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rwmarth
April 15th, 2009, 07:12
Anyone try using a solid state drive (ssd) for FSX? Any performance increases? This is the drive of the future and supposedly blazing fast compared to any mechanical drive. Seems a good fit for FSX especially with prices going down making a small drive (dedicated for FSX or a couple other programs) not all that unreasonable.....

Odie
April 15th, 2009, 07:29
Haven't tried one myself, but I did notice a couple of months ago that the boutique-shop PC builders in the UK have been advertising their builds in PC Pilot magazine that feature an SSD so that flightsim can have its own disk.

Sounds like a very logical step.....:typing:

rwmarth
April 15th, 2009, 07:39
I even wonder that perhaps it might have some benefit at installing FSX on a regular flash drive which is afterall what SSDs are. That should run faster even if it's just USB connection since the whole premise of ready boost is that flash drives are significantly faster than mechanical ones even if connected via USB.... 32gb flash drives are well under 100 dollars now along with SSD drives of similar sizes being close to that price as well.

Quixoticish
April 15th, 2009, 09:34
There used to be a lot of problems with solid state drives degrading alarmingly quickly and actually offering not that much of a performance increase. This was some time ago, I'm sure they've worked the kinks out now, but at one stage they were talking an 80% performance drop after six months of use. Here's an article from April last year:

http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2008/04/25/LaptopSSDPerformanceDegradationProblems.aspx

It does seem comparing even the latest solid state drives to traditional ones even though they use less power, are quieter and seek faster they are slower at consecutive reading in many instances.

Bjoern
April 15th, 2009, 09:38
I'll just leave this here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

Henry
April 15th, 2009, 09:46
I even wonder that perhaps it might have some benefit at installing FSX on a regular flash drive which is afterall what SSDs are. That should run faster even if it's just USB connection since the whole premise of ready boost is that flash drives are significantly faster than mechanical ones even if connected via USB.... 32gb flash drives are well under 100 dollars now along with SSD drives of similar sizes being close to that price as well.
I have tried that well actually a usb external drive
but its slow
H

Bjoern
April 15th, 2009, 09:51
I have tried that well actually a usb external drive
but its slow

No wonder. USB can only transfer 60 Mbytes per second...at *best*!

A SATAII HDD is capable of five times that transfer speed.

Krazy
April 15th, 2009, 12:51
New review on OZ 120 SSD at Guru3d..says it rocks and new controller fixes old issues..350 bucks or so..

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-vertex-120-gb-ssd-review/ (http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-vertex-120-gb-ssd-review/)

SolarEagle
April 15th, 2009, 12:56
I even wonder that perhaps it might have some benefit at installing FSX on a regular flash drive which is afterall what SSDs are. That should run faster even if it's just USB connection since the whole premise of ready boost is that flash drives are significantly faster than mechanical ones even if connected via USB.... 32gb flash drives are well under 100 dollars now along with SSD drives of similar sizes being close to that price as well.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of ready boost. Ready boost simply acts as high speed virtual memory, not high speed storage, and virtual memory is only used when you run out of physical RAM.

If in fact you are running out of physical RAM you would be far better off buying more RAM than attempting to utilize ready boost in it's place, but if you can't add more ram then ready boost it an alternative way to avoid having to utilize the hard drive as virtual memory.

kilo delta
April 15th, 2009, 13:52
I'm running 2x 64GB Samsung ssd drives in my current main pc and one in my notebook (cost ~€700 each over 12 months ago :help:).... 1 for the OS and the other for fsx photo scenery. I have tried every other combination of hdd's too...300gb Velociraptors, 36gb/74gb/150gb & 160gb Raptors, Samsung F1 7200's etc and have found that system performance has definitely increased since i've gone with the ssd drives. From powering on the pc to desktop takes around 20 seconds.
The second ssd is perfect for fsx photo scenery.......bye bye blurries.
With hindsight would I still have bought them?........hell NO. When I was assembling the parts for this build over 12 months ago I decided to buy the absolute best components that were available on the market...and this included the desire to try out SSD technology.
The best price - performance hard drive for FSX is the WD Velociraptor, imho.

rwmarth
April 15th, 2009, 16:10
I think you misunderstand the purpose of ready boost. Ready boost simply acts as high speed virtual memory, not high speed storage, and virtual memory is only used when you run out of physical RAM.

If in fact you are running out of physical RAM you would be far better off buying more RAM than attempting to utilize ready boost in it's place, but if you can't add more ram then ready boost it an alternative way to avoid having to utilize the hard drive as virtual memory.

Yeah, I was confused.... I must have just been thinking that if USB memory was faster than using the harddrive when the system is scarce on ram somehow would correlate into flash drive being faster than the harddrive too for all purposes. But I was too hastey in my thoughts!

Krazy
April 15th, 2009, 19:51
Well, if you have a Intel 80 or 160 SSD they have a firmware update out to fix slowdown!

Bjoern
April 17th, 2009, 07:59
The best price - performance hard drive for FSX is the WD Velociraptor, imho.

Nope, since more than 100€s for a HDD are more than ridiculous.

Best price-performance ratio: Samsung Spinpoint F1.

Alexraptor
April 17th, 2009, 08:02
I use a Spinpoint F1 for FSX :-)

kilo delta
April 17th, 2009, 09:04
Nope, since more than 100€s for a HDD are more than ridiculous.

Best price-performance ratio: Samsung Spinpoint F1.

We'll agree to disagree :kiss: :caked:

Bjoern
April 17th, 2009, 09:41
We'll agree to disagree :kiss: :caked:

Whatever floats your boat, sweetie. :-* :d