How to optimize WD SN850 1TB storage for Far Cry 6?
Having the loading bar hang at 90% for five whole seconds is absolute madness; it felt like I was back on a mechanical hard drive from the 90s. The problem was that the first M.2 slot was in 'Auto' mode and occasionally misidentified the drive as Gen 3, causing the read speed to plummet from 6600 MB/s to 3200 MB/s. I tried moving the drive to the second slot, but that went through the chipset and added 15ms of latency—a total waste of my time. I went straight into the BIOS and forced the PCIe mode to Gen 4 and flashed the latest firmware from Western Digital. In CrystalDiskMark, the sequential reads climbed back to 6400-6600 MB/s, and map loads dropped to 3 seconds. I did have a scare where the drive wasn't detected after the firmware update, but a quick reseat fixed it. Temps stayed around 42-50℃. I exported the I/O throughput logs, and the frame generation time is now a steady 5.1-6.4ms, though the BIOS menu is a bit clunky.
