Is the Plextor M6e worth it?

[John Connor]

I just found out about this drive and I would like to use it primarily for my FS2004 install. While playing FS2004 the HDD light constaly blinks and loads scenery slow as hell. I even have a SSD. But that's only SATA II. Is it worth it or would a SATA III SSD be about the same? I will need a whole new computer for SATA III unless I buy some PCI-e card for SATA III which means basically the same thing as the M6e.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Have you used task manager/resource monitor to figure out if the bottleneck is due to random reads/writes or sequential reads/writes?

 

[Blain]

Is the Plextor M6e worth it?

@ $301... no

 

[Charlie98]

I just found out about this drive and I would like to use it primarily for my FS2004 install. While playing FS2004 the HDD light constaly blinks and loads scenery slow as hell. I even have a SSD. But that's only SATA II. Is it worth it or would a SATA III SSD be about the same? I will need a whole new computer for SATA III unless I buy some PCI-e card for SATA III which means basically the same thing as the M6e.

I have FS'04 installed on my HTPC with a SATA3 SSD and it rocks compared to the previous HDD system it was loaded on. Scenery loads lickety split... I would tend to agree with Essence that maybe you have something else going on, even beyond the SATA2 limits.

Not that the Plextor isn't a nice unit, but swap in a Samsung, Crucial or Intel and I think you would still have the same problems.

 

[John Connor]

Well, I know the HDD isn't thrashing and crap before I start the game. I just know the scenery I have installed for most of California takes awhile to come into focus (for lack of a better word) and the HDD light is constantly flashing which tells me it's rendering the scenery. Don't think it's GPU related as FS doesn't need that much of a GPU. Hell! I ran FS on a GT6600. I now have a GTX 560 TI. The Proc is a Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I'd look at how much RAM you have and your page file configuration.

Run FS2004 in a window (not full screen or paused) and check task manager to see what the real-time usage is of RAM....then check your page file usage. If your page file usage is up, you can assess if you're running out of space there or whether you need to consider bumping up RAM.

If you have a non-SSD drive, I'd make sure the page file is writing to your SSD (where it counts) and put your scenery files OFF the SSD drive so it can read the data without impacting swap when you run out of RAM...if that makes sense....

 

[Charlie98]

Well, I know the HDD isn't thrashing and crap before I start the game. I just know the scenery I have installed for most of California takes awhile to come into focus (for lack of a better word) and the HDD light is constantly flashing which tells me it's rendering the scenery. Don't think it's GPU related as FS doesn't need that much of a GPU. Hell! I ran FS on a GT6600. I now have a GTX 560 TI. The Proc is a Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz.

If you are running an aftermarket scenery pack try what Scarpozzi suggested... I think you are running into memory issues or maybe rendering issues with the GPU.

When I had FS'04 on my desktop, I was running a 560Ti as well... didn't hardly break a sweat.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If it's flashing, there are periods of time when it's not being accessed, which means something else is your bottleneck.

 

[John Connor]

I'd look at how much RAM you have and your page file configuration.

Run FS2004 in a window (not full screen or paused) and check task manager to see what the real-time usage is of RAM....then check your page file usage. If your page file usage is up, you can assess if you're running out of space there or whether you need to consider bumping up RAM.

If you have a non-SSD drive, I'd make sure the page file is writing to your SSD (where it counts) and put your scenery files OFF the SSD drive so it can read the data without impacting swap when you run out of RAM...if that makes sense....

I have 6GB of RAM, it ain't that as FS will barley touch 2 GB.

 

[Turab]

Expensive.