Forums » Air Combat & Civil Aviation » IL-2 Sturmovik: FB, AEP, PF » Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2?


Topic Options
Rate This Topic
Hop to:
#3506812 - 01/29/12 06:41 PM Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2?
Deltahawkoz2004 Offline
Member

Registered: 10/28/04
Posts: 292
Loc: Ozzie
Looking at getting an SSD drive perhaps, hearing good things re OS load times. But howabout in flight simulations like IL2? Would the major benefit be in load times for missions? Or is there also a noticeable difference ingame, smoother, quicker?

Thanks
_________________________
The lurker formerly known as Deltahawk and Deltahawk53

Top
#3506967 - 01/30/12 04:23 AM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: Deltahawkoz2004]
WWSandMan Offline
Wing Walkers : 20 Years Online 1992--2012
Member

Registered: 05/16/02
Posts: 2069
Loc: Minnesota, U.S.A.
I have Rise of Flight loaded onto an SSD drive. Really helps load times, especially since I have all the skin packs installed. On a standard 7200rpm hard drive, mission load times were becoming extremely slow with all the custom skins being loaded. After I loaded RoF onto the SSD, missions load much faster.

I'm considering getting another SSD to use for MS FSX. I'm sure an SSD would be beneficial to all modern flight sims, and most older ones.

But for Il-2 an SSD is not necessary. Heck, I was running IL2 off an external drive (USB 3.0, but still an external drive) and didn't notice any difference until I went to check my desktop shortcut. And that's a modded install with UP3 and HSFX.
_________________________
Administration Officer
Wing Walkers (virtual) Combat Squadron

Top
#3506998 - 01/30/12 05:35 AM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: Deltahawkoz2004]
Fishingnut Offline
Member

Registered: 12/05/04
Posts: 592
Loc: Good ole' U. S. of A.
I have the two installs of IL2 I play the most on a separate SSD drive. I don't have the OS on it but the game is. Loads super fast and doesn't stutter as bad if the game has to go to the drive to get more data. Granted, most of what the game needs gets loaded into RAM and the game seldom needs to fetch more from the drive.


Edited by Fishingnut (01/30/12 05:35 AM)

Top
#3507391 - 01/30/12 01:56 PM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: Deltahawkoz2004]
WhistlinggDeath Offline
Member

Registered: 02/01/11
Posts: 605
Loc: La Jolla, CA
We have over 80 ssd drives in our lab Delta and have IL2 1946, ROF and LOMAC FC2 installed for group play after hours, and we have had a few burps with the latest OCZ Vertex 2.15 firmware that is not compatible with many ASUS motherboards, but except that, smoothness across the board and across many thousands of hours now.
_________________________
If you can defeat me in a fair same altitude duel, you are either Hartmann's ghost or you have a ganja problem that needs treatment.

Like asking weird questions and are good at math? Maybe you can join us at the Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego. Tackling the grand mysteries of the age with science.

At the core of most of life's deep mysteries, is the language that Mother Nature truly speaks in, ..... mathematics.

Top
#3507565 - 01/30/12 05:33 PM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: Deltahawkoz2004]
SC/JG_Oesau Online   content
Member

Registered: 08/26/07
Posts: 367
Loc: Sydney, Australia
Any comparative load times?
_________________________
Mobo - Gigabyte 965P-DS3P, CPU - Q6600 @3Ghz, RAM - 4Gb (800Mhz), Video Card - GTX580 (Drivers 266.58, 1920 x 1200), Sound Card - X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty (Drivers 6.0.1.1304)
TrackIR-4, CH Fighter Stick, CH Pro Throttle, Saitek Pedals, Logitech G15 Keyboard
Win 7 Home Prem 64bit

Top
#3509957 - 02/02/12 06:56 PM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: Deltahawkoz2004]
Jarink Offline
Member

Registered: 10/11/05
Posts: 179
Loc: Pekin, Illinois
There's only two downsides to SSDs right now. High price per GB compared to traditional drives and write performance is not improved as much as read performance. I like quoting Tom's Hardware that "even a low-end SSD will typically perform 80% faster than a high-end traditional hard drive".
_________________________
Proud Member of Axis and Allies Paintworks

'A skin is never done...it is only abandoned when the desire to work on it ends.' ~ Casey1976

Top
#3510117 - 02/03/12 04:02 AM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: SC/JG_Oesau]
WWSandMan Offline
Wing Walkers : 20 Years Online 1992--2012
Member

Registered: 05/16/02
Posts: 2069
Loc: Minnesota, U.S.A.
Originally Posted By: SC/JG_Oesau
Any comparative load times?


Google is your friend, but here's a couple YouTube videos comparing game load times from SSD vs HDD (top link), OS boot time on SSD vs HDD (center link) and a Tom's Hardware article on performance differences between SSD and HDD in video editing and some games (bottom link).

http://youtu.be/j84eEjP-RL4

http://youtu.be/FQpiZ44GyYU

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/video-editing-performance-ssd-hdd,3089.html

Quote from the article above:
Quote:
SSDs let you run multiple demanding tasks simultaneously without the I/O bottleneck that would otherwise hammer a mechanical disk. ....

The advantage is quite tangible, as you're no longer tied down to just one storage-intensive operation. Naturally, we still recognize the cost premium associated with SSDs, so we still recommend a tiered storage strategy. Use an SSD as your boot and system drive. Install your most performance-sensitive applications to it, and dedicate a little space for apps like Premiere Pro to work. Then, pile all of your documents, videos, music, and pictures onto a hard drive.
_________________________
Administration Officer
Wing Walkers (virtual) Combat Squadron

Top
#3510140 - 02/03/12 04:58 AM Re: Any one using an SSD drive with their flight sims? IL2? [Re: Deltahawkoz2004]
Keithb77 Offline
Member

Registered: 11/30/99
Posts: 1505
Loc: UK
Quote:
you're no longer tied down to just one storage-intensive operation


But most of us are onlyrunning one storage-intensive operation anyway...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ME5Dsas2K8
This is an interesting one for FSX load - significantly better, but no comment on running performance.

Cheers
Keith


Edited by Keithb77 (02/03/12 05:04 AM)

Top
Topic Options
Rate This Topic
Hop to:


Forum Use Agreement | Privacy Statement | SimHQ Staff
Copyright 1997-2012, SimHQ Inc. All Rights Reserved.