List of games that truly benefit from SSD

[Disposed]

Is there a list around somewhere? I know most games outside of load time theres no real benefit but some can be drastically improved with an SSD.

 

[kalston]

MMORPGs. Maybe not all of them though.

 

[gjs278]

Heroes of Newerth

on an HD, I can definitely tell it is loading textures as they happen in game. the SSD will load the textures immediately, saving you the potential delay.

 

[Insula Gilliganis]

As already mentioned, any game you feel has lots of maps and textures might benefit from using an SSD.. but have read it probably won't help as much as you think although a second saved here, a second saved there is better than none saved. It also might help you get into servers faster after map changes and with games which have large landscapes.

 

[adi]

As already mentioned, any game you feel has lots of maps and textures might benefit from using an SSD.. but have read it probably won't help as much as you think although a second saved here, a second saved there is better than none saved. It also might help you get into servers faster after map changes and with games which have large landscapes.

Echoing this. FPS map changes I can sometimes be the only one spawned for first spawn timer, and entering new areas in MMORPG's generally I'm moving 3-5 seconds before others.

Sidenote, running WoW back in the day in linux under wine, installed on XFS filesystem, it was about 40-50% faster loading areas than windows on the same hardware.

 

[Computurd]

Solid-State Drive (SSD) Impacts on the Run-Time Performance of A-List Games

here is an intel rundown of performance with games and SSDs. you can listen to the presentation, very very informative. here is a few of the slides that you will see in the presentation.
SSDs make a HUGE difference in all games.
it is stuttering hitching and lagging that truly affect the performance. SSDs negate this.
There is so much hitching on an HDD that they measured the time that it took a character to run from Point A on a map, to Point B.
they ran the test then on an SSD, and were actually able to record a difference in the time it took the character to traverse the map. This is a huge testament to the speed making a direct performance impact.
here are a few slides you will see in the presentation.

 

[Disposed]

Heroes of Newerth

on an HD, I can definitely tell it is loading textures as they happen in game. the SSD will load the textures immediately, saving you the potential delay.

I may be wrong but i dont think HoN loads any textures from HDD. Im pretty sure its all loaded into ram when you load the map. Like most FPS games.

 

[Red Falcon]

Nice comparison charts.

 

[Godmachine]

Most games only benefit slightly from it. I really wouldn't worry about it. If you want that couple of seconds of advantage when loading in a game during MP than grab an SSD and enjoy. But if you want any kind of reasonable storage you'll have to pay big time.

MMO's as its been said benefit the best. WoW benefits GREATLY from an SSD and in fact I wouldn't dare play it without as it can ruin the experience during heavy battles. If I was a competitive gamer like I use to be ages ago I would without question only play games off an SSD. Anything that even gives a slight advantage can only add to your ability even if its only fractional during most circumstances.

As a side note I don't experience the "hitching" issues the graphs seem to point out on a regular mechanical drive. I've only ever noticed slight loading time drops , but most games didn't feel any "smoother" simply because I was using an SSD.

 

[Deleted member 222586]

I'm not so sure about the differences. I started with a small Intel X-25M G2, in which I only had a bunch of games (due to its limited size, 80GB) and I at that time I can't tell with confidence that I saw any gameplay improvements...

...now, though, I'm running on a C300 128GB raid 0 (2 x 128GB), and I deffinitely don't see those "huge" improvements over HDD. Faster load times? Check. Faster boot times? Check. Better gameplay? Nope.

 

[Red Falcon]

Perhaps better gameplay isn't the correct term.
Better responsiveness might work a bit better imo.

 

[adi]

Those charts are a little silly. Oh no, my hard drive went to 75% utilization for 2 milliseconds at a time (during a 75 millisecond test). Oh no, the number of pixels changed in the past 200 milliseconds is low.

200 milliseconds is a fast blink. If you don't blink during gaming, then yes, a SSD will be the next logical step.

And the last graph, which most people probably thought was timed in seconds, actually is two different graphs with two different values (Cumulative I/O vs 'Trace time'). The fact that they kind of line up with the SSD graph looking better is called marketing. Who cares if the graphs are based on completely different measurements.

 

[gjs278]

I may be wrong but i dont think HoN loads any textures from HDD. Im pretty sure its all loaded into ram when you load the map. Like most FPS games.

it does not load every texture into ram. it loads a lot, but not everything.

 

[kalston]

I've always been one of the (and often the) first to load maps on all the games I play, be it MMOs or FPSes, never having a SSD. I did try to put my games on a RAMdisk and on a SSD, but it was worthless for all of them save some MMOs that I don't really care about because there's a timer that forces you to wait for the others.

I don't upgrade my whole rig of the time, but I always had a very beefy CPU and good RAM compared to what the average people had (I also always had a dedicated HDD for my games and my games only). For example I got a 8400 soon after it came out and got it overclocked to 4ghz, while now I have a i5 2500k @4.6ghz.
From my personal experience the CPU makes much more difference in loading times than upgrading the HDD or getting a SSD.

Ever since I got my i5 (kept the same HDDs and partitions), some games load ridiculously faster than before. On top of my head, source engine games & Dawn of War 2 loading times were at least cut in half. Used to load at the same speed as my friends, but now I actually have to wait for them. The RAM might matter as well, but I'm not sure it's very significant.

Edit: and about the actual in game performance, well I tried running some poorly optimized games off an SSD and still encountered freezes/stuttering. Hardly less than on my HDDs (I tried a Velociraptor too and could tell the difference but it was minuscule and not worth putting up with the noise in my case). And even on the Unreal Engine, for example, the hiccups most people get are not even related to the performance of the HDD but to the video drivers/game coding.

 

[Disposed]

it does not load every texture into ram. it loads a lot, but not everything.

What's not being loaded into ram? I ask because I already tried hon on the sad and outside loaf time there was no difference at all.

 

[Trepidati0n]

What's not being loaded into ram? I ask because I already tried hon on the sad and outside loaf time there was no difference at all.

Most modern games use a predictive method to detemrine what textures need and do not need to be in VRAM. Therefore, if they think you won't be using sometihng in the next couple of seconds, they might drop it and the same goes for adding. Some games are better at this than others. However, if they can get it all into VRAM, they will.

 

[Disposed]

Most modern games use a predictive method to detemrine what textures need and do not need to be in VRAM. Therefore, if they think you won't be using sometihng in the next couple of seconds, they might drop it and the same goes for adding. Some games are better at this than others. However, if they can get it all into VRAM, they will.

On a small map with only 10 players i cant imagine why everything could not be loaded into Ram.

 

[Computurd]

There are actually "filler" textures and whatnot loaded into your ram. IF the game does not recieve the data fast enough, they use this filler texture/shader to construct the image.
This is a very very common method of coding games. they talk about it at length in the presentation.
So..if you hav3e faster storage, you actually will get better image quality, as you will literally be seeing what you are supposed to be seeing, and not filler material.
The guy who discusses this technique is a independent third party game developer.
They have also designed a tool that will detect if you are using an SSD, then change how the game requests data accordingly. They also discuss this, and he even tells the audience if they are interested in the technique, he would be happy to share info.

So...exciting things!

 

[munkle]

MMORPGs. Maybe not all of them though.

Wow benefits greatly from a ssd.

But my expierence with SC2 was it improves nothing pretty much.

WC3 loads dota super fast on a ssd as well.

 

[jeremyshaw]

For Eve online, I think someone once found a correlation to drive write/read speed and the spawns of something to harvest, on [H]. Said he was going to actually put it in a ramdisk to exploit this fact.

 

[Aesma]

I heard that it helps greatly for FSX, especially if you have dozens of gig of add-ons, like most enthusiasts do.

 

[Computurd]

any type of racing game you are actually going to get better image quality. Instead of getting tons of filler textures as you whip around corners, past stands, etc etc, you will get the real deal.

Games are coded to provide a crutch to the HDD.

 

[Argentum]

I heard that it helps greatly for FSX, especially if you have dozens of gig of add-ons, like most enthusiasts do.

Yeah, it primarily helps for scenery- especially photoscenery- where FSX just thrashes the HDD as you're flying along. This is definitely a version of the heavy texture loading scenario.