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To SSD or not to SSD?
So I just picked up my Asus G74 Laptop and I was wondering if picking up an SSD is worth it. I am an MMO junkie and that is pretty much all I play. The current config comes with 8GB of ram which I assume is enough, correct? The only other upgrade I am wondering about is an SSD. Are they worth spending the cash on? Just looking for some opinions here. Thanks in advance.
Comments
I have 2 computers and put SSD's in both of them. Never going back to regular HDD again. Brands can matter with these though. I returned my Corsair SSD and picked up 2 patriot wildfires. Those have been great. They are expensive. If you have the money.. they are worth it.
The money so much isn't an issue. What brands are the good ones? I don't really know a whole heck of a lot about these things. Just that there are no moving parts, and faster. That is the extent of my SSD knowledge. Just not sure how it effects game performance.
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If you have the g74 you will void the warranty installing an SSD per ASUS, there was another guy online that I read did it and added another 8gb of ram and then called ASUS and was talking with them and thats when they told them he vioded warranty. so just be carefull and mabe call or email them to see if this would be the case. I am picking one up this weekend, i cant wait
It only effects load times.
My theme song.
This, It will make some games alot better. Others will load the zone/Dungeon faster. no other effects will be gained. If your issue is the Gfx card/ Cpu, there will be no gain other than a little less wait time to have your lag. So, if your laptop plays the games well, then you will be pleased with the SSD. If it dosent, then you are not going to see any improvement.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
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It's the SSD controller inside that matters, not the company sticker on the outside. All of the SATA 3 (SATA 6 Gb/s) controllers except possibly JMicron's are pretty good, so any such SSD not made by Kingston should be pretty good. Alternatively, any SSD made by Crucial, Samsung, Intel, G.Skill, Corsair, Mushkin, or OCZ will, at worst, be all right.
Depending on your desired capacity, any of these are a good value for the money right now on New Egg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227725
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147161
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227727
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
As of this posting, the Samsung 470 of my third link is a shell-shocker deal at $150. If that jumps to $200 or something like that in a few hours, it's not such a good deal anymore.
Very vague, and true, in a way. Completely off the mark in the way you meant it.
Textures loads=load times
Level loads=load times(what you are talking about)
See the problem?
Let's take a huge game like skyrim, or any MMO. They don't just load all the textures you need when you load a zone. You will often times get 'micro-stutter', to steal a term from SLI, as you walk into a place with many people or new textures.
SSD will elimiate that.
Watch your HDD next time you play any game. Yeah, see that thrashing? An SSD makes that not happen hardly at all.
Dollar vs. Performace, an SSD is the best investment you can make these days. It helps a lot, with way more than loading screens.
Just to note: Whether or not you do. Decide quick. Apparently HD's are going to GREATLY increase in price very soon.
Something about floods in Asia where like 85% of the market is made causing major shortages.
So it doesn't help with loading the environment loading/characters etc?
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As for whether an SSD is worthwhile, it's really a question of whether, when you ask your computer to do something, you want the computer to do it:
a) right away, or
b) eventually
Option A is the SSD. For most non-gaming purposes, it's the largest, most noticeable performance upgrade you can get. For gaming, it makes things load a lot faster (launching the game, zoning, loading textures when new players show up), but usually doesn't help with frame rates.
points up to previous post ^^^
Already happened - although the possibility that they can keep going up is certainly there. HDD's are already almost double what they were just a few weeks ago.
Again, not true and not true. It will help with frame rate drops due to hard drive thrashing. Overall framerate will remain the same.
For instance, running into a heavily populated area in an MMO. You won't see any stutter from texture loads, or it will at least be greatly reduced. Thus your framerate won't drop as much as it would for those few seconds until everything is loaded, leaving you with a more smooth play experience.
Make sure you get a good one with the best Random Read access rates. I have an intel X-25 and it rocks.
One poster mentioned frame rate increases, if there is a game like say Vanguard that loads a crapton of assets when you enter and walk around an area, it will do wonders...
If everything is loaded at once ( more common in heavily instanced areas ) that load time will decrease dramatically.
So it depends on the game. Cool thing is I just have an 80 gig and I load games I currently play on it ( moving others to another spot on another HDD ).
Best purchase I have made in years for my PC gaming experience.
Can anyone give an estimate on when the prices on SSD's will drop? I know it's a fairly new tech, and as such very expensive.
I play many many games, and am going to be adding more MMO's soon to the list, so for it to be of most benefit i'd need a pretty meaty one...500gigs i suppose would be good for windows and most of my games, but the price on a 500 gig i'm sure is upwards of 500 bucks at least.
When it comes to paying 500 bucks or more for something that helps loading times, but not graphics or anything else, i'm a total penny pincher!
OP: Yes, if you have the cash, it's def worth it from what i know. Me personally, i'll wait till the prices drop abit!
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
That depends on how well the game is coded. Vanguard is coded so badly that they should consider putting an SSD in the system requirements. Most games are able to cover up hard drive accesses a lot better than that.
For the running into a heavily populated area syndrome, again, it depends on what the game does. If it shows some generic clothing while waiting for the texture to load, an SSD won't change your frame rates, but it will make characters look correct much faster. If the game simply refuses to render any frames until it has loaded everything necessary, then yes, the SSD will make a huge difference.
Another important difference that an SSD makes is that, if some background program decides to hog your hard drive (e.g., an anti-virus program decides it's time to scan), with an SSD, it doesn't matter. With a hard drive, even if the game is coded to cover up hard drive accesses pretty well (e.g., request everything seconds before it is needed), that can break down if it can't get nearly as much access to the hard drive as normal.
Ya but unlike graphics carsds this SSD's also effects load times for windows and any other program you install on it. I was hesitant to buy an SSD. But after i did and used for my system drive. i will never go back.
They have been slowly and steadily dropping. When I bought mine a little over two years ago, it was $270 after rebate for 120 GB. When Intel launched the first good SSDs, it was $600 for 80 GB.
If you're hoping that there will be a day when suddenly they cost half as much as they did the day before, that's not going to happen.
If NAND flash scales roughly with Moore's Law, then we can expect double the capacity for the same price every two years.
Thanks for the info Quizzy, always a reliable info-bank lol.
No, i'm not looking for next day half prices, but somewhere in the ballpark of 300-400 dollars for a good, reliable 500 gig ssd would be my sweet spot.
If your theory plays out like you say, i guess i have another 2 years to go, as the last link you provided is 256 gig for 370$.
BUT, who knows, by then i may need an even bigger one, with games like Batman arkham City coming out now with 16 gigs of content-who knows how big games will be in two years
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
I'd question why you need 500 GB of SSD capacity, rather than going the small SSD plus large hard drive route if you need a lot of capacity.
Such a waste of money.... don't do it until terabytes are cheap as HDDs now.
op:no necessary just lower paging file to 250 and your good i hear if you put it off there is still a paging file dont know how this work so just leave it at 250 and you ll be ok (make sure you got 4 gb of ram at least(i suggest 6 gb)and your good speedwise
it wont speed up the hhd speed tho so if you got a lot of file needed on you hhd it will take slightly longer
I have a 1terabyte HD now, and it's almost full....granted some of it is programs and such, the large base of it is games....to utilize the ssd, one needs to install the game to it....so i'd have to install all the games i play to it...im at 819 right now, so i figure about 500 is my games.
what benefit would i get from a small SSD? i'd have to install/remove games each time i wanted to play them yeah? as always, thanks for the info's and thoughts
EDIT: if there was some sort of way for me to swap out games easily on the SSD from my HD, i'd do that! just need to know the basics on it ^_^
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
Very vague, and true, in a way. Completely off the mark in the way you meant it.
Textures loads=load times
Level loads=load times(what you are talking about)
See the problem?
Let's take a huge game like skyrim, or any MMO. They don't just load all the textures you need when you load a zone. You will often times get 'micro-stutter', to steal a term from SLI, as you walk into a place with many people or new textures.
SSD will elimiate that.
Watch your HDD next time you play any game. Yeah, see that thrashing? An SSD makes that not happen hardly at all.
Dollar vs. Performace, an SSD is the best investment you can make these days. It helps a lot, with way more than loading screens.
This...SSD is not a replacement for a crap system but no matter what,all of the above will happen. I have all my MMO on SSD plus W764bit and it's the best upgrade anyone can buy right now.
if you trully need ssd i suggest a hybrid hhd most of the time they got regular hhd and on that there is also a 4 or 8 gb ssd
ps:ms make recommandation on how to select the microsd card for their smartphone it isnt directly related but still apply to ssd so i suggest you find an article about it and read it cause ms knoqw their stuff and they recommand to go at it differently to select microsd card then other corp like android this is why it took forever to get ms certified microsd card