SSD vs HDD for gaming. Video.

Hey.

I know thats nothing new but i was pretty amazed when i saw it in action.
This current video shows lineage II (which i never even played) but i have same "hdd lag" in wow and well, a lot of other games i play (granted my video card should be ok for those).

Difference is DRAMATIC.
TLDR: SSD is best money investment in your notebook. Even low capacity one.

YouTube - Lineage II G+ Test (HDD vs SSD)

p.s. i failed to insert youtube video in the post. How can you do it?

 

Games are extremely varied in how they respond to SSD's some get almost no benefit at all in loading speed.

Others like most multiplayer games it matters not if it loads infinitely faster if you still have to wait for the other team to spawn or load or your team mates.

Considering the HUGE size games consume and the cost of SSD I say for gaming purposes SSD is not a good idea at all. I went from having 20 games installed that I could play at any time to now choosing 4 games on my 120GB SSD because there simply is not space to keep all my games installed at once.

Of those games Portal 2, it loads a bit faster. Starcraft II it loads a bit faster.

Both however I wait on everybody to load when playing multiplayer.

Battlefield Bad Company 2, loads the same speed as my HDD did (seems very GPU & Driver related)

Super Meat Boy, loads just as fast as the HDD did.

Also honestly that video looks rigged, must be a painfully slow HDD with horrible fragmentation. I question if they even used the same computer, one very well could have more RAM and a better GPU and that alone is the huge impact.

 

Thats exactly the same experience that i get in WoW on my new 7200rpm hdd.
First 5 minutes if you spawn in big city is basically unplayable. Then every time you get to another city you have to wait and sometimes even with a lot of people around you "hdd lag" is consistent and not going anywhere while fps meter shows me 80+

For games where you dont need to load anything like sc2 — sure there is no need in ssd. Also i am not suggesting to switch hdd with ssd (its still too expensive), but 2nd ssd drive is a good option.

Basic rule i guess — if your game is 20gb+ you will benefit from SSD.
If its an online game even more so. My WoW folder is 38gb+. My sc2 folder is 10gb.

 

I had that experience in WoW also until I got a better video card with more memory, more system RAM actually helps a lot too.

So your GPU & RAM can not hold all the texture data needed and thus its having to read it in real time off the HDD instead of having it stored in VRAM.

SSD is like compensating for a weak GPU in that situation not really fixing it. A better gpu will fix the lag & give you better gaming performance.


I suppose the very fist time if your hit with everything at once and none of it is in RAM yet it could be a problem, but that should only happen one time per gameplay session and thats if the game is not smart enough to have been streaming data to the RAM beforehand.

I can definitely say I have no lag in WoW even in major towns with a AMD 5870 and 4GB RAM. I did have lag when my old system only had 2GB ram and it was cut down super significantly when I upgraded to 4GB ram and eliminated when I got the 5870.

P.S. Be sure to go into your virus scan program and flag WoW as OK so it wont scan those files when they load, that can be the cause of your problem all by itself.

 

Well you can see my laptop in my sig — sandy bridge quad core, 8gb ram, 6750m with 1GB GDDR5. Should i have any issues on high (not very high or ultra) settings? I believe not.

There numerous reports of said LA II, WoW, AIon where people started to get acceptable performance on castle sieges when they switched to SSD.

 

Its a mac with a mid ranged card - its full of problems

 

In games like WoW with persistent loading textures, an SSD would help. More vRAM and a faster video card would also help matters, but that's not much of an option for you.

But as ViciousXUSMC points out, SSD's are a premium cost, and only benefit a few games. If you only play a couple games and those that benefit from it, go for it.

Otherwise 99% of games out there receive little real benefit.

 

Well going from very high settings to ultra in most games is also not a huge difference by any means and some people consider investing extra $200-500 to play on ultra.

Not to mention that ssd is single most noticeable upgrade for OS as well

Have you seen the video though? — its basically going from unplayable to perfect.

 

So your saying for 99% of the people in the world the game is unplayable?

I guarantee less than 1% of the people that play that game have SSD and I highly doubt they would produce a game that plays like that on a normal system.

I still feel that video is showing a worst case scenario due to one factor or many that the composer setup on purpose to exaggerate his point, or he has no idea how to use a computer and let it fall into a worse case scenario.

 

I've seen the video and own an SSD in my desktop and laptop and have tried dozens of newer game titles and have received little to no benefit, so games go on the HDD and Windows and apps go on the SSD. I can understand how a game like WoW might benefit. I know Microsoft Flight Simulator X does benefit as well since it's constantly loading textures. But having a fast GPU and lots of texture memory helps as well. In the video it's almost like they ran it with 1GB system RAM, 512MB video card, and a slow 5400RPM fragmented hard drive vs. 4GB RAM, 1GB video card, and an SSD or heck even short stroked 7200RPM HDD. Heck a fast 7200RPM desktop drive wouldn't cause that kind of stutter.

No info on specs either. Not sure what you are trying to get at though? If you want an SSD go right ahead, we're not stopping you. Vicious and I both own SSD's, are avid gamers, and have decently powerful laptops and desktops, so we have a little experience in this matter.

Not sure where you get that from. Size of intstall has nothing to do with it. All depends on whether it's persistent loading textures (which there are few games that do that) and your other system specs primarily GPU and amount of vRAM.

 

Well the SSD only helps in loading speeds I believe. I played Modern Warfare 2 (that's probably the only game my laptop could handle >_>) and I am actually patient enough to wait for each campaign/special op mission to load. My desktop (all in one) with a 2720qm and a GT 540M w/ a 7200rpm drive loaded the missions at half the speed, I had to press the windows key to do something to quit as I was not patient enough.

 

Yes, missions will load faster in many cases, but it usually doesn't matter because you either have to wait for everyone else to load or the host/server to give it a go. Bad Company 2 doesn't matter, that's based entirely on your system RAM and GPU/vRAM.

If it's a single player game, then doesn't matter to me if I have to wait ten extra seconds to start the next level.

 

I used to load BFBC2 faster than HT when he had his SSD and I had my HDD just because of the GPU and new drivers.

Vice Versa, there was a point in time where there was a loading bug for DX10 and it would take forever to load until new drivers sorted it out.

 

SSD certainly helped in games like ARMA 2 and OA that make frequent reads and writes to the HD. I thought it was night and day in my opinion. Other games I have noticed work well with SDD such as metro2033. Again I think it all depends on the game, how it is written, where cache and textures are stored, etc...

The bottom line is that SSD certainly doesn't HURT your system performance. If you gonna spend the money for a high end CPU and GPU you might as well compliment it with SSD.

Just my .02

StevenX

 

Aye. I wouldn't get an SSD for gaming improvements. I would get an SSD for overall performance improvement, booting the OS faster, web browsers, etc.

 

but when getting that, the gaming improvements are a nice to have, too.

i like it on crysis, where the far-distance textures get loaded in more quickly, which is quite noticeable. i like it in portal to not have to wait much between the levels (again, noticeable it got when playing multiplayer and suddenly having to wait much more between the levels).

but yes: one gets the ssd for 'everything', not per se for gaming. for gaming alone, it's not really worth it except one has a huge amount of money (i remember the guy who put it into a ps3 for faster game loading.. which is besides a huge money waste a performance waste, too (ps3 is sata1, not? so you get instead of a bit more than 100MB/s up to 150MB/s.. not that big of a gain)

 

SSD = faster load time and faster dynamically loaded images. Not everything is going to take advantage of that.

 

Would it be wrong to assume a game like Shogun 2 or other games in the Total War series would benefit with SSDs? Having to switch between the campaign map and battle maps should in theory be faster with an SSD, although not by a magnitude.

Otherwise agree with everything said so far. Upgrade the GPU and CPU first before thinking about SSDs for improved gaming performance.

 

Well, for a notebook user there is really not much opportunity to upgrade you know And while SSD are still expensive it really doesnt hurt to replace optical drive with some low capacity SSD that will get system installed on it + few most used applications / games.

As for CPU upgrade btw — i upgraded from 2.4 core 2 duo notebook like one month ago and i cant recall its having CPU used more then 70-80% under heavy load. GPU is surely important but for most of us there is really not much of a choice if you want "slim and powerful" notebook for around 2k — you wont get super awesome gpu with it.

TLDR to sum it up i still think SSDs are underrated for gaming

 

Vicious is right - SSD will make your system feel peppier if the system is lower in spec.

Consider your bottlenecks -

Quads arent always the way to go for gaming either as not all 4 cores get used - dual cores will be more responsive. Im using 2nd gen Quads which are a different beast.

The graphics card is only midrange - dont believe the marketing hype, its not going to move mountains.

7200rpm should be adequate - but different brands have different performance - also consider cache in the hdd itself - the preloader within the disc. There are also the hybrids - seagate xt momentus for example which has 4gb ssd used for preloading commonly used programs.

Im not a mac or a pc, but I wonder if Mac has anything to do with it in terms of code optimisation - most games are built for pc and then converted for mac. I could be wrong, but this is the case when games are ported on the games consoles.

Its never a straight answer for sure. Your games will perform slightly better with an SSD, but we are talking slightly and for the cost, you might be better going for something worth gaming with.

Macs dont come with great graphics cards for gaming - surprising really given that the desktops are the stomping ground of many a graphic designer.

PC laptops there are a few - HP Envy 17, Alienware 17....with new 18 being the super gamers machine about to hit. I currently have an Envy with (2 drives inside) 160gb ssd for the os and another 640gb 7200rpm second drive for my games - add in the 2820 i7, 8gb ram and 6850 with gd5 - its pretty peppy.

Then comes the balance - are you going for out and out gaming performance - are you hardcore, or just wanting some decent gaming action on your nice pc.

 

Judging by notebookcheck it cant run like 3 games on high, Metro 2033 and something else. And then there are like 100 2009-2011 games that it can run on high / ultra.
Is this considered midrange now?

i would like to get something hardcore but sadly there is absolutely nothing that doesnt look like a brick with weight over 3kgs and got a high-end gpu.

Thats the main reason why i am so confident that it got something to do with hdd — whenever something slow down for me its not because there was huge beautiful explosion that burned my gpu or CPU, CPU is barely 30% load and GPU is cold as ice, while i get something that FEELS like 5fps in lets say WoW.

 

60fps (framerate per second) doesnt show any slow down - that makes for super slick gaming.

With your graphics card Metro runs at 12fps on ultra and 22fps on high - anything under 30 and you are going to really feel and see alot of slowdown.

Even at 30 its not smooth gaming - and listing 30 is going to be best framerate - as soon as you get any action on the screen its going to drop dramatically giving lots of slowdown.

By default its a class 2 card which makes it mid range. Its in a laptop too - and then there is the 1st gen quad which probably isnt going to give you the same response as a core 2 duo in a gaming scenario. The processor and gpu comination does make a difference.

7200rpm with 8mb cache is more than adequate for heavy video editing - given the above, ssd is only going to give you a slight peppiness.

You can of course turn down your gamer settings - though if your like me youll want it to be detailed! Its a harsh reality I know - Im constantly wanting better performance.

Interms of your monitoring -not sure what to make of that. Though it could be something as a resultof porting the game to mac. A 7200rpm drive shouldnt give you this problem - a 5400rpm drive probably would though - are you sure its a 7200rpm hdd.

 

Well i am not trying to defend my GPU and i know its not the fastest on the market now. All that i am saying is that it can run most games on high so i wouldnt consider it a bottleneck TODAY.

Means whenever i am getting poor gaming experience in my average not super demanding game i would think to myself — "hmm its prolly not the cpu or gpu, prolly something else".

And WoW is a native game on mac, so ye..

 

Its not an attack - my point is that what you might consider to be playable on a high setting actually isnt that playable.

Use 60fps as a rule of thumb - and that needs to be maintained even when the screen gets busy.

There are of course a myriad of settings - you can run high settings in several resolutions - so what high is can be manipulated.

A 7200rpm hdd working correctly shouldnt give you any problems which is why id double check that it is 7200rpm - if you think it really is the hdd.

 

if you want to have high end, you can't look at notebook gpu's. they are never high end compared to what desktops have available. for gaming, i stay with a cheap pc that runs around any highend gamer laptop.

 

error in posting

 

You are the first person who actually insists that 60 fps is a "must", 30 fps is considered to be more common i guess. Something like "30fps in general with 25fps as absolutely lowest in the heat of the battle". I am even manually locking fps at 30-40 when possible to avoid overheating.

I guess movies are mostly — 18 fps oldest movies, 24 current, some are 30fps (BBC films). Sure its not the same as gaming but it should give basic idea.

 

do macs have a hdd light that shows when ever the hdd is active (and thus when ever the system is slow and the light is on, an ssd would help)?

or did jonathan ive reduce that away to improve user experience?

 

games are about response since input. when you click, you want to see an instant reaction. a 30fps game has (about) double the response time than a 60fps game.

as well, games don't have correct motion blur (some can fake it though). they show individual timestamps, not a period of time, like a movie does.

to have smooth movement in jurrasic park, they used about 600 or 6000 frames per second for the dinosaurs. and then combined the 20 or 200 to get a single frame out of it. similar, games need as much frames as possible to get the impression of movement. a video has no such need, as it captures actual motion.

 

it doesnt have a light nor you can hear a sound but its quite possible that something is wrong within my disk (i mean logic not hardware) since i didnt re-install for five years or so. Getting ssd will be a good enough reason to clean some stuff up.

But anyhow is think WoW is VERY dependent on hdd regardless.

p.s. thx for the insight people, i ll play around with different settings in different games.

 

best solution would be to stop playing wow but on a more serious note, i've noticed it to be very bad performing on a lot of friends systems for no real reason (its graphics nor its ai can be the reason, so gpu and cpu can't be it). have never tried to find out why.

 

This can be a bit about semantics. So my base is video console coding - this is where the settings cannot be changed. The benchmark for all consoles and indeed arcade games is 60fps. Remember that game programming is not the same as television - you are interacting with an evironment as opposed to passively viewing it.

60fps is industry standard specification for smooth gaming performance.

But also - there is a need to define what 60fps means - its a framerate. you might have 12fps at 1920x1080 but then 60fps at 600x900 resolution - its the amount of detail on the screen vs the speed it can run at.

 

Any place i can read about it? I mean every game site you encounter will tell you that 30 fps+ is absolutely fine and dandy.

Its more like "you cant hear coolers AT ALL" vs "you can hear your coolers", choosing 1st option for obvious reasons -)

 

a lot of console games are btw developed for 30fps only. on the n64, one of the few games that was 60fps was f-zero x, for example. (yes, i'm old... ).

btw, 600x900 has to be a fun resolution to play at

 

I took that out and replaced with this -

But also - there is a need to define what 60fps means - its a framerate. you might have 12fps at 1920x1080 but then 60fps at 600x900 resolution - its the amount of detail on the screen vs the speed it can run at.

 

Frame rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

second half of this article.

google sega and 60fps - in the old days Sega did alot of interviews on programming and frame rate performance. There are others. 30fps is lazy programming.

 

60fps is definitely a lot more smooth (and more responsive) than 30fps. one only doesn't notice the lack of smoothness on 30fps when the screen is really bad at refreshing, thus blurring the whole by being crap. i don't think that's the issue on the macbook.

 

Sorry to interrup the debate... but what are your sources? I've read always 30fps... and the wikipedia link is not very clear. I mean... the standard fps for the 360 and PS3 are 30fps for the majority of games.

 

they are 30fps or 60fps, depending on the game. a roleplay game can run fine on 30fps, while a fastpaced shooter should be 60fps (as should a racing game).

gran tourismo for ps3 made great effords to be 60fps 1080p on the ps3, afaik. the reason: smooth and responsive gameplay. and that's not just marketing blabla (they had to reduce the details as they have essentially have the time to draw the image), so for marketing, 30fps would have been preferable.

so there is an increased user experience going from 30fps to 60fps.

 

And I agree with you. But going from an 'increased user experience' to an 'industry standard' is something totally different.

 

Let's not start the 30fps vs 60fps argument again. Bottom line every eye and personality is different. With film, 24fps is ok because of the blurring between frames that your mind fills in.

I'll play a game at 25-35fps and I'm ok with it. Others can't live with anything less than 60fps. It depends on the game too. Do I care if Civ V is 30 fps? No. I like action games at 40-50fps if possible, but 30 is ok.

 

Personally I love solid state, everything gets some pep out of it. I would however expend my budget in graphics and CPU upgrades first. Money left over after that, yeah, I would definitely buy in and did just that. Time to game is short for me and faster loading levels mean I spend more time having fun.

 

30FPS is nice but I personally dislike anything under 50FPS. In a game that runs natively at 30FPS (console games that I emulate) I can't handle even 28FPS.

It's a matter of preference but I think everyone can agree that sub 30 is pretty much unplayable if it lasts more than a second or two.

 

i seriously doubt if ssd's can actually increase your gaming time by any significant amount...

 

SSDs really only help when you move onto a new area and have to load it. It might help the jitteryness overall, but an investment in a better gpu would serve you better.