I’ve been chasing texture pop-in in open-world games for years — it’s the one thing that ruins immersion faster than anything else. Recently I put a 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe drive to the test as a dedicated “scratch” drive for two of the most notorious offenders: Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring. The results weren’t magic, but they were instructive. Here’s what I learned, how I tested it, and how you can get the best chance of reducing (or even eliminating) texture streaming stutters on your own rig.
Why texture pop-in happens
Texture pop-in is usually a symptom of streaming systems not getting the texture data into GPU memory quickly enough. Several bottlenecks can cause this:
VRAM limits: If the texture pool is too small, the game will constantly swap textures in and out of VRAM.Storage bandwidth and latency: The faster and lower-latency your storage, the quicker the game can load high-resolution textures on demand.CPU overhead: The engine’s streaming threads need CPU time to decompress and prepare assets.I/O contention: If the same drive is handling OS, swap/pagefile, background tasks, and your game, latency spikes can add up.So when people ask if a Gen4 NVMe as a scratch drive will “fix” pop-in, the honest answer is: it helps where storage is the limiting factor, but it doesn’t cure every root cause (like insufficient VRAM or poor engine streaming behavior).
Why a 1TB Gen4 NVMe makes sense
Here’s the rationale behind using a fast PCIe 4.0 NVMe as a dedicated scratch drive:
Higher sustained read/write bandwidth: Gen4 NVMe drives like the Samsung 980 Pro, WD Black SN850, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus routinely outperform SATA SSDs and PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives, meaning textures are fetched faster and decompressed sooner.Lower latency: NVMe brings lower queue latency than spinning disks or older SATA SSDs, which matters when the game requests many small files.Less contention: Using the drive as a dedicated game/scratch volume prevents OS and background activity on your system drive from interfering with streaming I/O.1TB is practical: It gives you enough headroom for both games and a caching/scratch partition without feeling cramped.My test setup and methodology
Keep in mind this was a practical, playtest-focused experiment rather than a full lab benchmark. My test rig:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 (PCIe 4.0 lanes available)GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 (plenty of VRAM for high textures in most tests)OS: Windows 11 with latest storage driversStorage: Primary OS drive = PCIe Gen3 NVMe, Scratch drive = 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe (installed in CPU-connected M.2 slot)Games: Cyberpunk 2077 (High/Ultra textures, RT off/on), Elden Ring (highest texture quality)What I measured:
Subjective pop-in: how often textures visibly loaded in late while moving through areasFrame time consistency using RTSS/MSI AfterburnerIdle and peak storage utilization with Resource Monitor and Samsung/WDC monitoring toolsCrystalDiskMark to confirm bandwidth differences between drivesWhat I changed: practical settings
To give the scratch drive the best chance, I applied these changes:
Installed the games on the Gen4 NVMe (not just using it as secondary scratch partition).Ensured the NVMe occupied a CPU lane M.2 slot, not a chipset-shared slot, to avoid bandwidth drops under load.Enabled Ultimate Performance / High Performance power plan and set PCIe Link State Power Management to off in power options.Moved the Windows pagefile to the same Gen4 SSD (this can help or hurt depending on system RAM; I had 32GB so it didn't thrash).Kept background apps (cloud sync, heavy antivirus scans) off while testing.Enabled DirectStorage where possible (requires Windows 11 and a supported GPU + game support). Cyberpunk’s roadmap and updates increasingly leverage faster I/O.Results: did it reduce texture pop-in?
Short answer: yes — but with caveats.
Cyberpunk 2077: Installing the game on the Gen4 NVMe and running with high texture settings significantly reduced mid-city pop-in on dense streaming areas. Surface-level pop-ins when teleporting or fast-traveling still occurred sometimes — that’s often engine-level and decompression/CPU-bound. With RT enabled and high-res textures, the drive helped but VRAM limits began to matter more.Elden Ring: The Gen4 drive noticeably smoothed things out in castle interiors and mountain vistas where the game streams lots of assets. Pop-in during very aggressive camera moves was less frequent and felt delayed less often than when installed on a SATA SSD.Frame-time consistency: Average frame times improved slightly and worst-frame spikes were reduced, which is what you want for perceived smoothness.In short, if your current storage is a HDD or a low-end SATA SSD, moving to a Gen4 NVMe will bring a very tangible improvement. If you already have a strong Gen3 NVMe and your GPU is VRAM-limited, the gains will be smaller.
Practical recommendations
If you want to replicate my setup or improve your own experience, here are the steps I’d recommend:
Buy a quality Gen4 NVMe: Samsung 980 Pro, WD Black SN850, Kingston KC3000, or Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus are solid choices.Use the M.2 slot wired to the CPU for maximum bandwidth. Check your motherboard manual.Install the game on the Gen4 drive, not just your OS drive.Enable DirectStorage when supported by your OS, GPU, and game — it will reduce CPU and storage overhead and improve streaming efficiency.Keep adequate VRAM for your texture settings. If you’re seeing repeated pop-in even with fast storage, try lowering texture streaming quality or upgrading GPU/VRAM.Keep the NVMe cool — thermal throttling reduces effective throughput. Use a heatsink or motherboard-integrated thermal pad.Monitor disk and CPU utilization during play. If decompression/CPU is saturated, storage upgrades will have limited benefit.Edge cases and what didn’t work
A few caveats from my testing:
If the engine aggressively unloads textures due to low VRAM, no amount of storage speed will prevent re-loading delays — you need either more VRAM or lower texture residency settings.Some pop-in happens during fast teleports and is tied to how the game schedules async loading. That’s an engine design choice and can only be fully fixed by dev patches.Moving the pagefile can help on some systems but hurts on others if RAM is limited — test before committing.If you want, I can share my raw test logs, CrystalDiskMark screenshots, and a step-by-step checklist to set this up on your specific motherboard and GPU. I’m also happy to recommend drive models based on budget and whether you value sustained writes (content creation) or peak reads (gaming streaming).
