How to fix WD SN850X 1TB loading lag in Assassin's Creed Shadows?
Sprinting through Kyoto, the buildings would constantly snap from low-poly to high-poly models, which totally killed the immersion. The WD SN850X 1TB was hitting abnormal random read latencies of 12-25ms on my specific driver version, meaning the engine couldn't pull textures fast enough. I tried cranking the texture quality to Ultra, but that actually made the pop-in worse, which made me realize I needed a deeper fix. I used the official dashboard to flash the latest firmware and enabled 'Write Caching' in Device Manager. In CrystalDiskMark 4K random reads, I saw a jump from 58-64MB/s to 75-82MB/s, and the pop-in stopped. I had a weird moment where the drive wasn't recognized at boot after the update, but a quick reseat of the M.2 slot cleared it up. Temps are sitting at 42℃ - 50℃, and the heatsink is doing its job. Comparative tests show random read latency is now stable at 8-12ms.
