Solid State Drive advice

[snippyfsxer]

Hi:

I am always looking for ways to improve performance (especially, but not only fsx) and have been doing some preliminary research into solid state drives.

[T1MT1M]

Buying a solid state drive will be a massive improvement over mechanical drives. You would be better off buying a single larger drive instead of two smaller ones, the adapter to change from 2.5 to 3.5 costs $15.

Based on your price the best one would be a intel x25-m g2, make sure it is the g2 because the g1 does not keep its performance like the g2 does. It comes in 80 and 160 GB, you would be best putting your OS, applications, and flight sim on it. If there isn't enough space then just put some applications on a different drive.

It is true that the drive will degrade in performance the more you put on it but this will be minimal.

I said that the intel drive would be the best but I am unsure if flight simulator would be reading sequential data and if the difference in read speeds would make a big enough difference. If it would then you should look at the OCZ vertex. But that would be a question to ask someone else because I am unsure.

I got all of this information from anandtech's articles and if you want to know a large amount of what you need to know about solid state drives you should read all of these articles in order from top to bottom (oldest to newest).

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3608

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

[snippyfsxer]

Thanks so much for that info!

[richardd43]

I'm tending towards the OCZ Vertex because of the sequential write speeds but also, because the firmware now supports the TRIM command and I will concurrently be upgrading to Win 7, which supports it.

I have the OCZ Vertex with W7 but use Garbage Collector in lieu of TRIM because Raid is not supported by trim (yet).

I have never used the Intel SSD so can not say anything about them but I have OCZ, Corsair and Patriot SSDs and prefer the OCZ because of the available support provided.

If you want any info on the Vertex before you make a purchase check out the OCZ forum.

In fact I would recommend browsing all of the SSD forums, is great reading if you want to upgrade

[snippyfsxer]

This may sound like a dumb question, but what is the advantage of using RAID?

[T1MT1M]

The intel x25-m g2 has trim enabled, personally I wouldn't bother with raid. The thing that makes a solid state drive so good is that it can load things VERY fast compared to normal drives, having your OS on it will make your computer start up very quick in comparison. The idea of having your programs, games and OS on your SSD is that they will be able to load so fast. When I buy my computer with a solid state drive I will be putting all of my programs and OS on it, (not games because I have too many) with the games and storage on different hard disks.

With these drives the random read/write speeds are probably more important than sequential, that's why the intel drives are so good, all of the enthusiasts still get the intel when they buy a top of the range pc. Because FSX isn't all in sequence on the disk for what it needs to read I don't think it is the most important thing you should be looking at.

To answer your question the reason why in the past you would put FSX on a different drive is because the more you put on it, the slower it gets, with these SSD's this is no longer true (there is at maximum still a 5% slow down but with TRIM now here it is minimal). Also the OS will use the ssd to an extent while you are playing FSX and that will detract from the performance that FSX needs, because I am not really all that familiar with how FSX works I can not say for sure but, IMO there will be no advantage to having them on another SSD because the SSD's are so fast anyway.

Also AFAIK there is no system that can play FSX on full settings but I have been out of the loop for a while about that but your system is quite good and it will get as close as you can get.

Just a side note, you no longer have to defragment your drive in case you didn't realise that yourself.

[Fozzer]

...well, from my experience, my Hard Drive only loads the necessary bits of the Flight Sim Program into MEMORY when I start the Sim, from where it runs throughout the remainder of Flight.

My flights run from directly from Memory, and only on rare occasions does the Hard Drive kick in for a split second (watching the HDD light) to load a few bits of additional Data into Memory as the flight progresses without interruption.

If the Hard Drive Light is constantly lit, it means you have insufficient Memory installed to cope with the Data required by the program!

Paul...G-BPLF...FS 2004/FSX...FS Navigator... 8-)....!

[snippyfsxer]

...well, from my experience, my Hard Drive only loads the necessary bits of the Flight Sim Program into MEMORY when I start the Sim, from where it runs throughout the remainder of Flight.

My flights run from directly from Memory, and only on rare occasions does the Hard Drive kick in for a split second (watching the HDD light) to load a few bits of additional Data into Memory as the flight progresses without interruption.

If the Hard Drive Light is constantly lit, it means you have insufficient Memory installed to cope with the Data required by the program!

Paul...G-BPLF...FS 2004/FSX...FS Navigator... 8-)....!

I don't know about that...you might be right;

[Fozzer]

I have my Desktop Computer mounted horizontal

[snippyfsxer]

Ok, then, I guess your computer must be bigger than my computer

[Fozzer]

[quote]Ok, then, I guess your computer must be bigger than my computer

[snippyfsxer]

Concerning performance increases during actual run time.  I re read all those tuning guides from that Nick fellow, and in one of them he points out that the one of the best investments you can make for FSX performance is a WD Velociraptor...by clearing up any latency issues related to large scenery reads.  Given that SSDs are much faster than a Velociraptor, I have my fingers crossed that I will see at least some performance increase over and above what I have now...(a Hitachi Deskstar)

[snippyfsxer]

OK:  I couldn't upgrade to Win 7 because my Matrox+Nvidia don't play well together without 182.5 drivers (which I can't get to install in Win 7)

So concerning TRIM...I see that there is the aforementioned  Garbage Collector.  Does that do the Trim command for Vista 64?  How often do I have to run it?

[snippyfsxer]

Finally back in the saddle again!

Thanks for all the advice guys!

[Fozzer]

Snippy....

I'm still baffled by the claim that a fast "Hard Drive" can speed up your game.... ...!

I am always under the assumption that the game actually reads the contents of your computer (high speed) "Memory", and not the Hard Drive!
The hard drive only comes into operation when initially loading the Sim into Memory, and on very infrequent occasions when a very small section of updated Data is required to load into Memory, and this occurs whist the Game is running without interruption.
I would have thought that with sufficient computer Memory installed 3+ GB, the Sim should run for 99% of the time without requiring the Hard Drive to come into operation at all?

My method is the close the computer down before loading the Sim, thereby clearing out the computer Memory of any unnecessary Data beforehand.

As I mentioned before, my Hard Drive indicator light is readily