Best gaming hdd set up?

H

hdgamer

Gawd
Joined
Sep 28, 2009
Messages
816
I've been playing with the idea of getting another SSD for games. Or just going the cheap budget route and getting a newer WD Black FZEX or Velociraptor drive to store games on. SSDs are still pretty expensive and don't know if it's worth it yet. I do know of a few games that benefit greatly from ssd's like BF4, SWTOR, etc...

Has anyone had any experience upgrading to a FZEX Black, velociraptor and ssd's for games?
 
You can get the slowest SSD and it will still be faster then the other two.

You can buy 240gb SSD's for less then $150, possibly even lower through newegg deals and such.
 
Still expensive??

Man I was buying 120 ssd's when they were over 300 bucks lol. Now you can get them for 120.

Samsung Evo 240 for 140 bucks. I mean if that's expensive then I dont know what else to say.

You dont need all your games installed at once.
 
I use both, wd black for seldom played games and a 256gb for my current games like bf4.
Steam makes it easier to split libraries across multiple drives now, but not sure if origin does, haven't tried it.
 
is there any benchmarks for loading times on games? I have two computers I'm upgrading so yes it's very expensive still. If it was just one I'd probably grab a 500 gig Samsung evo . And one of my computers is community computer with that's also an htpc. Multiple users, which means lots of games installed. ;)
 
No benchmarks, but I will say Everquest load time is now 1/2 on a Samsung 840 EVO vs WB Green 640.

Zoning times are cut in half or less as well.

Don't notice any FPS or smoothness improvements at all tho, so I can't comment on drive access while actually raiding or grouping.
 
The western digital green is kind of hard to compare against since it's a slower power efficient drive. The Black and Velociratpors are more performance based. But thanks for the feedback!!!
 
hdgamer said:
The western digital green is kind of hard to compare against since it's a slower power efficient drive. The Black and Velociratpors are more performance based. But thanks for the feedback!!!
Click to expand...

I switched from a Raptor to a Crucial M4 128GB SSD. The boot times were faster, load times faster, the OS overall felt more responsive just doing things like opening a web browser or Word.

I can honestly tell you that the transition from HDD to SSD is one of the more transformative upgrades I've experienced in computing since I switched from Dial-up to DSL back around 2002.

Obviously all of the above is my opinion, if you were willing to shell out for a Raptor back in the day over a regular HDD this is an even easier upgrade to justify vs the Raptor.
 
devman said:
I switched from a Raptor to a Crucial M4 128GB SSD. The boot times were faster, load times faster, the OS overall felt more responsive just doing things like opening a web browser or Word.

I can honestly tell you that the transition from HDD to SSD is one of the more transformative upgrades I've experienced in computing since I switched from Dial-up to DSL back around 2002.

Obviously all of the above is my opinion, if you were willing to shell out for a Raptor back in the day over a regular HDD this is an even easier upgrade to justify vs the Raptor.
Click to expand...

Based on his post, he already has an SSD as the primary drive. He's asking what kind of drive to store just primarily games on.

In most games, I don't think it makes a difference. Especially multiplayer games like League of Legends, where you're limited by the lowest common denominator (the one with the 5400 RPM laptop drive). There are a few games that do make a difference (large maps), but those he can just throw on the SSD primary drive.
 
MrAgmoore said:
If he already has an SSD as a primary and is thinking of a Raptor, that just seems like a step backwards. I don't know how the newer SATA 6 raptors compare to SSDs. I noticed that high end retailers are still selling the older SATA 3 drives, so if you get a Raptor, get the SATA 6 ones.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=20

Comparison:

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=759
Click to expand...

He's not replacing the primary drive. He's supplementing it, and he's wondering if getting an SSD would net any benefits over a traditional drive for gaming.

Yes, there will be some benefits, mostly found in games with lots of places where the map has to load, or games with long loading times. Other than that, differences are minimal. I would probably suggest going with a Western Digital Black or other 7200 RPM drive if most of the games fall into the latter criteria.
 
Yes I understand that. It depends on whether he plays the MMOs or FPS games like he mentioned. It depends on how much value he places on that kind of thing ( which is highly subjective ). It depends on the requirements of next gen gaming like Star Citizen.

Star Citizen will push 4k gaming into GTX 880 territory and Chris Roberts mentioned SSDs as a maybe. Western Digital failing to come out with hybrid drives or SSDs is not very visionary.

Right now I have a dual boot system:

Win XP 32 bit on a WD Sata 3 Raptor 300 GB.
Win 7 64 Pro on a Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB SSD ( Sata 6 but crippled to Sata 3 because the motherboard shares the Sata 6 with the PCI-e ).

If he considers SSDs "still too expensive" then he has already made his decision. Since he has an SSD as a primary, why even bother asking about SSD performance in gaming?

Personally, I plan on building a new rig for Star Citizen, based around PCI-e 3.0 & pushing Sata 6 on the new motherboard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top