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Solid State Drive (SSD)
chrisrobhay2
Member Posts: 114
in Hardware
Can anyone that has AoC tell me if an SSD would help the game run smoothly? I am going to be getting a rig with:
i7 860
8GB DDR3 RAM
MSI Fuzion Motherboard
2x Sapphire Vapor-X 5870
So I am wondering if I should get an SSD to put my games on. Also, I don't care about price:performance ratio. I just want to know if there is a tangible difference between SSDs and HDDs in AoC.
Comments
Get a SSD if you're already going to spend that much on a PC. Idk if it's going to help in AoC, but it's going to help in alot of other applications as well.
This should be in Hardware btw.
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Just get a 10k or 15k rpm hard drive and you will be set, dont waste money on ssd's just yet,
www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp
www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp -10k , if it were me i would buy this one
You wont really notice any performance increases, however load screens may be shortened.
Thanks for the quick replies! And in regard to your statement about there being no actual performance boost, I have seen some websites claiming there to be about a 4-6 FPS increase in the minimum FPS department. Could this be just groundless claims?
Sorry, I made this post regarding AoC, and I wasn't sure if I should put it here or in hardware.
Im going to assume that they got a 4-6 fps increase because there old hard drive was a fragmented pile of shit, which slowed there computer down then they switched to a new hard drive and they got the performance boost, however with a totally new pc it wont make much of a difference aside from loading times which is still an important thing to consider,
Also your building a top end pc, which means you will probably already be at the 60 fps cap that most games have and assuming there is a magical 5 fps increase you wont even notice, however im going assume that you are trying to future proof your pc so in your case i would buy the 10k rpm hard drive to store your games on, and then buy a second hard drive with a TB of storage space to store all music,movies and etc.
I wouldnt even look at ssd's at the moment other then a money sink. They have a very minimum advantage over hard drives at the moment however this will change in the future and thats when you should consider buying a ssd.
Solid States don't crash, so spending money on them imho isn't a big deal. Sure, they are going to go way down in price soon, I predict that they will completely replace disk drives in the next 2-4yrs. Already in just a year they have dropped more than half price. 1yr ago a 120gb would have ran you in the thousands, today not so much.
They really aren't that expensive. 120gb is $379 on NewEgg. That's plenty of space to run your OS from and 4-10 games. 250s are $800 and that's probably not worth it. Compare the speed with a Raid0 or Raid5 with the price, and you're looking at a cheaper drive. You can get a 1TB Disk drive for storage, a 120gb SSD for OS, games, and secure storage of smaller files and you're going to be running alot faster for alot cheaper than a Raid0/5 setup with 4 drives.
But hey, it's up to you. Just don't be mad in a year when that 120gb is $50. lol
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I am no authority on this nor have I tested it myself:
But would a fast SSD greatly improve the loadingscreens? or are they there to load from server and not from hdd?
SSD should improve loading screens as you will pull the data from your hard drive faster.
I don't, however, see how it would improve fps. Iif your pulling from your hard drive when processing your graphics you've got other issues.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
There is a significant difference in the read time when comparing standard HDD's and SSD's. SSD's are significantly faster.... significantly. you will notice a difference. I did on both my laptop and my home PC.
BUUUUT ...... if you have a Raid 0 setup. Then with the right HHD drives at 10,000 rpm you can outperform SSD - if the ssd is setup normaly.
Of course you always run a higher risk of data loss with Raid 0. and the current SSD technology has a bit of a high failure rate.
My advice... Buy SSD but DO NOT BUY A CHEAP SSD DRIVE>!!!
or go raid 0.
BoB
Just to add to the last person.
Raid 0 means that your data is striped across an array of disks with no error control. Big speed boosts, but if just 1 drive fails then you just lost everything on ALL the disks. I would suggest Raid5 if you're like me and don't regularly backup important stuff, lol. It's a little slower than 0 but with error control.
I disagree with the 10k drives, 7200s will do. They can cost as much as a SSD, if you RAID SSDs you get absolutely insane speeds. lol
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I have an Intel X25-M 160gb SSD I got on sale Black Friday and I love it. Definately notice an improvement all around. I also have a Raptr and 2x WD 1TB blacks. I moved some games to the SSD (Also used for OS) and I see a decent improvement.
Thanks for the replies! I think I am going to go with the SSD set up.
It was actually Anandtech testing SSDs againt each other and WD Velociraptor HDDs. Here's the link: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=14
Also, there is an Intel test here:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=136677I don't see how a SSD can help with FPS, only thing I can think is slightly faster load times.
Maybe because in a game with very high resolution textures (Crysis), your CPU has to constantly swap textures with your Hard Drive and RAM. So having an SSD could actually improve that. Just click on the two links I have in my post above yours.
Is RAID 5 similar to RAID 0+1?
Is RAID 5 similar to RAID 0+1?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_5#RAID_5
TL;DR
Basically, it writes slower than a reg HD, reads as fast as RAID0. Avg that out, you get more performance than a single disk. But, if one crashes, you don't lose anything you just have to replace the drive.
At least that's what it should say, I didn't read it.
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Thanks for the info.
Am i the only one who picked up the fact that u cant run buy or run DDR 3 @ 8 gig. Not to sound like a troll but if your dropping this much money on a rig you need to do your research. That or your blowing smoke..... 3 6 or 12
ePeenery.com
While SSD's are starting to become mainstream in pricing for some models the will not replace standard hardrives at least for the next 10 to 20 years for the simple reason that as good as a solid state drive is you will probably be able to get a platter type drive for the same price with 10 to 100 times the storage capacity and close to the same speeds...at least for a while yet. As much as solid state technology improves - plater drive technology also improves. Even now the research and advancement of the manipulation of magnetic fields is growing so fast that who knows what will really happen. A lot more likely will be a hybrid of solid state with plater technology emphasizing the advantages that both have to offer.
However, as you say, if you have the money to spend at this point why not? At least you will be helping to fund the research that makes it affordable for me
. And you will see some improvements in overall system speed and performance.
Dunki:
Am i the only one who picked up the fact that u cant run buy or run DDR 3 @ 8 gig. Not to sound like a troll but if your dropping this much money on a rig you need to do your research. That or your blowing smoke..... 3 6 or 12
Actually my friend, you are wrong. The P55 chipset only supports dual-channel DDR3, which means it would increase in intervals of two. Try doing YOUR research.
I doubt 10-20 years till these are mainstream. There already installed on most high end laptops for every purpose. The price difference you are paying is simply for the security of never having a platter crash. You can achieve the similiar enough result with conventional harddrives and a simple RAID 0 setup. At this point you are going to see no game improvement..
ePeenery.com
@Dunki
I'd like to honestly weigh your opinion against others, but in your first post you gave me false information, so I don't know if I should trust any of your suggestions. Lol. Just kidding.
Guess i resend, nice catch. suppose i need to catch up with whats happening lol
ePeenery.com
No problem, I was just busting your chops. It's really no big deal.