Is an MMO on an SSD a good idea?

[Craig234]

For playing/performance it is. Lots of loading it's good to do faster.

But it'd increase writes a good amount - would that cause enough harm to make it bad?

 

[Phynaz]

Have you ever heard of an SSD wearing out when someone wasn't purposefully attempting it?

There's your answer.

 

[Geofram]

I ran World of Warcraft off of my SSD for several years, and I have yet to have an SSD die of overuse.

 

[CiPHER]

@Phynaz: what are you talking about? SSD endurance is only relevant for SOHO/enterprise users not for consumers. All regular SSDs are durable enough for common usage.

@Craig234: yes MMO's are among the games that benefit the most from SSDs. This is because they tend to do I/O while the game is running, i.e. not just for loading scenes but also during gameplay. I played World of Warcraft in the past and noticed a difference between SSD and HDD during gameplay. If an enemy player ran into your field of vision with textures that needed to be loaded on the fly, the HDD would cause FPS drops that was quite annoying. Having the game on an SSD will resolve such issues, and will also cause faster game loading scenes and startup.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Run SWTOR off my SSD. It does help load times. Hasn't seem to hurt anything.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

This is still asked? Welcome to 6 years ago. Lol

 

[Essence_of_War]

@Phynaz: what are you talking about? SSD endurance is only relevant for SOHO/enterprise users not for consumers. All regular SSDs are durable enough for common usage.

That is exactly what Phynaz said...

 

[linster]

The OP needs the following link

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

 

[Phynaz]

@Phynaz: what are you talking about? SSD endurance is only relevant for SOHO/enterprise users not for consumers. All regular SSDs are durable enough for common usage.

@Craig234: yes MMO's are among the games that benefit the most from SSDs. This is because they tend to do I/O while the game is running, i.e. not just for loading scenes but also during gameplay. I played World of Warcraft in the past and noticed a difference between SSD and HDD during gameplay. If an enemy player ran into your field of vision with textures that needed to be loaded on the fly, the HDD would cause FPS drops that was quite annoying. Having the game on an SSD will resolve such issues, and will also cause faster game loading scenes and startup.

Isn't that what I said?

 

[Ranulf]

Have you ever heard of an SSD wearing out when someone wasn't purposefully attempting it?

There's your answer.

The 840 EVO?

Though I guess an MMO that is played often wouldn't slow down on an unfixed 840 evo.

 

[coolhund]

It wont at all, if the newest firmware is installed...

 

[Flapdrol1337]

For playing/performance it is. Lots of loading it's good to do faster.

But it'd increase writes a good amount - would that cause enough harm to make it bad?

Loading is only reads, not writes.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Have you ever heard of an SSD wearing out when someone wasn't purposefully attempting it?

There's your answer.

This.

Even my first 80GB X25-M G1 SSD is still healthy. While HDs have died left and right in the meantime.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This.

Even my first 80GB X25-M G1 SSD is still healthy. While HDs have died left and right in the meantime.

While I've had good luck with HDDs, thankfully, and haven't had one outright die on me in a long time, good-quality SSDs should last even longer, barring firmware or power-related glitches.

Edit: I've lost a 500GB Seagate HDD that rode in the back of a van inside a PC cross-country, and I've lost two SSDs. One 30GB OCZ Agility, that was killed by a defective case PSU, and one 240GB Chronos Deluxe that was flaky since I bought it, and died in under a month. (That was back when SSDs were $1/GB. Ouch!)

A friend of mine also lost a 240GB OCZ when the power glitched during a storm.

 

[Gryz]

I have my Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD for 2.5 years now. My computer is on 12-16 hours per day. I played a lot of games during the last 2.5 years. Including 9 months of intense World of Warcraft playing last year (40+ hours per week).

According to CrystalDiskInfo I have written 3.9 TeraBytes of data to my SSD over the course of those 2.5 years. I believe the official maximum number is a few hundred TeraBytes. So I am not worrying at all. My SSD will last another few decades. Installing a new 10GB game is probably more bytes written than all written data by a game during its play.

The benefit of a SSD depends on the game. Some MMOs try to load as much new data way ahead of the user entering a new area. WoW does that. Even with a slow HDD, moving from one area to another area is very smooth. With an SSD the only benefits you will see is at game startup/login. And when you use a teleport, or go into a dungeon.
Other MMOs are not so efficient. It might be noticable when you switch from one area or cell to the next area or cell. I think MMOs based on the Unreal engine have that problem. In that case, an SSD will certainly help.