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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: SSD Benefits?  (Read 4101 times)

ciago92

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SSD Benefits?
« on: August 10, 2014, 05:04:15 AM »

Hey all, have a question for you. I just got a Solid State Drive and I was curious what if any benefits I should expect to see putting StarSector on it. I forget the details but I had heard that some games it actually slows down due to some bottleneck somewhere and I was curious if anyone else had SS on an SSD to tell me if its worth it or not. Thanks!
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PCCL

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #1 on: August 10, 2014, 05:05:44 AM »

hmm, I got SS, and I got an SSD, lemme try that

EDIT: NOPE. no noticeable difference. I suppose if you run huge mods (like ironclad) it WOULD load faster, but on vanilla I don't see anything

EDIT2: Samsung 840 EVO, on 3gb SATA cable
« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 05:14:36 AM by gunnyfreak »
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Debido

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2014, 05:40:37 AM »

I'll put it to you this way, there are SSD's of all shapes, sizes and performance envelopes. I've been privileged to have my hands on consumer, commercial and HPC/enterprise database flash drives. The answer is that there is consumer stuff out there that won't make a significant difference, but the more expensive stuff will give a marginal benefit - but the stuff that will give you "WOW THAT'S FAST!!!!" performance - you probably can't afford it right now.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2014, 07:46:15 AM »

A SSD rarely influences loading times significantly.

SSDs generally have excellent read/write speeds but most consumer SSDs are not much faster than a good hard drive.  Where a SSD's performance comes in is with responsiveness; lacking a seek time or physical platters, they have random access performance that a hard drive can never hope to match.

In conclusion there is rarely any benefit whatsoever to gaming on a SSD, but you would benefit greatly by running your operating system on a SSD.
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Mattk50

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2014, 09:42:05 AM »

A SSD rarely influences loading times significantly.

SSDs generally have excellent read/write speeds but most consumer SSDs are not much faster than a good hard drive.  Where a SSD's performance comes in is with responsiveness; lacking a seek time or physical platters, they have random access performance that a hard drive can never hope to match.

In conclusion there is rarely any benefit whatsoever to gaming on a SSD, but you would benefit greatly by running your operating system on a SSD.

On a 2d game like starsector, it is true that you are unlikely to see any benefit at all from an SSD. However, even the cheaper consumer grade SSDs can drastically decrease load times on any modern 3d game with large amounts of textures, and can even increase in-game performance on games which spend time loading and unloading textures and world data. Many open world games that lack any loading screens have to do this, and in those games it makes a significant difference. most modern games just at minumum store needed textures to the RAM, meaning it will only impact initial load time in those games.
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xenoargh

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2014, 01:50:00 PM »

On really big games, like, say, Fallout: New Vegas, I've found that my SSD significantly decreases latency and load times. 

On small games, where all the assets will be loaded at run-time?  Not so much.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2014, 04:09:25 PM »

Yeah, though with the size of most SSDs you don't often get to install more than, say, two big games on it.  For smaller games like Starsector, a SSD makes zero difference.  A catch-22.
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Linnis

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2014, 08:12:16 PM »

I do all my video editing magic on my SSD, and its such a world of difference. But for gaming, I really cant tell...
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Pentarctagon

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Re: SSD Benefits?
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2014, 10:13:22 PM »

An SSD will *never* be slower than a normal HD.  That said, it will only improve things related to I/O.  So essentially your savegame will load faster, but you won't get any better FPS in a battle.
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