Win10 VM Running Steam Games - Loading Speed Issues

[mbc0]

Hi,

 

I have a Windows 10 VM running from my Cache Pool with a GTX790 passed through and it works great for the kids using Steam Link except loading times.

 

I am just curious as to what everyone else does to store their Steam library as I would love to have it stored as an unraid share for my Gaming Rig & kids but games just take ages to load (Wreckfest for example takes 3-4 minutes to load each track) 

 

If I copy files from the Steam Library share to the VM I get a constant 140mb/s so I would have thought it would have been fast enough

 

I have now passed through a physical disk and moved some games to it using steam move install folder and loading times are now normal (Wreckfest tracks load in 20-30 seconds

 

Am I expecting too much or is there a better way?

[Warrentheo]

I have both my Windows 10 Image file stored on the UnRaid Cache (on my system a 2x 960 Evo in Raid-0 Striped pool), as well as a second image that just works as a scratch pad for temp storage, also backed by the UnRaid Cache...  This gets the driver letter E:\ on my system...  I also have an UnRaid share for Steam, and map steam to have most games installed on the share by default, about 70% of games run off of a network share just fine, and I use that for most small or older games where load times are negligible... Most everything else, I use the "Move Local Files" function of Steam to move them to the E:\ Steam share (again, on my system this is backed by the UnRaid Cache) speeding loading times up quite a bit...  I use a separate image file because then I can do Windows backups by just copying the image file for Windows, and ignore the "Cached scratch drive" for backups...

Edited March 1, 2019 by Warrentheo

[bastl]

Similiar solution I'am using to mount a share with all my games but without caching involved. Windows is installed on it's own NVME directly, no vdisk. Depending on the game the loading times of the network share are extremly long. For example Ark takes up to 3-4 min to load in. Even an small update of 30-40MB takes for ages. I guess the fact that the game stores all files in large chunks and has to unpack these for an update takes that long. I have an second SSD passed through to the VM where I store the games I wanna play on. Steam has 2 library entries for me, and if I wanna play a game stored on the network share and it bugs me with long loading times, I transfer the files to the local SSD via the Steam settings. 

[tjb_altf4]

Same as above scenarios except my game rig is a physical machine (for now).

90% of my library sits on the array, the rest lives on my local install.

This usually happens for performance reasons, or in other cases some games simply don't work (or install) without block level access to drives.

 

 

[mbc0]

Thanks for all your replies,  Even with 10gbE connection the loading times are not acceptable for me so I will just pass through 1 disk for installs on the Gaming VM and carry on using my 1TB SSD on my gaming rig, would have been nice to keep them all in the same place but not really an issue.

 

 

[JustOverride]

Was anyone able to resolve the issue were some games don't run like this?