how much do SSD's help the game

[Kyomagi]

So i have a Lenovo Y580 with a I7 and a GTX660M

Bench scores 3700 on laptop high 1080p. It has a standard HDD in there right now, i believe a 5400rpm

would i see a significant increase in the bench if i ran the game off of a SSD?

[Monty]

Only thing I noticed when upgrading to SSD was slightly faster load times for areas. Beyond that, there was nothing noticeable. That being said, the SSD is worth it for everything else involving Windows. Faster boot up times and everything's much snappier. For straight gaming though, doesn't make much of a difference, most people run their games off massive TB drives while keeping windows alone on their SSD.

A few people will install whichever game they're currently playing on SSD for the load time, but that's it.

[Hiruke]

"Slightly" faster load times? I load into any/all areas, including extremely high pop areas like Mor Dhona, in 4 seconds or less (approximately, never stopwatched it, just counting in my head). I suspect OP's load times into Mor Dhona are 2x or 3x that (or possibly more).

Anyway, 4 seconds or less when teleporting into any area vs. whatever you're seeing now. That's the difference. (Personally, I cringe seeing HDD folks load into anything. It takes forever.)

[Monty]

Ok, faster load times. Beyond that though, there's really no benefit. I went from a HDD to SSD, and like I said, it's faster. But to say it was significantly faster, eh. That being said, saving 4-8 seconds to some is HUGE and others, meh. Again though, for everything else non-gaming related, it's a fantastic upgrade.

[Zfz]

It also means no annoying mechanical sound from the HDD when you play. Although you most likely will start to think the fan is too noisy once you get used to the silence of the SSD.

[Riardon]

For this game you won't see huge difference on loading times cause it doesn't read huge files from disk like other games. It's fairly optimised for this reason to run on consoles. They avoided high res textures for that reason. It's not only that the consoles do not have the processing power for this but the loading times too. This game is only 15 GBs while other MMORPGs are around 40Gbs. You will see a difference with an SDD but do not expect the big difference you see in other bigger games.

[SekhmetM]

With my HDD I load areas fast. I don't feel the need to get an SDD.

People need to stop getting premade computers with cheap 5200RPM HDDs and start buying quality 7200RPM+ drives.

[Rune_Crystalblade]

So I wanted to jump in here and give a bit of information.

Working in IT I see a lot of HDD's and SSD's Come and go. Yes it would boost your area transitions and load times, however much of the games delays are network related, not hardware related.

On top of that, like Monty said, most people run windows from an SSD and then their programs from a HDD. The reason for this has nothing to do with performance, but maintenance. SSD's have a finite amount of Writes before they begin to fail. The technology is such right now that there's nothing that can be done with it. Always staying on top of firmware updates, keeping the drive defragmented, virus free etc.... These are all things SSD owners Need to do it stretch out the drives life as long as possible.

So while the gains are pretty appealing, the cons of it can sometimes be costly. One of the biggest cons is often when an SSD fails, there's no warning, No S.M.A.R.T Status notifications, nothing. It just fails on the spot.

If you really want to go the performance route, I'd suggest a Hybrid Drive. They can perform just as fast as an SSD with the reliability of an HDD. But just be aware if you get an SSD, weather it's OCZ or Western Digital... You could very well run into a drive that's high maintenance and more of a pain in the neck than it's worth. Moral of the story, keep an HDD handy just in case.

On a slight side note, the place I work for has been playing around with Mirror raiding an SSD and HDD with capasity matching and differential backup methods with a new Raid Driver that Seagate has put out that basically let's you mirror an SSD to an HDD and do the backup either on a timed schedule or deferentially so that the HDD doesn't reduce the speed of the SSD. Just something to think about for the more geek inclined on here lol.

[Hulan]

In response to Rune_Crystalblade, while everything you said is true - and something the OP should consider - it's worth mentioning that video games have an extremely low read-to-write ratio. The amount of writes done for a non-patched game is on the order of O(1) - even considering save files, they are so small compared to the size of the game, you're still on an amortized cost of O(1) - while the worst case scenario for a patched game is one block of writes every 1.5 months on average. You get a lot more deterioration from things like databases, work files and god-forbid, web browsers (those things are constantly updating their settings and history). I would consider space to be a larger concern for a game like this. You'll need to pay a premium to support your OS, MMO, and any other software you have on your computer and be comfortable with the amount of space you keep in reserve. I'm constantly having to go through and judiciously clean my folders every time FFXIV updates (note to self, look into larger SDD).


Edit:

keeping the drive defragmented

Sorry, just noticed this, please please don't defragment your SSDs, defragmentation is deactivated by default on modern OSs when using an SSD for a reason, defragmentation requires a massive number or writes and will wear down your SSD faster than you can so "oops".

[Xoriam]

Ontop of faster loading times it can cut down on frame stuttering due to the game wanting to access new files and transfer them to your ram.

Either get an SSD or a hybrid drive. they are so cheap now I see no reason for a normal hard drive apart from storage beyond 1TB.

Crucial MX100 is a really reliable and low priced SSD.

So I wanted to jump in here and give a bit of information.

Working in IT I see a lot of HDD's and SSD's Come and go. Yes it would boost your area transitions and load times, however much of the games delays are network related, not hardware related.

On top of that, like Monty said, most people run windows from an SSD and then their programs from a HDD. The reason for this has nothing to do with performance, but maintenance. SSD's have a finite amount of Writes before they begin to fail. The technology is such right now that there's nothing that can be done with it. Always staying on top of firmware updates, keeping the drive defragmented, virus free etc.... These are all things SSD owners Need to do it stretch out the drives life as long as possible.

So while the gains are pretty appealing, the cons of it can sometimes be costly. One of the biggest cons is often when an SSD fails, there's no warning, No S.M.A.R.T Status notifications, nothing. It just fails on the spot.

If you really want to go the performance route, I'd suggest a Hybrid Drive. They can perform just as fast as an SSD with the reliability of an HDD. But just be aware if you get an SSD, weather it's OCZ or Western Digital... You could very well run into a drive that's high maintenance and more of a pain in the neck than it's worth. Moral of the story, keep an HDD handy just in case.

On a slight side note, the place I work for has been playing around with Mirror raiding an SSD and HDD with capasity matching and differential backup methods with a new Raid Driver that Seagate has put out that basically let's you mirror an SSD to an HDD and do the backup either on a timed schedule or deferentially so that the HDD doesn't reduce the speed of the SSD. Just something to think about for the more geek inclined on here lol.

That whole SSDs dying over time situation ended pretty much after the first generation of them...
Now a days you'll definatly just be wanting to buy a new one for the hell of it before anything.
Btw I have a few first generation SSDs still TODAY, and I've used them every day since they came out and they are working EXACTLY the same as the day I bought them.
(i.e. they will be 10 years old next year.)

You'll end up killing a HDD drive due to the fact that it has moving parts way before you have to worry about an SSD which you could throw and it will still work.


Just stay away from the 840 EVO, it has some issues. (even the firmware update isn't a 100% fix)

Sorry, just noticed this, please please don't defragment your SSDs, defragmentation is deactivated by default on modern OSs when using an SSD for a reason, defragmentation requires a massive number or writes and will wear down your SSD faster than you can so "oops".

Exactly, but now a days windows will optimize an SSD (I.E trim) it won't defrag it unless you use some sort of extra utility.