Should I update WD SN850 2TB firmware for MGS Delta?
Right as the jungle textures were popping in, the read speed would dip, causing these annoying micro-stutters. The old firmware on the WD SN850 2TB has some instruction set conflicts with 4K random reads, making I/O wait times jump between 15-40ms. I tried disabling Fast Startup in Windows, but that didn't touch the in-game loading lag—complete miss on that one. I used the Western Digital Dashboard to flash the latest 2.1.0 firmware and realigned the disk partitions. CrystalDiskMark showed random reads climbing from 60MB/s to 85-92MB/s, and load times dropped by nearly 4 seconds. I did notice a 5-second boot delay right after the update, but updating the motherboard chipset drivers cleared that up. Temps are sitting between 42-50℃ and the read curve is finally flat. Comparing the before and after, it's a night and day difference in smoothness.
