Running Arma2 from SSD

[rekrul 7]

Has anyone tried installing Windows and Arma2 on a SSD disk with either no pagefile or pagefile on a standard HDD?

I'm curious if it gives a performance boost in regards to loading textures faster than a 7200 RPM disk.

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

What are the cache speeds of these new SSDs? I'm tool lazy to look it up. XD

[campstr 10]

hi mate .. i know of a person who just recently fitted a 30g ssd and installed vbs2,

He was happy with the results, he post in the vbs2 forums the results. all are definatly in the positive as far as performance is concerned.... there was a noticably increase in speed

---------- Post added at 02:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 AM ----------

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SSD and VBS2

Postby Doc » Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:09 pm

Hey every1,

Just thought some maybe interested in my testing of a SSD drive with VBS2 only on it....

System:

ASUS M4N78 PRO

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Processor (2800 o/c to 3200)

2 x 2Gig DDR2

EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 (1920 x 1080)

Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme

60 Gig OCZ Summit SATAII SSD

500 Gig SATAII HDD (7200rpm)

OS

Windows 7 Ultimate (6.1.7100) 64 Bit

VBS2 1.23 YYMEA (13.8Gig)

Stats I got......

VBS2 start till menu

7200HDD

samples

52,54,56,58 AVG-55

SDD

samples

43,39,33,44 AVG-39.75

28% quicker

Networking - NEW till create game screen

7200HDD

samples

20,23 AVG-21.5

SDD

samples

6,8 AVG-7

67% quicker

1st player slot - launch till Mission Brief Screen

7200HDD

samples

83,83 AVG-83

SDD

samples

65,63 AVG-64

23% quicker

Editing Menu till map load - Syrian 10x10ver97

7200HDD

samples

20,20 AVG-20

SDD

samples AVG

13,13 13

35% quicker

[Dogtags 0]

hi mate .. i know of a person who just recently fitted a 30g ssd and installed vbs2,

He was happy with the results, he post in the vbs2 forums the results. all are definatly in the positive as far as performance is concerned.... there was a noticably increase in speed

---------- Post added at 02:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 AM ----------

* Report this post

* Reply with quote

SSD and VBS2

Postby Doc » Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:09 pm

Hey every1,

Just thought some maybe interested in my testing of a SSD drive with VBS2 only on it....

System:

ASUS M4N78 PRO

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Processor (2800 o/c to 3200)

2 x 2Gig DDR2

EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 (1920 x 1080)

Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme

60 Gig OCZ Summit SATAII SSD

500 Gig SATAII HDD (7200rpm)

OS

Windows 7 Ultimate (6.1.7100) 64 Bit

VBS2 1.23 YYMEA (13.8Gig)

Stats I got......

VBS2 start till menu

7200HDD

samples

52,54,56,58 AVG-55

SDD

samples

43,39,33,44 AVG-39.75

28% quicker

Networking - NEW till create game screen

7200HDD

samples

20,23 AVG-21.5

SDD

samples

6,8 AVG-7

67% quicker

1st player slot - launch till Mission Brief Screen

7200HDD

samples

83,83 AVG-83

SDD

samples

65,63 AVG-64

23% quicker

Editing Menu till map load - Syrian 10x10ver97

7200HDD

samples

20,20 AVG-20

SDD

samples AVG

13,13 13

35% quicker

Can't wait for prices on SSD to drop, at least to start with. 80GB would be perfect along side a 1TB Hard drive just for storage.

I think the new 80GB HP or IBM? SSD's are faster than what was shown above so they are only going to get faster.

[An Fiach 10]

yea they just need to improve their life span

[campstr 10]

yeah a 150g will cost about $1500

[rekrul 7]

You can get a 128GB for $300 but you really don't need a big disk as it only will contain OS and maybe applications (you can install other programs on a normal HDD).

Prices are coming down and Intel are already announcing price drops so it looks like the next step. My HDD is the weakest spot on my PC right now.

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

Kingston has a 256gb that you can preorder for only $1000 (£650).:rolleyes:

[Baff1 0]

What I'm intrested to learn is if it defeats the LOD bug.

The texture load times, and the games frame rates during streaming.

[Dogtags 0]

yea they just need to improve their life span

I am sure I read they have a life of 2 million hours or something like that, not sure about read/writes though.

[huendchen 0]

What I'm intrested to learn is if it defeats the LOD bug.

The texture load times, and the games frame rates during streaming.

I just got a OCZ Agility 60gb for ArmA2 and Windows; the results are fantastic.

The textures load instantly and there is no stuttering due to streaming. Very

few times I might get a blank head but only for a fraction of a second. Also

the load times for missions are (subjectively) only ~30% as long.

Also the whole OS experience is just way more fluid, no hiccups with heavy

multitasking involving HDD access, applications start almost instantly and

you get very fast booting. It's one of the most noticeable upgrade you can get.

They are pricey though and you have to research what drives are good.

I recommend either Intel X25-M, OCZ Vertex or OCZ Agility. The 30gb Agility

is available at below $140, so you could just get that one for ArmA2.

Edited July 23, 2009 by huendchen

[rekrul 7]

I am sure I read they have a life of 2 million hours or something like that, not sure about read/writes though.

It can read infinite times but writing to it is somewhat limited so you wouldn't want your page file there.

[Baff1 0]

I recommend either Intel X25-M, OCZ Vertex or OCZ Agility. The 30gb Agility

is available at below $140, so you could just get that one for ArmA2.

Thanks for the reply, 60 GB Vertex is what I had in mind, A dedicated drive with just ArmA and Crysis on it.

[Game__On 10]

It can read infinite times but writing to it is somewhat limited so you wouldn't want your page file there.

I read that as long as you don't defrag the ssd drives have no noticable less liefespan than normal drives ?

The data on these drives is supposed to be fragmented, exactly for lifespan reasons.

[-=seany=- 5]

I just wanted to know if anyone had else bought an SSD drive for Arma2 and what the performance difference is like? Will it stop the constant stuttering in towns?

I was considering this:

Corsair SSD Performance P64 2,5" 64GB

SATA2, read/write speed of up to 220MB/200MB sec, MLC, Gen 2

[kklownboy 43]

i use a SSD for ARMA1(steam) , old school gskill with the Jmicron, was ok no real difference, well some speed in some stuff loading, but from time to time it would be utter fail, and show what SSD do when they loose there mind and get written too. 5sec frame stutter, really 5secs a frame! The I/O count goes out the roof....talking nonstop I/O, 100s of thousands...

In a raid setup on a dedicated card on a 4xPCI-e slot maybe good, but as a stand alone drive on a direct sata(ich10 intel) it can be serious fail...money better spent on CPU or Vidcard... Tho i will be trying it again when we get a good patch for A2 and will be using 505/cdwow verison, not a Steam DL 4gb patch BS version.

[Yoma 0]

I use an intel x25-m and it's pretty good :-)

Have winxp and arma2 on it and just a few basic applications. Swap file is on a "real" hd.

I wouldn't recommend a small 30GB ssd, performance does go down when you fill the entire disk and may be lower then the bigger versions from the start anyway.

With future addons the 30GB might turn out to be smallish so i'd say if you do get one, get one that's 60GB at the least.

[.kju 3244]

same here. loads times are improved vastly.

texture flickering is unrelated to ssd. lod switching is smooth here

[Tankbuster 1744]

With future addons the 30GB might turn out to be smallish so i'd say if you do get one, get one that's 60GB at the least.

Agreed. I added up my windows and program files directories and got 34GB so a 60GB drive should be just right.

[GunSlingerAUS 10]

I'm using a Patriot TorqX 128GB for my Win7 OS install and ARMA2.

Good news = fantastic OS and app performance, faster loading of ARMA2.

Bad news = it doesn't fix ARMA2's performance. I still get texture pop-in, and sub 20 fps.

Still, if you can afford one I highly recommend it. Windows and productivity apps run beautifully. Just make sure you buy the right SSD - some older/cheaper ones have major issues which can make them perform worse than a mechanical drive. Anandtech has a fantastic article on why, and which drives to avoid.

[koroush47 10]

I am sure I read they have a life of 2 million hours or something like that, not sure about read/writes though.

So 200 years?

You sure?

[nomdeplume 0]

i use a SSD for ARMA1(steam) , old school gskill with the Jmicron, was ok no real difference, well some speed in some stuff loading, but from time to time it would be utter fail, and show what SSD do when they loose there mind and get written too. 5sec frame stutter, really 5secs a frame! The I/O count goes out the roof....talking nonstop I/O, 100s of thousands...

The JMicron controller, especially old ones, are rubbish. They're not a good indication of what 'real' SSDs can do. Performance can vary a lot; Intel still has the lead but at a high price premium. There's a few companies producing goods drives that are almost as good as the Intel ones at about half the cost.

It can read infinite times but writing to it is somewhat limited so you wouldn't want your page file there.

This isn't really true either. Swapfiles are actually very good candidates for SSD drives due to their access patterns: low numbers of large writes and high numbers of small reads. This is particularly with reference to Windows 7 where they've done a lot of work because they believe SSD is 'the future'.

See: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Regarding the thread: I haven't noticed much difference at all with my shiny new Corsair 128GB drive; however my previous setup had two Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptors in a striped (RAID 0) setup, so it was already pretty fast. I imagine the difference in going from a single 7,200 RPM drive would be night and day.

[Baff1 0]

So 200 years?

You sure?

They have a much longer expected life than a standard HDD mate.

No moving parts.

[rekrul 7]

This isn't really true either. Swapfiles are actually very good candidates for SSD drives due to their access patterns: low numbers of large writes and high numbers of small reads. This is particularly with reference to Windows 7 where they've done a lot of work because they believe SSD is 'the future'.

My argument was based on the SSD's lifecycle not efficiency. Meaning your SSD will live longer with pagefile on another disk, however I don't know the actual impact (to lifecycle) this has, so if it reduces the lifecycle from 12 years to 7 my entire point is moot. :)

[-=seany=- 5]

How come it doesn't speed up loading/paging when the game is actually loaded? Surely as far the HD is concerned it shouldn't be that much different to loading an application, I mean it's just data transferred from the disk, right? I don't think I would bother with SSD if it wont speed up HD/file access in game, load times aren't really that big of a deal, you only have to load it once.

Maybe Ill get one in a year or two when they are competing on par with mechanical HD's.