BavmordasMuffin Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 Hi all, Just as many of you are probably doing I'm dealing with my skyrim obsession by building a rig to run it like it should be run (max settings 2560x1600). My technical knowledge is limited, please forgive any mistakes. This question is not about load times, I actually don't care about waiting while loading cities/interiors. so my research into what an SSD can do to for gaming has been inconclusive. There are some tests out there showing modest increases to framerate and other factors, particularly with open world games, but the results vary drastically from game to game. Unfortunately I couldn't find any of these tests performed on fallout3 or oblivion (these seem like the best reference for Skyrim). You might assume an SSD would help with texture reads from the disk as you travel through the world, but I have a suspicion that the game's architecture isn't scalable from the consoles to PC, and that it will never even try to read faster, regardless of what hardware I make available to it. So has anyone run a previous Bethesda game on SSD & HDD and noticed a gameplay difference besides load times? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blu02 Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 Yes! SSD's make wonders for huge games like this. The difference in performance compared to an HDD in Oblivion and Fallout 3/NV was totally worth the upgrade. But just so you know, it's not exactly increasing your fps, but rather eliminates stutters and fps-drops that appears when your HDD cant keep up with reading data. This mostly occures when you're traveling fast through detailed environments, like riding a horse through the forest. That's why you cant find any traditional fps-tests that proves the gain in performance ;) I recommend Intel's SSD's as they're currently the most failsafe ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elderiii Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 Like Mr. Bravo said, in an open world environment a SSD will almost always be smoother and sometimes help with a higher FPS as well. Most open world games are constantly sending a ton of data back and forth, especially as you move rapidly across terrain. Remember how in Oblivion you would have a frame rate drop and you feel like a "jerk" is happening on your screen whenever you cross into a new cell whilst running through the forest? A SSD will help with that. How much exactly it will help with Skyrim is anybodies guess at this point, but it will help to some extent for sure. I'm probably going to install it on my SSD just for that purpose. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BelgarionNL Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 (edited) just reinstalled my windows 7 on a vertex 3 so i can have only skyrim on my SSD! so yes huge difference Edited October 16, 2011 by BelgarionNL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jermungand Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 (edited) (exasperated sigh) What are "SSD" and "HDD" even supposed to mean? Edited October 16, 2011 by Jermungand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowk Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 (exasperated sigh) What are "SSD" and "HDD" even supposed to mean?SSD = Solid State Drive. New tech, much faster than...HDD = Hard Disk Drive. The spinny-disk kind which is still viable, but slower. Also has much more storage space, for now. That is all. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stycks Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 (edited) Your load times will drastically decrease along with a more stable FPS (depending on what your CPU and GPU offers). EDIT: Didn't see your side note about load times. My bad. Edited October 16, 2011 by Stycks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iv000 Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 (edited) They are a lot faster and decrease loading times and stuttering, but they are extremely expensive.Paying 175$ for a 60Gb SSD (Croatian prices) just doesn't appeal me. :confused: Edited October 16, 2011 by Iv000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stycks Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 They are a lot faster and decrease loading times, but they are extremely expensive.Paying 175$ for a 60Gb SSD (Croatian prices) just doesn't appeal me. :confused: That is the exact reason I havn't got one yet. I might buy a much smaller SSD for essential files and folders. (So my PC boots up in the matter of seconds.) Other than that it ain't worth it in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 If you're taking money out of other areas to pay for an SSD then don't bother, it's not worth it. The single most important component is your GFX card, so ensure you spend as much as possible on that before even thinking about other areas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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