Povuholo Posted October 16, 2011 Share Posted October 16, 2011 (edited) So has anyone run a previous Bethesda game on SSD & HDD and noticed a gameplay difference besides load times?When I installed Oblivion on my SSD, I suddenly had access to spears and crossbows. It was amazing. :tongue: Edited October 16, 2011 by Povuholo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blu02 Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 (edited) But with that HDD-stuttering, it doesnt matter how awesome the rest of your computer is or barely what graphic-settings you're running, the game still has to keep up with reading all that data as you run through the gameworld. Not true. You can just create a RAM-drive out of your existing memory specifically for Skyrim. If you have 8GB of RAM or more it would be more than enough for it. Saves you a stupid amount of money on an SSD, and gives you better than SSD performance. Sorted. I speak from a devil's advocate position. I have an SSD, and can guarantee you a better GFX card will do more for your games than an SSD does. I've just put another HD 5850 in to my system and crossfired them up and I can double the FPS. So £125 has doubled my FPS. An SSD would not double your FPS or do anything near as much for your gaming. At the end of the day, I'd rather play Skyrim at full GFX settings, at 1900x1200 res with longer load times, than have to drop the graphics but have lower load times. True, forgot about ramdisk. But that is if you have that amount available to use for it. If not, you could just as well get an SSD for the money instead with quite a lot more space and proper storage-abilities. That extra speed ramdisk provides compared to SSD is quite moot in games anyway, as even the slowest SSD's are fast enough to cure HDD-stuttering. Slightly faster loading-times with ramdisk, but not much more. A second gfx-card does however NOT double the performance, as they cant scale 100%. In best case scenario maybe around 80% in some few rare situations, but support for crossfire/SLI-solutions in games variate like hell and can go all the way down to 0, and even have negative impacts on performance in some horribly ported games :P I dont know how or where you noted those numbers, but they are not realistic, certainly not in general. 3 or 4 cards in crossfire can however double the performance compared to a single card, but still with very variating results in different games. So again, buying an SSD or slightly better gfx-card completely depends on what games you're playing (And your amount of RAM then :P ). There are still many games that put a lot more work on CPU and harddrive than gfx-cards, and I'm betting Skyrim is one of those since Bethesdas games are traditionally most heavy on the harddrive and ships with low/mid-res textures. I'm personally in that position with the games I play, where my SSD's and CPU are way more important for my performance than gfx-cards, unless I go eyefinity of course. I just prefer getting rid of that damn random stuttering before concentrating on more fps, which is a lot easier to gain without new hardware. But as soon as modders start releasing their insane graphic-improvements for Skyrim, our gfx-cards will definitely run a lot hotter! :woot: Edited October 17, 2011 by Mr. Bravo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BavmordasMuffin Posted October 17, 2011 Author Share Posted October 17, 2011 Thanks for your help everyone, I have already got a decent GPU (HD5870) so the SSD is my next purchase! I cant wait to push this game to the limits with mods... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BelgarionNL Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 (edited) Thanks for your help everyone, I have already got a decent GPU (HD5870) so the SSD is my next purchase! I cant wait to push this game to the limits with mods... yes buy a SSD even a 60gb for your windows and skyrim will make a huge difference Edited October 17, 2011 by BelgarionNL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spartin2 Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 I'm waiting until SSD is standard for machine costing $500 or so before I get one since I can already maximize my performance on my new compy. The price to space ratio is just seems awful to me right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch2129 Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 (edited) To get better performance you can also set up a raid0 if you have 2 HDDs, it sped up my load times on Oblivion. I have an intel core i7 930 at 2.80ghz with 6gb of ddr3 ram and a radeon hd 5870 video card but would still get lag when passing through loading areas while playing oblivion, after setting up my raid0 the stutters all but disappeared. (Heavily Modded Oblivion Game, Over 100 Mods)The Raid0 Divides the workload between the 2 HDDs which allows content to load at a faster rate. Just a suggestion, its a cheaper alternative to investing in a SSD Edited October 17, 2011 by Mitch2129 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason73nf Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 Do 10,000rpm hdd's match the performance of ssd's? I see them sell for $1/gb or less, but I know little of their performance or stablity. Does anyone know if they are a viable alternative? I've seen 600gb velociraptors for $340cdn and would possibly buy one myself. Just not sure of the performance incerase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valamyr Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 (edited) They are a lot faster and decrease loading times, but they are extremely expensive.Paying 175$ 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. A cheap SSD is almost always worth it, even if its just as complementary cache. I mean, its true that 100$ more spent on your CPU or GPU is nice, but if you research well and look for deals, I think you can always work in an SSD. Hell Id take the 100$ outta my food budget if I had to :D Do 10,000rpm hdd's match the performance of ssd's? HELL NO!!! Edited October 17, 2011 by Valamyr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raudelmil Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 I have some questions after reading this thread, like "how do you get Steam to work with a ram disk?" and "how much memory gets used for raw data and how much for transient data?" But, also, I am hoping that we can tell skyrim to cache stuff in memory, if we have enough of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bullseye83 Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Ordered my 120 GB SSD today 8) With all the high resolution goodies that's put into Skyrim right now, my HDD is really struggling to keep up! The HDD LED has become my power LED xD Can't even turn around anymore without it stuttering like crazy... I'll post my experience once I get it up and running :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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