Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Any TDM players using SSDs?


lost_soul

Recommended Posts

Does an SSD decrease mission load times a lot?

 

Yes. In Darkmod less drastic than in most other games, though (especially 1st loadup, quickloads become almost instantaneous).

Don't try to shave off the last 20 Bucks and get yourself an Intel SSD (much more reliable long term) -

I have an X25-M 80 GB under quite heavy load for over a year now and it's great - friend bought cheaper and had some SSDs suddenly dead.

 

Just get OS on one small partition, and use another for games etc.

Seldom used or speed-wise uncritically data like movies or music I amass on a cheap 2HDD-Raid-1 for data security; the games I play or software I use regularly are on the SSD.

 

Afer all, that SSD felt like the most drastic computer speedup in the last decade for me (turns out most of the time computers feel slow while waiting for HDDs to come up with data).

 

That said, get yourself a SSD, but take a small and fast one. Smallest Intel should be best overall.

 

Edit:

Just looked it up: There is an 40GB Intel SSD available for about 70 Euros. Seems like the best for the buck today.

Edited by Outlooker

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Outlooker, what SSD's did your friend buy? I'm planning to buy a Corsair Force Series 60GB, 2.5", SATA II (CSSD-F60GB2-BRKT) tomorrow (Sandforce 1200), so I'd like to know if I'm about to buy a reliable SSD.

Edited by 7upMan

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Outlooker, what SSD's did your friend buy? I'm planning to buy a Corsair Force Series 60GB, 2.5", SATA II (CSSD-F60GB2-BRKT) tomorrow (Sandforce 1200), so I'd like to know if I'm about to buy a reliable SSD.

It was an (early) OCZ one.

Couple of months ago there was a SSD test on heise.de or golem.de regarding SSD use in commercial data centers (heavy use) - the result was basically that all brands other than Intel had at least twice as much breakdowns - the higher price for Intel SSD seems justified by that.

 

Edit:

http://www.golem.de/1012/79989-3.html

Intel SSDs turned out to be the only SSD brand that was actually more reliable than the best HDDs (failure rate about 1,2%)

(Intel 0.6% failure rate;Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, OCZ between 2 and 3%)

 

EDIT2:(For the sake of being interesting)

Worst HDD was a Western Digital model; 10% failed. Ouch.

Edited by Outlooker

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I remember that test. Well, I do hope that the guys at M&M can tell me how many defective SSDs they had to replace and what brands that were. If possible, I would not want bu buy anything from The Great Satan of IT.

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7Up

 

Save your money, SSD just arent worth it right now, I know I have the cash but choose to just upgrade my 4x320GB Raid-0 array for the same monye as 64Gb SSD and I will tell you why..

 

1. price, pretty odbious that one.

2. performance over time - The only OS that correctly uses SSD is linux, both W7 and OSX still dont communicated with the SSD (despite being advertised as such)

3. SSD have a shorter like span than HDD, even more so if you DONT turn off typical windows services that thrash normal HDD (index, defrag, superfetch, etc etc)

4. performance difference between makes of drive is a minefield.

5. Most motherboards cant utilies the FULL performance of SSD drive, because they are mostly Sata2 - only the latest boards are Sata3 and even these boards are poorly designed so that the Sata3 controller chip cant run at full speed without impacting the rest of the system performance.

 

With referance to each of my points:

 

- 2. - TRIM and GC commands (HDD's do this internally, but SSD's rely on the host OS to do this, how shit is that). Unlike normal HDD's SSD dont delete data marked as deleted which results in loss of perf, and this results in a noticeable drop of in perf over time to the point where the drive has to be rest back to AS NEW format to get the perf back.

- 3. Despite the fact I am pro IT engineer - if I cant use something out of the box without haveing to be "an engineer" then this is just a non-starter for me.

- 4. See above - and even I am getting overwhlemed but all the data out there. Suffice to say the best SSD chipset out there is the Sandforce based - fyi SF1200 is being superceeded by SF1300/1600 this year, so I would hold off making a decision till then.

- 5. that crucial drive you spotted is capable of hitting 350MB/s sec on a Sata3 controller, but you do anything at the same time and the perf dips..

 

I seriously suggest you do what I did..

 

My old array -

 

4* 320GB Seagate ST3320618AS (£125 a year ago)- 450/400MB/s Read/Write with 8ms access times, only issue is ad 8secs to boot times for the array to intialise.

 

new array

 

4* 320GB Samsung HD322GJ (£118 2weeks ago) - 640/600MB/s Read/Write with 5ms acess times, but crucially theses drives are much better than any other mechanical drive in the 512byte - to 4k file sizes. Its not on par with SSD buts its 4x faster than any other mech drive.

 

nuff said.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because I like the fence...

 

2. performance over time - The only OS that correctly uses SSD is linux, both W7 and OSX still dont communicated with the SSD (despite being advertised as such)

Win7 doesn't use AHCI by default but will use it if you either enable it via driver or registry, I'd assume most flavors of linux don't default to it either. OSX supports and even has AHCI as a requirement iirc. AHCI is pretty much the standard for using an SSD and expecting any sort of sustained performance.

 

3. SSD have a shorter like span than HDD, even more so if you DONT turn off typical windows services that thrash normal HDD (index, defrag, superfetch, etc etc)

Current ones should last 8-10 years, most are released with a rather large hidden area for remapping later in life (some brands give this as an option) Next gen will last less, failure rates seem to be increasing sharply with the shrinks, but there's not much good data to judge lifespans yet.

 

- 2. - TRIM and GC commands (HDD's do this internally, but SSD's rely on the host OS to do this, how shit is that). Unlike normal HDD's SSD dont delete data marked as deleted which results in loss of perf, and this results in a noticeable drop of in perf over time to the point where the drive has to be rest back to AS NEW format to get the perf back.

TRIM etc is a whole bag of worms on it's own and it's one of the reasons I scratch my head when I see people shopping on capacity. In any case it's largly influenced by the filesystem, ext3/4/ntfs etc seem to be very badly hit by this, but for example trim has a small negative effect on HFS/ZFS and almost no change in UFS (softupdates+journalling)... it's seen as a bit questionable and most likely something that if anything will shorten lifespans more than really necessary. But you can safely assume that after a few months of 'good' use with a lot of writing, you'll want to revert it anyway, TRIM will never be a good solution.

 

---

 

In the end I don't really understand why people buy SSD's, my system is ancient and snappy as hell, sure doom3 takes FOR FUCKING EVER to load a map, but I also require these breaks to visit the ablution facilities as well as boiling of a kettle (and RttC dependent, make tea). However if you are certain that you want to burn the cash then buy the pretty Intel, but go for something small since you'll know not to fill it up with crap and spend the rest on some cheap Samsung Green's (and build yourself a storage server, hippy. You don't want drives spinning up/down or any power cycling). Alternatively burn it in a holey little can on your desk in the middle of winter, completing your STALKER experience and enriching your life far more than you thought possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Win7 doesn't use AHCI by default but will use it if you either enable it via driver or registry, I'd assume most flavors of linux don't default to it either. OSX supports and even has AHCI as a requirement iirc. AHCI is pretty much the standard for using an SSD and expecting any sort of sustained performance.
  • Current ones should last 8-10 years, most are released with a rather large hidden area for remapping later in life (some brands give this as an option) Next gen will last less, failure rates seem to be increasing sharply with the shrinks, but there's not much good data to judge lifespans yet.

 

  • yeah not its not an out the box fix/config, 995 of use4rs wont evne know how to enable this in the bios..
  • And it might say 8-10yrs on the packaging, but I have rarely read about any SSD lasting longer than year or so atm before failing..

 

they are too expensive and cutting egde for even people such myself to consider getting one. Also what the sites that are paid to do reviews don't tell you in in half of the scenarios an SSD is only slightly faster then a HDD.

 

<_<

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I did read tests about current SSDs in my price region (aka 100 €), and it seems that OCZ has a horrible reputation for failing and/or slow drives. Corsair OTOH seems to be a good choice. Since I'll need to go to the computer store anyway I'll just ask. If the ppl there can recommend me a specific drive for the computer I'm doing my job on, then I'll probably give it a try. My important data (job folders) will stay on the HDD anyway.

 

What did you guys mean by Win7 doesn't support AHCI out of the box? I was kinda assuming that I'll just install the clean SSD in my PC, enable AHCI in the BIOS and start the PC up with the Win7 install DVD in the DVD-ROM drive. Won't the install routine detect the AHCI mode and install the appropriate driver accordingly?

 

 

 

P.S.: Also, I'm not keen on getting me a RAID system. I'm fairly happy with my current very quiet setup (large 12 cm CPU fan sitting on a huge CPU cooler) and a quiet GPU cooler (Sapphire HD5770). The HDD is actually the loudest component in my system, at least in read/write operations.

 

 

Edited by 7upMan

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What did you guys mean by Win7 doesn't support AHCI out of the box? I was kinda assuming that I'll just install the clean SSD in my PC, enable AHCI in the BIOS and start the PC up with the Win7 install DVD in the DVD-ROM drive. Won't the install routine detect the AHCI mode and install the appropriate driver accordingly?

Setting it in the BIOS will only enable the controller to allow it, In Windows the driver can specifically use it, Intel try force you to install their 'raid' driver which does this, AMD offer a AHCI driver option in their installer. You can also enable it via the registry if you don't want to use the Intel driver which is often annoying (YMMV).

 

I'll never really 'get' RAID either (besides RAID-Z :D), so I'm with you there :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Serpentine, can you point me to the AMD AHCI driver, for Dummies, please. The way I understand you, I have to install the driver and can then enable AHCI in the BIOS. I *think* that would already boost my HDD's speed, as I have AHCI disabled. I have WinXP/32.

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're using XP and enable AHCI, you'll most likely make windows unbootable and have to do a bit of jiggery pokery to get it working again. I really wouldn't bother with it. The driver is included with the southbridge driver, you can find it on game.amd.com under chipsets.

 

I'm sure there are posts regarding safe methods to do so elsewhere, I really cant say I've tried - only heard people moaning about reinstalls/fixing it :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've bought the SSD (OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB) and regretted it a day later. Apparently, OCZ not only switched from 34nm chips to 25 nm, but is also using chips with a higher capacity (64 Gbit) instead of 32 Gbit. This means that less chips are used and several chip lanes are unused, resulting in less throughput. Fortunately, OCZ seems to replace those drives without any problems. I already made a ticket with the support and will replace my SSD.

 

In the meantime, I'll get myself a Corsair Force F60 SSD which is 34nm (and thus more durable than the new 25nm chips) and has the full complement of chips. God, I already know more about SSD internals than I ever wished for. :-(

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean Corsair did this too? And to answer the OP: No, even a fast SSD doesn't really decrease loading time, because the loading part is actually the least time consuming. Preparing all the data takes way more time.

 

BD, I can understand your reluctance toward SSD's, as this is still a new and somewhat unreliable technology. Still, once you've experienced the non-existant loading times and the "snappiness" of your computer, you'll never want to miss it again!

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean Corsair did this too? And to answer the OP: No, even a fast SSD doesn't really decrease loading time, because the loading part is actually the least time consuming. Preparing all the data takes way more time.

 

Er, I beg to differ :)

 

After cold-boot, loading Heart.map takes 240 seconds on my system. After doing it twice in a row, it only takes 120 seconds. So 120s (50%) of the time is on my system spent fetching the data from the HD into the memory, and you can clearly hear the HD grind in the background. I believe a faster HDD (I have an old 300 Gbyte SATA I one) or a fast SSD would definitely help here.

 

BD, I can understand your reluctance toward SSD's, as this is still a new and somewhat unreliable technology. Still, once you've experienced the non-existant loading times and the "snappiness" of your computer, you'll never want to miss it again!

 

Er, which way is it "is not decreasing loading time" or "non-existant loading times"? :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, the thing is that I took the SSD on a ride to see how much faster TDM becomes. As anyone who played RttC knows, this FM is demanding on the computer. The updated version didn't change that much in terms of loading time. It is entirely possible that loading time has indeed decreased, but when it already takes ages for the FM to load (long enough for a trip to the loo and back) a few seconds won't make a difference. Every other software, from MS Office stuff to Opera with many tabs open, is accelerated through the roof.

 

By the way, Tels, I read your discussion with stgatilov. I have no idea what you guys are talking about, and most of the time I'm only checking the thread in the hope to see some nice pictures (as with the SEED thread), but I couldn't help to notice that you are talking about loading time lately. Would it help if I tested those spawn times with my shiny new SSD? You'd just need to tell me exactly what to do.

 

 

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, the thing is that I took the SSD on a ride to see how much faster TDM becomes. As anyone who played RttC knows, this FM is demanding on the computer. The updated version didn't change that much in terms of loading time. It is entirely possible that loading time has indeed decreased, but when it already takes ages for the FM to load (long enough for a trip to the loo and back) a few seconds won't make a difference. Every other software, from MS Office stuff to Opera with many tabs open, is accelerated through the roof.

 

Yeah, 2 minutes minus 10 or 20 seconds make no difference :) However, having it load in 10 seconds less if that is repeatable is still a good thing :)

 

By the way, Tels, I read your discussion with stgatilov. I have no idea what you guys are talking about, and most of the time I'm only checking the thread in the hope to see some nice pictures (as with the SEED thread),

 

LOL I forgot that thread over there was public :blush:

 

Will post "pweddy bicdurs" later :D

 

but I couldn't help to notice that you are talking about loading time lately. Would it help if I tested those spawn times with my shiny new SSD? You'd just need to tell me exactly what to do.

 

When you load a map, doom3 prints something like "12345 ms to load mapname" on the console.

 

So you could:

 

* boot your computer, load d3, load the map "Heart of Lone Salvation"

* repeat the above (without rebooting)

* repeat the above again (without rebooting)

 

Tell us the times d3 says :) If you have a lot of time, copy the doom folder on your HD, and repeat the above test. That would tell you if your SSD is faster :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...