Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently taking up all the storage space I would give to Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG.

  • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago
    • Buy 2tb NVME for 60 bucks
    • Buy NVME usb 3 gen 2 enclosure for 20 bucks
    • Get drive speeds comparable to an internal ssd
    • Profit???
    • TehPers@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      USB 3.2 gen 2x2’s theoretical speeds cap out at 20Gb/s (or 2.5GB/sec). It’s certainly a performance improvement compared to USB 3.0, but still doesn’t quite meet the performance of an internal NVMe. If your PC supports Thunderbolt, you get double the bandwidth (so 5GB/sec) which does match what some slower PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives can handle. This is of course assuming you’re comparing to a NVMe, a SATA drive won’t come close to these speeds but I believe most laptops these days use NVMe drives.

      Regardless, if you’re loading games off a USB 3.2 gen 2x2 interface, and assuming you’re using a single drive to a single controller (keep in mind that performance is split between connected devices per controller, and PCs often only have a couple controllers at most to manage all the ports), your read performance is probably more than enough.

        • TehPers@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Ah, most laptops these days ship with an internal NVMe, so that’s what I assumed you were comparing against. A USB 3.2 gen 2x2 enclosure will vastly outperform a SATA SSD I believe, again assuming it’s the only device connected to your controller.