RAIDing SSDs....worth it?
- Thread starter -BA-
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"Is there a noticeable difference if they are striped? "
Depends on what you are doing and how you are going to use them. To my mind, I would say it's not worth it. But others may disagree depending on how/what they use their raid array for.
Out of interest... what advantage do you think you will get from having your games on an SSD? Not being rude or anything, just interested. From what I can see... initial game load would be quicker. But besides that, the only sort of games that I could see benefiting from being on an SSD, would be "free roaming games" (EG. Stalker) that load the game world as you move around.
I did think about this myself. But discounted it as even a dedicated 128GB SSD was not really proctical for holding even a moderate number of games. My STEAM folder alone is almost 100GB and that doesn't contain that many games!
Up to individuals I suppose. But if it was me, I'd stick the games on a decent mechanical HD.
PS. The way I've set things up... is OS and main applications (browser and serious programs) on the SSD. Games on a dedicated mech HD. All other stuff (downloads/pictures/music etc.) re-directed automatically to yet another mech. HD. Finally a decent sized external HD for image level back ups of my other 3 drives. Only one way of many to set your system up of course. This way, should the main drive supporting the OS fail (God forbid that an SSD would have course!) then all I have to do, is re-install Windows on the main drive and then just point it to the relevant other drives etc.
Only my opinion. Others may well have a different view (and probably will).
Depends on what you are doing and how you are going to use them. To my mind, I would say it's not worth it. But others may disagree depending on how/what they use their raid array for.
Out of interest... what advantage do you think you will get from having your games on an SSD? Not being rude or anything, just interested. From what I can see... initial game load would be quicker. But besides that, the only sort of games that I could see benefiting from being on an SSD, would be "free roaming games" (EG. Stalker) that load the game world as you move around.
I did think about this myself. But discounted it as even a dedicated 128GB SSD was not really proctical for holding even a moderate number of games. My STEAM folder alone is almost 100GB and that doesn't contain that many games!
Up to individuals I suppose. But if it was me, I'd stick the games on a decent mechanical HD.
PS. The way I've set things up... is OS and main applications (browser and serious programs) on the SSD. Games on a dedicated mech HD. All other stuff (downloads/pictures/music etc.) re-directed automatically to yet another mech. HD. Finally a decent sized external HD for image level back ups of my other 3 drives. Only one way of many to set your system up of course. This way, should the main drive supporting the OS fail (God forbid that an SSD would have course!) then all I have to do, is re-install Windows on the main drive and then just point it to the relevant other drives etc.
Only my opinion. Others may well have a different view (and probably will).
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I'm assuming your running windows 7. I highly expect you'll see more benefit from increasing memory from 4 GB then an SSD. The reason is Windows 7 will cache files into spare memory, providing you have spare memory Windows 7 will even pre-fetch regular executable files also.
Back to RAID SSD. You will gain little from RAID SSD, as big advantage of SSD is access times on smaller files. If you look at benchmarks for RAID SSD, you see 4-64k access times are very similar, it's normally this smaller file behaviour pattern when loading programs and data. You can confirm this by opening performance monitor and looking at disk access. Sort disk access into high reads first and you'll see lots of small file requests.
People go-on about SATA 3, and post benchmarks showing so many 100's of MB's per second their disks can handle, but in terms of general performance access times (response time) is more important.
Back to RAID SSD. You will gain little from RAID SSD, as big advantage of SSD is access times on smaller files. If you look at benchmarks for RAID SSD, you see 4-64k access times are very similar, it's normally this smaller file behaviour pattern when loading programs and data. You can confirm this by opening performance monitor and looking at disk access. Sort disk access into high reads first and you'll see lots of small file requests.
People go-on about SATA 3, and post benchmarks showing so many 100's of MB's per second their disks can handle, but in terms of general performance access times (response time) is more important.
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from what i have read online, it is almost impossible to tell apart the loading times of the slowest and fastest SSD
that is why i have an original vertex and not felt the need to upgrade to a faster ssd
i think that raiding is unnecessary especially due to the fact that you lose TRIM support too
that is why i have an original vertex and not felt the need to upgrade to a faster ssd
i think that raiding is unnecessary especially due to the fact that you lose TRIM support too
I'm not sure about that, i think a raid 0 of say 3 vertex 3s or m4s would be signficantly quicker...for say booting windows than just 1.. but i'm yet to try it.
I know of someone who has done it with x2 and says it's great but then maybe his investment is swaying his opinion, on paper it sounds good.
I know of someone who has done it with x2 and says it's great but then maybe his investment is swaying his opinion, on paper it sounds good.
Not convinced myself, but be more than interested to see some hard facts (screen prints etc.) showing any real world improvement that you would get from a raid-array in windows boot (not convinced that this is a BIG plus for investing this sort of money anyway ... but up to individuals I suppose).
JasonM makes some good points and I would pretty much agree with his comments.
panyan also makes some good points and again I tend to agree.
Though as commented before, it's up to individuals as to how/what they want to spend their hard earned money on. I just can't believe than in most (not saying all) situations, that you would be hard pressed to tell much difference between any of the half decent SSD's.
Really appreciate the feedback guys. This is with a view to the SSDs being part of a new system. I am looking to move on from the system in my spec now. Re. the types of games I play. I play MMOs quite a bit, mostly Eve at the moment but will be possibly looking at SWTOR. Love my FPS games and aim to play BF3 (the beta has been pushing my current setup pretty hard as I had stability issues already). Also looking to play Skyrim when it comes out. With regard to load times, historically, I have had really slow map loading times which I find really frustrating and want to eliminate.
In summary I am content to use a 64GB for o/s and a 128GB for games if striping isn't really worth it. It's my first pc investment in 4 years so I don't mind throwing a bit of money at it.
In summary I am content to use a 64GB for o/s and a 128GB for games if striping isn't really worth it. It's my first pc investment in 4 years so I don't mind throwing a bit of money at it.
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Hi BA
Interesting post as i'm almost in the same situation as you.
I've always tended to upgrade GPU's but my mobo in sig recently died so I am now in the process of building a new i5 2500K system.
I was running a pair of now 4 year old 150Gig Raptors for W7 & games which to be honest have been very reliable drives.
After some soul searching, I've finally completed my build spend today by buying 64 & 128Gig M4 Crucial SSD's on offer at OCUK.
As you, I intend to install W7 + apps on 64Gig boot drive & use the 128Gig purely for games.
All docs, pics etc will go on a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3.
This setup appears to give me the best of all worlds and allied to my i5 should offer a true 4 year upgrade i.e, at least double the overall performance of my previous system.
I did briefly consider using Intel SRT (smart response Technology) using a 64Gig SSD as a Cache drive for the Samsung, but after reading up, although cheaper, its just not as good as a dedicated SSD setup and can at times lead to system instability.
So in conclusion, and with respect to Mikeo, I firmly believe that if you can afford it, Windows & all aps (including games) will benefit from being on a SSD.
And with regards to overall space, because SSD's are so quick, it isn't really a problem to install/uninstall games as required, providing you retain the save games.
Have fun
Interesting post as i'm almost in the same situation as you.
I've always tended to upgrade GPU's but my mobo in sig recently died so I am now in the process of building a new i5 2500K system.
I was running a pair of now 4 year old 150Gig Raptors for W7 & games which to be honest have been very reliable drives.
After some soul searching, I've finally completed my build spend today by buying 64 & 128Gig M4 Crucial SSD's on offer at OCUK.
As you, I intend to install W7 + apps on 64Gig boot drive & use the 128Gig purely for games.
All docs, pics etc will go on a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3.
This setup appears to give me the best of all worlds and allied to my i5 should offer a true 4 year upgrade i.e, at least double the overall performance of my previous system.
I did briefly consider using Intel SRT (smart response Technology) using a 64Gig SSD as a Cache drive for the Samsung, but after reading up, although cheaper, its just not as good as a dedicated SSD setup and can at times lead to system instability.
So in conclusion, and with respect to Mikeo, I firmly believe that if you can afford it, Windows & all aps (including games) will benefit from being on a SSD.
And with regards to overall space, because SSD's are so quick, it isn't really a problem to install/uninstall games as required, providing you retain the save games.
Have fun
Thanks for the reply vortical. I would certainly be interested to see the spec of you final build. I too was looking at the i5 2500k but have started leaning towards the i7 2600k since hearing that BF3 and other future games may actually start to utulise hyperthreading which would hopefully make an i7 system even more future proof.
I could be wrong but still not fully ready to purchase the build yet but might get the SSDs this week whilst they are on offer.
I could be wrong but still not fully ready to purchase the build yet but might get the SSDs this week whilst they are on offer.
Vore
Vore
I have two Vertex 3's, I have tried them in a striped configuration and stand-alone. The only performance difference I noticed was in benchmarks as booting the OS/loading applications was already so quick the potential difference wasn't clearly evident.
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Go on, you know you want to!!!
Hehe I have redundancy money, rather dangerously burning a hole in my bank account but just waiting to hear about some other income coming in before I push the button
Got my b'day coming up so it would be nice to treat myself
Again no disrespect intended but I think you would find something like a WD black, or a Samsung F3 a fair step up from the HD's that you currently run.
Though I do appreciate the lure of having everything installed on SSD's.
I wish you well and would be interested in hearing your experiences once you have your system up and running.
vorticalspace
Still not convinced of the advantage of having games installed on an SSD, If only because I would consider even an 256GB drive (which I must admit I did almost buy a 2nd hand one off the MM the other day!) far too small.
Like -BA- I wish you well and will be interested in hearing your experiences once you have your system up and running. You never know, you might convince me otherwise.
Still not convinced of the advantage of having games installed on an SSD, If only because I would consider even an 256GB drive (which I must admit I did almost buy a 2nd hand one off the MM the other day!) far too small.
Like -BA- I wish you well and will be interested in hearing your experiences once you have your system up and running. You never know, you might convince me otherwise.
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vorticalspace
Still not convinced of the advantage of having games installed on an SSD, If only because I would consider even an 256GB drive (which I must admit I did almost buy a 2nd hand one off the MM the other day!) far too small.
Like -BA- I wish you well and will be interested in hearing your experiences once you have your system up and running. You never know, you might convince me otherwise.
Hi Mikeo
I am in agreement with your opinion of gaming on SSD's
All my research on everything SSD has led me to understand that the main gaming related benefits are:-
1). Reduced level load times
2). Possibly smoother gameplay on free roaming sandbox games such as FO3, FONV, Oblivion etc.
I don't believe for one minute that overall FPS will increase but generally for the types of games I like to play, there is some justification for my choice.
Game smoothness is a subjective issue at best and personally, I didn't want to be left wondering had I not gone down the SSD route.
On reflection, I could have maybe ordered the 64Gig SSD & tried a game or two on there but what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound
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I did consider a 264Gig M4 which due to its increased size may actually offer faster writes than the smaller drives but for me a separate boot & gaming disk has always been the preferred option. I would generally partition a separate disk anyway.
No real justification, just personal choice
Whilst making my decision, I dug out the original invoice for my 2 x 150Gig Raptors which were new in Sept 2007. I was amazed to see that even then, I paid approx £130 per drive so in real terms, the current price of SSD's isn't too bad
vorticalspace
I shall be VERY interested to hear how much an SSD reduces the "hitching" that you get in a free roaming game (that's why I considered the 256GB SSD off the MM). It does prove a bit of a distraction in this sort of game, drove me mad in the last Stalker game. It wasn't "that bad" but did break my immersion in the game. And in case anyone is wondering, it's not a lack of VRAM causing this (well not on my system), it's as the next area gets loaded off the HD.
Now if I could pick up a decent 500GB+ SSD for a decent price, it would be a whole new ball game. But I expect that's what everyone wants.... cheaper and BIGGER SSD's
I shall be VERY interested to hear how much an SSD reduces the "hitching" that you get in a free roaming game (that's why I considered the 256GB SSD off the MM). It does prove a bit of a distraction in this sort of game, drove me mad in the last Stalker game. It wasn't "that bad" but did break my immersion in the game. And in case anyone is wondering, it's not a lack of VRAM causing this (well not on my system), it's as the next area gets loaded off the HD.
Now if I could pick up a decent 500GB+ SSD for a decent price, it would be a whole new ball game. But I expect that's what everyone wants.... cheaper and BIGGER SSD's
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