Phaedrynn Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 My computer gave up the ghost Monday, and I am looking at replacements. I am considering an SSD (120 GB OCZ Agility 3 SATA-III) as the primary drive and, in addition to the OS, installing SWTOR there as well. I am curious as to how significant the impact on load times will be. For reference, the rest of the system will be: Core-i7-2600k 16 GB DDR3/1600MHz Kingston HyperX 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Data drive) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wikar Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 There was a lot of posts that even RAID composition of SSDs gives you zero benefint in loading screens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kooto Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) I moved game from HDD to SSD and nothing changed at all. But you can buy SSD anyway cause other games loads faster. Edited February 2, 2012 by Kooto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Crueak Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 SSD's usually don't help a MMO out too much from past experiences. They however do help pretty much any other application or game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
formulaic Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 The loading bar is: [middle] With an SSD, the left bit is almost instant, the middle bit glacially slow, and the right bit varies. Sadly, I think the middle bit is server comms - so having an SSD doesn't really help . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phaedrynn Posted February 2, 2012 Author Share Posted February 2, 2012 This is moderately disappointing. However, there are still a lot of benefits to an SSD, so I intend to go ahead and get one, just hoped I could reduce the extreme load times somewhat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parthis Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 There was a lot of posts that even RAID composition of SSDs gives you zero benefint in loading screens. I noticed a difference, but it was much more noticeable on plants like Tattooine. I have a 7200rpm drive and it died, using an OCZ Vertex. I don't have numbers, I didn't time it, I just know it's quicker and that i'm certainly not waiting around as much as I used to. That said, I never considered my loading times with the HDD to be slow; I simply consider the SSD to be a little faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BalynRex Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I haven't noticed any difference in using an SSD to run the game. Like someone stated before me, the left part of the bar loads instantly - then there's a delay in which seems like the game is communicating with the server and then the rest loads probably at the same speed as a standard HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heretiq Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) I used to play on my 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 (103SJ) for a while until I decided to upgrade to an SSD (Samsung 830 256gb). I definetely noticed a difference. And it's not just a placebo effect either. For example alt-tabbing out of the game and getting back into it is a lot faster now. Normal loading screen times have improved, too. Nar Shadaa was a pain in the *** (and still is to be honest) but on my SSD it is way more endurable. EDIT: Although having a fresh and new installation of windows 7 might have helped as well. Edited February 2, 2012 by Heretiq Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wikar Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) That said, I never considered my loading times with the HDD to be slow; I simply consider the SSD to be a little faster. Well, ye, there is still some datas need to be loaded from your HDD. But i think as everyone notice 90% of the time its something that wait for a server response soooo looong. I did't see any huge jump in a downloading stream at this time (like you think you need to download huge real time datas every loading screen, but no), server just doesn't respond for this time and not alowing you to "load" on client side in a new zone. Im realy hope this can be "optimized" or even completly removed\fixed in a future patches, cause the loading screen of death can be quite annoying Edited February 2, 2012 by Wikar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinnerD Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I have a feeling there's an issue with the loading of planets. The loading screen comes up, i hear my HD loading content, then it pauses for a while, before it suddenly jumped further and continues to load. That pause in the loading might be a bug? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaniWes Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 My computer gave up the ghost Monday, and I am looking at replacements. I am considering an SSD (120 GB OCZ Agility 3 SATA-III) as the primary drive and, in addition to the OS, installing SWTOR there as well. I am curious as to how significant the impact on load times will be. For reference, the rest of the system will be: Core-i7-2600k 16 GB DDR3/1600MHz Kingston HyperX 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Data drive) Slightly off topic but important nonetheless: I'd suggest to get 8 GB RAM, 4 is enough, 8 is fit for the future but 16 is a massive overkill. Secondly get the i5-2500k, the CPU is just as fast as the 2600k, only thing is it doesn't have hyperthreading, which is fairly useless on multicore CPU's. Especially since most applications don't support or use it. Thirdly, as a gamer, go for the GTX580. Running two 560 Ti's in SLI will not even get close to the performance of a single GTX580. The GTX580 will be more expensive, but that's why you get 8GB of RAM and an i5-2500k instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FixerFortyKay Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Well, my personal SSD has a varying load time depending on the type of planetary operation I'm indulging in. Last month I turned up at a world sympathetic to the Rebel Alliance. After announcing my arrival with eight hours of orbital bombardment I followed up with a full scale invasion to round up the shattered remnants of their leadership as they cowered in bunkers bored deep into the world's crust. Reloading all the troops, captured prisoners and items of technological value or artistic interest to myself took almost three days. Meanwhile, a standard supply run at a Golan II platform was completed with impressive Imperial efficiency and was completed in under two hours. Oh you're talking about computer hardware? Sorry, thinking of something completely different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rafter Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 The difference was negligible enough that instead of keeping the game and OS on the SSD I decided to use the SSD as a cache for my standard drive and get a boost with everything. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmyquinella Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Fresh load of game: around 12 sec. (From play button to character select) Planet zone: around 9 sec 2500k 16 gig Ram 90 gig Samsung SSD AMD 6870 Gig Z68 MB Take that information for what it's worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erevan_Kindelar Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 My computer gave up the ghost Monday, and I am looking at replacements. I am considering an SSD (120 GB OCZ Agility 3 SATA-III) as the primary drive and, in addition to the OS, installing SWTOR there as well. I am curious as to how significant the impact on load times will be. For reference, the rest of the system will be: Core-i7-2600k 16 GB DDR3/1600MHz Kingston HyperX 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Data drive) In an MMO, you wiould have to use a stopwatch and statistical analysis to see any difference in planetary load times between a hard drive and SSD, because between 95 and 99% of the loading time is your computer waiting for the server to acknowledge messages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crowleyz Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 SSD's are incredibly superior to the standard HDD, but if you wait 1 year, or longer, you can buy twice the capacity at half the price. Personally I'm waiting until they release them at a fair price with storage that slightly exceeds what I expect I will be needing(1 TB is probably a lot more than any normal person NEEDS). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martub Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I have an OCZ Vertex Plus. My loading times between planets are seconds. On a very odd occasion, I've had a load screen of maybe 10-15 seconds. I know people have been complaining about how long it takes at spaceports, but I've never really had a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeel_Aldair Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 There's some discussion about this in the following thread regarding RAMdisks: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=143515 I've only ever had SWTOR on an SSD myself, so I couldn't tell you if it's faster than a regular HDD. It's certainly not lightning fast anyway, not like the way Windows boots up in no time at all compared with a HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaverf Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 The only difference I've noticed is absolutely no more texture popping. No load speed change compared to my 1TB WD 7200 64mb cache 6gb/s HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillycat Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I can't give accurate answer as i changed my whole system, not just my HDD. My old system with 7200rpm HDD would take sometimes 30 seconds+ to load a new area up My new system with SSD with read/write speeds of over 500mb/s is less than 10 seconds. But that might not all be the type of drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rafter Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 SSD's are incredibly superior to the standard HDD, but if you wait 1 year, or longer, you can buy twice the capacity at half the price. Personally I'm waiting until they release them at a fair price with storage that slightly exceeds what I expect I will be needing(1 TB is probably a lot more than any normal person NEEDS). I doubt we see TB sized SSD's any time soon. You should check into the SSD caching like I mentioned in my previous post. You can buy a cheap 60 gb SSD and get 90% of the speed by using it as a cache for your standard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maranea Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I recently bought an SSD. I used to see 2-3 minutes load times for big planets like Tatooine, but now no load screen is longer than 20 seconds. I'm a bit puzzled how other people are seeing no difference at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterKayote Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I have a SATA 6 one from OCZ (Agility?) It still takes much longer than in should to load. Thankfully I decided to go with the SSD for this games install because id probably still be level 15 on my main if I had to wait on a regular HD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kokosak Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 After beta, I upgraded the whole system, including going from HDD to SSD+HDD. As of now, I almost always appear in instances as the first in my party, even though not I did not enter as first. And by a decent amount of time first. However, I cant tell how much of this does the SDD and how much the rest of the upgraded system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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