Questions about M.2 Memory

Hi

I'm investigating what M.2 memory is all about and what is involved in getting it up and running. I've already learnt a lot in just browsing various websites that explain what it is.

At present though, my husband seems to be having problems running Trainz on his PC and it seems like a faster drive would be useful to say the least in overcoming those problems. Since he has a mobo with an M.2 M socket on it he could quite happily install an NVMe x4 into his PC to use for storing the files. One question though: once it is installed, does it appear in "This PC" in the same way as any other drive. If it does, presumably it can be used as pretty much a normal drive would be. Pretty elementary questions I know but I would prefer to know before I pay my money as we have some very big expenses coming up.

Oh! One other question about M.2 add-on cards. I wouldn't have thought you could expect the same improvement in speed from an M.2 adapter card as you would get from a socket on the mobo but what is the difference between the two and is it worth worrying about? The only reason I ask is that I don't have an M.2 socket on my mobo and I'm just wondering for future reference.

Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.

Tracey

PS As you can guess from the above I am not suggesting that my husband uses M.2 memory as a boot device.

Let me start by doubting that game performance would be much improved by running the game from an SSD. It could reduce load times, but I wouldn't expect performance to be improved beyond that.

If your husband's PC is low on RAM, increasing that may help. (Particularly if the game is going to "virtual" memory, which is using the hard drive to simulate more memory.)

I'd make a distinction between an SSD (M.2 or otherwise) and memory. To me, memory is RAM, which is very fast, and random access. A hard drive (spinner) is much slower, and it isn't strictly random access. (The average latency, or delay, is the time it takes for the disk to complete 1/2 a rotation. For a 7200 RPM disk, that's about 4 millisecond.) An SSD is somewhere in between, with a read latency of tens of microseconds.

There are two basic types of M.2 drives: SATA and PCI-E. Some slots support both.

Under the PCI-E interface, older cards were PCI-E X2, newer ones PCI-E X4. (X2 and X4 are the number of PCI-E lanes used. X4 supports twice the theoretical data rate of X2.)

PCI-E X4 M.2 cards now tend to support NVME. The PC's BIOS must support NVME to use such a card as the boot drive. I don't know whether it would be possible to use an NVME card in an unsupported system if it was just used as a data drive.

I wouldn't expect a performance loss by using an M.2 card in a PCI-E slot adapter. I'm using an old Plextor M.2 card in an adapter. It is not, however, an NVME M.2. Those are getting hard to find.

Yes, a M.2 SSD will show up in This Computer, just like your existing disk drives.
A M.2 PCIe adaptor card wont show any performance loss. It does the same thing as the M.2 expansion slot on the motherboard. That is the adaptor allows a M.2 device to be connected to the PCIe bus, and that is what the M.2 slot does on the motherboard. The drawback of the M.2 adaptor card is that it takes up more space.
Make sure you know which version of PCIe bus (ether version 2, 3 or 4) the M.2 interface is compliant with.
Make sure you have a screwdriver with a magnetic head, when fixing in a M.2 device to an available slot, as they are so small they are quite difficult to fit in.

TraceyW said:

Hi

I'm investigating what M.2 memory is all about and what is involved in getting it up and running. I've already learnt a lot in just browsing various websites that explain what it is.

At present though, my husband seems to be having problems running Trainz on his PC and it seems like a faster drive would be useful to say the least in overcoming those problems.

Is the husband's computer the one listed in your computer specs? If not, we need to know the specs of the computer in question. If it is, an M.2 drive is not going to help run Trainz at all. You need to seriously upgrade the graphics card. I'm running dual RX580 graphic cards in my PC and I would say my Trainz performance is at the low end of acceptable. The GTX760 listed in your specs is rated at about 60% performance of one RX580.

Also hinges on what version of Trainz your husband is running? the newer versions as in TANE and TRS19 are extremely GPU intensive, I'm using a 1080TI and that will struggle to get above 30FPS on some of the more "cluttered" routes with everything maxed.

Hi all

Well quite a lot of replies all of which have points to make. The only reason I asked about getting M.2 for my husband is that he does seem to have problems getting files off HDs, at least, he says he does. At present he has Trainz on a 500GB standard SSD but from time to time the program doesn't help by its apparent slowness at getting files off the SSD and I thought just maybe an M.2 would prove to be beneficial to him.

Currently he has 16GB RAM installed and we have another 32GB waiting to be fitted in the hope that that will improve the situation. He'll still have the problem of digging things off disk though. His graphic card is a GTX1050Ti and much better than the GTX760 which I inherited; we have no plans to upgrade his graphic card just yet on the grounds of cost.

In my initial post I admit that I got things confused by referring to M.2 memory when it should have been M.2 SSD and I apologise for that oversight. But I did also refer to NVMe x4 which I understand to be the fastest type of M.2 SSD there is at present and I was thinking to replace the 500GB standard SSD he now has Trainz on and install an NVMe x4 M.2 SSD. Surely that together with an extra 32 GB RAM should be a step forward. But from what people are saying I'm now beginning to wonder.

Tracey

You will not see any increase in game performance replacing a SATA SSD with an NVME SSD.

NavyLCDR said:

You will not see any increase in game performance replacing a SATA SSD with an NVME SSD.

I'm not familiar with the game, but I'd also be surprised if going from 16GB of RAM to 48GB would help.

I don't see any mention of the PC's CPU but unless it's terribly weak, the graphics card is likely to be the limiting component. Getting a better one is expensive, as the OP has noted.

It is a very CPU and Graphics game. I'm running it on a Ryzen 7 overclocked to 4.1 GHZ with dual RX580 cards and I would call it minimum acceptable. I'm also running the OS on an NVME SSD and the game files from a SATA SSD. 16GB of RAM, I think each GPU card has 8 GB of video memory.

Bottom line is Trainz needs substantial CPU and GPU resources.