LET'S talk about SSDs

[Raydeus]

Seeing current prices are finally starting to become decent enough to consider investing in them I'm getting interested in a couple for my next PC upgrade due to the performance increase they can provide.

However I'm concerned about durability due to write wear and other related issues.

So my question is if anyone here has experience working with SSDs on a gaming rig and could give me some insight about working with them.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

My MacBook Pro has an SSD drive. I really love it too. I do limited gaming on it though, I craft on FFXIV and some Steam. Iits more for work than anything, I do my graphics work on it.

[Raydeus]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

How long have you been using it?

Because asking around I've gotten very mixed opinions on the subject with people going from only 6 months of good performance to people claming more than 3 years (and counting) working with them every day.

I want a couple of disks that can keep up with every day gaming use for at the very least 2 years but I'm lost when it comes to decay.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Hmm...the laptop is at LEAST 1+ years old, maybe closer to 2. Still going strong and still love it. I guess I'm in the long term category then. It's had plenty of use too since I use it daily.

[Raydeus]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Cool.

Do you happen to know which brand is the SSD you are using by any chance?

[TheGrandMom]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Oh hell, I have no idea but if I can figure it out I'll let you know. Right now I'm upstairs and the MacBook is downstairs in my briefcase and I'm too lazy to go and dig it out. lol

[Raydeus]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Heheh, there's no rush, I'm planning on upgrading till early next year since all the games I want to play have been moved to 2011 anyway.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

(Had to flip through several notebooks of shit I jotted down to remember but I finally found this!) Oh and Ray, I may be purchasing one of these drives in the near future:

Kingston SNV425-S2 64GB

Newegg.com - Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2/64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

and

OCZ Onyx 32/64GB drives

Newegg.com - OCZ Onyx Series OCZSSD2-1ONX64G 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Both are a decent size (for SSD) and a decent price. I'm starting to replace some of my older HD's. I've done some research and while they aren't the fastest SSD drives out there, they do amazingly well for their price range.

[Raydeus]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Nice.

For my update I'm thinking about getting a 256Gb SSD for the C stuff (system, OS, programs) and a 32-64Gb for D (Virtual memory, second EVE client, temp files etc.) with at least 200mb/s write and rewrite speeds.

But it really depends on how much lifetime I can get from them, which means I will probably go safe and buy either Corsair or Kingston even if they aren't the fastest. <_<

For instance ADATA are 25% faster than the average while being cheaper, and are supposed to last a long time, but are reported to have several issues as a boot unit.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Ya the large SSD's are still too rich for my blood. I'll stick to the 100gb range for now for our secondary computers. When it comes to my personal desk top then all bets are off. I have a few TBs in mine right now so thats gonna be expensive to replace.

[Raydeus]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Oh ya, there's no way I'd use a SSD for my documents right now.

I'm not willing to spend 4000+ bucks on a 4TB SSD. <_<;

Sad part is since most of those files are static it would last for a very very long time. orz

But maybe in 5 years or so.

[DakAttack]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

How does this make gaming better? Speeds up loading times, right?

[Raydeus]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

Exactly, close to no loading times and zero pop up for games.

I've seen it at work and it's awesome, and that's not even counting how it makes the OS, antivirus, etc. pretty much non existant. Something you certainly notice using a regular HDD no matter how good your PC is due to the data transfer bottleneck.




PS > This SNES loading times VS Playstation loading times.

This is the part where you say: "What SNES loading times? "
And then I say: "Exactly. "

[ShepardG]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

How does this make gaming better? Speeds up loading times, right?

pretty much this:

The problem early on, and i might be dumbing this down a bunch or completely wrong, but they used to have a problem after having been wrote too and erased a bunch.

The onboard 'chips' that controlled where the data was stored would work in a pattern like this:
(left to right, left is the start)

00000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000

So say 0's are the current info stored on the drive well then you delete a video that you had or a game, you get:

00000000000000000000000xxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxx00000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000

So a week later you delete a bunch of old games you don't play:

00000000000000000000000xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx0000000000-----------
------------------------------------------
------------------------000000000000

Then Starcraft II comes out, and it decides to write some of it here, and some of it there:

0000000000000000000000xxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx000000000SSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSS----------------000000000000

And now you've reached that point where you want to install FFXIV (god why i don't fucking know, because it's horrible) so you install it and:

000000000000000000000xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSFFFFFFFFFF0000000000000
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

etc...

So basically, it would get "fragmented" and after awhile it would take the drive longer to find the data it needed than if it were on a spining platter, because it would only read/write in one direction.

This was how I understood it, and from what i've seen recently, the controllers on some of the newer drives will actually "clean up" afterthemselves, when it comes to writing/deleting new data.

Those two that TGM suggested should be on point, OCZ usually dosen't put out inferior chips/storage devices (memory,usb,SSD's)

[Aeni]

Re: LET'S talk about SSDs

So my question is if anyone here has experience working with SSDs on a gaming rig and could give me some insight about working with them.

I haven't personally had experiences with this, but here are some experiences from a friend and then another experience posted by one of the reporters over at Anandtech.

-Load times for WoW was cut in 1/2 and there were no delays with the listings on AH displaying despite congestion (My friend)

-Load time for FFXIV got cut by a whopping 75% with an SSD drive (Reporter at Anandtech)

So if you're noticing performance issues with your rig with regards to data loading, then CPU or GPU isn't going to help you with that. SSD is the way to go but unfortunately does not store very much (at least right now) and price-to-storage is very expensive. I would probably only install your OS and then one or two often used programs on the SSD ... remember, you need to have some space left on it for page-file for the OS ... and also updates and your My Documents folder and temporary storage for other things. So, if you have FFXIV installed and it currently occupies around 6gb now? 8gb? You need to remember that you'll need double that for at least the next 2-3 years for (a) updates and (b) expansions.