Hybrid VS SSD.

[Bad_Karma-701]

Hello. all Looking into upgrading now that a drive has failed and would like to move my current 1TB HDD that has DCS on it to the location of the drive that failed. and get a newer Drive for DCS

 

Would there be any benefit to getting a Hybrid drive ? i know it can be faster than an HDD but would i see any difference that if Id gone with a straight SSD?

 

heres the items on newegg

 

hybrid:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA7W5YM3460&cm_re=hybrid_drive-_-1Z4-0002-006T7-_-Product

 

SSD:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156173

 

I am also open to other suggestions

 

I would like to stay relatively close to

$100.00 and 500-700GB range. thanks all for the input and have a great day !

[Rudel_chw]

Actually, the hybrid drives seem to offer quite a bit more everyday-performance than traditional drives ... here is a down-to earth comparison:

 

 

https://blog.wirelessmoves.com/2016/04/hdd-sshd-and-ssd-speed-comparison.html

[scampaboy]

I used to have a hybrid, an Imac fusion drive.

 

Without any stats, or tests, only seat of the pants use the SSD beat the fusion drive hands down. Still better than a HDD though.

[Haukka81]

I have Hybrid , 8GB ssd buffer is is way too low for gaming. DCS preformance got really nice boost when i installed it to fast M2 SSD.

 

 

If you have tight money, then get cheap 60gb ssd and one big normal drive. Then use primochage to set that ssd to buffer normal drive = daddaaa... self made hybrid and its fast because big enough buffer. -->https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

[Burning Bridges]

If I were into this I would rather look at Intel Optane

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3191706/storage/optane-memory-review-why-you-may-want-intels-futuristic-cache-in-your-pc.html?page=2

 

It's of course somewhat more expensive but benchmarks are surprising to say the least.

[Burning Bridges]

Ah well, and looking at your requirements. A few weeks ago I bought a Samsung 850 500 Gbyte for 99€. In the end that's what I would recommend you too. All those hybrid solutions only provide you a limited cache, and you must know exactly what you are using it for. Whereas for nearly the same money you can get a SSD, whose performance won't break down dramatically when a certain size is exceeded. Prices are falling btw, and even if 500 GB is not enough for you, 750 isn't that much better. So I went for a 250 GB SSD, now a 500 and will buy new ones as they come.

 

This is not to say those hybrid drives are not a good idea. On the contrary, they are a great new option for a lot of tasks. But I'm afraid DCS ain't one of them, because it is also a geodata application and that is bandwidth hungry as nothing else.

[BitMaster]

I have had two Seagate Hybrids, 1st: both failed; second: no match to a SSD or even NVMe.

 

Good for Grandma's 2014 iMac, that's about it.

[Bad_Karma-701]

I have Hybrid , 8GB ssd buffer is is way too low for gaming. DCS preformance got really nice boost when i installed it to fast M2 SSD.

 

 

If you have tight money, then get cheap 60gb ssd and one big normal drive. Then use primochage to set that ssd to buffer normal drive = daddaaa... self made hybrid and its fast because big enough buffer. -->https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

 

Interesting, well that anwsers if a cheaper hybrid drive is a solution for DCS and other games. ?

 

Ah well, and looking at your requirements. A few weeks ago I bought a Samsung 850 500 Gbyte for 99€. In the end that's what I would recommend you too. All those hybrid solutions only provide you a limited cache, and you must know exactly what you are using it for. Whereas for nearly the same money you can get a SSD, whose performance won't break down dramatically when a certain size is exceeded. Prices are falling btw, and even if 500 GB is not enough for you, 750 isn't that much better. So I went for a 250 GB SSD, now a 500 and will buy new ones as they come.

 

This is not to say those hybrid drives are not a good idea. On the contrary, they are a great new option for a lot of tasks. But I'm afraid DCS ain't one of them, because it is also a geodata application and that is bandwidth hungry as nothing else.

 

thanks if I went the SSD route will a 500GB drive be big enough for DCS ?

 

I have had two Seagate Hybrids, 1st: both failed; second: no match to a SSD or even NVMe.

 

Good for Grandma's 2014 iMac, that's about it.

 

whats the Difference between SSD and NVMe. ? whats the trade off's for either.?

 

Thank you all for the valuable information.

[Burning Bridges]

Yes, 500 Gb is more than enough for DCS. My 2.5 installation with Nevada, Normandy, Caucasus, 5 plane modules and other mods is currently 93 GB

 

On a 250 GB SSD that also houses Windows however it gets too tight, as you probably want to play other games too without constantly moving them back and forth.

[Burning Bridges]

whats the Difference between SSD and NVMe. ? whats the trade off's for either.?

 

NVME is a new controller standard and term for the newer generation that is significantly faster than SSDs. They are also known as M.2 but that is just a bus that is not very well supported. The tradeoff is: a) 2-3 times more expensive and b) you need to understand how to get transfer rate. I

 

n brief terms, you have one 16x PCI-E slot for your graphics card and another 4xPCI that the NVME uses up. To get the true 4x transfer speed you must use a controller card and cannot use a sound card, otherwise they share the PCI-X lanes and the performance is wasted.

 

Sorry if that sounds confusing, but it's a new technology and there is no other way right now to get at the maximum 3,200 MB/s. I assume that future generation of mainboards will support these new drives much better, so it might be a good idea to wait.

 

With a normal SSD on the other hand, you just connect a SATA cable and power, and you're set, but are limited to ca 500 MB/s

[Burning Bridges]

And just to clarify what I just wrote. With most current mainboards you only have only "one shot" at one of those new, super fast drives, so it may not hurt to wait till the end of 2018.

 

Explanation: since we obviously leave the 16X PCI of our video card alone, we are left with remaining 4x PCI lanes and the new drives use them up entirely - there is no other way to get that much data to the CPU than to bundle all available PCI channels.

 

It's like a rail system where you have 4 rails and you use them all simultaneously to get as much coal to the destination as possible.

 

So, if we ignore some expensive boards with a 4x M.2 controller, an NVME drive needs a controller card which takes up all available bandwidth (except your graphics card). ie if you were just to have 1 extra card in another slot (eg soundcard) the PCI lanes would halve and the maximum transfer rate of the drive would go from 3.2GB/s to 1.6GB/s. This is the reason a lot of people wrote reviews "M.2 is a dissapointment", because they did not realize it was limited to 2x PCI-E usually, and their drives capability was halved.

 

So, I recommend to wait until you really know what you are doing, prices are right and only then fill this one slot. There is no rush by the way. Intels Optane is also on the horizon which has about the same bandwidth but is better in practical terms because it has sensational low latency. Currently those drives cost 500-600$ but this could quickly go into normal territories.

 

A Samsung 960 500GB NVME has currently gone down to ca 200€ and a controller card is another 30-40. So you must know if it's worth it to you already.

[Abburo]

SSD all the way - you already receive a lot of good detailed advices

[BitMaster]

And just to clarify what I just wrote. With most current mainboards you only have only "one shot" at one of those new, super fast drives, so it may not hurt to wait till the end of 2018.

 

Explanation: since we obviously leave the 16X PCI of our video card alone, we are left with remaining 4x PCI lanes and the new drives use them up entirely - there is no other way to get that much data to the CPU than to bundle all available PCI channels.

 

It's like a rail system where you have 4 rails and you use them all simultaneously to get as much coal to the destination as possible.

 

So, if we ignore some expensive boards with a 4x M.2 controller, an NVME drive needs a controller card which takes up all available bandwidth (except your graphics card). ie if you were just to have 1 extra card in another slot (eg soundcard) the PCI lanes would halve and the maximum transfer rate of the drive would go from 3.2GB/s to 1.6GB/s. This is the reason a lot of people wrote reviews "M.2 is a dissapointment", because they did not realize it was limited to 2x PCI-E usually, and their drives capability was halved.

 

So, I recommend to wait until you really know what you are doing, prices are right and only then fill this one slot. There is no rush by the way. Intels Optane is also on the horizon which has about the same bandwidth but is better in practical terms because it has sensational low latency. Currently those drives cost 500-600$ but this could quickly go into normal territories.

 

A Samsung 960 500GB NVME has currently gone down to ca 200€ and a controller card is another 30-40. So you must know if it's worth it to you already.

 

 

! No controller card will give you PCIe lanes out of the blue, don't get fooled !

 

A current Intel Desktop CPU has 20 lanes TOTAL, 16x for the 2 GPU PCIe slots, either 1 x 16x and 1 x 0x ( deactivated ) - or - 2 x 8x for SLI or CF..or ANY other card that needs bandwidth that you would like to share with your GPU.

 

The other 4 lanes connect the PCH to your CPU. The PCH ( Peripherie Controller Hub ) chip controls all of your Sata, most if not all of your USB, ALL other PCIe-Slots other than mentioned 2 GPU slots with 16x connector width, your Soundcard, your LAN, WLAN, etc...

ALL that uses those 4 PCIe lanes on any Intel i3/5/7 desktop edition ( Socket 115x ).

 

When you pull a FULL boost read on those, heck, where is the bandwidth to write all that stuff too. So it really does not make sense to make a Raid-0 on 2 of those if you have 2 slots. Ther eis simply no bandwidth to use it.

 

No, an adapter solves solvces NONE of your PCIe lane shortage problems. You can switch the GPU to 8x/8x and use 2 NVMe with such an adapter board on the 2nd PCIe16x slot that usually is for a 2nd GPU.

[Bad_Karma-701]

Ok now im royally confused i currently have a Z97 Pro with a 4790K and a gtx 970 I knew the GPU is on the x16 lane slot I also am running a M2 120GB drive thats got the OS and C: on it. am I creating a bottleneck using the m2 as my C drive ?

 

Now for the rest of my drives I had 1TB and two 500GB drives one 500 died:cry: and a 160GB from a laptop that the screen died on me. I was able to pickup a 120gb SSD for 40.00 locally. all SATA III.

 

 

So what should I do with it would I get any benefit to run it as a CACHE for the Sole remaining 500gb that holds Tarkov and DCS atm or for my 1tb steam drive

 

or should I transfer DCS to the SSD until I can replace the 160gb HDD with a 500 or larger SSD down the road and then. what will give me the best overall performance across the board not just DCS with all my games I have 600gb remaining on the Tb and 155gb on the 500 so the SSD i picked up for cheap wont hold either drives full contents

 

but will hold DCS. I am personally leaning towards using the small SSD as cache until I can swap the small HDD for a large SSD. but I would like more advice before I do anything Thanks.

[Burning Bridges]

Now I know why I never wanted to work in a computer shop.

 

m.2 drives are usually connected via a dedicated port on the mainboard and run at 2xPCI-E. So no, not a bottleneck but unless we know your exact drive we can't tell. most first generation m.2 drives were just bogus labelled SSDs. Inside they are normal SSDs and only marginally faster, completely independent of the bandwidth of the connection you use. That means, 2x PCI is enough for those drives.

 

So, there is a lot of bogus out there. Right now the only true M.2 NVME drives I know are Samsung 960. You recognize them by a maximum transfer rate of 3,200 MB/s which is currently the limit of 4xPCI connections.

[David OC]

I 100% recommend you at least go with an SSD, such as the Samsung 850 EVO 500G SSD, I run two of these drives at 540 MB/s.

 

Plus one Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe 500G SSD, Need for speed with this drive!

Edited March 8, 2018 by David OC

[BitMaster]

Now I know why I never wanted to work in a computer shop.

 

m.2 drives are usually connected via a dedicated port on the mainboard and run at 2xPCI-E. So no, not a bottleneck but unless we know your exact drive we can't tell. most first generation m.2 drives were just bogus labelled SSDs. Inside they are normal SSDs and only marginally faster, completely independent of the bandwidth of the connection you use. That means, 2x PCI is enough for those drives.

 

So, there is a lot of bogus out there. Right now the only true M.2 NVME drives I know are Samsung 960. You recognize them by a maximum transfer rate of 3,200 MB/s which is currently the limit of 4xPCI connections.

 

The bottleneck will occur if you press it.

 

Your Z97 chipset has the same 16+4 config, well, not quite the same, newer Intel Chipsets have double bandwidth on the PCH 4x link, so you are at 50% speed compared to a Z270 or later chipset. Anyway, with 2 drives at 2x means they both use up all your lanes IF they are in full burst, given they can saturate their 2x link. Now what happens if you have a 3rd drive, a 2TB HDD that can easily write or read beyond 112MB/sec ( Gbit speed ). When you stress both your NVMe's you have hardly any bandwidth left for any other task that needs the PCH. It may never occur or may occur daily, heavily depending how and what you work with.

 

Those 4 lanes from the PCH are basically EVERYTHING but the GPU. Saturate it with NVMe and have an eye opener what too few lanes mean, STOP 'n' WAIT until the tracks are clear again.

 

We need AMD's success to have Intel make this better. This is 2010 layout, outdated.

 

You can use any of your NVMe at full speed and use any other device as well but that may not work if both NVMe's are stressed and pushing, try then to copy 2GB file to another medium, you will se e ahalt or slow down.

 

There are many more true NVMe drives other than Samsung 960, for example Crucial M500.

Tho I prefer Samsung all the way for an SSD variant

[Bad_Karma-701]

The bottleneck will occur if you press it.

 

Your Z97 chipset has the same 16+4 config, well, not quite the same, newer Intel Chipsets have double bandwidth on the PCH 4x link, so you are at 50% speed compared to a Z270 or later chipset. Anyway, with 2 drives at 2x means they both use up all your lanes IF they are in full burst, given they can saturate their 2x link. Now what happens if you have a 3rd drive, a 2TB HDD that can easily write or read beyond 112MB/sec ( Gbit speed ). When you stress both your NVMe's you have hardly any bandwidth left for any other task that needs the PCH. It may never occur or may occur daily, heavily depending how and what you work with.

 

Those 4 lanes from the PCH are basically EVERYTHING but the GPU. Saturate it with NVMe and have an eye opener what too few lanes mean, STOP 'n' WAIT until the tracks are clear again.

 

We need AMD's success to have Intel make this better. This is 2010 layout, outdated.

 

You can use any of your NVMe at full speed and use any other device as well but that may not work if both NVMe's are stressed and pushing, try then to copy 2GB file to another medium, you will se e ahalt or slow down.

 

There are many more true NVMe drives other than Samsung 960, for example Crucial M500.

Tho I prefer Samsung all the way for an SSD variant

 

 

 

:thumbup:Perfect, thanks for the information.

[Tinkickef]

Hello. all Looking into upgrading now that a drive has failed and would like to move my current 1TB HDD that has DCS on it to the location of the drive that failed. and get a newer Drive for DCS

 

Would there be any benefit to getting a Hybrid drive ? i know it can be faster than an HDD but would i see any difference that if Id gone with a straight SSD?

 

heres the items on newegg

 

hybrid:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA7W5YM3460&cm_re=hybrid_drive-_-1Z4-0002-006T7-_-Product

 

SSD:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820156173

 

I am also open to other suggestions

 

I would like to stay relatively close to

$100.00 and 500-700GB range. thanks all for the input and have a great day !

 

Timely thread. I fell for the ssd hype, having one ssd boot drive and one hybrid storage drive with DCS on it.

 

Yesterday I swapped out the perfectly good hybrid for a new ssd storage drive in the search for optimum performance.

 

And have not noticed the slightest bit of difference.

 

£120 down the crapper.

[BitMaster]

You need large files to see the difference, take a 50gb backup file for example, maybe 10-20gb is big enough too. As long as it fits the cache of the hybrid both are fast. Still, a true SSD is faster imho

 

 

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[BIGNEWY]

Just thought I would comment, I run SSD's for my public builds, but I use a 1tb hybrid for my internal DCS builds and don't have a problem.

Edited March 9, 2018 by BIGNEWY

[REL]

@Bad_Karma-701

Go SSD and you will feel the difference ... I use 250GB for Windows & 3Big games ... all the other data is on 2TB HDD

[=Mac=]

Perhaps I am a bit lucky. For sure, I am very much poorer. But I don't have spinning HD. I have 3 SSD's, the newest 500 giggle bite thing dedicated exclusively to DCS World.

 

My mobo is too old to have an M.2 slot so I'm stuck with three SSD's plugged into the SATA slots. But my DCS launch time is measured in seconds, not minutes. (Multiplayer launch, notwithstanding, of course.)

[Burning Bridges]

You need large files to see the difference, take a 50gb backup file for example, maybe 10-20gb is big enough too. As long as it fits the cache of the hybrid both are fast. Still, a true SSD is faster imho

 

 

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Well, one thing that gets me thinking is that if a Hybrid HD with 32 GB Cache already performs that well, then what happens when you combine SSDs with something like Intel Optane Memory?

 

The idea is not new by the way. I don't know who remembers the so called "cache controllers"? Those were ISA or VESA local bus cards with RAM modules as cache. Of course technology has made huge leaps since then, harddisks now have their own onbuilt cache but with the new harddisk accelerators we are now getting into Gigabyte cache territory. This mean entire applications can be run entirely from the cache.

[Haukka81]

Well, one thing that gets me thinking is that if a Hybrid HD with 32 GB Cache already performs that well, then what happens when you combine SSDs with something like Intel Optane Memory?

 

The idea is not new by the way. I don't know who remembers the so called "cache controllers"? Those were ISA or VESA local bus cards with RAM modules as cache. Of course technology has made huge leaps since then, harddisks now have their own onbuilt cache but with the new harddisk accelerators we are now getting into Gigabyte cache territory. This mean entire applications can be run entirely from the cache.

 

 

 

Where to get hybrid drive with 32gb? I have only 8gb and its too low.

 

 

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