Managing SLC cache and space on WD SN850 1TB for TLOU?
This SN850 1TB is just too small for modern AAA games; once my free space dipped below 10%, the performance became an absolute joke. Because the SLC cache was constantly overflowing, write speeds crashed from 6500MB/s to under 800MB/s, causing frame times to swing wildly between 15-100ms. I tried using the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup, but it only found 1GB of junk, which was a complete waste of time. I eventually used a third-party tool to deep-clean all shader caches and moved my virtual memory to a secondary backup drive to take the I/O pressure off the main disk. Using a latency analyzer, I saw the disk response time drop from 40-120ms to a tight 12-25ms, and the stuttering mostly disappeared. I did hit a snag where the system wouldn't boot after moving the page file, and I had to rebuild the BCD boot entries to get back in. Temps are now 45-52℃ and speeds are back to a stable 5000MB/s, though the drive is still nearly full.
