How to fix disk I/O bottlenecks for WD SN850X 1TB in FF7 Rebirth?
This is just ridiculous—my frames were dropping from 120 to 40 during simple scene transitions. It made no sense. I found that the default WD SN850X 1TB drivers were struggling with random small-file reads, leading to a massive I/O queue buildup that left the CPU idling. I tried killing all background sync apps, but the drops stayed—a total waste of effort. I installed the WD Dashboard, enabled 'Game Mode', and optimized the driver cache, while setting the Windows power plan to 'Never Turn Off' for the hard disk. The frame time graph finally flattened out, with generation times stabilizing at 8-12ms. I did notice a 2W increase in idle power draw after enabling Game Mode, but I tweaked the energy thresholds to balance it out. Drive temps are sitting at 48-54℃. I've exported this I/O config as a backup just in case, but it's been rock solid so far.
