Which SSD for Arma2/OA?

[Gibbo355 10]

gday,

Im looking at upgrading to an SSD in my gaming rig, im currently running a 150Gb Velociraptor for my OS and all games/apps, and from what ive read this seems to be the major bottleneck in my system in regards to running Arma2.

current system specs:

CPU: i7-920 @ 3.8Ghz

GPU: 4870x2 @ 780/900

RAM: 6GB G.Skill 8-8-8-20 1448MHz

PSU: Coolermaster 850w

AUDIO: Xonar DX

MOBO: ASUS P6T Deluxe

HDD 1: 150GB Velociraptor

HDD 2: 1TB WD Caviar black

OS: Win 7 x64

Im pretty clueless when it comes to SSD's, as ive only just considered buying one and havent had the time to research and compare the different controllers available, from what ive read @ anandtech.com im swaying towards the Intel G2.

any experiences or recomendations with either Intel G1/G2, Indilinx and sandforce based drives from the Arma2 community would be very helpful, im happy with my fps (~50fps 1920x1080 terrain low/objects high/100% 3D res) but i still feel overall there is something lacking.

cheers.

[johncage 30]

imo, that "lacking" you feel is basically just materialist habit trying to get you to spend unnecessarily.

[tonton 0]

indeed. You already have fast Velociraptor, so if your arma is already on this drive, you wont get significant performance boost like when you switch from standard HDD to SSD.

[Gibbo355 10]

you could possibly be right there zachanscom, however with the price drops recently and the performance bosst not only in arma but in the system overall that everyone raves about, i think my rig deserves one.

[rexehuk 16]

You got a few choices about, the intel is a good choice, I assume you mean the 80 or 160GB versions?

Other things to check out might be the Vertex 2 (I have one), these use a sandforce controller which essentially keeps the drive running at top speed (or near it) regardless of what is on the drive. This helps reduce the speed decrease drops you find on most conventional HDs and SSD over the course of your windows install.

I've got A2 installed on SSD with Windows, all other games are ran from WD blacks, but you have a Velociraptor which would be a very nice game drive + downloads for fast interchange between your SSD when needed.

Oh and once you buy an SSD, stop upgrading your system ;) I put my SSD down as my last upgrade due to the money I was spending... stopped short of eyefinity luckily.

[Fred DM 0]

does an SSD really make much of a difference in ArmA 2, or games in general?

it seems to me that upgrading from a standard HDD to an SSD is not much more than an enthusiast upgrade to shave off a handful of seconds of loading times.

too many times i've seen SSD users brag how their Windows now loads 7 seconds faster, or how their BFBC2 map load times decreased from 12 seconds to 8. i find that ridiculous considering how much an SSD costs and how small (in capacity) they are compared to regular HDDs.

unless there's more to it than that, i don't think it's in any way worth it.

Edited June 29, 2010 by Fred DM

[Gibbo355 10]

thanks for the suggestions rexehuk, i am looking at particularly the 80GB Intel X-25M G2, larger would be nice but dont really want to spend more than around $300, so i guess after checking the prices on the sandforce, that only leaves me with the Intel option, plus i have the Velociraptor for other less demanding games/apps like you said, so 80GB should do the job nicely.

and yeah its been a while since my last upgrade (noctua HSF) i built this rig over 12 months ago and it cost me enough back then, well over $2k, however having a nice fast snappy system was always the plan so an SSD would just compliment the build nicely.

---------- Post added at 05:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:09 PM ----------

does an SSD really make much of a difference in ArmA 2, or games in general?

i have read several sources claiming that arma2 does benefit in game from having quicker access times from an SSD.

i'll link these sources if you're interested, dont have them bookmarked but i could find them easy enough.

[Tankbuster 1740]

i have read several sources claiming that arma2 does benefit in game from having quicker access times from an SSD.

i'll link these sources if you're interested, dont have them bookmarked but i could find them easy enough.

Here's a source. :)

The guts of my system dates back to 2006 and I can't afford a whole new PC to start playing in the i5/i7 playground. I'm stuck in the Q9550 bit.

So, when SSD's became affordable, it seemed the obvious way to go for me - I expected performance increases and knew that I could carry over the drive to any new PC I built in the future.

I should say at this point that I also moved up to an extra 2 GB of RAM making 6, and from XP32 to 7 Ulti 64. So it's hard to quantify how much of my performance gains (in game and in the OS AND in applications) is down to the new drive, but the difference in ARMA2 was noticeable, faster loads, no texture-pop, less crashes and marginally improved FPS. Of course, everyone has seen big gains since 1.07, but I don't regret getting my SSD for one second.

For reference, I stretched my budget and got the Intel X25M Gen 2 80GB. Drives are something we only buy every 5 years or so. It makes sense to get the very best you can (only just) afford.

I put the OS, ARMA2/OA on it, plus Photoshop and MS Office. I might move office off to the HDD now though as it's running a little short of space.

[Gibbo355 10]

thanks Tankbuster, this is what i was hoping to hear, after reading more into the tech available it seems the Intel G2 is the way to go as it has the fastest access times in the market.

[enforcer1975 0]

gday,

Im looking at upgrading to an SSD in my gaming rig, im currently running a 150Gb Velociraptor for my OS and all games/apps, and from what ive read this seems to be the major bottleneck in my system in regards to running Arma2.

Im pretty clueless when it comes to SSD's, as ive only just considered buying one and havent had the time to research and compare the different controllers available, from what ive read @ anandtech.com im swaying towards the Intel G2.

any experiences or recomendations with either Intel G1/G2, Indilinx and sandforce based drives from the Arma2 community would be very helpful, im happy with my fps (~50fps 1920x1080 terrain low/objects high/100% 3D res) but i still feel overall there is something lacking.

We have the same HDD specs.

I recently bought a OCZ Vertex 96GB, it's like day and night. Starting the game is ultrafast, no more textures popping up!! Should be of course, it has more than double the speed of the 150GB Raptor i also have.

We both have Win 7 / 64 bit, so Trimming should be no problem.

[Gibbo355 10]

yeah i think im just gonna do it, havent heard anyone say they regret buying one, pity theyre so expensive in Australia, its cheaper to buy one from the USA over ebay than locally...

thanks for the replies.

[Baff1 0]

I bought a OCZ Vertex for ARMA2.

It seemed like the best buy for my budget at the time, but it's only 30GB so it's a dedicated ArmA drive.

Intels are the best or were when I last looked but they cost a lot more.

A lot of the variation depends on write speed, or sustained writes. But this is irreleveant for a game drive which only needs read speeds. So these are the drive statistics you should be comparing.

I still get the odd texture pop ups, so I still want something faster, but the frame rates don't noticeably stall anymore.

It was the texture popups I was trying to defeat when I bought this drive, hopefully they will have imporved by the time I buy the next one.

Edited June 29, 2010 by Baff1

[MavericK96 0]

This is the closest thing I can find to an SSD thread about ArmA2, so I will use this thread to ask my question:

When using an SSD, would it be better for the game to run the OS and other apps off of a different drive, and just have ArmA2 and maybe the page file on the SSD? Or is performance pretty much the same just running the OS and ArmA2 off the SSD together?

[Wolfstriked 11]

I don't mean to rain on this parade but an SSD did little for me stutter wise.Its did cure the texture pop though.

[Antigoon 10]

Couple of questions;

By texture popping, do you mean for instance when you look at a tree and zoom in ,it kinda gets finished drawing on the screen before your eyes? Cause if i could get rid of that, that would be great!

And what is a pagefile? I can probably figure out how to install an SSD in my pc but have no idea what you mean by that. (would be Arma dedicated)

[giorgygr 61]

This is the closest thing I can find to an SSD thread about ArmA2, so I will use this thread to ask my question:

When using an SSD, would it be better for the game to run the OS and other apps off of a different drive, and just have ArmA2 and maybe the page file on the SSD? Or is performance pretty much the same just running the OS and ArmA2 off the SSD together?

Personally i don't own a SSD but i would not suggest you to

assign the "paging" file in there due to SSD nature.

The SSD's "life" depends (unless Armageddon arrives) to

"how much quantity of data" are written to SSD in time.

So ..a paging file and/or a defrag reads and writes really 2 many times in

disk..seriously harming his longevity

;)

[MavericK96 0]

I've read about that, too, and it's not actually an issue. In fact, many people (including Microsoft) seem to say putting the paging file on an SSD is one of the best things you can do.

That aside, my real question was if it was better to have the game alone on the SSD or if it was the same (performance-wise) to have the OS on there as well.

@Wolfstriked: Yeah, it doesn't do much to help stutter really, but it does help the texture LOD switching a bit as you mentioned.

@Antigoon: Page file is what your computer uses when it is unable to use more RAM, and is stored/accessed on the HDD or SSD, depending on where it's assigned. Doing a google search on page files should help, but there are some who believe that having 6+ GB of RAM you no longer need a page file, which is untrue in my experience. I've had programs (ArmA2 included) crash with "out of memory" issues when disabling the page file.

[Janat 10]

Before I got an SSD, I had quite a lot of stuttering and slow texture loading (resulting in missing textures like totally white faces or buildings and such, then stuttering and finally textures getting rendered in front of my eyesI. I got an Intel X-25M G2 160GB SSD for windows 7, pagefile and games including ArmA 2. Now there's a lot less stuttering, texture pop up has almost disappeared, only in some rare cases does it happen and launching any program installed on SSD is way faster than it was on my Samsung F3. SSD drive is most likely the best upgrade you can get for your computer.

[PogMoThoin 10]

The advantage of an SSD is not the speed, its only a little faster than my 4 year old 2x36GB raptors in raid 0 that do ~150MB/s, but its the access time. As there's no moving parts, no disk to spin to position, the seek time is virtually zero compared to a few miliseconds. I've Arma+OA+mods on a 40G SSD and it makes a huge difference to a mechanical drive

---------- Post added at 10:05 ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 ----------

Before I got an SSD, I had quite a lot of stuttering and slow texture loading (resulting in missing textures like totally white faces or buildings and such, then stuttering and finally textures getting rendered in front of my eyesI. I got an Intel X-25M G2 160GB SSD for windows 7, pagefile and games including ArmA 2. Now there's a lot less stuttering, texture pop up has almost disappeared, only in some rare cases does it happen and launching any program installed on SSD is way faster than it was on my Samsung F3. SSD drive is most likely the best upgrade you can get for your computer.

I hope not the pagefile :eek:, SSD's have limited writes, don't let your OS page on it or it won't last long. Pagefile should be disabled if You've enough ram, or moved to a mechanical drive.

You shouldn't defrag an SSD either, they don't need it as the seek time is zero but it reduces the lifespan of the SSD

[SpiritWolf448 10]

I had 3 SSDs die on me over the course of roughly 8 month. All of them (1x Intel G2 160GB and 2x Samsungs 128GB) started throwing S.M.A.R.T. errors after about 3-4 month of usage due to "too many bad sectors". All of them were replaced under warranty, but it did enough to lessen my enthusiasm for this young technology. With productivity systems (my PC is used for work as well as gaming), speed is nothing without relyability.

(Actually, when doing the support call to replace the faulty drives, the Intel support guy actually told me that consumer level MLC based SSDs aren't meant for highly dynamic data patterns, like swap files, databases ect. He told me to buy an enterprise level SLC based SSD for that kind of use. ^_^" Dunno if that is correct or only potential money making, but I tend to agree that the SSDs I had installed seemingly did not like being used for swapping and my SQL databases.)

Just saying. Don't intend to rain on anybodies parade here. Carry on. :D

[Janat 10]

I hope not the pagefile :eek:, SSD's have limited writes, don't let your OS page on it or it won't last long. Pagefile should be disabled if You've enough ram, or moved to a mechanical drive.

You shouldn't defrag an SSD either, they don't need it as the seek time is zero but it reduces the lifespan of the SSD

I've set the pagefile to be fixed size to minimize the amount of bad sectors caused by it. The drive's MTBF is over a million hours. SSD's low access time is a huge benefit in page file use. What's the point of getting an SSD if you ain't going to use it? :p

[frederf 0]

Regular magnetic HDDs have limited writes too. People get all in a huff about limited writes on solid state memory until they do the math and realize that even under extreme use the SSD will last 10x longer than the traditional device it's replacing.

[giorgygr 61]

btw i don't recall if is possible to assign the paging file in a Ramdrive..

If this can be done..i would have :

my paging file to ramdrive

Data (i.e ArmA) in SSD

the OS in fast HDD

Edited July 10, 2010 by GiorgyGR

[PogMoThoin 10]

I've set the pagefile to be fixed size to minimize the amount of bad sectors caused by it. The drive's MTBF is over a million hours. SSD's low access time is a huge benefit in page file use. What's the point of getting an SSD if you ain't going to use it? :p

Why do You want paging at all, disable it and make it use ram, ram is much quicker. There are lots of reports of SSD's dying in less than 3 months when the pagefile is on them, its early days for this tech.

[Wolfstriked 11]

btw i don't recall if is possible to assign the paging file in a Ramdrive..

If this can be done..i would have :

my paging file to ramdrive

Data (i.e ArmA) in SSD

the OS in fast HDD

:rolleyes:Sorry dude and again I don't mean to rain on your parade but I have same setup you describe and it stutter like no other.

BIS,if science can cure this case of stutter then you can cure our stutters

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96vJ49D0lxw[YOUTUBE]

Edited July 10, 2010 by Wolfstriked