SSD or Hybrid drive?

[metaton]

Good Morning,

 

I really could use some help:)

 

I am playing with skyrim since it came out, I upgraded my rig for it, but now I got to the point when I need to do something wise.

I have a 250 gb samsung EVO SSD drive, but my mods folder in MO reached 150 gb. I have Windows on it and also Guildwars 2 which I cannot get rid of (family reasons)

so I would need more space as now I constantly deleting saves to have at least 5 gb free space on it.

 

Now I cannot afford a 1TB SSD, I won`t go for 500 gb because it will be small soon too, if I change my drive I will go for a bigger one.

There is another way, buying a Hybrid drive SSD/HD. My understanding is that the drive using the SSD part for cache (which is seems to be 8gb flash). I cannot find any relevant information how Skyrim accessing the data, so I am not sure it won`t slow down the game (is it constantly loading textures and models? How it is affecting gameplay?).

 

I am using 250 mods, HD texture packs, K enb, so my system is really working hard, I am a bit afraid, if the reading speed will get slower the game won`t load or will CTD.

 

So would need a bit of an expert advice, is it worth buying the hybrid and replace my small SSD, or wait until I get money for a 1 TB SSD? (which probably won`t happen for a loooong time)

Edited August 3, 2015 by metaton

[jones177]

Hi

 

To me the most important test for a storage devise for use in an open world game is read burst speed.

Your SSD has a read burst speed from 410 to 450 mb/s depending on manufacturer. It is about the same as the read speed.

A Hybrid drive has a read burst speed of around 260 mb/s. That is a big difference.

 

This is not about loading an operating system, it is about fetching data. You would get better performance with a WD Black 4tb than a Hybrid.

 

I use WD VelociRaptor 1tb. Even though their read/write speeds are not much faster than a normal HD, their read burst speed is in SSD territory(401 mb/s).

I will be replacing my VelociRaptor with a Crucial BX100 CT100($350) later this year.

 

I use this site for HD/SSD performance tests. http://techreport.com/

 

Later

[jhelzei]

The problem with a hybrid drive is that performance is going to stink compared to your current SSD. while a hybrid drive is better than a standard HD once you have to load more than 8gb of data, it performs not much better than a regular hard drive. Consider another option: buy a 2nd 250gb SSD. Leave Windows on your current drive and move the Skyrim stuff to your new drive. otherwise I'd say save up.