SSDs and framerates(or the perception thereof)

[maniacalpha1-1]

I'm about to buy both an SSD and new video card. How much I spend on one affects what I can spend on the other, and vice versa. If I stick to a 60GB SSD I'll be able to go pretty high on a GPU. On the other hand, right now I use only about 87 GB on my HDD and that's with a bunch of semi-older games I reinstalled recently, so were I to go for a 120-128 GB SSD I'd be able to comfortably hold everything on it for the foreseeable future. So basically, 60GB means some installed games will have to go to HDD and 128 means nothing "must" go to HDD and the HDD would basically be a backup drive.

So in order to help me decide, I'm wondering, do SSDs help framerates in certain situations? Or perhaps the "perception" of FPS, rather than literal FPS is the better way to put it. Now, there may be times when in a single player game a sudden cutscene loading might make your machine stutter and it has nothing to do with the GPU, and an SSD may help that. But what about multiplayer games. Obviously loading a map at the beginning of a round will be helped by an SSD, but in the middle of a round where the map is already loaded, are there any situations where your FPS drops from a sudden loading of something from the HDD that to your eyes registers as an FPS stutter but is actually nothing to do with a GPU? (And which might register on fraps as an FPS hit too, but really isn't?)

Then there's games like MMORPGs. Everquest for example has clearly demarcated zones that you load when you cross, an SSD will help that of course. But some games have "seamless" (no clear zonelines) worlds in which the loading takes places in the background. I've never played anything but Everquest but I might be buying a new MMO in the future...surely games like this have the occasional loading stutter that is not actually GPU related?

 

[strep3241]

I was just wondering about this myself. I have a OCZ vertex 2 120gb and wondered if it would help out the FPS in BFBC2.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Yea, Battlefield 3 is the game I'm definitely waiting for and would be basically the same answer as for BFBC2. You would tend to think that the entire map would be loaded and that the answer would be no for that kind of game, and yet I'm nevertheless curious because I've had random stutters in the middle of BF2 maps before that surely were not GPU related.

 

[djshortsleeve]

Ill let you know - Im starting a build tonight with a 128 GB Crucial SATA III and HIS Radeon 6870 1 GB 256 Bit GDDR5.

 

[Carmen813]

I've noticed a massive improvement in WoW, particularly when loading into cities where there are tons of character models. Its the difference of taking 30-45 seconds for models to load in, and 2-3....its just huge.

In Black Ops things seem a bit smoother as well, though it makes less of a difference.

 

[woolfe9999]

I've seen some benchmarks suggesting that SSD's can somewhat dramatically improve minimum fps, though they have virtually no effect on average fps. Not sure how this impacts the subjective experience.

Personally I would go for the larger capacity SSD assuming you can still get a reasonbly decent GPU. When I get an SSD, it will be large enough to hold all my applications.

 

[Zap]

Basically any game that loads stuff dynamically during gameplay may feel "smoother" with an SSD. WoW is the poster child for this. Besides loading times (which WoW still has, and which an SSD cuts to shreds) just walking around the environment is smoother because new stuff is loaded dynamically.

Most games don't do this, so there is no difference.

 

[Nintendesert]

Basically any game that loads stuff dynamically during gameplay may feel "smoother" with an SSD. WoW is the poster child for this. Besides loading times (which WoW still has, and which an SSD cuts to shreds) just walking around the environment is smoother because new stuff is loaded dynamically.

Most games don't do this, so there is no difference.

I figure any game, especially online games, where the range in textures and content has a large range of possibilities having an SSD would improve the experience since that stuttering or jerkiness as the game loads on the fly would be removed.

I would guess every MMO out there would see benefits from an SSD in this regard.

Overall it really would depend on how a game is coded and setup to load content. Either way the big cut down on loading times would make for a better experience to me.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Basically any game that loads stuff dynamically during gameplay may feel "smoother" with an SSD. WoW is the poster child for this. Besides loading times (which WoW still has, and which an SSD cuts to shreds) just walking around the environment is smoother because new stuff is loaded dynamically.

Most games don't do this, so there is no difference.

Ah, so following this, WoW style MMOs with huge worlds may see benefit, but a game like BFBC2 will only be likely to see benefit in the initial map load, and in map reloads between rounds, but not otherwise in the middle of play. well, Star Wars the Old Republic is one I'm looking forward to, I suspect it may help there

 

[pjkenned]

Ah, so following this, WoW style MMOs with huge worlds may see benefit, but a game like BFBC2 will only be likely to see benefit in the initial map load, and in map reloads between rounds, but not otherwise in the middle of play. well, Star Wars the Old Republic is one I'm looking forward to, I suspect it may help there

Realistically, you want a SSD for loads and then you want to never swap stuff out of RAM. Beyond that, you probably want a good CPU and GPU as those make a bigger difference than a SSD by far.

 

[Nintendesert]

Ah, so following this, WoW style MMOs with huge worlds may see benefit, but a game like BFBC2 will only be likely to see benefit in the initial map load, and in map reloads between rounds, but not otherwise in the middle of play. well, Star Wars the Old Republic is one I'm looking forward to, I suspect it may help there

Considering the size of current MMOs, TOR is going to be huge. You'll have to use something bigger than 60gigs for an SSD to handle that game. I wouldn't really be surprised to see a 40gig install on just that game initially.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

40gb? whoa. Well, that brings another question. TOR is coming later this year. If I were to get a 60GB SSD now and another to add later in JBOD, to handle TOR, chances are the newer one will be a different controller than the one I'd get now. Are there any complications to expect if you have windows on one type of controller SSD and the game on another? Probably not, but I don't know how these integrate with your system as a whole.

 

[Nintendesert]

40gb? whoa. Well, that brings another question. TOR is coming later this year. If I were to get a 60GB SSD now and another to add later in JBOD, to handle TOR, chances are the newer one will be a different controller than the one I'd get now. Are there any complications to expect if you have windows on one type of controller SSD and the game on another? Probably not, but I don't know how these integrate with your system as a whole.

Now that 40gigs is just my guess based on other games in the genre like Conan and even their own Dragon Age was a very beefy install. I'm not sure on the JBOD stuff, I'm sure someone else here knows. The game may very well be smaller than that but I'm sure it'll be pretty beefy as well with all that audio work they're doing.

 

[Concillian]

When WoW was downloading large patches pre-4.0.3 it was needing 35-40 GB to have:
- current game install
- large downloaded compressed patch
- room to unpack patch
- room to work with during the patching process.

Many people who were playing WoW fine, but cramped for space came up against a wall and had fatal errors when patching for Cata because they didn't have the extra 15-20GB free space necessary. Many had to delete, free up space, then re-install from scratch again (no small task given some of the GB+ sized patches that need to download.)

Once all was said and done, it was back down to the 20-25GB range, but temporarily it needed well over 30 GB. A massive game like TOR will want a dedicated 60GB all to itself at a minimum.

 

[sticks435]

Basically any game that loads stuff dynamically during gameplay may feel "smoother" with an SSD. WoW is the poster child for this. Besides loading times (which WoW still has, and which an SSD cuts to shreds) just walking around the environment is smoother because new stuff is loaded dynamically.

Most games don't do this, so there is no difference.

Wouldn't this be Crysis and pretty much any Unreal Engine 3 game and Gamebryo engine games? Basically anything that uses a streaming texture system would benefit a tremendous amount.

 

[strep3241]

I don't know if this is SSD related but I am getting really low FPS in BFBC2 compared to what I was getting while using a standard drive.

I am right around low 30's even with the settings turned down to low. Before I was getting in the upper 60's. I need to find out what is going on.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

What SSD do you have? And I assume you had your 5870 before you got the SSD?

 

[strep3241]

I have the OCZ Vertex 2 120gb and yes I had the 5870 before the SSD. I hate when stuff like this happens.

 

[Voo]

Many people who were playing WoW fine, but cramped for space came up against a wall and had fatal errors when patching for Cata because they didn't have the extra 15-20GB free space necessary. Many had to delete, free up space, then re-install from scratch again (no small task given some of the GB+ sized patches that need to download.)

Well you can just copy it to a HDD, install the patch there and copy it back - WoW is extremely well behaved in that regard.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I have the OCZ Vertex 2 120gb and yes I had the 5870 before the SSD. I hate when stuff like this happens.

No idea...based on what we already established in this thread, it should have minimal positive effect, and to the contrary it should have minimal negative effect as well I would think. I would be very interested to know what you find out.

Some questions do come to mind though, like, do you have both Windows and the install of BC2 on the SSD?

 

[strep3241]

Yes, Windows and BC2 is installed on the SSD.

The one thing I could think of is I am overclocked to 3.2ghz. Before I was not. Maybe there is some setting that is causing issues. I can pass Intel Burn Test.

I also wonder if AHCI could be affecting this. Surely not but who knows.

Maybe I need to create a new thread for this.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Well, I can tell you that I overclocked my CPU once to play Civ 5 better, and it did, but it caused Battlefield 2 not to work at all. Maybe try clocking it back to stock and checking?

 

[strep3241]

WTH, it turned out it was the overclock causing the problem. I have it set to stock settings with turbo enabled and now I am getting in the 70's and 80's with everything set to high.

Now I have to figure out what setting caused it.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Whew, I'm about to order an OCZ SSD myself, was hoping that was not the issue

 

[strep3241]

I don't think it has anything to do with the drive, at least I hope not. I am thinking there was a setting set wrong for the overclock. I just need to figure out what it is.

Maybe I need to post some screenshots here. Take a look at this screen shot:

Crap, it is too small, I can not read anything. How do I get it where it is big enough to read?