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SSD for MMO?
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
in Hardware
Is it worth installing my OS and my favourite MMO game on an SSD, do i win any performance (framerate) ingame?
Or does it only shorten loading times while zoning?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
For the most part a GPU or CPU upgrade is preferential to an SSD but and SSD is good if everything else is already great.
Actually yes. I got 3 FPS more in EQ2 when I installed my first SSD, and more in some zones like Neriak. Now I run 4 raided SSDs.
But it probably depends a lot on the game you are playing, EQ2 loads heavily while you move. You also get rid of the lag while you walk between zones in Vanguard. In some games it probably wont matter at all.
The best thing with SSDs in non laptops is that it is soundless, the speed is also good of course but I hate the sound of a HD turning. The heat is another good thing.
I found my vertex2 made a BIG difference on framerates.. mainly where you would take a frame hit because it was loading a new scene/zone when you entered a new area (or rounding a corner in AOC for example).
The latency thing, however, will always cause slow down in populated area though because however fast your computer is, it can only load the information it has.. if it isn't coming in fast enough it has to wait for it.. no other option outside of getting a faster internet connection.
Yeah, I can imagine that AoC is even worse than EQ2 with loading stuff, I didn't had AoC installed when I changed drives and I didn't reinstall it until I had a new GFX card as well.
In GW on the other hand I saw no difference at all, possible some load time but not enough for me to notice.
I was actually curious how the performance was in MMO's myself. I see a lot of synthetic benchmarks but I purchased one for our GIS department and in our real world tests we saw absolutely no improvement in disk access speeds for our daily production processes. It left me under the impression that an SSD is more designed for burst access and wouldnt really help us in larger tasks
Does anyone know of a chart that shows actual real world performance marks with games? Or at the very least some real world benchmarks.. period instead of the synthetic ones I keep finding?
If the problem is that you're waiting on a slow hard drive, then an SSD will fix it. If you're not accessing the hard drive at all during whatever is giving you problems, then an SSD won't make any difference. What solid state drives mainly fix is when you want to load a bunch of small files at once, so that a hard drive would have to spend most of its time waiting to spin to the right spot before it can do anything.
If you're hoping for an across the board frame rate increase, that's not going to happen. If you've got hitching problems, then it's likely that an SSD can fix it. A lot of games try to load things on the fly while you're out in the game world. If a game is coded well, they can mostly hide the hard drive latency so that it isn't a problem. If not, then this can cause hitching problems, which an SSD will fix.
Another thing an SSD can help with is if you're playing a game, and Windows or some other program decides to do something stupid in the background with a bunch of disk accesses. This can bring your frame rate to a crawl if most of the time your system is waiting for some other program to access the hard drive. Then you alt+tab out and try to find what is causing the problem and shut it down, and hope it wasn't at an inconvenient time that results in you ending up dead. With an SSD, it won't have to wait, so you won't notice and the game will continue to play smoothly.
An SSD will also improve game loading times and zoning times. Sometimes loading an instance before the other guy does can give you a real advantage. If you get an SSD, don't just put the OS and your favorite game on it. Put web browsers, too, and any other programs that you use a lot.
is got a good improvement in EvE and darkfall using the SSD but if the game is "small" use a ram disk (perpetuum is one of them)
BestSigEver :P
There are charts for how fast the drives are but it is hard to make one for gaming, even for EQ2 where you get a pretty big boost you mainly notice that the game runs a lot more stable, it keeps the lag down. To measure that is rather much work since even in EQ2 it depends on where you are and how many other players that are there at the same time.
It just isn't practical.
But th SSD is useful in larger tasks since most regular HDs are pretty fragmented and the read gead must jump all the time. I guess if you defrag often it lowers the gap somewhat.
A SSD Is worthless for gaming. The money spent on a ssd could be spent on proper cpu,mobo, ram, vid card, decent monitor, a proper HDD like a WD Black edition for like 60 bucks, etc.
The only time an SSD would be beneficial is in a game like vangaurd where u cross zone lines repeatedly, I never noticed any sorta slow down on a non ssd though.
I would recommend buying SSD when you can get a 500 gig for like 100 bucks. Otherwise it is really a waste of money in terms of gaming.
SSDs at their current prices are pretty much worthless for everything, gaming included. Yeah you get a quicker boot and faster access to files on your disk but are seconds of your time really worth hundreds of your dollars?
I don't care how long a game takes to load. All I care about is how smooth it runs when it's loaded and for that you need GPU, CPU and ram!
It's a question of budget and priorities. If you're using integrated graphics and are debating whether to buy a real video card or an SSD, then for gaming purposes, get the video card. If you've already got a very nice gaming system with a high end video card and are debating whether to add a second card for CrossFire or SLI or to add an SSD, get the SSD.
Maybe an SSD only saves you a few seconds here and a few seconds there. But it can easily add up to a few minutes per day. That can easily add up to 10 or 20 hours per year. Multiply that by however long you keep it and it can come to dozens of hours. Is it worth $120 to avoid dozens of hours of your time spent frustrated and waiting? If you've got a real job and use your computer a lot, I think it is.
The gains in responsiveness and feel are hard to quantify, but they're real, and glaringly obvious once you try a system with a good SSD. It's kind of the offline equivalent of taking 100 ms off of your ping time in online games. Even if a game doesn't give you a direct measurement of ping times, you can tell the difference.
Honestly, I would recommend buying another card for crossfire or sli before recommending buying a tiny SSD that will give u a few seconds off your boot time. Any purchase made could be more justified than buying a new SSD. Hell, spend that money on a cool case.
Ever use a good SSD? I'm curious on what your history with parts is.
My history with parts started maybe 6 years ago. I started working for my first computer repair shop. My position there required me to do all th eparts ordering from a dozen vendors. As such I had a very intimate understanding of cost of parts from various makers such as asus, gigabyte, samsung and western digital. I then spent several years build and repairing computers for another company. By repairing I mean diagnosing and replacing hardware issues.... why doesnt my computer turn on? Your hdd is dead!!. I also diagnose and repair many software applications. Im the guy that looks at bsod and determines what to do to fix it. I went then to an onsite tech job. I would be called out to dentists and lawyers and restraunts to mantain their server and networks. In that position I would again diagnose hardware issues and deal with a wide variety of manufacturers. I would alsoo do alot of network administration and cam server work. From there I went to the biggest computer repair store in my state where we typically checkin 500+ computers a month. There I kept track of inventory orders and did software/hardware repair. From there I went to the largest hosptial in the souther region of the united states. I now work as a technical support that covers the entire region and support the doctors and nurses that can save your life, but cant seem to understand a usb mouse. What is your understanding of parts quizzical?
On a side note all of the reads and write are going to beat the crap out of your expensive SSD drive for only a minimal performance improvement in an MMO...
Quizz I know you know your hardware and are probably one of the top hardware posters on this site but I just can't see the value in SSDs at current prices! I'd recommend WD Black Edition any day unless one really has $ to burn!
SSD's aren't that expensive. Sure, the GB/$ figure isn't the greatest, but for $100 you can get a sick solution to use as a bootup drive and with your favorite games.
Do you know for certain?
Nice filibuster, but you never answered the question. Have you used a computer with a good SSD much?
"On a side note all of the reads and write are going to beat the crap out of your expensive SSD drive for only a minimal performance improvement in an MMO."
Reads don't meaningfully wear on an SSD at all. You can aggressively read from an SSD 24 hours per day every day for years and it won't meaningfully wear on it. It's writes that can wear out an SSD, but MMORPGs don't do a whole lot of writing (even an extra few GB per day is inconsequential), and it really takes a lot of writes to wear one out. It's the sort of thing that someone running a database might need to worry about, but for an average home user, it makes no difference.
"The second card in Crossfire or SLI will give you more frames/performance in your game than the SSD and probably cost you less. I know the second card doesn't "double" graphics performance but it will do more than the SSD."
Except that in most games, it won't. That's why, for example, if Hard OCP compares SLI and CrossFire setups, they basically throw up their hands and say, with one monitor, there's no difference unless you're at 2560x1600 and run the cards out of video memory. So let's move to three monitor setups that will tax the cards enough for there to be a difference. If you do use Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround for gaming, then sure, you might well need multiple cards. But that's way out of the budget of most people.
There are reasons why I said a high end card, and that will give you a steady 60 frames per second in most games. Does upgrading from a $100 video card to a $200 video card make more sense than an SSD for most gamers? Sure. But if you've already got a high end video card, then upgrading the video system even further won't help much.
It's really a question of budget. If you're trying to scrape together a gaming system on a $600 budget, then an SSD just doesn't fit. If you've got a $4000 budget to assemble the ultimate dream system, then going without an SSD on that would be just crazy. Where's the threshold, at which above this line you get an SSD and below it you don't? If you're excluding peripherals, I'd say somewhere in the $1000-$1500 range is the right time to add an SSD. But again, a lot depends on the personal preferences of the user.
"Most of us aren't bothered by having to wait 6 more seconds for Win 7 to load after getting off shift and would rather throw the ssd money at a new game, better GPU or mmo sub fees."
If you don't mind constantly having to sit and wait for your computer to do anything, then sure. Don't get an SSD. Personally, I'd much sooner take a mid-range video card and turn down graphics sooner than to give up my SSD. Of course, gaming isn't the only thing I use this computer for.
"I'd recommend WD Black Edition any day unless one really has $ to burn!"
Sure, and that's why when I pick parts for someone whose budget doesn't accomodate an SSD, I usually do include a WD Caviar Black.
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One thing I hope the original poster catches from this is that opinions vary. If you want your computer to feel faster and more responsive, and not constantly make you sit there and wait, then get an SSD. If the only thing you care about is average frame rates in games, then don't spend the money on an SSD.
Well,you asked my history with parts was. I stated the fact that I have many years of history with parts and all aspects of computer building and repair for residential, commercial, and corporate environments. I do own a SSD. I also know several people that do. I have also owned several work machines with ssd. Im a nerd remeber? I ve come across one.
I asked you what your history of parts was. I get the idea that you just read alot of magazines and talk about alot of stuff that you have never witnessed first hand on one computer much less 20.
It is really basic knowledge that a second card in sli would give better performance in game fps than a ssd would. I cant believe you have good intentions for the OP when you suggest otherwise. Sure not all games utilize it perfectly. Some games do a great job. Some drivers are built to specifically add sli profiles for games.
Not to draw this out into an argument even though this is what it has become. But really?
I prefer Raptor's SSD will be nice when they get the price of 1 and 2 tb's drives down I would be more comfortable saving my files on a SSD.
£8000 for a 2 TB Foremay SSD -_-
what a waste of money
You think a raptor is a waste of money or the ssd,if the ssd then ya huge waste if VR your mad gives nice improvement over a 7200
I get a 600gb for 225
the 2tb ssd
so what is the outcome ? what is worth for gamming ?
and give me the link of the raptors ssd
Its not on sale so its 270 atm http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=1508111457M&vpn=WD6000HLHX&manufacture=WESTERN%20DIGITAL%20-%20DESKTOP%20DIRVE
Foremay 2TB SSD http://www.myce.com/news/foremay-ships-worlds-largest-2tb-ssd-32332/
U can get 15k Cheetahs but I find them really buggy WD is working a 20k drive aswell
You get a 60 or 80GB and a slow drive as media drive instead.
SSD is a lot better than a Raptor: Faster, silent, no heat and uses a lot less power. But you don't need to put more than the OS and the games you play on the SSD, anything else is just a waste of money.
And Raptors crash a lot more often than SSDs, go and ask your local computer store what they get in most often.
I had 4 SSDs raided for over 2 years now, no problem whatsoever even if the rumor at the time said they only lasts for a year or so. They do in fact last a lot longer.
I don't think they will replace the SATA drives because other stuff is coming soon that will replace them with even faster speed but neither will the Raptors.