SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V

[S2Hizzle]

I think that's a reasonable request. Maybe like a round 2.

Though, I can tell you right off the bat that it's not going to improve frame rates. We would have to artificially create a situation where the hard drive was heavy fragmented in order for the disk to load textures slower. That would affect frame rates. Think of the stuttering that occasionally happens when you're gaming. Translating that part of gameplay into something reproducible in the lab is a bit of a head scratcher.

Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com

Thanks, I'd appreciate that. As far as frame rates go, it makes sense reading through the comments, and you're right, the drive doesn't need to be tested as the drive isn't bottlenecking the system.

If you do a followup, I'd recommend a couple different common drive configurations for the level loading tests, ex. 1x7200 rpm HDD, 2x7200rpm RAID 0, 1x10k rpm and compare these results to the SSD you tested. I've had a SSD for a while and even though I know it's faster in these types of tasks, I'd like to be able to see some data to show how much.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[jdwii]

nice article,been waiting for one of these. maybe this is why sims 3 skips even though i'm getting great FPS.

 

[kikireeki]

So this article was SSD vs Windmills?

 

[compton]

[citation][nom]sceen311[/nom]Pretty bad game picks for use of an SSD, once I am in game in Civ5 there is no more loading and those games can go for hourrrrssss. Only time I load in WoW is entering an instance and load times are very bearable. Not sure about crisis2.I put Oblivion on my SSD and that was a fantastic idea, there are loading times at least every 20 mins or so in that one, and sometimes within 2 mins. Fallout would be another good one for it, similar load times and all. Witcher would be a good one, I'm wondering about NWN, Dragon Age and the Mass Effect series but it's been a little while since I've played those and can't remember what the load times are like.[/citation]

Fallout 3 and NV, Oblivion, Civ 5 and Portal 1/2 are all on a 60GB SSD I use just for Steam games. It makes a huge difference with Fallout 3 and NV, since every door you walkthrough generates a loading sequence. On an SSD, that pause goes down to nothing. If you have ever played any Fallout or Oblivion game on the XBOX, it's almost unplayable with all of the loading going on.

As you buy one SSD, then another later, and so on -- you end up with a few drives to play with. Then you can have one for a boot drive, one to put your most played games, one for your old laptop, ect. Using a 7200RPM drive just for your Steam folder generates most of the performance, but you do gain an advantage with many games.

One question no one has answered is this:
If you install your games on a HDD and use an SSD as a boot drive, which drive does the game write to while playing?

 

[Guest]

For wow players this is kinda usless you need to test running around in org at peak times when new characters are coming in and out of view. You don't write 3X times data that you read when you play the game. And most chunks are 4K. Go to www.dual-boxing.com to the hardwear section and see what tests are best.

 

[Guest]

there's some gamez that really benefit from quick drive access times.
anybody who played games like battlefield 2 or second life know what I'm talking about. those games don't have levels/zones or instances they are seamless and you load stuff as you go...

 

[ngoy]

There are a ton of terms used to quantify storage performance. If you're a gamer, you have to be wondering how such dry terminology can apply to having fun. Rather than telling you, we're going to dissect three popular titles to show you instead.

SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V : Read more

It's nice you spent all this time, but with a comparison to another ssd and a regular hd, you might as well have expounded on the effects of alcohol consumption on perceived framerate variations of 18-35 year old males.

All your article shows is that an SSD might be faster.

 

[hyteck9]

I think there needs to be a full-blown compare done on this. Benchmark the following as a total package:
system boot time, initial game load time, Level load time, and avg FPS once in-game for 1 minute duration. When isntalled on...

1. on a single 7200 RPM HD
2. on (2) RAID 0 7200 PRM HD's
3. on SSD for OS and single HD for game files.
4. on SSD for OS and game files.
5. on (2) RAID 0 SSD's

 

[hyteck9]

I think there needs to be a full-blown compare done on this. Benchmark the following as a total package:
system boot time, initial game load time, Level load time, and avg FPS once in-game for 1 minute duration. When isntalled on...

1. on a single 7200 RPM HD
2. on (2) RAID 0 7200 PRM HD's
3. on SSD for OS and single HD for game files.
4. on SSD for OS and RAID 0 HDs for game files.
5. on SSD for OS and game files.
6. on (2) RAID 0 SSD's

 

[Shadowgargos]

How about a comparison with a SSD and Ramdisk!

In answer to icepick314 I can't imagine any scenario where (2) 10,000 RPM VelociRaptors in Raid-0 could conceivably be faster than (2) SSD's in Raid 0.

I think a Raid Controller would be needed for (2) SSD's in Raid-0 since they would max out the bandwidth of Sata 3.0 which is around 6Gbps or 600 MB/s. n.b. Assuming the use of the faster SSD's e.g. OCZ Vertex 3

 

[hyteck9]

haha. Maxing out SATA 3.0. Wouldn't that be a nice problem to have.

 

[sithtis]

Sorry but, WHY THE HELL DIDNT YOU COMPARED IT TO A 7200RPM normal drive

The *u*k those numbers tell me if you dont show me it side by side against a regular hdd

you usually do the same for video cards and cpu

People want to know how it compare, not only between higher and lower model but mostly agaisnt their current hardware and you NEVER DO this!!

for exemple... you benchmark a i5... god add a damn q6600 and cpu and other model like e8400 and other so we can know if we really need to upgrade

YOU NEVER DO IT AND NOW IM PISSED

Ok back on subject... SSD are still way to expensive... i am waiting for another 2 years before i consider trying one. Cause right know, I DONT HAVE A CLUE HOW IT COPARE TO MY ACTUAL DRIVE (looking at this benchmark)

have a good day everyone

 

[kyuuketsuki]

Sorry Tom's, but the other comments are right: this article really needs to have an actual comparison in performance between the HDD and the SSD. No one is asking what the difference is between different SSDs, so throwing that out there is a red herring. Compare the HDD and SSD that you presented at the beginning of the article, since comparing them was sort of the implication of the article at the beginning (but it never happened).

The theoreticals with transfer sizes and queue sizes and all that is great, but this isn't going to help anybody on the fence actually decide if an SSD is worth it. Add the comparison, please.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I set up my son's system for dual boot (fully isolated):

1. Vertex 3 120 GB
2. Barracude XT 2 TB

Unless I get out a stop watch, it's hard to tell which one is which. MMO load times are almost identical .... SSD boots in 15.6 seconds, HD in 21.2

$250 for 5.6 seconds a day is an expensive investment.

 

[Third-Eye]

Grand Theft Auto IV and or the expansions (A game that may actually benefit from an SSD) should also have been tested, because they suffer from texture and object popin on just about any non SSD hard drive.

 

[ojas]

I checked your SSD roundup...I see you've compared three HDDs to the SSDs...would still be nice to see a similar comparison in this case, it'll still make more sense. The only test i could see that has anything to do with level load times is the PCmark test. Would be nice not to have to divide the total data loaded by the transfer rate and see how much time it should take for a level to load with an HDD.

 

[gmp23]

What I hate about storage in general is that it's advertised as on the box as a a specific amount of space and the second you install it, it takes a huge hit. It's like going to the grocery store and buying a bag of chips, opening it up, and finding that only half the bag is full. For example, I just installed a 1.5 TB hdd, didn't put a single thing on it, and bam, 1.35 Tb's. If you advertise a specific amount, that's what it should be. If it's going to take a hit the second you install it, I think they should account for that so when you actually do install it, it is what is advertised.

 

[tsnor]

Where is the table that gives the wall clock time difference in starting, loading and playing games ? You have a nice table comparing a seagate barracuda drive to an SSD. I was hoping to see you actually benchmark a difference.

Great article, loved the appraoch. loved the data. will reread. Just left me guessing what the result is.

I'd also like a subjective evaluation. "I couldn't feel the difference playing, but really could loading" or "I'd rather get better video than put games on ssd because i couldn't tell the difference". or ...

 

[gmp23]

This is especially important with SSD's, taking into consideration price per gigabyte. When it's 300 bucks for a 120 GB SSD, every single little bit of storage is extremely valuable. After installing my Intel 510 120GB SSD and only putting W7 on it, i'm already down to 82 gigs. Although I would love to do it, installing games on it is a no-go for me. The price on these things needs to come way down.

 

[stevelord]

Total War Shogun 2. Long loads even with Vertex 3, when in DX11 mode. With an HDD? Horrendous. DX9 mode is much faster obviously.

 

[mapesdhs]

[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]...I hear 10000RPM HDDs are very fast in loading when in RAID 0 configuration...I imagine in real world situation, 2 of 10000RPM HDDs in RAID 0 are just as fast as 2 of the most SSDs in RAID 0....[/citation]

If that was the case, two 2nd-hand 15K SAS in RAID0 would be best of all.
In reality, 4K random read is still a lot better with an SSD. Some 10K or
15K units striped are great for sequential though (I get 700MB/sec with
4 x 15K SAS).

Ian.

 

[mapesdhs]

I meant to add, the real benefit from an SSD for gaming is reduced stuttering
for games which do load a lot of data as one moves around a large game world,
eg. Stalker. Try running the first Stalker benchmark, there's a major lag a
few seconds after it starts. Testing with a 60GB OCZ Vertex2 instead, this lag
was significantly reduced, which greatly improved recorded minimum frame rates.

Games like this, Oblivion and others will all benefit. But others will not.
Depends on the game.

Ian.

 

[PudgyChicken]

I would love to see some charts showing possible performance gains using multiple large 7200 RPM drives in RAID 0. Personally, I boot from a 60 GB OCZ Vertex II, which houses things like chrome and Word, while all my storage is on 4x 1TB WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM drives in RAID 0. I feel like that's the optimal setup-- you get epic OS performance and tiny load times in all your games and other apps.

 

[Guest]

I have been searching the web for information on mmo gaming and ssds for a couple of month now. What i found out was that in terms of mmos, ssds do have a serious advatage over hdds. Be it wow, lotr or lineage 2, i found plenty of comments of mmo gamers who stated that upgrading to a ssd brought a huge performance increase in terms of gameplay. They said most of the gliches and lags experienced while moving through a seemless gameworld, especially when entering high populated areas, just disappeared. So as the test included wow i though that is information worth mentioning. I ll buy a new rig next moth and it will definatly have a ssd.

 

[danwat1234]

[citation][nom]Soma42[/nom]This just confirmed what I knew already. I will probably upgrade to a SSD with my next build, but they are still so bloody expensive for the storage they offer. Plus, SSD are supposed to have better reliability compared to magnetic drives.[/citation]
If you don't want to put $$$ down for a 160GB SSD, get the new Seagate 1000GB Momentus XT when it comes out. SHould have 8GB or more of flash.