HDD vs. SSD Real World Gaming Performance @ [H]

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gamerk2 said:
*sigh*

Everything done here was WRONG.

Remember first, that most games aggressively pre-load most of the data they need at any point in time, so for most situations, you won't have a major impact once a level is loaded. At that point, HDD impact is already minimal. However, the way this was tested is WRONG.

*) How do HDD's affect gameplay performance? When data needs to be read off them.
*) When does data get read of HDD? When Paging occurs.
*) When does paging occur? When you run out of free RAM.
*) How much RAM was used in the test system? 16GB.

Reduce to, say, 4GB of RAM, and bench a game that actually uses more then 2GB of RAM [This requires it be compiled as Large Address Aware, otherwise the Win32 2GB restriction on Address Space usage remains in effect], and you'll get a different result set then what you see here, as reading from the HDD will occur more often.
Click to expand...

Welcome to [H]. No one has 4GB on their gaming systems here.
 
gamerk2 said:
*sigh*

Everything done here was WRONG.

Remember first, that most games aggressively pre-load most of the data they need at any point in time, so for most situations, you won't have a major impact once a level is loaded. At that point, HDD impact is already minimal. However, the way this was tested is WRONG.

*) How do HDD's affect gameplay performance? When data needs to be read off them.
*) When does data get read of HDD? When Paging occurs.
*) When does paging occur? When you run out of free RAM.
*) How much RAM was used in the test system? 16GB.

Reduce to, say, 4GB of RAM, and bench a game that actually uses more then 2GB of RAM [This requires it be compiled as Large Address Aware, otherwise the Win32 2GB restriction on Address Space usage remains in effect], and you'll get a different result set then what you see here, as reading from the HDD will occur more often.
Click to expand...

In that case: buy more ram and not an SSD ;-)
 
As a World of Warcraft player, I can say that using an SSD makes a very significant difference.

Back in 2005 I switched from playing WoW on 2x 7200rpm SATA drives in Raid0 to 2x 36G 10,000rpm raptors and the difference was significant. A year later in 2006 or so I upgraded again from the 2x Raptors to 2x 15,000rpm SCSI drives and the difference was noticeable yet again. A few years later when I finally upgraded to an SSD, it was the biggest upgrade of them all. World of Warcraft simply LOVES fast hard drives.

It's not that it improves FPS, but rather, the reduction in loading times is very significant. World of Warcraft is constantly loading things on the fly as you travel around the world and a slow hard drive means hitching, stuttering, and things popping up all around you seconds after they should have.
 
You guys should really consider testing other games besides first person shooters, which are traditionally GPU limited and graphically intensive. I play MMO games (SW:TOR) a lot and I can attest to the SIGNIFICANT improvement in fps and reduction in stuttering that an SSD provided.

I understand that Hardocp's methodology takes time and they can only test so many games, but SSD performance in Arma3 is not relevant to me at all. I was surprised that not even something like Civ5 or Shogun2 was included. At least that would've provided some variety in genres.
 
Meh...I use SSD to play MP games where I loaf the map and are ready to go uber fast.

Never thought it would help frame rate at all, and you proved it.
 
khaki said:
You guys should really consider testing other games besides first person shooters, which are traditionally GPU limited and graphically intensive. I play MMO games (SW:TOR) a lot and I can attest to the SIGNIFICANT improvement in fps and reduction in stuttering that an SSD provided.

I understand that Hardocp's methodology takes time and they can only test so many games, but SSD performance in Arma3 is not relevant to me at all. I was surprised that not even something like Civ5 or Shogun2 was included. At least that would've provided some variety in genres.
Click to expand...
So your SSD made more FPS? Weird!

Or your load times went down so much, it seems like it?
 
technogiant said:
So the expresscache has the ability to specify files and folders via command line as well as general caching of frequently used stuff......that sound just like what I want.

Does Intel SRT also have the ability to specify individual files/folders for preload?

Is expresscache purchaseable stand alone software or bundles with specific ssd's?
Click to expand...

I think Express Cache is just bundled with SSD's. Mine was part of the Lenovo downloads for my work laptop, though I just purchased the SSD myself since my laptop was amazingly slow. Yes, when you specifiy files/folders it just forces that data in to the cache, otherwise it jut puts the data you access most in there.

I haven't found a way to specify files and folders with Intel's SRT setup. Though it works surprisingly well. I don't think it's caught on well in the enthusiast spheres because it doesn't benchmark well, for instance if I do a read test on my spinning disk with SRT on and off it's pretty much the exact same. The actually using of my machine though is like night and day if I just turn off SRT, it feels like I downgraded to a 486 or something having to wait around for everything. I don't even think SRT has a way to query the cach like the express cache info I pasted in before, it just kind of sits there and works in the background withe more of a 'set it and forget it' style.
 
gamerk2 said:
*sigh*

Everything done here was WRONG.

Remember first, that most games aggressively pre-load most of the data they need at any point in time, so for most situations, you won't have a major impact once a level is loaded. At that point, HDD impact is already minimal. However, the way this was tested is WRONG.

*) How do HDD's affect gameplay performance? When data needs to be read off them.
*) When does data get read of HDD? When Paging occurs.
*) When does paging occur? When you run out of free RAM.
*) How much RAM was used in the test system? 16GB.

Reduce to, say, 4GB of RAM, and bench a game that actually uses more then 2GB of RAM [This requires it be compiled as Large Address Aware, otherwise the Win32 2GB restriction on Address Space usage remains in effect], and you'll get a different result set then what you see here, as reading from the HDD will occur more often.
Click to expand...

If I had 4GB of RAM, I would certainly upgrade my RAM before I upgraded from an HDD to an SSD. I think that's just common sense, upgrade your RAM first if you are under 8GB, that will show the biggest advantage.
 
I would like to see what the numbers show when using lower amounts of ram. Like 4 and 8GB? Paging file calls would effect framerates potentially. That being said the loading speeds are all that change with SSD vs HDD. Kind of like when some of us were using RAID 0 arrays vs standard HDD's.
 
kreno said:
I would like to see what the numbers show when using lower amounts of ram. Like 4 and 8GB? Paging file calls would effect framerates potentially. That being said the loading speeds are all that change with SSD vs HDD. Kind of like when some of us were using RAID 0 arrays vs standard HDD's.
Click to expand...

That would be artificially gimping a system component just to force a result though.

I think what is more telling is when nothing is holding the HDD and SSD back, and then seeing inherently which is faster.
 
All criticism understood. We will not be addressing this issue again. Thanks for your input.
 
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