Should I tweak HMB cache for Kioxia EXCERIA PRO in GoW Ragnarok?
The feeling of Kratos leaping across the World Tree is absolutely electric once you get the loading right. By default, the Kioxia EXCERIA PRO 1TB only allocates 64MB for HMB cache, which caused peak delays of 110ms - 130ms when streaming 4K textures. I tried disabling all background Windows updates, but that only shaved off 0.2 seconds—hardly a solution. I ended up using a registry tweak to force the HMB cache up to 256MB and switched my power plan to 'Ultimate Performance'. In 3DMark storage benchmarks, the sequential read speed stabilized at 7.1GB/s - 7.3GB/s, up from 6.2GB/s. I did have a moment of panic when the system hung at the motherboard logo after the registry edit, but booting into Safe Mode and restoring the startup items saved me. Temps are stable at 52℃ - 58℃. Using the in-game load timer, I confirmed the transition is now instant, though the registry editing process was a bit tedious.
