The reason the 30fps lock eliminates these traversal stutters is simple. At 30fps, the time it takes for the GPU to generate a frame is 33.3ms. So, in most current-gen games, SATA SSDs and NVMe SSDs can transfer the data a game needs during that timeframe without issues. Since it doesn’t take more time to transfer the data the game needs for its new/next zone, the game does not drop frames and runs consistently at 33.3ms. By increasing your framerate to even 60fps, you immediately lower the time it takes to generate a frame to 16.6ms. So, if a game needs, let’s say, 25ms to load the data of its next zone from your storage to your RAM, the GPU will halt and you’ll get a stutter. Pretty simple, right?
What you need to understand is that this is mainly a “storage -> RAM” issue. In other words, increasing your CPU power will not result in any improvements. And that’s because the bottleneck is not in the CPU. This is also why you’ll notice longer traversal stutters if you install the game on an HDD.
During our tests, we didn’t notice any difference between a SATA SSD and an NVMe SSD. This basically means that PC games can’t currently take advantage of the ridiculously high bandwidth of both the SATA SSD and the NVMe SSD. In theory, DirectStorage may be able to solve this issue, though we’ll have to wait and see.