Will a SSD improve stutter in games?

[toon_mad]

I am seriously thinking of ordering my first SSD within the next week or so, mainly because I have had my Seagate Barracuda 250GB and 500GB Sata 7200rpm hard drives for a long time. I have just recently done a new build and I think my hard drives are bottlenecking or holding back game performance.

In certain games I get major stutter/pauses where I believe the Hard drive is accessing/reading some of the game data. For example GTA IV is pretty bad because as you drive around it seems to be constantly loading the new game data and I get drops in FPS when this happens, if I stand or walk around however there is no lag so I know my PC is capable enough.

The front of my tower I can see the HDD activity LED, I can see this flashing when games start to lag. Most games it is not a problem as the game data must be loaded into memory or something.

Other than speeding up the OS and game load/save times would a SSD help smooth out the problems I mentioned above? The same applies to Skyrim when new map areas are been loaded - then it stutters.

My PC is the one in my sig, I think these Sata hard drives are the weakest link. Windows 7 WEI scores are:

As I have never used or worked with a SSD I could do with some advice regarding which is the best one to go for? Faster read and write times would be better? Which brand? etc

I was hoping to get 120Gb or more one and partition one side for Windows 7 and the other for programs and games etc. Price range between £80-£130.

Thanks

 

[drunkenmaster]

Partitioning is realistically not worth doing, it doesn't partition like a normal HDD which physical splits the drive and only puts data on one part(so you can allocate the faster outside edge or first partition to windows/games and stick storage on the slower inside part). SSD's split the data around the drive constantly anyway, the OS has no idea where it is, its best to keep an SSD full and if/when you reinstall windows wiping with secure erase(essentially resets the drive) is pretty much the best way to go.


As for stuttering, its a difficult question, some games just stutter in an irritating almost unfixable manner, some games definitely do run smoother with an ssd, some it won't make a difference for. GTA4 has just so much wrong with it, personally I'd recommend an ssd fullstop, for a windows drives and a few of your main games it gives instant on feel to most programs and a few games will have loading times vastly reduced and be smoother, for MMO's with almost constant loading to new area's it can be great.

GTA4 I always had stuttering with when I had vsync enabled, Just cause 2 as well and a few other games, I've seen Nvidia and AMD users see it so it could be as simple as that.

If you get an SSD I think you'll be impressed and see its completely worthwhile, but don't expect any particular game to be smoother as it could be another problem.

What SSD, Samsung 830, Crucial M4, price/performance they can't be beaten. £80 for a 120gb of either pretty much, £140-150 for a 240gb size version of either(the samsung is easier to find at that kind of price at the moment).

 

[shuffle]

I would say yes, once I installed a Intel 520, Battlefiled 3 ran more smoothly. It really surprised me the difference. It was as if it was made to run on an SSD.

 

[toon_mad]

Partitioning is realistically not worth doing, it doesn't partition like a normal HDD which physical splits the drive and only puts data on one part(so you can allocate the faster outside edge or first partition to windows/games and stick storage on the slower inside part). SSD's split the data around the drive constantly anyway, the OS has no idea where it is, its best to keep an SSD full and if/when you reinstall windows wiping with secure erase(essentially resets the drive) is pretty much the best way to go.

This is the way I have always done it with mechanical hard drives, I give the Windows C:\ drive about 20Gb and the remaining space is partitioned to D:\ drive - Formatting Windows is effortless that way as you never lose any documents or music etc.

So from what you are saying then, do you think I would be better off getting for example two 64GB SSD's? One for the Windows OS and the other for Programs, Games, Music etc? I will be keeping the 500GB hard drive to store backups etc but I want the main things I use on the SSD.

If I could have partitioned say a 120GB SSD I would have give it 20GB to Windows and the remaining space for a separate partition for the games etc.