Never had a raptor fail and Ive used alot of them and built alot of computers with em as I said when a 1TB SSD is released for under 400 bucks then I will be happy to swap them all out.
I would guess we will see a 1TB SSD for that by the end of 2012.
I think Loke was referring to the fact that raptors are mechanical hdds with a motor that spins whereas SSD do not have mechanical parts that would typically fail.
Originally posted by tuzalov Never had a raptor fail and Ive used alot of them and built alot of computers with em as I said when a 1TB SSD is released for under 400 bucks then I will be happy to swap them all out. I would guess we will see a 1TB SSD for that by the end of 2012.
Thing is most people don't have 1TB of data they need on instant access so a huge 1TB SSD is a waste of money. That's why a $165 80GB SSD and a $60 1TB hard drive would be far better than a $225 600GB Raptor.
The OS/apps/games you need fast can easily fit on the 80GB SSD, and you have 1TB of slow storage for everything else like movies/music that would get no benefit from quick access times.
The Raptor route you get only 600GB instead of 1080GB. The stuff that can benefit from fast access won't be as quick on a Raptor as it would be on an SSD, and you have less overall space for the stuff that doesn't need the speed. In effect it's slower and smaller for the same price as SSD/HD combo.
The VelociRaptor is maybe twice as fast as the Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM hard drive, which is itself markedly slower than most desktop hard drives. But it's not in the same league as the real SSDs. If you're going to pay as much as an SSD costs, then you might as well get an SSD.
If you need 1 TB of storage and get an SSD, you don't need a 1 TB SSD. You get a small SSD like this:
and then install the OS and main programs on the SSD, and everything else on a hard drive. There are legitimate purposes where people really do need a 1 TB SSD, but the general consumer space isn't it.
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?
I use 3 SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration, the readspeed test in SiSoftSandra shows an average of 734mb/second.
I've tried playing some games that I installed on the SSD's.
Warhammer Online - Known for its extremely long loading times, 0% change in loading times. The FPS was like usual 100.
AION - Known for its short loading times, 0% change, the game still changed maps instantly at my end.
So after those two tested I figured the games doesnt depend on your diskspeed, they depend on the CPU speed and multithreading to load up fast much more than they depend on the medium they are loaded from.
Warhammer Online - No multithreading support in the game engine, loads everything 1 by 1. All games using GameBryo seems to act this way, like the Bloodbowl game, very long loading times due to singlethreading technique.
AION - Great multithreading support, really takes advantage of Core i7 CPU's with hyperthreading.
But Windows 7 64bit loads up lightning fast with the SSD raid compare to the old Velocity Raptor raid I used before. 11 Seconds to load up, login and launch all autostart programs like internet security and such with the SSD's, compared to 34 seconds for the Raptor's. Also programs loads up instantly when you start them, but games...No there is none to very little advantage.
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 -_-
You dont buy SSD's from other brands than Intel if you want FAST SSD's. The IOPS are very important.
And to everyone else, If you do decide to buy SSD(s) dont buy the cheapest ones, they are made for notebooks and have horribly low amount of IOPS. Go for the highest possible MLC, unless you are rich or running a database then you can go for the SLC.
MLC are guaranteed to last for 10,000 writes, that means with the use of TRIM that it will last you atleast 10years if you use it 24/7/365. You will replace it long before it breaks in other words, but ofcourse you can get a bad disk that lasts for less, but then you have the warranty to get you a new one.
SLC are guaranteed to last for 100,000 writes, if you use TRIM it will live longer than you do if you use it 24/7/365. Even if it is a database you run on it.
When you put SSD's in a RAID like I have done you cant use TRIM, the only workaround you can do once they start slowing down is to manually low format them and they will be like new once again. If you buy from Intel you can download tools from their website to manually TRIM raided SSD's. It's one of few companies that provides you with a manual TRIM tool that doesnt erase all data on the disks.
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?
I lke the way the way a system runs off of an SSD all the way around. I don't see any difference in FPS in the games I play.
As a matter of fact, I have played several games from an external USB hard drive and I see little to no performance differnece from them being installed on my main hard drive. Maybe the zone load times are a little slower(never timed it) but the FPS are exactly the same.
You dont buy SSD's from other brands than Intel if you want FAST SSD's. The IOPS are very important.
Yes, IOPS are very important. And the Intel X25-M gets blown away in write IOPS by the Marvell and SandForce controllers. The Intel controller also loses to the Marvell controller in read IOPS, though it does beat the SandForce controller by a little bit there. Sure, go ahead and get an Intel SSD if you can get it at a discount as compared to the faster ones. But don't pay a premium for Intel.
-----
You can figure out what the bottleneck is yourself. Open Task Manager and check the various tabs screen to see how much processor and network activity there is at various times during loading screens. If there's a ton of processor activity, then you're waiting on the processor. If there's a ton of network activity, then you're waiting to download some data. If there isn't much of either, then you're waiting on your hard drive. Those times could be nearly skipped if you had an SSD.
What you're waiting on can vary from one point to another. In Champions Online, for example, most of the loading bar fills up as it loads things off of the hard drive and into system memory, but then the end of it stops doing that and instead has to download the data for the zone you're entering. An SSD doesn't help at all with the end there, but makes the rest of the loading bar go by in a few seconds while zoning.
In League of Legends, just by watching the loading bars, you can see who has an SSD and who doesn't. Alas, you have to wait for everyone to load the game there before it lets anyone in. (I'm not saying they should change that; I realize that it's necessary for competitive balance reasons.)
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?
MMORPGs are not coded that well and have many small files. So small that even on a regular HDD of most of the files to memory is the same. What SSD helps with are those large files you really need to open up like models and meshes, but thanks to "Poor Optmization" we run into many problems.
Most MMOs are made in Korea and some made in Japan. Most people there do not have great computers so to facilitate the lower memory those computers have along with the lack in technology, games are coded in ways to handle more frequent "garbage" collection. In short freeing memory in use. This means a lot more gets loaded and you can't really control this to the point memory can fragment over time.
You can buy an SSD but once Garbage Collection occurs on the data in the memory, you will be left reloading files frequently that you need to play the game....and see fragmentation. All thanks to rather than load all the files it needs Correctly into memory without so much swapping, to save memory a lot of files are swapped in and out and lots of garbage collection occurs.
My advice to you is that if you plan on being Serious about SSDs, only go for the ones that connect directly to the PCI-Express interface and forget about other interfaces. PCI-Express interfaces each have their own pool of dedicated bandwtih while SATA has bottlenecks all over the place and the entire controller itself shares bandwith among everything plugged into it.
While I've used SSDs for gaming before in tests. They do not score higher than what I currently use in testing....For this reason while Ive used SSDs for Operating Systems, I have never kept an SSD for gaming. I use my alternate method. ^_^ Good luck.
Using an SSD is noticable, and it will make your computer seem like a brand new computer. Many people don't care how long it takes their computer to boot, or how long their programs to load, or characters to zone, or what have you, but that difference is quite significant and immediately noticeable. Most people who use an SSD for the first time never want to go back. You don't need a top of the line SSD to notice this either. Dollar for dollar, an SSD will even give a 10,000rpm Raptor (even in Raid0) a run for the money in performance (and I have seen many of the older generations of these fail, but I don't have as much experience with the newer 2.5" generations), but not in size. SSDs do have a limited number of write cycles, however, they are rated to last as long as a mechanical hard drive (~5+ yrs), and when they do they don't break, they just start to see a reduction in performance and capacity. And there is the heat and power issue - SSDs take a fraction of the power, and produce a fraction of the heat.
However, it will not significantly impact your frame rates. Most games that stream or run zoneless are designed to do so well with extremely slow (4200rpm) drives (there are exceptions of course). A good 7200RPM drive is all you really need for solid performance, and the prices for these are rock bottom, even in very large capacities. Older SSDs without TRIM support do need some extra attention to maintain performance.
If it is worth the money or the hassle of splitting out your files across multiple drives (as it really isn't practical to buy large SSDs right now), that is up to you.
Originally posted by darknss So after those two tested I figured the games doesnt depend on your diskspeed, they depend on the CPU speed and multithreading to load up fast much more than they depend on the medium they are loaded from.
That is a good point, at least 50% of load time in games is due to the CPU rather than the disk, and MMO's probably have a further % bottlenecked by internet content being downloaded when you zone. The disk is only being accessed about half the time while loading a game, the rest of the time the CPU is decompressing the data that's been read and getting it set up in memory while the disk sits idle waiting for the CPU to grab more data.
So there may not be a significant change in many MMO's and only a slight change in single player games over a Raptor (it sounds like that's what the comparison was against). A Raptor is still quite fast even if a bit slower than an SSD and there may not be much room to gain in game zoning times.
I've played Guild Wars on two different systems with a WD Caviar Black (fast for a hard drive) and an OCZ Agility (Indilinx Barefoot controller, slow for a modern SSD), and the SSD made a huge difference in loading times, and much larger than could be explained by the difference between a Core i5-750 and a Core i7-860. The computer with the hard drive had a faster Internet connection, too. Guild Wars relies enough on map travel that playing it with an otherwise fast computer that lacks an SSD just feels awkward to me.
We should meet in Guild Wars. It was one of my favorite games. For years I've ramdisked the entire game. Due to all files existing in System Memory, the game stays in memory. In short my computer never searches a HDD (or SSD) for files. Of course I've spent many years learning as much about Ramdisks and trying out tons to the point that while I dont mind SSDs for operating systems, SSDs feel very slow to me for gaming compared to things like Ramdisking all of Crysis and then running a 64 bit executable for it. ^_^
This is why I rather spend money to put lots of RAM on a motherboard vs spending tons of money to buy a "consumer grade" SSD which is going to be outshined every generation while regardless the generations of SSDs released, a ramdisk will always be faster than SSD although the only one I like is the OCZ model that plugs into the PCI-Express Slot.
note: When I say Ramdisk I mean "A volatile disk made out of system memory" and not the memory that Samsung creates and brands as a ramdisk. I've been ramdisking games for the past 12 years.
Comments
Never had a raptor fail and Ive used alot of them and built alot of computers with em as I said when a 1TB SSD is released for under 400 bucks then I will be happy to swap them all out.
I would guess we will see a 1TB SSD for that by the end of 2012.
I think Loke was referring to the fact that raptors are mechanical hdds with a motor that spins whereas SSD do not have mechanical parts that would typically fail.
Thing is most people don't have 1TB of data they need on instant access so a huge 1TB SSD is a waste of money. That's why a $165 80GB SSD and a $60 1TB hard drive would be far better than a $225 600GB Raptor.
The OS/apps/games you need fast can easily fit on the 80GB SSD, and you have 1TB of slow storage for everything else like movies/music that would get no benefit from quick access times.
The Raptor route you get only 600GB instead of 1080GB. The stuff that can benefit from fast access won't be as quick on a Raptor as it would be on an SSD, and you have less overall space for the stuff that doesn't need the speed. In effect it's slower and smaller for the same price as SSD/HD combo.
A VelociRaptor is a little bit faster than most hard drives, but not enough to fix the problem.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/6
The VelociRaptor is maybe twice as fast as the Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM hard drive, which is itself markedly slower than most desktop hard drives. But it's not in the same league as the real SSDs. If you're going to pay as much as an SSD costs, then you might as well get an SSD.
If you need 1 TB of storage and get an SSD, you don't need a 1 TB SSD. You get a small SSD like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550
and then install the OS and main programs on the SSD, and everything else on a hard drive. There are legitimate purposes where people really do need a 1 TB SSD, but the general consumer space isn't it.
I use 3 SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration, the readspeed test in SiSoftSandra shows an average of 734mb/second.
I've tried playing some games that I installed on the SSD's.
Warhammer Online - Known for its extremely long loading times, 0% change in loading times. The FPS was like usual 100.
AION - Known for its short loading times, 0% change, the game still changed maps instantly at my end.
So after those two tested I figured the games doesnt depend on your diskspeed, they depend on the CPU speed and multithreading to load up fast much more than they depend on the medium they are loaded from.
Warhammer Online - No multithreading support in the game engine, loads everything 1 by 1. All games using GameBryo seems to act this way, like the Bloodbowl game, very long loading times due to singlethreading technique.
AION - Great multithreading support, really takes advantage of Core i7 CPU's with hyperthreading.
But Windows 7 64bit loads up lightning fast with the SSD raid compare to the old Velocity Raptor raid I used before. 11 Seconds to load up, login and launch all autostart programs like internet security and such with the SSD's, compared to 34 seconds for the Raptor's. Also programs loads up instantly when you start them, but games...No there is none to very little advantage.
You dont buy SSD's from other brands than Intel if you want FAST SSD's. The IOPS are very important.
And to everyone else, If you do decide to buy SSD(s) dont buy the cheapest ones, they are made for notebooks and have horribly low amount of IOPS. Go for the highest possible MLC, unless you are rich or running a database then you can go for the SLC.
MLC are guaranteed to last for 10,000 writes, that means with the use of TRIM that it will last you atleast 10years if you use it 24/7/365. You will replace it long before it breaks in other words, but ofcourse you can get a bad disk that lasts for less, but then you have the warranty to get you a new one.
SLC are guaranteed to last for 100,000 writes, if you use TRIM it will live longer than you do if you use it 24/7/365. Even if it is a database you run on it.
When you put SSD's in a RAID like I have done you cant use TRIM, the only workaround you can do once they start slowing down is to manually low format them and they will be like new once again. If you buy from Intel you can download tools from their website to manually TRIM raided SSD's. It's one of few companies that provides you with a manual TRIM tool that doesnt erase all data on the disks.
Have fun!
I lke the way the way a system runs off of an SSD all the way around. I don't see any difference in FPS in the games I play.
As a matter of fact, I have played several games from an external USB hard drive and I see little to no performance differnece from them being installed on my main hard drive. Maybe the zone load times are a little slower(never timed it) but the FPS are exactly the same.
Yes, IOPS are very important. And the Intel X25-M gets blown away in write IOPS by the Marvell and SandForce controllers. The Intel controller also loses to the Marvell controller in read IOPS, though it does beat the SandForce controller by a little bit there. Sure, go ahead and get an Intel SSD if you can get it at a discount as compared to the faster ones. But don't pay a premium for Intel.
-----
You can figure out what the bottleneck is yourself. Open Task Manager and check the various tabs screen to see how much processor and network activity there is at various times during loading screens. If there's a ton of processor activity, then you're waiting on the processor. If there's a ton of network activity, then you're waiting to download some data. If there isn't much of either, then you're waiting on your hard drive. Those times could be nearly skipped if you had an SSD.
What you're waiting on can vary from one point to another. In Champions Online, for example, most of the loading bar fills up as it loads things off of the hard drive and into system memory, but then the end of it stops doing that and instead has to download the data for the zone you're entering. An SSD doesn't help at all with the end there, but makes the rest of the loading bar go by in a few seconds while zoning.
In League of Legends, just by watching the loading bars, you can see who has an SSD and who doesn't. Alas, you have to wait for everyone to load the game there before it lets anyone in. (I'm not saying they should change that; I realize that it's necessary for competitive balance reasons.)
MMORPGs are not coded that well and have many small files. So small that even on a regular HDD of most of the files to memory is the same. What SSD helps with are those large files you really need to open up like models and meshes, but thanks to "Poor Optmization" we run into many problems.
Most MMOs are made in Korea and some made in Japan. Most people there do not have great computers so to facilitate the lower memory those computers have along with the lack in technology, games are coded in ways to handle more frequent "garbage" collection. In short freeing memory in use. This means a lot more gets loaded and you can't really control this to the point memory can fragment over time.
You can buy an SSD but once Garbage Collection occurs on the data in the memory, you will be left reloading files frequently that you need to play the game....and see fragmentation. All thanks to rather than load all the files it needs Correctly into memory without so much swapping, to save memory a lot of files are swapped in and out and lots of garbage collection occurs.
My advice to you is that if you plan on being Serious about SSDs, only go for the ones that connect directly to the PCI-Express interface and forget about other interfaces. PCI-Express interfaces each have their own pool of dedicated bandwtih while SATA has bottlenecks all over the place and the entire controller itself shares bandwith among everything plugged into it.
While I've used SSDs for gaming before in tests. They do not score higher than what I currently use in testing....For this reason while Ive used SSDs for Operating Systems, I have never kept an SSD for gaming. I use my alternate method. ^_^ Good luck.
Using an SSD is noticable, and it will make your computer seem like a brand new computer. Many people don't care how long it takes their computer to boot, or how long their programs to load, or characters to zone, or what have you, but that difference is quite significant and immediately noticeable. Most people who use an SSD for the first time never want to go back. You don't need a top of the line SSD to notice this either. Dollar for dollar, an SSD will even give a 10,000rpm Raptor (even in Raid0) a run for the money in performance (and I have seen many of the older generations of these fail, but I don't have as much experience with the newer 2.5" generations), but not in size. SSDs do have a limited number of write cycles, however, they are rated to last as long as a mechanical hard drive (~5+ yrs), and when they do they don't break, they just start to see a reduction in performance and capacity. And there is the heat and power issue - SSDs take a fraction of the power, and produce a fraction of the heat.
However, it will not significantly impact your frame rates. Most games that stream or run zoneless are designed to do so well with extremely slow (4200rpm) drives (there are exceptions of course). A good 7200RPM drive is all you really need for solid performance, and the prices for these are rock bottom, even in very large capacities. Older SSDs without TRIM support do need some extra attention to maintain performance.
If it is worth the money or the hassle of splitting out your files across multiple drives (as it really isn't practical to buy large SSDs right now), that is up to you.
That is a good point, at least 50% of load time in games is due to the CPU rather than the disk, and MMO's probably have a further % bottlenecked by internet content being downloaded when you zone. The disk is only being accessed about half the time while loading a game, the rest of the time the CPU is decompressing the data that's been read and getting it set up in memory while the disk sits idle waiting for the CPU to grab more data.
So there may not be a significant change in many MMO's and only a slight change in single player games over a Raptor (it sounds like that's what the comparison was against). A Raptor is still quite fast even if a bit slower than an SSD and there may not be much room to gain in game zoning times.
I've played Guild Wars on two different systems with a WD Caviar Black (fast for a hard drive) and an OCZ Agility (Indilinx Barefoot controller, slow for a modern SSD), and the SSD made a huge difference in loading times, and much larger than could be explained by the difference between a Core i5-750 and a Core i7-860. The computer with the hard drive had a faster Internet connection, too. Guild Wars relies enough on map travel that playing it with an otherwise fast computer that lacks an SSD just feels awkward to me.
@Quizzical
We should meet in Guild Wars. It was one of my favorite games. For years I've ramdisked the entire game. Due to all files existing in System Memory, the game stays in memory. In short my computer never searches a HDD (or SSD) for files. Of course I've spent many years learning as much about Ramdisks and trying out tons to the point that while I dont mind SSDs for operating systems, SSDs feel very slow to me for gaming compared to things like Ramdisking all of Crysis and then running a 64 bit executable for it. ^_^
This is why I rather spend money to put lots of RAM on a motherboard vs spending tons of money to buy a "consumer grade" SSD which is going to be outshined every generation while regardless the generations of SSDs released, a ramdisk will always be faster than SSD although the only one I like is the OCZ model that plugs into the PCI-Express Slot.
note: When I say Ramdisk I mean "A volatile disk made out of system memory" and not the memory that Samsung creates and brands as a ramdisk. I've been ramdisking games for the past 12 years.