Solid State Hard Drive or a normal hard driver?

[nick1200]

I was looking to buy a 2tb hard drive
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-244-SE

and then noticed a lot of users are buying Solid State Hard Drives to store there os on and then using a normal hard drive for there games.

Just wondering why ?? Are Solid State Hard Drive faster or ?

 

[price_th]

Yes.

 

[bucknutty]

A SSD is much faster when used as a boot drive. For example my 4 year old computer with win 7 used to take 45-55 seconds to boot. With a ssd it now takes about 10-20 seconds to boot.
I play a lot of games like ME3 and MW3. When the match started I would often be last in sometimes like 30 seconds late, becuase the game has to load the level and such from the disk. Now with windows and the game installed on the SSD, the map loads in like 5 seconds and Iam normally first in.

SSDs are fast for loading and copying files, but they will not make the game play or FPS faster.

The down side is they are still pretty small, so you really need a mechanical hard drive for all your personal stuff and you need to plan ahead in reguards to what programs you want to install on the ssd.

SSDs work best on newer boards that support AHCI, so if your board does not have AHCI then it might not even be worth the trouble.

 

[DarkOutlaw]

You should install your games on the ssd, use normal hdd for file storage like pictures, music, videos.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

SSD drives are much faster.

 

[ss202sl]

SSD'a are much faster, but I have noticed that some games don't seem to load faster on the SSD. There is a program(steam mover) which was designed to move steam games from a hard drive to an SSD, but it will work for any game(or program). This will allow you to move games onto your SSD and play them, but move them back to your HDD when you get tired of the game, or need space for a new game.

 

[nick1200]

I have noticed tho that the biggest size ssd ive found what a 120gb. Im guessing i would be able to fit like 3 games on that with my od has well ?? So id have a fast os and 3 games which run faster. The the test of ym games on the 2tb driver which runs 50% slower ??

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Personally my games load faster on my ssd but the actual improvements being played from the ssd are minimal.

 

[bucknutty]

I did a clean install of windows 7. I have 8 gigs of ram so I set the Page file to 1gb. Its a desktop so I dont use hybernate so I dissabled that. That put my Windows install at about 10 gigs. My SSD is a 120 once formated its like 100gb. So that leaves 90 gb for games. Most games are like 10-15gb so that is like 6 games.

I have steam and origin installed on the D drive. That is an WD black 750gb. That is also where my "mydocs folder and such are.

I use the windows mklink command to leave steam and origin installed on the D drive but to run my favorate few games from the C: drive. This is an easy way to manage what games are on the C: and D: drive.

 

[nick1200]

So if i bought a 120gb ssd with my amd fx 8120 8 core with 12gb memory then my windows 7 should load in 10-20 seconds ??

 

[bucknutty]

yup

in my case windows loads so fast it skips the welcome screen with the blueish back ground and the green swirl and the leaf.

 

[nick1200]

Do you have a link to your ssd so i can buy one like yours ?

 

[bucknutty]

I got this one only because it was on sale. I went looking for the cheapest sata3 drive I could find.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171567

you should take a look at this while you consider what drive is right for you.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-benchmark-review,3237.html