Any PC Players Running FFXIV on SSDs?

[PapaGuu]

Just recently installed a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB with RAPID enabled. Sequential Reads and Writes are 1,000+ MB/s and Random Reads and Writes are 90,000+ IOPS.

BUT, with all that said I honestly don't feel a significant difference in terms of loading screens both at starting up the game and changing zones. Right now it takes about 5 seconds and before the upgrade it was taking maybe 10 seconds at most.

So I was hoping to get some feedback from everyone to benchmark with my system and see if I need to spend more time tweaking the OS and drivers (the journey to install the SSD and download the appropriate drivers was a 2-day endeavor).

I'm not real technical but I know enough to do some damage. The whole reason I got into upgrading to a SSD was after seeing how Diablo 3 was loading INSTANTLY on my cousin's rig.

Looking forward to hear back from you guys. Cheers~

[Pseudopsia]

I have a Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB and have RAPID enabled.

RAPID mode uses DRAM as a cache. You will get a speed boost only when reading data that was cached, reading data that's not in cache will not be any faster.

[SavageWolf]

That's about as good as it's gonna get.

[Ooshima]

Erm I don't think I've seen 1-2s load times. I'm using the same SSD and changing zones are typically 3s wait (after teleport finish casting) for me.

IDK what's the usual speed for normal 7200rpm HDD because I never used them for quite a long time. I've heard some people say it could take up to 30s, IDK. I pick SSD as I have other photography and imaging programs that I use frequently that demands performance, so normal HDD is never a thing for me.

Nonetheless do you really need 1s load screen or something? I don't think it make a difference in this game?

And I'm curious what driver and OS tweaking you have done.. Mine is just one evening business from installing hardware from scratch (ie screwing in the CPU to the motherboard etc) to all the software and drivers, no tweaking whatsoever done and IDK why your load time is 5s and took 2 days to configure.

[Eekiki]

I use a Crucial M4 500GB disk...it's a couple years old, but it works good. I routinely zone in before other people in the PT (skipping cutscenes, etc.)

However, I also put a Samsung EVO 840 SSD in my PS4 (also 500GB), and the load times on the PS4 are noticeably shorter than they are on the PC.

So take that for what it's worth. To me, that says that Windows is continuing to hog resources even though the game is supposed to be in exclusive (full screen) mode.

What OS are you using? I've noticed the game runs better on Windows 8.1 than it did on Windows 7 or even Windows 8.0.

[PapaGuu]

What OS are you using? I've noticed the game runs better on Windows 8.1 than it did on Windows 7 or even Windows 8.0.

Here's my build. It's somewhat dated but I don't really run any resource-intensive programs so until something breaks they're going to stay... perhaps I just had unrealistic expectations and I'm trying to shake the feeling that I didn't get my money's worth...

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 945 (OC'd to 3.4 GHz)
Motherboard: ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB DDR3 1600
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB Desktop Kit (MZ-7TE250KW)
HDD: WD Black 500GB 7200RPM

[PapaGuu]

I have a Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB and have RAPID enabled.

RAPID mode uses DRAM as a cache. You will get a speed boost only when reading data that was cached, reading data that's not in cache will not be any faster.

Well I ran the performance benchmark in Magician on my HDD as well and got 128 MB/s in Seq. Read and Write. That's 8x the difference so I was hoping to see some drastic performance boost. I wonder if my cpu and/or my motherboard is the bottleneck now...

[Pseudopsia]

CPU does affect load times. I did notice this in the benchmark when I was testing it with enabling and disabling cores.
Also communication with the server will affect load times. There's only so low you can get the load times.

I don't recall what the load times on my setup is; I'll check tonight.

[PapaGuu]

Nonetheless do you really need 1s load screen or something? I don't think it make a difference in this game?

And I'm curious what driver and OS tweaking you have done.. Mine is just one evening business from installing hardware from scratch (ie screwing in the CPU to the motherboard etc) to all the software and drivers, no tweaking whatsoever done and IDK why your load time is 5s and took 2 days to configure.

2 days may be exaggerating but I only have limited time to play or search online on weeknights. The main reason was because I cloned my HDD to the SSD and found out that 1) my BIOS was outdated, 2) Windows never installed AHCI drivers so I had to find guides to make changes in the registry, 3) the default Windows AHCI driver is also outdated and was only giving subpar readings on my SSD (without RAPID I was only getting 300 Seq Read/Write, 2000 Random Read (no I didn't miss a 0 there) and 40000 Random Write).

[Clavaat]

I don't think you'd notice too much of a difference from HDD -> SSD for a game such as this. MMO's in general are very processor-dependent, and don't make too many rw's to your disk since everything is updated through the server. Also, the reason for loading time between zones is due in part to your connection to the server, as that is where your location data is being processed.