Is your SSD REALLY faster than your hard drive? Or do you just assume so?

[ZavienUK]

Apologes in advance I haven't read the OP so just replying based off the subject, but I wanted to chime in to say that SWTOR was the game which benefited most from the SSD. I used to hate planet load times, now when I see people complaining about them I just wonder why they don't get an SSD, it's a total non issue for me. The difference is night and day, some of the biggest planets used to take forever to load, now none of them are long enough for it to bother me at all.

[Malorey]

I don't really care about having an SSD for games, but for the OS, it's a definite must!

[DarthDucky]

I think the test, although nicely done, is irrelevant .

 

There is one point that is not mentioned or cared for... server load.

 

I will assume that going to places where many people are present, will significantly increase the loading time, and for this no amount of HW goodness will change anything on our side .

 

So depending on the time where an instance is accessed, could be significantly different in the next few minutes (especially during events).

 

I would suggest, for the test to be viable, to do 4 or 5 tests of each, with several intervals for each others, and redo the same test a week later at the sametimes, with the 2nd rig... even with that, population can not be guaranteed, hell, few or more players could mean you end up on a brand new, nearly unpopulated instanced map .

 

While I was on holiday for 3weeks, and online for most of the time, the loading times were significantly lower at night time, where only a few hundreds of people seemed to be around.

 

Another test you could do, would be to use the PTS server, during a night (so hopefully very quiet), to remove server load from the equation all together .

[MadHobbit]

so what about the new sata express? if the interface to the drive gets bottlenecked,then the speed of the drive is of lesser importance.

[MaximusRex]

You just zeroed your credibility with this statement.

 

No, they don't.

There's so few SSD that have run out their write cycles that you'll never find one outside of a lab specifically testing their life endurance.

Not just most, but virtually all SSD failures in the wild, i.e. outside of endurance testing in a lab, have resulted in little aluminum bricks.

 

 

I won't bother to reply to the rest because, while most of the data you presented is correct, your credibility has been zeroed. So while I could explain how a difference of 200 or 400 grams doesn't matter in a 20kg PC standing on a 50kg table next to a 10kg display and 80kg speakers, your failure above has freed me of this arduous duty.

 

You massive stawmans and total lack of any cited facts sure makes me think you are worth listening to over other posters. Oh wait, no, it makes you look like someone with ZERO credibility.

[wean]

I went with a hybrid drive and it has worked nicely for me.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

so what about the new sata express? if the interface to the drive gets bottlenecked,then the speed of the drive is of lesser importance.

 

I was actually reading something on this ( well M.2 ) recently and it can come down to m/b manufacturer and how they implement it. Something like instead of following reference design via the chipset interface on the m/b going in through the PCIE bus to speed up the transport of data or something like that. Certainly not quoting verbatim as I was only skimming over the article out of interest to look into further one day if I do go Sata Express or M.2 but it was something that stuck in the back of my mind anyway ( can't be bothered trying to find the article again ).

 

I'm sure someone more in the know can give the correct information on this anyway.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

I'm sorry but I don't see how you can do this kinda test on an online game that has variables you can't measure or control (IE: the server the game is hosted on, your own ISP and internet connection, the amount of players online at the time, the amount of players in your specific instance of the fleet or what not, etc).

 

Example: I don't have the greatest internet at my house and I've noticed that when my internet isn't running very well, or when the server starts to go out or something, loading screens take forever. Long enough that by the time the loading screen is done (and is followed up by a black screen usually, then low texture quality, then it smooths into my normal play experience) I'm already tabbed out of the game doing something else, or I've gotten up and walked away to do something else. But when my internet is running as it should be those loading screens go by painlessly and the textures load immediately.

 

Now, don't take this as exact data and hard evidence. This is just my experience to show you that your data is leaving out a LOT of variables. You can't account for how many people were online, on the fleet, at the time you did those tests unless you did them simultaneously. But you didn't. In fact, looking at your data it seems like they were actually almost 24 hours apart. Do you not see the problem with this? There's too much variation between your tests to make any real conclusions. If you wanted to make an argument like this you'd have to take an offline game and run it through these kinda tests. That eliminates all the variables you can't control with TOR while keeping the others.

 

I can respect you taking the time to capture all of this data, and I honestly have no dog in this race because I've never used a SSD (for financial reasons). But being an Engineering major and looking through your data I just couldn't stop myself from making the comment that you really messed the process up bad. You didn't account for all of your variables, you missed a lot of them actually, and as a result I just don't think your data really means anything.

Edited November 19, 2014 by The-Kaitou-Kid

[Transcendent]

Basing your choice of hardware on a single game is just silly beyond words. Actually, it's not beyond words. There is one word to describe it; stupid.

 

I'll disagree there.

 

When I bother to do an upgrade and build myself a new PC that's exactly one of the main factors in my new build, the game that i'm currently playing or plan to play. The plus side is that everything else tends to work pretty well as a side effect of those decisions.

 

Also someone mentioned not requiring 30+ TB of storage, my work PC is designed for maximizing my productivity for graphics design (and yes it actually has more than one HDD in there, designed for Raid usage specifically and for scratch disk use). So it's easy to need more than 30+ TB of storage, equally said I'm lucky enough to have a good internet connection for personal use, and a business connection that means using Dropbox is never an issue (work bears the cost for the speeds and Dropbox).

 

I would suggest the reality is not many people are going to be able to afford to have a personal use cloud storage solution and internet connection, to allow completely removal of HDD as a large capacity storage solution. Also I'll point out that if you do have a large amount of games that 30+ TB actually isn't too far fetched a requirement, although I would question why in this day and age people don't just download the games they want to play when they want to play them, unless people truly do have terrible internet speeds with no alternatives available.

 

TLDR;

 

SSD as a fast storage medium is becoming more affordable, especially as capacity becomes less of an issue with higher densities. HDD still has practical uses, and cost is still a factor that comes into play. Especially when speed isn't too much of an issue.

[OwenBrooks]

Seeing this thread is discussing SSDs , just in case anyone is using a Samsung 840EVO, update the firmware is worthwhile.

 

Background - http://techreport.com/review/27212/samsung-840-evo-update-fixes-slow-reads-with-old-data

 

Fix - http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads/Samsung_SSD840EVO_Performance_Restoration.zip

 

Installation Guide - http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads/Samsung_Performance_Restoration_v10_Installation_guide.pdf

[swredrage]

About 2 years ago (give or take) there was a similar discussion somewhere here on the forums.

 

Yes you get a boost in load times. In my case I consistently can hear others abilities, move and take action but the bioware load screen is still active. I'm not sure if the network/server lag or if it is a bioware thing to make sure the screen is shown? Whatever the cause slows things down.

 

There where load tests done (some by me) back then loading SWTOR from a ram drive. There is an 'add-on' (called Unleashed i think) that will take parts of the game and load it directly into ram as a drive for faster read/write. It helps smooth the game out. Running the full game from a ram drive provides a minor benefit in my case but did smooth out some of the fps drops at times.

 

Granted to run the game from a ram drive you will need enough ram to put the game in RAM, Unleashed i think requires 4GB of memory to work well... while putting the full game in memory you'll need a lot more, at that point getting a 60GB ssd is MUCH cheaper and will provide similar benefit.

 

The general conclusion then was if you are having some trouble with load times and fps drops a SSD could really help smooth it out.

 

OP's tests are hardly conclusive as it is hard to tell which instance you will log into, Biowares crappy server lag or general server load. one load may take a few seconds the next may take 30

 

long story short. Yes get an SSD if you can afford it, it will really help regardless what you do.

 

BTW: if i had to wait 50 seconds I would be VERY upset ;-)

 

SYSTEM: i7-3930k@4.25GHZ, Samsung 830 SSD, ADATA SSD, 2xOCZ Agility 4 SSDs, 64GB RAM, MSI GTX970 on a Rampage IV

[MSchuyler]

Some of you people are truly amazing. Here I have shown you with a Real World example that in a nearly four hour game session I saved a whopping 1 minute and 37 seconds. That's the amount of difference between using an HDD and an SSD. OF COURSE YMMV! But it won't vary by leaps and bounds. If you have a competent gaming rig that doesn't put its own obstacles in the way of game play--due to lack of RAM or some other issue--then this is a Ball Park estimate of the real difference you will see. And the slowest aspect of my rig is the HDD. Had I sprung for a faster HDD the difference I showed would be less. According to the benchmarks, it is considered a "weak" point in my system, and, BTW, the only one. Everything else is plenty fast.

 

And OF COURSE this is not a "Pure Measurement" of an SSD vs an HDD. It isn't meant to be. Caching, in particular, is DESIGNED, on purpose, to help alleviate speed issues in hardware components, so to gleefully say, "It's the cache!" is willfully missing the point. It doesn't matter in the Real World. A "pure" test is irrelevant.

 

So it boils down to a religious issue. Those who BELIEVE! with all their hearts will continue to insist the speed improvement using an SSD is actually meaningful. But that idea is on a par with "God exists" and "Jesus saves," both of which have a greater chance of being true than this delusion that SSDs actually save you a significant amount of time.

[lpope]

What you fail to realize is that your tests aren't robust enough to make your claims. You fail to take into account all the variables including playstyles. I often log in to all 18 of my toons just long enough to send out my companions out on crafting missions. In that scenario, the vast majority of time is spent loading into the character. Thus an SSD will be a great benefit. If you login to one toon and don't zone into new areas often or switch characters much, the benefit will be lower. In order to make the claim (one way or the other), you need to have a much more robust set of test cases.

[BuriDogshin]

So it boils down to a religious issue.

No, it doesn't. The benefits of SSDs such as shorter load times are provable and real, not based on belief.

And some people's play style involves more load screens than others, alt-a-holics in particular.

Try rotating through 16 toons doing crew missions with and without an SSD, the difference is huge.

For SWTOR, anyone who hates waiting for at load screen should get an SSD if they have the spare cash.

 

Anyone building a new system should get a 256GB SSD or larger for their boot and application drive, for the improved boot time, application load time, disk search performance, pagefile performance, and reliability. The extra US$100, if you are also putting an HDD in for bulk store, is money well spent. If you are not putting in an HDD and relying on the SSD alone, the cost difference is negligible. Plenty of supporting studies for these benefits are available on the net.

 

The clear superiority of SSDs for anything but cost-sensitive bulk storage is a proven fact.

[swredrage]

Some of you people are truly amazing. Here I have shown you with a Real World example that in a nearly four hour game session I saved a whopping 1 minute and 37 seconds. That's the amount of difference between using an HDD and an SSD. OF COURSE YMMV! But it won't vary by leaps and bounds. If you have a competent gaming rig that doesn't put its own obstacles in the way of game play--due to lack of RAM or some other issue--then this is a Ball Park estimate of the real difference you will see. And the slowest aspect of my rig is the HDD. Had I sprung for a faster HDD the difference I showed would be less. According to the benchmarks, it is considered a "weak" point in my system, and, BTW, the only one. Everything else is plenty fast.

 

And OF COURSE this is not a "Pure Measurement" of an SSD vs an HDD. It isn't meant to be. Caching, in particular, is DESIGNED, on purpose, to help alleviate speed issues in hardware components, so to gleefully say, "It's the cache!" is willfully missing the point. It doesn't matter in the Real World. A "pure" test is irrelevant.

 

So it boils down to a religious issue. Those who BELIEVE! with all their hearts will continue to insist the speed improvement using an SSD is actually meaningful. But that idea is on a par with "God exists" and "Jesus saves," both of which have a greater chance of being true than this delusion that SSDs actually save you a significant amount of time.

 

The problem with your 'real world' tests and assumptions are vast :-) really not your fault it is an MMO situations change. hour by hour, minute by minute or second by second. there is no control. Also the only real effect you mention of an SSD is general load times. The responsiveness of the drive (not the through put so much) can have great effect on other aspects of the game. For example, remember getting 5 FPS in Ilum PVP? went to SSD was getting 30+ (which was good at the time considering my other hardware)

 

Also the hard ware you are comparing it with. is also fairly decent. If you where going from say a 5400rpm green to an SSD you would probably see a greater difference. YOU don't need an SSD. But if you set it to your boot drive and put your apps on it you will see much greater responsiveness including quicker load times.

 

Your mechanical drive is pretty good. despite the 5.9 rating windows it isn't bad. In fact as far as 2.5" drives go the 7200rpm Scorpio black is one of the better laptop drives out there. unless you got a really bad or REALLY good mechanical drive or RAID it will almost always be 5.9 experience rating. Moral of the story ignore experience rating it is crap :-)

 

Some people, like your self won't see much of a benefit in game by switching to an SSD (in terms of load times). Others unlike you who have a serious bottle neck with their drive will see great benefit.

 

Also, no.. it is not a religious issue. It's a priority to cash (not cache hehe) issue. If you got a few extra bucks go with the SSD over mechanical. Over all performance, not just SW:TOR will be better.

 

TL;DR: people shouldn't just take our word for it. If you buy a SSD JUST for SW:TOR you are doing it wrong

[Heal-To-Full]

No, it doesn't. The benefits of SSDs such as shorter load times are provable and real, not based on belief.

These two are.

 

But as for the rest, it often comes down to an almost-religious zeal with which people who have gone all-SSD try to label anyone using HDD inferior and explain how their storage needs are wrong, and a similarly near-religious zeal with which HDD adherents badmouth everything about SSD.

 

And it's almost religious-like to call me a "SSD-hater" simply because I disagreed with some of your arguments. I started running SSD as early as 2008, so clearly I don't hate them, but it's exactly because I've dealt with them for a while and dealt with hundreds of people dealing with them that I've seen how they aren't some magical perfection some claim them to be. In an average desktop PC, SSD are a tool for eliminating a particular bottleneck, loading permanent storage contents into RAM, that's it.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[Max_Killjoy]

Not sure how this could be an issue of dispute, SSDs have faster read and write times last I checked.

 

The benefits of the faster read, write, and access times are real, but not miraculous or magical.

 

The whole thing is what it is, and going off the deep end in either direction is silly.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Max_Killjoy

[JediQuaker]

"It’s not really worth the trouble, at least not with SWTOR. And counseling people to “put SWTOR on an SSD for faster performance” is simply not justified nor supported by the evidence. " - MSchuyler

 

So, this dipwad got owned in New Player Help and now he's trying to infest this forum too.

 

1. Of course no-one would (or at least, should) buy an SSD just to put SWTOR on. All the SSD does is lower your level load times, which is a small proportion of your total play time.

 

2. Of course, conversely, everyone should (or, at least could) get an SSD to install their OS and essential programs on. It speeds up you entire system noticeably. Once you have a good CPU (i5), enough RAM (8GB), and a good GPU (R9 270X) or better, an SSD is the next logical step to improve overall performance.

 

3. Since you have an SSD for your OS, it only makes sense to put SWTOR (or whatever games you play regularly) on it too, just for the small gains in reduced level load times (if you have the space on the SSD).

 

4. Whether or not an SSD is "worth it" to you is an individual choice, but the performance gains are very real. I was someone who resisted getting an SSD for quite a while, but now I'm getting a bigger one for my main rig and moving the current one to my HTPC. I wouldn't build another PC (for me) without one.

 

5. The OP obviously knows how to type - he just doesn't know when to stop.

I don't usually crap on posters, even when they say dumb stuff, but this troll is asking for it.

 

6. Please ignore this guy. Don't feed the Trolls - send them back to WoW.

Edited November 19, 2014 by JediQuaker

[Heal-To-Full]

so what about the new sata express? if the interface to the drive gets bottlenecked,then the speed of the drive is of lesser importance.

It's not going to make a difference anywhere except benchmarking.

The advantage of SSD over HDD is not their linear read rate, it's their fast random access. A HDD will slow down to just 1 MB/s on small files; a SSD will still run full 100 MB/s or more. That's where SSD win, in 100 vs 1 MB/s on random files, not in 500 vs 200 MB/s linear read.

 

I wonder what reality you live in where putting in lighter, quieter parts don't actually make something lighter and quieter?

Because with some exceptions the user won't be able afford all-SSD storage (those who can, already have a few SSD), so they'll keep heavier louder parts.

 

I have been considering a NAS ( purpose built as opposed to a file server that some people like to call a NAS ) myself for bulk storage and backup. Are you using this for backup of everything off your desktops/laptops or only certain data? Is this then being serviced over Wifi? Most importantly is there much improvement for say end user bulk storage over just using a PC as a file server that would justify using a NAS?

Not really. The only gain from using a purpose-built NAS is it's smaller, lighter, a bit more reliable because it's not running a large GPOS or a hot GP CPU. On the downside, you can't use it as a second PC either. Comes down to cost, space, availability of an old PC to turn into a file server.

 

Ethernet is the way to go, Wi-Fi doesn't put out enough speed. Here is another factor, cheaper NAS boxes don't always have GBaseT. You need gigabit ethernet, with 100Mbit you're not getting reasonable performance.

 

I had thought this also but I guess we shouldn't jump to conclusions.

Nah, what would be the point of storing something you can get off the internet any day? And "free" movies are only "free" as long as you don't spend money on NAS to store them, it's cheaper to pay for the tickets if you do!

 

It is indeed mostly video, and some of it poorly compressed. Not everyone uses their PC solely for consuming content. And much of it isn't worth anything to anyone here, but, I mean, it's for me to decide what I need and what I don't.

 

I've looked into cold storage, but the hassle is too great, there's too often a need to pull that fragment shot long ago, and the savings from tape storage are too small below 50-100TB. Above that range, especially if considerable further growth is expected, tape wins.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[Foambreaker]

Because all computer upgrades should be based on whether they make SWTOR load faster or not.

 

Everything else runs on my phone

[swredrage]

I have been considering a NAS ( purpose built as opposed to a file server that some people like to call a NAS ) myself for bulk storage and backup. Are you using this for backup of everything off your desktops/laptops or only certain data? Is this then being serviced over Wifi? Most importantly is there much improvement for say end user bulk storage over just using a PC as a file server that would justify using a NAS? For example for what I would generally use it for is I kind of want to just have 'forget about it' backup running and also setup to have media automatically moved to the server for streaming access to PC's that need it.

 

Its called a NAS because it is Network Attached Storage. Yes many are just fairly simple file servers.. many more do other things as well. I use mine for storage of data i don't frequently use and finished productions. among other things. Synology and QNAP make some very nice ones that can do a lot of useful things standard.

 

almost everything GB lan, was thinking bout 10GB but.. way to expensive on my budget (not to mention overkill) WIFI will work for many things but I wouldn't want to copy 100GB of data to my NAS on wifi.. use wired.

 

I use a NAS instead of local storage because it is more convenient for me. I can turn my pcs off and still have access to my documents, music, pictures and movies because the NAS is always on. NAS boxes usually have some sort of RAID setup.. in my case SHR which gives me some protection against a single drive failure (saved my butt a couple months ago)

 

Also in my case i built my computer to have no mechanical drives (though i did end up getting a blu-ray burner) and I needed space for static data. A NAS was a logical choice for me.

 

They have OS's on them, usually some flavor of Unix of Linux with a custom GUI. FreeNAS, QNAP, Synology.. all pretty good just keep them updated.

 

They are not for everyone and can get expensive. Example a Synology 4bay is somewhere around 700$ Plus three NAS drives and if you need network switch and/or cabling you can get well over a grand quick. You can also build your own too for a bit cheaper. If you are just looking for a simple back up.. just get an external USB drive (or two). If you got a few devices all accessing similar data along with the backups then a NAS maybe something worth looking into.

[BuriDogshin]

These two are.

 

But as for the rest, it often comes down to an almost-religious zeal with which people who have gone all-SSD try to label anyone using HDD inferior and explain how their storage needs are wrong, and a similarly near-religious zeal with which HDD adherents badmouth everything about SSD.

Baloney. This thread was started by someone bashing SSDs. Since then we've seen lots of unsupported nonsense from the anti-SSD neo-luddites, and seen mainly published-analysis based facts from those who like SSDs. No one has said "you must have an SSD or you are wrong," but many have instead advised, completely correctly, that if you can afford it an SSD is one of the best ways to spend your money for an upgrade or new build.

And it's almost religious-like to call me a "SSD-hater" simply because I disagreed with some of your arguments.

The flaws in your posts on this thread include a complete lack of studies supporting statements you have made, which statements contradicted reputable published analysis. For example, you claimed "SSD reliability is abysmal," which contradicts every published study I have seen on SSD and HDD reliability, and you offered no verifiable evidence to support your claim. So what was your motive to make that statement?

[Heal-To-Full]

For example, you claimed "SSD reliability is abysmal,"

That was certainly an overstatement on my part.

But so was claiming SSD are so reliable they don't even need to be backed up.

 

In practice, across a large number of people I've dealt with, and an even larger on the forums, from 2007 to 2014, about as many people have suffered a SSD failure as a HDD failure - with HDD owners outnumbering SSD owners by 1:10 or more.

Many of these failures resulted from buying crap SSD on JMicron controllers. Many of these failures happened with Sandforce drives. Just as many happened with Intel 320 drives on Intel motherboards. Many of these failures didn't destroy the drive, just the data. Even so, they're still failures.

 

I know massive arrays of high quality SSD perform very reliably in corporate storage, better than HDD even. But that's simply not what I see happening around me, to people I at least remotely know, and that's a large sample, across a wide selection of drives and a wide selection of systems.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

Some of you people are truly amazing. Here I have shown you with a Real World example that in a nearly four hour game session I saved a whopping 1 minute and 37 seconds. That's the amount of difference between using an HDD and an SSD. OF COURSE YMMV! But it won't vary by leaps and bounds. If you have a competent gaming rig that doesn't put its own obstacles in the way of game play--due to lack of RAM or some other issue--then this is a Ball Park estimate of the real difference you will see. And the slowest aspect of my rig is the HDD. Had I sprung for a faster HDD the difference I showed would be less. According to the benchmarks, it is considered a "weak" point in my system, and, BTW, the only one. Everything else is plenty fast.

 

And OF COURSE this is not a "Pure Measurement" of an SSD vs an HDD. It isn't meant to be. Caching, in particular, is DESIGNED, on purpose, to help alleviate speed issues in hardware components, so to gleefully say, "It's the cache!" is willfully missing the point. It doesn't matter in the Real World. A "pure" test is irrelevant.

 

So it boils down to a religious issue. Those who BELIEVE! with all their hearts will continue to insist the speed improvement using an SSD is actually meaningful. But that idea is on a par with "God exists" and "Jesus saves," both of which have a greater chance of being true than this delusion that SSDs actually save you a significant amount of time.

 

Again: Have you considered how much of an impact on your data the variables you either ignored or assumed weren't significant but actually were had? It has nothing to do with belief, you're drawing conclusions from a heavily flawed test. The servers, time of day, internet speed, instance population, all of that has an effect on your load times and you ignored them completely.

 

If you want to make this point go do it with an offline game and then see what your data is. Maybe it'll support what you're saying, I'm not claiming to know nor would it bother me if it did support what you're saying, but until you do that the data doesn't mean anything. Choosing TOR to do this test on was a very poor choice.

[BuriDogshin]

RE:" SSD Reliability is abysmal"

That was certainly an overstatement on my part.

But so was claiming SSD are so reliable they don't even need to be backed up.

Strawman, Who claimed that? I sure as heck never did.

 

Since you seem to now feel obliged to fabricate false positions for the other side, perhaps is it time for you to quit the argument. No one is fooled, and all you are doing is discrediting yourself.