1 month with SSD(Solid State Drive) - Great.

[815TooCooL]

To avoid placebo effect, I write this after 2 months of test.

It would be long enough for personal review.

Frankly, writing something long in English is quite complicated job for me so it was deferred until now. :doh:

 

Like it or not, Black Shark cannot load everything on RAM so it reads many textures, models and sounds during flight due to large map and so many objects even after long loading time.

 

Playing BS about 4 weeks with ordinay HDD,

I could feel -micro or mass- hiccups from HDD access in many situation, Initial load of textures, emerging cityscape textures, panning fast with TrackIR4, and large battles going on etc etc and those were so much annoying.

 

So I decided to try SLC SSD to avoid occasional(or often) micro-hiccups and bought MTRON SLC SSD 16G at about $140.

 

Result was noteworthy.

Average FPS is about the same(and it should be) but overall smoothness in every situation is uncomparable to that of HDD.

After 4 weeks of SSD flying, I forgot the differences between HDD and SDD so I tried a few HDD flight again and OOOOOPS, it almost made me not wanna fly this beautiful shark. It s**ked.

 

 

In conclusion, If you invested enough money on CPU, RAM, VGA and more importantly all those flight peripheral devices but without SSD, I confidently recommend SSD.

It's so Smooth during entire flight. I just don't wanna fly BS in HDD.

Complete silence and shorter loading screen are just minor bonuses.

 

The only downside of my SSD purchase is I was quite doubtful so I didn't buy 32G SSD!!

I'm so much a fps&smoothness-hungry sim-freak so you can trust me. :D

 

-----

All I am talking about is SLC SSD, not MLC SSD which is cheap but not so much better than fast HDDs.

3rd generation MLCs are good but they are still not in retail and their controller tech is premature.

I'm looking forward to 3rd gen SAMSUNG MLC SSD but for gaming experience, SLC SSD is way to go, especially in BS & GTA4(friend's report).

cool. I saw a 128 gb for a little over 230 bucks at newegg. I will experiment. Thanks.

[rapid]

I will jump ship when the size increases.

[WynnTTr]

I will jump ship when the size increases.

Yeah same. Waiting for size to go up and prices to come down.

 

Wonder if anyone's compared rl experiences between Veloci Raptor v ssd.

[-Nighthawk-]

Not so much sizes I'm waiting for, its prices and performance ;)

Every month SSD's get a lot faster and cheaper, might buy one at the end of the year

[815TooCooL]

Don't try to use SSD as operating drive.

Satisfying size won't come soon due to technical limitation & economy crisis.

Moreover, size of SLC SSD especially won't go up anytime soon.

Just use it for game install then it won't take much size.

PC hardly access OS drive during game anyway.

My example:

I use 500G C: as main OS hard drive, 500G D: as data drive, and

E: which is SSD as sim(game) install drive & temp files etc.

16G or 32G SLC SSD is enough for Black Shark Nirvana.

 

 

And someone said 128G...

almost anything above 32G currently are MLC SSD.

This thing is bad in performance.(except 3rd gen, you won't see it in retail now)

You can find informations on the net yourself. I got to work.

 

So sing along with me.

No MLC, Yes SLC. :music_whistling:

[Oezem]

I have a 64Gig one in my M9750 laptop from which I boot Vista and I love it as well. Can't comment on what that does for BS but swapping in general must be quicker with one of those. Then again I see your rig has 4gig RAM like mine. How much swapping is there taking place anyway with 4gig? Is BS really that memory hungry? And obviously maxing out your RAM is the first thing and cheapest way to get your performance up.

[815TooCooL]

I have a 64Gig one in my M9750 laptop from which I boot Vista and I love it as well. Can't comment on what that does for BS but swapping in general must be quicker with one of those. Then again I see your rig has 4gig RAM like mine. How much swapping is there taking place anyway with 4gig? Is BS really that memory hungry? And obviously maxing out your RAM is the first thing and cheapest way to get your performance up.

 

I'm sorry but you're mistaken.

It's not swapping.

Game reads new data when it's needed.

Game with large world do not load entire world into memory however rich ram you have since all the objects on memory would cost huge performance loss. It loads data when it need to and unload it when it doesn't need.

GTA4 is good example and BS also benefit.

I really don't want to teach anyone in here so hope you find the difference. S~

[Bisch]

Very interesstiung report! Thanks for that!

 

But talking about using it for games only: It won't solve the problem of low drive space for me. My steam directory alone would fill it easily ;)

So you better focus on games which have more loading times during gameplay I guess?

[uhoh7]

Well you have my attention, sir

 

I was just looking at the Intel® X25-E Extreme 32gig.

 

YOu can see my specs below. I'm hearing that I just need to install BS on this drive. Any other non-BS related swap or temp files which would need to go on it ?

 

I'm running vista64 ahci.

 

Thank you very much for letting us know about this.

[815TooCooL]

YOu can see my specs below. I'm hearing that I just need to install BS on this drive. Any other non-BS related swap or temp files which would need to go on it ?

 

I'm sorry I don't understand your guestion correctly.

You mean, aside BS performance, you wanna set Windows temp files on SSD like me?

It's pretty easy.

Assign internet explorer temporary file folder onto SSD and assign some of environmental variables onto SSD. It can be found in Control Panel->System. Actually I don't prefer tricky tricks so what I did was just explorer temp file assigning to SSD.

 

About BS, you don't need anything other than installing BS onto SSD.

[Raploc]

Hi could you please test it with CrystalDiskMark? This is the score of the disk I've installed BS on:

 

 

--------------------------------------------------

CrystalDiskMark 2.2 © 2007-2008 hiyohiyo

Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

--------------------------------------------------

 

Sequential Read : 92.918 MB/s

Sequential Write : 86.645 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 64.437 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 58.744 MB/s

Random Read 4KB : 1.627 MB/s

Random Write 4KB : 3.789 MB/s

 

Test Size : 100 MB

Date : 2009/02/25 18:15:31

[opformaster]

I bought a G.skill 128gb SSD (not the TITAN) in january, Im not really happy with it so I RMA'd it and will be reselling the new one when it arrives.

 

Basically it boils down to this

 

-WinXP stutters and hangs (I did notice faster loadtimes but that doesnt mean squat if it hangs for a couple of minutes after loading WinXp really quickly)

-G.skill marketed and sold it as a HDD replacement

-G.skill provides no compatibility lists and poor customer support (they actually recommend you go to the OCZ forums)

-It is a non-returnable item But Newegg did me a solid and let me RMA it after my 30 days were up.

-Ive actually notice an improvement in frames since I went back to my Raptor.

 

And before everyone jumps on me saying you have to align partitions, etc... I followed the guides on the OCZ forum to the T and had no luck:mad:. Im pretty sure that my older NF4 Mobo and the SSD are not 100% compatible. G.skill has been so useless Im glad I never patronized them before cause I sure as hell wont again.

 

-op4

[Francous]

Things need to be known from SSD drive

 

Advantages:

 

Faster start-up, as no spin-up is required (RAM & flash).

Typically, fast random access for reading, as there is no read/write head to move (RAM & flash).

Extremely low read latency times, as SSD seek-times are orders of magnitude lower than the best hard disk drives, as of 2008.[15] (RAM) In applications where hard disk seeks are the limiting factor, this results in faster boot and application launch times (see Amdahl's law)[16] (RAM & flash).

Relatively deterministic read performance: unlike hard disk drives, performance of SSDs is almost constant and deterministic across the entire storage. This is because the seek time is almost constant and does not depend on the physical location of the data, and so, file fragmentation has almost no impact on read performance.

No noise: a lack of moving parts makes SSDs completely silent, apart from cooling fans on a few high-end and high-capacity SSDs.

For low-capacity flash SSDs, low power consumption and heat production when in active use, although high-end SSDs and DRAM-based SSDs may have significantly higher power requirements (flash).

High mechanical reliability, as the lack of moving parts almost eliminates the risk of mechanical failure (RAM & flash).

Ability to endure extreme shock, high altitude, vibration and extremes of temperature: once again because there are no moving parts. This makes SSDs useful for laptops, mobile computers, and devices that operate in extreme conditions (flash).

Larger range of operating temperatures. Typical hard drives have an operating range of 5-55 degrees C. Most flash drives can operate at 70 degrees, and some industrial grade drives can operate over an even wider temperature range.

For low-capacity SSDs, lower weight and size: although size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in) form-factor. Up to 256 GB, as of 2008 SSDs are lighter than hard drives of the same capacity.

When failures occur, they tend to happen predominantly while writing, or erasing cells, rather than upon reading cells. With magneto-mechanical drives, failures tend to occur while reading. If a drive detects failure on write operations, data can be written to a new location. If a drive fails on read, then data is usually lost permanently.

 

Disadvantages:

 

Cost: As of mid-2008, SSD prices are still considerably higher per gigabyte than are comparable conventional hard drives: consumer grade drives are typically US$2.00 to US$3.45 per GB for flash drives and over US$80.00 per GB for RAM-based compared to about US$0.38 or less per gigabyte for hard drives.

Capacity: As of 2008, far lower than that of conventional hard drives (Flash SSD capacity is predicted to increase rapidly, with experimental drives of 1 TB, hard drive capacity also continues to expand, and hard drives are likely to maintain their capacity edge for some time).

Limited write (erase) cycles: Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC, while high endurance cells may have an endurance of 1–5 million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer).Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device (so-called wear levelling), rather than rewriting files in place. In 2008 wear levelling was just beginning to be incorporated into consumer level devices.

However, effective write cycles can be much less, because when a write request is made to a particular memory block, all data in the block is overwritten even when only part of the memory is altered. The write amplification, as referred by Intel, can be reduced using write memory buffer. In combination with wear leveling, over-provisioning SSD flash drives with spared memory capacity also delays the loss of user-accessible memory capacity. NAND memory can be negatively impacted by read and program (write) disturbs arising from over accessing a particular NAND location. This overuse of NAND locations causes bits within the NAND block to erroneously change values. Wear leveling, by redirecting SSD writes to lesser-used NAND locations, thus reduces the potential for program or write disturbs. An example for the lifetime of SSD is explained in detail in this wiki.[dubious – discuss] SSDs based on DRAM, however, do not suffer from this problem.

Slower write speeds: As erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large (e.g. 0.5 - 1 megabyte), they are far slower than conventional disks during small writes (the smaller, the worse) and can suffer from write fragmentation, and in some cases for sequential writes. SSDs based on DRAM, which do this several orders of magnitude faster than conventional disks, do not suffer from this problem.

Lower storage density: Hard disks can store more data per unit volume than DRAM or flash SSDs, except for very low capacity/small devices.

DRAM based SSD require more power than hard disks, when operating; and they still use power when the computer is turned off, while hard disks do not.

Note: When Playstation 3 users want to upgrade their hard drive to a SSD it can acually decrease performance compared to the 5400rpm drive that the Playstation comes with. In some games there is a slightly higher or lower load time. This is due to slower write speeds. It is far better to stick with a hard drive than to switch to a SSD in a Playstaion 3 being that it is cheaper and usually faster than the new SSD's.

Edited February 25, 2009 by Francous

[AlphaInfinity]

At the end of the day, ALL of my studdering problems in LOMAC:FC and DCS:BlackShark were resolved with some page file manipulation(size/location). I don't think the SSD drives are really there just yet from a price/ease of use perspective. Don't forget SAS. My mobo came with two SAS drive ports and I may look at that in the future if a game comes out that has really long load times. Most of the Intel/AMD servers now come with SAS.

[Aeroscout]

Very cool!

Did you test performance in Flaming Cliffs?

[Flyby]

an interersting article on SSDs

 

this article might be of interest to some of you

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=1

Flyby out

[815TooCooL]

I'm sorry I don't have FlamingCliff.

I didn't like LockOn. Initial version was not very good for me.

I know FC was damn good but at that time I was playing IL-2 and now busy with Black Shark.

 

In gameplay, what BS do is reading, reading and reading and very few writing. In this regard, it is very natural you see improvement over HDD.

In regard to size and writing speed, I still hesitate to use it as OS drive and I don't need to.

It's about playing BS and I don't like to debate over OS use.

Edited February 26, 2009 by =815=TooCooL
typo

[uhoh7]

this article might be of interest to some of you

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=1

Flyby out

 

 

Good article. The X25M seems to be the "read king" even if it is MLC, and if toocool is right about BS wanting to mostly read, them maybe I should give it a try, even though I have a fast HD.

[Raploc]

At the end of the day, ALL of my studdering problems in LOMAC:FC and DCS:BlackShark were resolved with some page file manipulation(size/location). I don't think the SSD drives are really there just yet from a price/ease of use perspective. Don't forget SAS. My mobo came with two SAS drive ports and I may look at that in the future if a game comes out that has really long load times. Most of the Intel/AMD servers now come with SAS.

 

I'm using one of these:

 

Seagate 146GB SAS Hard Drive - ST3146356SS

 

Will set you back some 200 bucks. Seeing that I want to upgrade the end of this year. I'm interested in a consumer mobo supporting SAS. But I cannot find any reference that an Asus 6PT Deluxe is capable of supporting SAS drives. :huh:

[AlphaInfinity]

Sorry:

 

ASUS P6T

 

It is there newest mid-line Mobo for the CoreI7 platform.

[Flyby]

something about access times here...

 

speaking about SAS hard drives, I found this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas-hard-drives,1702.html

It gave me a look at the benefits and the drawbacks. Certainly when building a gaming rig, I want to keep in mind the micro-stutters that might be caused by the system waiting for the hard drive to catch up.

Flyby out

[Raploc]

Sorry:

 

ASUS P6T

 

It is there newest mid-line Mobo for the CoreI7 platform.

 

Ok thanks!! Looks like a fine Mobo. Now if I could only get my greedy hands on some 400GB SAS drives :D

[Raploc]

speaking about SAS hard drives, I found this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas-hard-drives,1702.html

It gave me a look at the benefits and the drawbacks. Certainly when building a gaming rig, I want to keep in mind the micro-stutters that might be caused by the system waiting for the hard drive to catch up.

Flyby out

 

I'm getting about 5+ ms for random access times with this drive so (almost) no micro stutter for me. :thumbup:

[Deveous]

SSD Deal

 

Tiger Direct has a 32gb SSD for 84.99

 

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3956991&CatId=4147

 

Just picked one up and am all ready thinking about getting a second one for a raid configuration. As of now I have my page file on it and a couple games... The games load so much quicker and like the op said, no more micro hick ups.