Modern SSD vs. HDD for SWTOR

[Drake_Averrod]

I am going to get a new Desktop Computer soon with both HDD and a SSD (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB) . My question: Is there generally any benefit in putting SWTOR on the SSD?

 

This old thread makes me believe that the benefit is at best small:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8830010

 

In my own experience there seems to be little difference, as my old Laptop with HDD was rarely slower than my Ex-Girlfriends SSD powered SWTOR.

 

However modern SSDs (like mine) are way faster than the older ones. So....to SSD or to HDD....please tell me what to do so I will do what is best.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Drake_Averrod

[ThomasStarWars]

i just a few days ago put swtor on

 

SSD

 

minor difference in the loading

 

(970 evo 1TB)

[Cupelixx]

Yes, there are benefits. How much depends on your system as a whole. But really, there's no reason NOT to put the game on SSD if you have one and enough space available on it.

[ThomasStarWars]

Yes, there are benefits. How much depends on your system as a whole. But really, there's no reason NOT to put the game on SSD if you have one and enough space available on it.

 

totally agree. any game you play most

 

i play 2 mmos, this and another and one SP game

 

worth moving from HDD to my SSD

[JediQuaker]

I am going to get a new Desktop Computer soon with both HDD and a SSD (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB) . My question: Is there generally any benefit in putting SWTOR on the SSD?

The benefit to SWTOR is mostly in load times. But, even then, it only cuts them in about 1/2 because of network back & forth.

If you have the space, it makes sense to put SWTOR on the SSD. You don't have to re-install it to do that. Just copy the folder from the HDD to the SSD. After the copy, navigate to the new SWTOR folder on the SSD and run Launcher from there (not from the old shortcut), and that will "reconnect" the new folders to the Windows system.

 

P.S. My system has no HDD. I use two SSDs. I wouldn't want to be without an SSD.

Edited December 19, 2019 by JediQuaker

[BelorfinSiana]

My SWTOR is on SSD. Loading is instant, except the initial startup. Big difference between this and my old Vista computer.

[TrixxieTriss]

As a system builder and tester, I can say an SSD can make a noticeable difference in both load times and combat. It makes no noticeable difference running around.

In combat it can prevent or tone down some micro stutter or lag affects, but the lower spec PC’s will notice this less.

 

The short answer to wether you should use an SSD is YES you should. They are cheap now and provide an over all improvement to system performance. Which also affects games.

There are so many on the market that they fill all price points. From entry lvl to the highest performance lvl. Even the larger size SSD’s are coming down in price and are around the same price as HDD’s (size on size) we’re before SSD’s were launched.

 

HDD is old tech now. The only reason I would use a HDD now as a consumer, would be for massive storage requirements, ie RAID NAS units.

 

If you can afford it and your motherboard supports it, get an SSD with NVMe M.2. This connects straight onto your motherboard and uses PCIE instead of sata. Which by passes the sata bottle neck that prevents you from getting the true performance an SSD is capable of.

Maybe try out the Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe if your motherboard supports it.

They also look cool and you can eliminate a lot of cable clutter in your PC.

Edited December 20, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[red_onion]

I haven't even run this game on an HDD, but SSDs all around make the computer run so much better that I'm surprised this is even a question in 2019. SSDs have gone so far down in price that it's the only thing I'll use anymore (well, NVME M.2 aside).

 

Unless you get a killer deal on a WD Black, I wouldn't bother with the older tech. It seems like so many of the individual reviews for HDDs have gone down hill over the last few years in regards to reliability.

 

Is an M.2 NVME an option on your board? The ceiling on those for data transfer is much higher than an SSD; I'd even call an SSD somewhat obsolete at this point. Something relatively cheap like a 1TB Intel 660p would work well for this game.

Edited December 20, 2019 by red_onion

[BelorfinSiana]

M.2 NVME IS an SSD. Just a different form factor. It's what I've got. I have Windows 10 and SWTOR on that, and everything else on my HDD.

[OlBuzzard]

Yes, there are benefits. How much depends on your system as a whole. But really, there's no reason NOT to put the game on SSD if you have one and enough space available on it.

 

Pretty much this !! ^^^

 

I upgraded my whole system... and this time I used the SSD... definitely MUCH better !!

[SteveTheCynic]

M.2 NVME IS an SSD. Just a different form factor. It's what I've got. I have Windows 10 and SWTOR on that, and everything else on my HDD.

It's more complicated than that, in fact.

 

There's ordinary SATA in all its flavours, but above all with a cable to a (relatively) large enclosure that contains either an actual disk (HDD) *or* an SSD. The SSD will be faster than an HDD because of the "movement of physical parts" thing.(1)

 

Then there's M.2 that talks by SATA (but without the cable), but the physical size allows only SSDs. It's approximately equivalent to cable-SATA SSD except that the technology is newer so the SSDs are based on newer SSD tech, and that's probably a bit faster, subject to SATA transfer rate limitations.

 

Then there's M.2 that talks by 4-lane PCI express. That's newer than cable-SATA as well, and provides faster transfer rates.

 

(1) That bit is why background processes that scan stuff on the disk cause HDD-based systems to slow down so much.

 

For reference, my main PC is Windows 10 on a Samsung EVO 970 2TB M.2 PCIe SSD. Goes like greased owl [REDACTED].

[TrixxieTriss]

M.2 NVME IS an SSD. Just a different form factor. It's what I've got. I have Windows 10 and SWTOR on that, and everything else on my HDD.

 

No, that’s not entirely correct. A normal HDD or SSD that uses sata connections is limited in the bandwidth available to it.

Are the memory chips of both the M.2 and SATA SSD’s similar. Yes they are and use the same types of memory.

The difference between them is how they are connected to the system. One uses the older SATA connections and one uses the PCIe lanes of the chipset.

These are the same type of lanes a Graphics card uses. Could you imagine connecting a graphics card through a sata type connection? Of course not be cause there isn’t enough bandwidth and there would be a massive performance decrease.

As for SSD’s, ever since they were invented and came to market, they have been limited by the bandwidth that sata has.

Even fast HDD were limited by sata bandwidth. Businesses by pass this bottle neck by using SAS controllers and connections, plus raid setups to speed things up. This is both expensive and impractical for the home user,

Researchers knew the true potential of SSDs was being wasted using sata, which was designed for mechanical hard drives, not SSD.

This lead them to look at other alternatives like SAS and raid cards that use PCI and PCIe connections to provide more bandwidth for business applications. But as I said, this isn’t consumer friendly and they needed another way to use the PCIe lanes for SSDs.

The earliest PCIe SSDs were mounted directly onto a PCIe card and slot like your graphics card. These were bulky and expensive, but they showed huge improvement in bandwidth and speed compared to SSDs connected via sata.

The thing with PCIe is it’s shared via the motherboard chipset directly to the CPU and have limited lanes, that’s why if you want to run 2 graphics cards, you can usually only run one at 16x and the other at 8x or both at 8x (ie they share the lanes).

What intel and other tech companies did was come to an agreement to share some of those lanes directly with the SSDs through their own specific motherboard connection, which freed up PCIe slots on the motherboards.

At first there were a couple of different connections and designs as the industry tried to come to an understanding of which to use (kinda like VHS or Beta or Blu Ray or HDVD). That’s why there are still some older boards that have slightly different M2 connections and can’t use the newer M.2 NVMe SSDs.

 

In layman’s terms.

Imagine sata as a two lane highway at peak hour and you have a Porsche and all you can do is bump along in the traffic and all the super car performance is wasted.

Imagine PCIe (M.2 NVMe) as a super highway with no traffic, a hundred lanes and no speed limit. Now you can drive your Porsche as fast as it can go and get the full potential

 

So as you can see, it’s not as simple as saying it’s a different form factor because it’s not.