SSD noticeably smmoths flight experience

[JaseGill]

Guys,

You may have read this elsewhere from others (and this from me if youre on the Beta Forum too so I apologise but put it here too for those with no Beta Forum access yet) but I have just installed an SSD for my games drive (OS already on an SSD) and wanted to pass on my experiences.

Both are OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD's and I immeddiately noticed a benefit of the OS drive some weeks ago.

Now that the games drive is also SSD again a serious improvement. Why only 60GB, well bigger is much more expensive and I dont have many "games" on my PC. The not so hungry ones (Company of Heroes/World in Conflict) can all run from a spinning drive with no problems as they arent as hungry as WH or BS, or for that matter FSX).

All stuttering seems to have stopped so even though my standard airport/city frame rate is around 20 - 25 constant and 60 otherwise the difference is still noticeable, I think due to the fact that stuttering really wrecks the experience. Im guessing stuttering comes from in game retrieval of data from the hard drive and the SSD is much faster read than a spinning drive (even though previous was 1TB Spinpoint F3). Its now smooth between 20 and 60 depending on ground details. I run most on high.

Loading time is also reduced at start of the sim, down to around 30 secs when before it was a minute or two, less important I know but Im in the cockpit doing more of what I want to do much faster now rather than waiting for the sim to load.

As an aside I got much better performance too by overclocking my processor from 2.66Ghz to 3.2Ghz. Im watercooled so please take this into consideration when OC'ing your processor. A10C therefore I assume, as has been said before is CPU intense.

At 3.2 and a GTX460 OC its a very useable sim in Beta 3 and BS in comparison runs at an almost constant 60FPS. If (and I doubt it as BS view distance is less than that in WH as youre low and slow in the BS most of the time) the final release runs as smooth as BS I'll be a very happy hog driver :)

J.

[JaseGill]

If only I could spell "smooths".

Of to IcantspellorshouldjustcheckpostsbeforeIhitpost.com for some posting advice ;)

[Konovalov]

Yes, you don't appear to be the first SSD user to indicate that the SSD eliminates in-game stutters. This alone is a strong selling point for me besides the other claimed benefits of SSD's. How long can I hold out before I surrender to the SSD? :music_whistling:

[EtherealN]

One thing to remember about SSD's: the smaller ones are often much slower than the big ones. This is because the most common solution for their design is to have a central controller with an amount of lanes to a bunch of flash chips - think of it like a RAID array. So say you have 16 flash chips of 12 gigs each for 192 GB total. Then you need a cheaper variant, so you remove 8 of the flash chips for a total of 96 GB. But since you removed chips instead of replacing them with smaller ones, the RAID spreads itself over less drives and sustained transfer rates suffer. (Seek-times and such would likely remain the same, though.)

 

So when shopping for SSD's, whenever you go for two small you should look very closely at the architecture of it, since it might offer speed advantages to go for a single large.

[Succellus]

Nice Ethereal , thanks for the advice +1

[Pilotasso]

Sweet spot is the 120/128-240/256GB. Anything higher is exponentialy expensive. My next build will have a PCIE based SDD the likes of revodrive. But for now I will hold on to my recently upgraded quad core for another year (taxes increase so..).

 

SDD=stutter free bliss yeah. :thumbup:

[EtherealN]

Agreed on the sweetspots, Pilotasso.

 

And Succellus, I'll add one note though: even though the smaller SSD's may often be considerably slower than the large ones, they're often still a lot faster than your standard spin-platter vinyl-wannabe disk. But I did see a roundup of budget SSD's where some of them were about on par with the faster HDD's like the Raptors for sustained speeds (but faster seek-times), so definitely dig into the details of the purchases. But that's really nothing new: generally speaking I don't think there's any computer component I'd purchase without either personal experience or a lot of reviews. (Though well, exception for my Razer headset, which I bought "on faith" since my Razer mice and keyboards have been good". :P)

[HiJack]

My next build will have a PCIE based SDD the likes of revodrive.

+1 :D

[bumfire]

I cant remember which site it was, but they tested a C300 against a revodrive and the C300 walked all over it.

 

I cant remember the size of the Revo, but it was shown up big time against a normal SSD.

 

So now I know what my money will not be spent on.

[Konovalov]

Next generation of SSD's are due out early 2011 which should hopefully bring further improvements along with price reductions per GB. I'm just not sure if I should hold off on a purchase or pickup a current 120GB SSD drive such as the OCZ Vertex 2E priced around £170 before the VAT increase kicks in at the beginning of the year? :huh:

[Loz]

I've just installed a new C drive with a OCZ RevoDrive PCIe 120Gb, for just that reason. And I similarly find a definite lack of stuttering and although it is hard to quantify, I'm sure that my overall framerate has improved.

Like JaseGill I am running everything on High, with the exception of Water = Med, Traffic = Low, Mirrors = Off, full screen = Off. My res is 3150 x1200 on triple screen although the outer screens only show the MFCDs. Occaisional slow down over 3D buildings down to 8-10 but the rest of the time 24 - 60.

As you see from my Sig I have a crossfire card but the sim does not support it at the moment and it only runs on one GPU.

Pictured here

 

I hope to try full Triple Screen, with embedded MFCDs when Beta4 is released, but I think that will still be dependant on SLI / Crossfire support, otherwise I fear a slideshow.

Edited November 26, 2010 by Loz
Added Text

[CrashEd]

I've been reading up on SSDs recently and the thing to look for is what controller it has (JaseGill pointed this out in another thread as well). Most SSDs at the moment have good read speeds but poor write speeds (almost half the read speed). This is because the controller has to perform a delete operation followed by a write operation, hence the speed reduction. OCZ seem to have overcome this somehow with the use of the Sandforce controller in the Vertex 2E.

 

Something to keep an eye out on when shopping for SSDs ;)

 

I, like others, am not sure whether to wait until next year or buy now. Prices are getting pretty good for ~240GB drives utilising the current technology.

 

EDIT: Nice setup Loz :thumbup:

Edited November 26, 2010 by CrashEd

[EtherealN]

before the VAT increase kicks in at the beginning of the year? :huh:

 

Depends a bit on what your VAT is at now and what it'll be later. For myself I can often make savings through purchasing from abroad, even with postage, since our VAT is 25% and when purchasing from other parts of the union I only get slapped with the 15% euroVAT.

[Konovalov]

UK VAT is going up from 17.5% to 20% in January.

[Pilotasso]

here from 21 to 23%

[joey45]

UK VAT is going up from 17.5% to 20% in January.

 

S%&t didn't know it would be that much...

 

Oh well, my new upgrade next year would be moer expensive then I thought.

[Rusty_M]

S%&t didn't know it would be that much...

 

Oh well, my new upgrade next year would be moer expensive then I thought.

 

Which is why I'm building a system late December, even when SandyBridge is round the corner. Sucks doesn't it?

[bumfire]

Dont remind me, I bet once the country picks its arse out of the debt shit pile, somehow I dont think they will reduce VAT again to its 17.5 level :(

[EtherealN]

bumfire, you are probably right there. If I remember right we introduced the VAT back in WW2 to fund the mobilization and "readiness", and when the war was over it was such a nice cash cow that it just never disappeared. :P

 

It's a bit similar with petrol taxes as well - whenever the oil prices fall we hear the words "due to the lower oil prices there is room for an increase in the point tax on petrol", but when oil spot goes back up again they don't rollback the increase. (And the smartest racket since the Sumerians is that we pay VAT on the point tax, which is funny. So 1 liter of gasoline is 3 SEK + 8 SEK point tax = 11 x 1.25 for VAT = ~13.75 SEK per liter. I actually giggle at that pretty often, but it's easier on me than many since I don't drive and the aviation fuel we use isn't covered by the same tax scheme. :P )

[CrashEd]

Jase> What have you done about your pagefile? I was wondering whether having it on your SSD will have a negative impact on its lifespan/performance? Could it be put on another drive?

[Rusty_M]

Is it possible to have W7 on the SSD, everything else, including the page file on a hard disc, then later upgrade the HDD to a Raid0 setup to maximise performance?

[Pilotasso]

Placing the page file on a hard disk is a mistake. Should be on the SDD to enjoy the performance boost fully.

[Steel Jaw]

If I could only afford 1 SSD, should I use it for my OS or my SIMS?

[KillaALF]

For both, obviously. Or in other words, how big is your OS footprint? After 7 months my W7/64 installation is roughly 37GB, so even on a 60GB SSD there would be space left for one or two games.

[BKLronin]

If I could only afford 1 SSD, should I use it for my OS or my SIMS?

 

Thats the question. I don t like having games and OS on one drive. So what would make more sense? I guess having games on the SSD is giving a better performance and the SSD lives longer.