Performance question (SSD vs HDD)

[WarbNull]

Assembling a rig with a 128G SSD and 1TB 7200 RPM Mechanical Drive, so I'm wondering where I should install the game applications.

My preference is to install games onto the mechanical/storage drive, but I am wondering what sort of performance to expect between installing on either drive.

Hoping the main difference will simply be the load times.

Thanks,

 

[tomatthe]

Yes, the main performance difference will only be the load times. Games will run with ~ the same framerate running from either drive.

 

[willard]

Like tomatthe said, you won't get a framerate boost. You will, however, get dramatically improved load times in most games. Some games, The Old Republic being a notable example, have a CPU bottleneck in the load process, so an SSD won't improve those times.

Basically every other game sees a boost, though. In Skyrim, with my pitiful little Corsair Force 3 on a SATA II interface, no load took longer than two seconds. Fast travel to the other side of the world? Two seconds. Load into a dungeon? Two seconds. Run right back out? Two more seconds. It was crazy consistent, and absolutely wonderful to not have to deal with constant loads from that ancient engine.

 

[jrazor247]

How much RAM u got? Swap file...

 

[WarbNull]

16 gig DDR 1600 (2 8 gig sticks)

 

[geofelt]

Assembling a rig with a 128G SSD and 1TB 7200 RPM Mechanical Drive, so I'm wondering where I should install the game applications.

My preference is to install games onto the mechanical/storage drive, but I am wondering what sort of performance to expect between installing on either drive.

Hoping the main difference will simply be the load times.

Thanks,

You are buying a SSD, so use it. 128gb will hold the os and quite a number of games. Install the games you will play on the SSD. When the SSD starts to get full, remove the games you don't play much. Reinstall on the hard drive if you need to.

With 16gb, hibernation will take away a big chunk of the SSD. Google how to deactivate it and recover the space. Once used, it is a bit difficult to recover the space.

 

[WarbNull]

Thanks for the advice.

Isn't Steam kind of a pain when installing multiple games across multiple HDs?

 

[tomatthe]

I haven't personally done this, but it does look like it's quite a rig to use multiple drives with steam.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=998110

That has some info on it, but it certainly isn't the smoothest operation based on reading through a bit of it.

 

[smiley22432]

Thanks for the advice.

Isn't Steam kind of a pain when installing multiple games across multiple HDs?

I have done it. I have games installed on my SSD, velociraptor, and standard 7200 rpm drive.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=664376

Link187 For this to actually work properly for vista users:

-Copy the game folder to the destination you want.

-DELETE the entire game folder from it's original location or the command will produce an error.

-run cmd.exe as administrator

use the command: mklink /J "C:\junction folder\game" "D:\actual folder\game"

it will create a folder where the old one was but it will have a little arrow thingy on the bottom left corner of the folder icon. Essentially a shortcut folder. Now you don't have to buy bigger hard drives or uninstall games or wait for steam to finally have this functionality built in.

This works in windows 7 too. Very easy to do and not that big of a pain.