly out of often.
And post SU5, I haven’t really tried. The sim runs acceptably well for me now in any case. I still only use manual cache.
Those are great explanations along with great informations. I really appreciate for all the answers.
Kind of OT. But don’t bother getting a PCI 4.0 NVMe for the sim. I did not notice a difference between going from having the OS/SIM on a PCI 3.0 NVMe to the OS on the 3.0 and the sim on the 4.0.
I went 4.0 for virtualization.
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