SSD vs Fast HDD for gaming load times?

[Maverick123w]

Hey guys,

There are 3 huge games coming up soon that I'm waiting on (BF3,SWTOR,Skyrim) and I want to get the absolute smoothest experience I can while playing them.

I've already upgraded most of my hardware so I should be good from a pure FPS point of view, however, I want to get very fast load times and the smallest amount of "hitching" possible when loading new objects from the drive etc.

My question is do you guys think?

Should I get an SSD like this one just to put the games I'm currently playing on..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227706

Or would something like this where I'd have the space to install every game I have make more sense?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136557

[Maverick123w]

Originally Posted by slaWter

The only game I've really noticed an improvement thanks to an SSD was ArmA II. It was much smoother on an SSD.

Other than that, there might be a slight advantage in loading times but usually not something that you'd notice right away. Maybe on a stop clock.

As cheap as SSDs are these days, it doesn't hurt to get one for your games. But don't expect miracles like when using an SSD for your OS and apps. And it would also be a much smarter investment than that Vraptor.

However, I'd get a 1-2TB WDC Black. That's what I use for my games.

Edit: Of course those new SATA 3 SSDs might change the whole picture again with much faster sequential transfer speeds.

What do you think about taking advantage of the smart caching on this board? Maybe the best of both worlds?

[Maverick123w]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Not sure how SRT is configurable and how it works in a multi disk system (more than just the system disk).

Anyway, I wouldn't invest in this. Get a bigger SSD instead and use it as a standalone disk and have all the bonuses of a SSDs at all times.

I currently have a 60gb ssd that I use as my os drive, and my trusty caviar black 1tb I use for everything else. I think I'm going to try this intel smart caching seeing as how I already have everything I need for it.

[K007]

fast hdd/ lots of ram = probably cheaper/better.

[Rakeesh]

Originally Posted by K007

fast hdd/ lots of ram = probably cheaper/better.

Once you reach around 8GB of ram, adding more doesn't provide any benefit, and a set of two GOOD 4gb ram sticks will cost $75 at most.

Hell, I have my paging file completely turned off, and have never seen any out of memory problems on 8GB.

I personally use an OCZ Vertex 3 120gb for OS/Games, intel X25-m 80gb for apps, and a 2TB Caviar Black for everything else.

I only use the x25-m because I didn't care to sell it when I upgraded from it to the ocz v3.

[pkirby11]

Hey Maverick, I usually just lurk around here but since I've recently setup SRT I'll give you my thoughts on it. In spite of what many might think, it does actually give you a pretty decent bump in load times. If you check out most reviews you will see that after several loads of program you started to see near SSD speeds. It also increases the boot time of windows as well as SRT is seen as a RAID array and accessed at boot.

Basically you just install Intel's RST software/driver, set your BIOS to RAID and then go into the RST utility and you will see an accelerate option. You choose the SSD and the volume you wish to accelereate, it also will work with RAID arrays. I will tell you this, stay away from the RST drivers on Intels site for now, they must have a bug as when I tried those I could not boot after enabling SRT. I got the drivers from my motherboards site and those worked fine.

I like SRT, smalled SSD but with near SSD speeds. Only one drive to manage without needing to decide what I want to put were and it's simple to setup. However if you got the cash, going straight SSD will be faster than SRT but for me it was just what I was looking for.

Nice little article on SRT too if you want to read up on it:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage...ing-Z68-Tested

[Maverick123w]

Originally Posted by pkirby11

Hey Maverick, I usually just lurk around here but since I've recently setup SRT I'll give you my thoughts on it. In spite of what many might think, it does actually give you a pretty decent bump in load times. If you check out most reviews you will see that after several loads of program you started to see near SSD speeds. It also increases the boot time of windows as well as SRT is seen as a RAID array and accessed at boot.

Basically you just install Intel's RST software/driver, set your BIOS to RAID and then go into the RST utility and you will see an accelerate option. You choose the SSD and the volume you wish to accelereate, it also will work with RAID arrays. I will tell you this, stay away from the RST drivers on Intels site for now, they must have a bug as when I tried those I could not boot after enabling SRT. I got the drivers from my motherboards site and those worked fine.

I like SRT, smalled SSD but with near SSD speeds. Only one drive to manage without needing to decide what I want to put were and it's simple to setup. However if you got the cash, going straight SSD will be faster than SRT but for me it was just what I was looking for.

Nice little article on SRT too if you want to read up on it:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage...ing-Z68-Tested

I actually am running SRT right now and I'm pretty impressed. My boot times are about 3 seconds slower but that still clocks in around 16-17 seconds so it's by no means slow.

Beyond the actual hard data that shows it is indeed slower, it doesn't feel any slower and I guess that's all that matters. Feels like I have a 1TB ssd.

[pkirby11]

Originally Posted by Maverick123w

I actually am running SRT right now and I'm pretty impressed. My boot times are about 3 seconds slower but that still clocks in around 16-17 seconds so it's by no means slow.

Beyond the actual hard data that shows it is indeed slower, it doesn't feel any slower and I guess that's all that matters. Feels like I have a 1TB ssd.

I agree, I like it a lot, its a nice alternative if you have an SSD lying around or even if you don't have the money for top of the line. I'm very happy with it.

[wrugoin]

You won't find many tech sites benchmarking load times for games. They put great importance on sequential 4kb reads/writes, MB/s and IO, but very little on real-world observable benchmarks.

For load times, I've found YouTube videos to be more informative. Granted, they're not very scientific, and probably contain next to zero rigor in the experiment, so it's up to you to find value/credibility in the videos. Regardless, It's worth a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQpiZ44GyYU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sA0zmhW7Fg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF1KAZDozNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYJAFnQdwQA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47dt-y27eYk