[Hardware Question] SSD just for the OS?

[csThor]

It's an Enermax PSU and already 4 years old. I'll take the PC to the shop in a few minutes and then we'll see ...

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by csThor

It's an Enermax PSU and already 4 years old. I'll take the PC to the shop in a few minutes and then we'll see ...

I have an Enermax PSU as well, albeit mine is a bit older - 6-7 years. It was the best thing money could buy at the time. I had some (fan started making too much nose) problems with mine but it is still working properly. The point is, as time passes by - electrolytes in PSU-s go. And thus the total output power goes down. Which might just be the case with your PSU.

[klem]

Thanks for the replies guys and csThor I hope it's ok to continue using your thread. It may help others too.
Just to get my thoughts in order and I hope I don't offend anyone of I have misundertood....

A. HDD or SSD?

The "Negatives"
1. Cost
2. Drive Space (but I have plenty of HDD space for general purpose use)
3. "Not much faster than a Mechanical HDD in gameplay" if I understand correctly. I understand Madfish's comments about "In the real world no game loads 3TB data after it's started. It'll load in smaller chunks". But then Feuerfalke says "Especially for gaming it's random read access and here is, where the SSD can really triumph, because it simply has no physical disc to turn and no arm to swing. As a result the most important thing for loading multiple files especially for gaming is the reaction time. etc". Ermmm.......


The "Positives"
Fast loading:
I would sacrifice Windows Boot time for better gaming response (FSX, IL-2, SoW). Boot time is a one-off. For me it's all about smoother gameplay.
I know an SSD will not run the game much 'faster', that is mainly down to the CPU/memory/GPU/OS etc but I would have assumed it would help load new IL-2 maps/missions faster and remove some of those scenery update/player'joining' hesitations due to faster read speed of scenery data, a/c data etc. No?

Longer life/Reliablity
Takes a fraction of the Power of an HDD
Low (no) noise level (and there's not much demand of the HDDs while flying) although the pesky fans make most noise.

The "Uncertaintives"
The anandtech gaming load times vary from 1 second (Spore) to 21 seconds (Crysis) and minimum gaming FPS (although in Crysis) benefits from the SSD while average FPS shows marginal improvement. (Is Spore a serious benchmark?) And then this: http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...ence_Rev_3.pdf suggests only a 5-6% improvement in loading and FPS and "Although not quantifiable, there was a definite feeling of smoothness while running the system with the SSD."

Conclusion:
Given my experience with HDD failures and the small but definite improvements the SSD gives it seems right to go for a gaming SSD as that is my main concern. I'm not a "must load it now!" person when it comes to other applications and in any case the new rig will be much faster than anything else I have had before. If the SSD runs out of space I'll just have to relegate whichever sim is least used to a HDD or buy another SSD.

B. Socket 1336 seems to be my choice as futureproofing within a budget is one major criteria. I can't wait for the P67's early next year and overclocking is likely to become an issue in 3-4 years time. I'm sure I'll be able to overclock beyond an i7 960 so I won't double the CPU cost on one now. Also the money saved on an SSD won't get me from a 5870 to a 5970 GPU.

Any major opinions against?

Thanks again guys,

klem

[Madfish]

@klem - maybe you should open a seperate thread

Anyways, games won't run smoother because they're on an SSD. Games also don't depend solely on their game folders content. The keyword here is IOPS. In- and Output operations. If you have nothing else than the game loading a regular mechanical disc is hardly slower than an SSD. Where the SSD really kicks in if the OS is loading components, messes with the pagefile etc. while the game's loading.

The biggest boost in perfomance will come from an OS on SSD. Games don't profit close as much as the OS from SSD storage.
Even Samsung testified that the average gain of LOAD TIME decrease is about 5% in fact it's 4,4 compared to a 10k mechanical disk. However, they didn't write anything about a ~5% FPS increase. Yes, if the game loads textures in the background you can gain a minimal performance increase but NO where near to 5%. Maybe 1% max. Usually it's an FPS or 2. But even that would be rubbish compared to the FPS increase you could gain by buying a better / 2nd GPU for that money spent. You could easily gain 30% or more by investing that money into a multigpu or high end gpu solution.

Let me explain it differently. If you have the OS on a seperate drive and the game loads from a mechanical drive that load time WILL be fast. However, if you load the game, load a new level and maybe record a full size FRAPS video to the same drive then things will get messy. That's something you could improve with an SSD but then again, do you know the size of 1080 fraps movies? ;P you'd fill up your SSD within 10 minutes.

So yeah, get an SSD big enough for the OS or big enough for the OS and games or just keep the money as it really won't affect game performance at all. There are better ways to spend money than an SSD for games.

[csThor]

Oh my ... Just as I expected the PSU is too weak for the combo of CPU and GFX card. The GTX 480 alone draws 42 Ampere under full load and the old PSU could only supply 36 Ampere. At least nothing bad ... can be solved by judicious application of money.

[klem]

Thanks Madfish, I think I understand the bigger OS picture now and it's involvement in the game loading/running.

I am still going to get that 64Gb SSD, well you just have to jump in somewhere with the new stuff don't you

I'm going to load Win7 on it and transfer my Flight HDD to the new rig and see how it runs. After a while I'll move IL-2 and/or FSX to the SSD and see if there's any difference.

btw that report I posted a link for said:
Conclusions
Gamers want the game to load instantly and play at maximum possible frames per second (FPS) with all features turned on. Using that as our measurement objective we found:
• 4.4% improvement in average game loading time was obtained.
• 6.4% improvement in frames per second was measured.
• 33.5% improvement on one test and 58.3% on another was realized in system benchmarks.
Using a solid state drive will give the gamer the extra edge he or she is seeking.

The games that were used in the testing were:
• Call fo Duty 4
• Crysis
• FarCry 2
• Left4DEad
• Stalker Clear Sky

I'm not saying they're right, and it's not a great improvement, but I'll find out.

Be interesting to see what csThor makes of it too.

Speaking of whom - thanks for the thread csThor, it gave me a lot of useful info