Gaming on SSD's

[Ariona]

I currently have an 840 EVO 120GB boot drive, with skyrim modded. My skyrim runs so much smoother and my loading is so much faster.

 

I want to get a secondary SSD for games I play ALOT and can mod like skyrim etc, 

 

I was going to get a 240GB EVO but after the last WAN I am strongly considering getting the 850 Pro. 

I want something strong that I can edit easily 50+ GBs daily writes.

 

Do you think gaming on SSD's is a good idea? Or should I just exchange my standard barracuda for a Caviar black ? 

What about you? what do you game with, and what do you think the best gaming geared SSD is? 

 

Reliability and lifespan would be most important for the save file writes, installing games, and deleting as well as modding games, Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout etc,

[Biased Opinion]

There is no such thing as a gaming ssd. Just get something like an MX100 or whatever is the cheapest dollar per gigabyte. The drive will be outdated before you kill it.

[flibberdipper]

A. Gaming on an SSD would be fine, reads don't impact the life.

B. A Caviar Black would be the same speed as a Barracuda, more thank likely.

[Frankie]

I don't have much experience with SSD's, but I can tell you that I play couple years on Caviar Black and never had any problems Sure is gonna be slower than SSD but price/size ratio is better.

[Sheldon_King]

I know I am going to take some flack here.

 

Personally, I would not game on an SSD, unless you absolutely had to. The reason being is for what you pay for a 240GB SSD, you could have a 1-2TB HDD and the same gaming experience.

The only time I have ever been held back by the HDD with games is when I am running a game on one screen (Specifically Mafia II or Euro Truck Sim 2) and am also running a VM on the secondary screen that is hitting the drive hard for I/O, then the games tend to skip some. But just gaming with nothing else going on, most of the time once the world/level is loaded, you will not see the performance.

 

As for your specific problem, are you also running anything else like recording programs, or saving a butt ton of screen shots that would also hit your drive hard? If so, then the SSD would help you, but not as much as getting a scratch drive to use for those programs.

[majikslipper]

If you are running texture mods on a lot of your games then it will cut down on the loading times but that is about it, once the game is loaded you won't notice improvements, and for open world games there may be less stuttering due to the level loading (noticed this on Fallout; NV and Oblivion).

 

SSDs are very durable, from the tests that tech report were doing, when you get the the 200TB (i think) range of writes to the drive, this would be the point at which you would see problems.

 

Would I game on a SSD yes, can I afford it no. I would stick to HDDs as they are cheap and the loading times are not too bad. Anyway there is always steam mover, you can use this application to move game to the SSD when needed.

[The_Strict_Nein]

There has been conflicting reports of higher performance in Skyrim/Fallout games while using an SSD with high-res textures.

I personally notice a bit smoother performance and much much faster loading, especially if you have close to the max number of mods.

I'd recommend an SSD for games with long loads/texture mods, then a 1TB standard HDD for all other cakes

[Antistatic12]

Do you think gaming on SSD's is a good idea?

What about you? what do you game with

1. Yes.
2. SSD's all day, everyday.

Just do what you are comfortable with and within your budget.

Reliability and lifespan has definitely increased over recent years. Certain controllers have evolved nicely and things like TRIM have helped greatly

[Ariona]

There has been conflicting reports of higher performance in Skyrim/Fallout games while using an SSD with high-res textures.

I personally notice a bit smoother performance and much much faster loading, especially if you have close to the max number of mods.

I'd recommend an SSD for games with long loads/texture mods, then a 1TB standard HDD for all other cakes

My skyrim used to load from scratch main menu into game vanillia open world in roughly 5 minutes. Now on the SSD modded with roughly 230 plugins / mods I load in 2 minutes average. I also do not ever get "unresponsive" screens anymore.

 

If you are running texture mods on a lot of your games then it will cut down on the loading times but that is about it, once the game is loaded you won't notice improvements, and for open world games there may be less stuttering due to the level loading (noticed this on Fallout; NV and Oblivion).

 

SSDs are very durable, from the tests that tech report were doing, when you get the the 200TB (i think) range of writes to the drive, this would be the point at which you would see problems.

 

Would I game on a SSD yes, can I afford it no. I would stick to HDDs as they are cheap and the loading times are not too bad. Anyway there is always steam mover, you can use this application to move game to the SSD when needed.

Performance increase no, Stutter fix? YES I have much less stutter now that things load instantly allmost. 

 

I know I am going to take some flack here.

 

Personally, I would not game on an SSD, unless you absolutely had to. The reason being is for what you pay for a 240GB SSD, you could have a 1-2TB HDD and the same gaming experience.

The only time I have ever been held back by the HDD with games is when I am running a game on one screen (Specifically Mafia II or Euro Truck Sim 2) and am also running a VM on the secondary screen that is hitting the drive hard for I/O, then the games tend to skip some. But just gaming with nothing else going on, most of the time once the world/level is loaded, you will not see the performance.

 

As for your specific problem, are you also running anything else like recording programs, or saving a butt ton of screen shots that would also hit your drive hard? If so, then the SSD would help you, but not as much as getting a scratch drive to use for those programs.

I do a lot of heavy editing, I have roughly 17K pictures, and about 1TB of video. I do not edit when I play my games though. 

 

I think I will go ahead and get either another 840EVO 120GB only for gaming. Cheap, and fast and if it's only for Skyrim, Fallout, and maybe some other games I think that'll be a good size to work on. Maybe the 240GB since its only 40$ more or so. 

[TheRetiredSlave]

The only problem I see with installing games to an SSD is that games are getting very large nowadays, and SSD space is still fairly expensive. The only thing that's really improved is load times, so you may be better off with an HDD for mass storage of large games..

 

BTW, I run plenty of games off my 500 GB 840EVO, but you should still differentiate between "games in which load speeds matter" and "games where load speed doesn't matter", and install them to the proper drive.

[Biased Opinion]

before i got my new drives i was running just whatever was my main game on the SSD, completely worth it for the load times.

[Misanthrope]

If price is no objection, then yes is a good idea. Load times will be faster.

 

If price is an objection, then it is NOT a good idea. Specially with games now casually throwing 20, 30 and 40 gb installs your way. A good compromise would be to get a standard 2 tb mechanical for gaming and then if you do a good partition you can guarantee the best performance out of your mechanical which should be good enough (like only 2 times as slow or 3 times as slow as an ssd instead of slower and slower and slower as it gets filled up)

 

Plus it gives me an excuse to post some of the only known footage of Dr. Diaper himself Wendell from Tek Syndicate without any face covering shenanigans!

[JEpiCsOme]

I have 3 SSDs on my system, by which are not in any RAID mode. Why? so if any of it fails out of nowhere it can't ruin my system (assuming it runs on raid 0, can't buy the cost of raid 1 and up).

One SSD is dedicated for OS, system drivers, and necessary softwares like browsers, MS office, etc.another SSD is dedicated for games just pure games from my steam library, and my last SSD is for scratch disk for multimedia, mainly AE, Premier, Vegas, etc. been harassing that SSD for a while like seriously.

 

So if you want a dedicated SSD for gaming it will just cut loading times but will have a same gaming experience as if you are using a regular HDD.

 

Things to consider if you really need a SSD or a HDD:

 

-If you have money to spare get a SSD. Consider a 120gb-240gb SSD costs as same as a 1tb-2tb HDD depending on the deal you get (you really need lot of space because game files today cost a lot).

-Contrary from above get a HDD you can install tons of games on that.

-Hate loading times? get an SSD.

-Love loading times? (who the hell loves that) get a HDD.

[The_Strict_Nein]

Also, if you're worried about SSD durability, I've written close to 10TB of data to my Crucial M4 120GB in my laptop, and it's at 99% life according to SMART. Bigger drives last even longer, to the point where terrabyte class SSDs regularly out live hard drives by decades in life estimates.

[Sheldon_King]

I do a lot of heavy editing, I have roughly 17K pictures, and about 1TB of video. I do not edit when I play my games though. 

 

I think I will go ahead and get either another 840EVO 120GB only for gaming. Cheap, and fast and if it's only for Skyrim, Fallout, and maybe some other games I think that'll be a good size to work on. Maybe the 240GB since its only 40$ more or so. 

The (possible) issue that was being asked about is if you are recording or the like form in game onto the same HDD as you store the game on. Lets give an example:

C:/ is an HDD and D:/ is a HDD. The game is stored on D:/ and I am recording to C:/. This would be no issue. If the game were on D:/ and the recording destination was also D:/, then you would face throttling issues. The HDD in this case being a bottleneck. The SSD would reduce that, but it would still be difficult to do both at the same time.  It is always best to have large dynamic data applications on their own physical drives if you want to run them at the same time (It's the same reason why I have 3HDDs dedicated to recording and VMs).

 

As for what you are doing (planning if I understand right), I would just go for the least expensive 240/250/256 GB SSD you can find. Brand and speed will not matter that much, the sequential speed of even a SATA II SSD will be roughly double that of a 7200RPM HDD.

[Ariona]

If price is no objection, then yes is a good idea. Load times will be faster.

 

If price is an objection, then it is NOT a good idea. Specially with games now casually throwing 20, 30 and 40 gb installs your way. A good compromise would be to get a standard 2 tb mechanical for gaming and then if you do a good partition you can guarantee the best performance out of your mechanical which should be good enough (like only 2 times as slow or 3 times as slow as an ssd instead of slower and slower and slower as it gets filled up)

 

Plus it gives me an excuse to post some of the only known footage of Dr. Diaper himself Wendell from Tek Syndicate without any face covering shenanigans!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA2kEoXpI3s 

Holy crap wendel! 

 

Ok hm So currently I have my 2TB HDD in use with about 1.3TB of data, mainly games and videos etc, I can backup the pics, videos, and save games and re download my games later. How would I go about setting this partitioning up properly? I would assume de-activate the HDD, format, then activate and create 2 partitions ?  (Using windows 7 Ultimate 64bit)

[Misanthrope]

Holy crap wendel! 

 

Ok hm So currently I have my 2TB HDD in use with about 1.3TB of data, mainly games and videos etc, I can backup the pics, videos, and save games and re download my games later. How would I go about setting this partitioning up properly? I would assume de-activate the HDD, format, then activate and create 2 partitions ?  (Using windows 7 Ultimate 64bit)

 

A more in depth step by step on the how to's of it:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toLYV7th0L8

 

EDIT: Also for this to matter, you should be more diligent than usual with disk defragmentation if you're using a file format prone to it (should always be the case on Windows installs) I would suggest better disk defrag utility software than the windows default one, I personally use smart defrag

[Ariona]

A more in depth step by step on the how to's of it:

 

 

EDIT: Also for this to matter, you should be more diligent than usual with disk defragmentation if you're using a file format prone to it (should always be the case on Windows installs) I would suggest better disk defrag utility software than the windows default one, I personally use smart defrag

Thanks! Do you have any backup online free sites you use? I doubt I could backup everything but as much as possible would be nice. 

[Misanthrope]

Thanks! Do you have any backup online free sites you use? I doubt I could backup everything but as much as possible would be nice. 

 

Not anything remotely close to even SSD hard drive space. I just use google drive for the most important stuff and plain old optical media (rewritable dvds) for everything else.

[Ariona]

Not anything remotely close to even SSD hard drive space. I just use google drive for the most important stuff and plain old optical media (rewritable dvds) for everything else.

I have Gdrive with 100GBs from my chromebook. but whenever I upload with the desktop app it takes AGES, I hate it. and mediafire works almost instantly it's super fast but I only have 16GBs on it X_X 

[Misanthrope]

Well yeah anything internet based will be orders of magnitude slower than even the slowest connection on your pc and stuff. I'd use optical media myself but because I still have spin towers of the stuff just lying around, if you don't buying an external (or internal) hard drive is probably better.