Are SSD's an Improvement?
- Thread starter lewisner
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johnwhelan
Well-known member
According to Chris (WindWalkr) items load faster because of the lower latency and Trainz uses lots of little files.
Cheerio John
Cheerio John
yea pretty much thats whats will get faster is loading of the route at the beginning and better fps while moving very fast across the map.
johnwhelan
Well-known member
In terms of pure FPS though I did some tests on a new machine the increases in performance was less than 1 fps over a raptor on the same route.
Cheerio John
Cheerio John
Hi, As Beattie just said. The loading of the computer and game/routes are amazing. Never any lag ...dont know if thats graphics card or not ....but the loading of items as you drive or scroll across your route/map must have something to do with the SSD drive,as the last hard drive i had ,i was waiting for items to appear as i was driving or moving across the screen. as you may see i have both SSD and raptor. never tested one to the other. But SSD's are the way forward Regards Brad.
I guess there will be an improvement but I've read reviews of SSD's (in particular the OCZ Vertex 3) and they seem to be split between "This is the greatest thing I ever bought" and "It would be great if it actually worked".
One in particular said support from OCZ was virtually non-existent. With the price tag I wanted to think carefully and canvass opinions!
One in particular said support from OCZ was virtually non-existent. With the price tag I wanted to think carefully and canvass opinions!
It's a bad bad time to buy an SSD right now. The high performance options (Vertex 3, Force 3, etc) all use the Sandforce chipset, which has a massive problem with being very very unstable - I've spent the last 2 days fighting with it myself, and returning the Force 3 for a slower Intel SSD.
OCZ, Corsair, others, are simply stonewalling on the issue, since Sandforce aren't being too helpful, and noone has a clue when the issue might be resolved, whether it can be resolved with a firmware update, or whether it will require drive replacements.
If you aren't willing to potentially have to deal with RMAs, or buying a new drive a month or two from now, I'd wait until the issue is resolved, whenever that might be.
OCZ, Corsair, others, are simply stonewalling on the issue, since Sandforce aren't being too helpful, and noone has a clue when the issue might be resolved, whether it can be resolved with a firmware update, or whether it will require drive replacements.
If you aren't willing to potentially have to deal with RMAs, or buying a new drive a month or two from now, I'd wait until the issue is resolved, whenever that might be.
Your kind of experience is what has me worried! I looked on Amazon and there were 52 reviews of this drive with 31 being 5 star and the other 21 varying between 1 and 4 star.
On the other hand I usually seem to be lucky - I bought the Pait GTX 460 GPU after reading about how some guys had had the plastic fan blades crack and fall off, but mine has been flawless.
I wish I was just being alarmist, and could honestly say 'take the chance...' but I honestly wouldn't recommend anyone buy a SSD (at very least a Sandforce based one) until this is resolved.
To give you an idea that it's not just one or two 'one off' situations, see this following thread on Corsair's forums:
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?p=510232#post510232
And bear in mind that the problem is definitely being attributed to the Sandforce chipset, and that OCZ, Corsair and many others (usually that claim ~500MB/s or SATA/3 performance) use the Sandforce chipset.
Ironically, OCZ own their own SSD-chipset producer, but haven't used it for the latest generation due to the patented improvements that Sandforce have come up with - although right now I'm not willing to trade those performance improvements for the BSODs and drive dropouts (This is the problem I had the most of, if I copied any file large enough to get beyond 50MB/s transfer rate, then my USB devices and/or magnetic HDDs would disappear from windows' device list, sometimes they'd come back, othertimes it would require a cold power cycle to get the drives recognised). My boyfriend also saw repeated F4 and 50 stop codes which are also directly attributable to the chipset faults. (I saw a single F4 stop code BSOD, and an unsolicited reboot while running trainz)
Personally, I haven't seen such a hardware snafu since either the CMD640 or the intel cc820 times (and yeah, I got bit by those bigtime too, the cc820 issue actually stopped me from being willing to buy Asus brand boards for 4 years).
As I said, I contacted ebuyer, and thankfully they were willing to trade them for a pair of intel 320 series, which are 'only' 270MB/s read speed, but much much much more reliable. Had I known about this issue before ordering, I would definitely have postponed buying SSDs for a month or two though, just to see where things lay - if the Sandforce problems can be resolved via firmware, then I'm going to feel annoyed that I'm restricted to 'slower' intel drives.
True, some people have been 'lucky' and gotten drives that are working, but on the other hand, that also means that they might have a time bomb should whatever triggers the flaw slips into their environment. If as some theorise, it is related to power issues, then an aging PSU is likely to start triggering the problems at some point down the line. If as others theorise, it's an issue of data throughput, then a change in work habits or software use might trigger it.
It's a mighty gamble to take, IMO, and one that I wasn't willing to let the drives lapse out of the initial 'safe' period for returning them (yeah, it's a 3 year warranty, but beyond 7-14 days it's a case of replacement with like-for-like product). And given the stonewalling and lack of a true recognition of the scope of the problem (Corsair admit there is a problem, but seem to happily blame and suggest changing SATA cables, if they can).
From what I've seen, OCZ are mostly not even acknowledging that there is an issue.
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From what I've been hearing from the experts - I work for a manufacturer of SSD drives, is the really inexpensive ones, like those found in consumer-grade products, don't have the lifespan of those in commercial equipment such as servers and fast RAID setups.
The problem is the number write-cycles that can be handled by the devices. These devices work by a voltage shift from +5 to +12 during the write-cycle. Eventually as I was told, this wears out the device and you end up with dead spots. Now all drives have bad places on them and there is a special algorithm built into the firmware on the drives that map out the bad spots, but these devices don't last quite as long as the regular drives yet.
There are other issues still with the SSDs that have to do with random access, and sequential reads, which need to be addressed in the cache and firmware of the drives.
Here's an interesting article from Anandtech.com on the subject.
http://www.anandtech.com/print/2738
When the cost per megabyte and lifespan of the devices is equal or better than a regular hard drive, I'll surely look at them for my system.
John
The problem is the number write-cycles that can be handled by the devices. These devices work by a voltage shift from +5 to +12 during the write-cycle. Eventually as I was told, this wears out the device and you end up with dead spots. Now all drives have bad places on them and there is a special algorithm built into the firmware on the drives that map out the bad spots, but these devices don't last quite as long as the regular drives yet.
There are other issues still with the SSDs that have to do with random access, and sequential reads, which need to be addressed in the cache and firmware of the drives.
Here's an interesting article from Anandtech.com on the subject.
http://www.anandtech.com/print/2738
When the cost per megabyte and lifespan of the devices is equal or better than a regular hard drive, I'll surely look at them for my system.
John
"When the cost per megabyte and lifespan of the devices is equal or better than a regular hard drive, I'll surely look at them for my system."
This is a large part of the problem. There's a local dealer (Leeds) who advertises the OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB at £351 which is about as cheap as you'll get it, but still a serious amount of wonga.
The current Custom PC magazine says the OCZ Vertex 3 is "the best you can get" but mentions NO problems at all......however I'm cynical enough to realise they may be "influenced" by OCZ
After reading Nikkia's post I tried the OCZ Forum and they had a poll there - which got closed down- and the majority of users found it OK after the latest firmware update.
So I can take a gamble with a large sum of money or as Nikkia said wait a month or two, and do more research.
Thanks for the replies all!
This is a large part of the problem. There's a local dealer (Leeds) who advertises the OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB at £351 which is about as cheap as you'll get it, but still a serious amount of wonga.
The current Custom PC magazine says the OCZ Vertex 3 is "the best you can get" but mentions NO problems at all......however I'm cynical enough to realise they may be "influenced" by OCZ
After reading Nikkia's post I tried the OCZ Forum and they had a poll there - which got closed down- and the majority of users found it OK after the latest firmware update.
So I can take a gamble with a large sum of money or as Nikkia said wait a month or two, and do more research.
Thanks for the replies all!
schweitzerdude
Active member
Re JCitron's comment on SSDs
makes sense if you have heard the stories (rumors?) that USB flash drives have been known to fail after a number of write-cycles. But most of us never see that because we use flash drives for backups or file transfers but we are not pounding on them continuously as would be the case if used as a hard-drive replacement.
makes sense if you have heard the stories (rumors?) that USB flash drives have been known to fail after a number of write-cycles. But most of us never see that because we use flash drives for backups or file transfers but we are not pounding on them continuously as would be the case if used as a hard-drive replacement.
OK guys and girls I'm sorry but......I was in a local pub talking to my friends Mr Heineken and Mr Kronenburg a few nights ago and they said I should buy an SSD and I followed their advice. 
First reactions were; Windows 7 Pro installed in about 10 minutes (literally).
After I had the basic stuff running I tried to install TRS2009 from my former D drive and the results were not promising, it was obviously corrupted in some way.
Today I reconnected the former C drive and copied TRS2009 from there - it took about ten minutes AND the results exceeded expectations....it sings like a bird! Loading times have reduced from about 3 minutes for the bigger of my 2 routes to seconds.
When running a train FPS are almost surreally smooth even in the most high detail areas - its like the other guy said "night and day".
It looks like I was lucky again, even though it is early days.
First reactions were; Windows 7 Pro installed in about 10 minutes (literally).
After I had the basic stuff running I tried to install TRS2009 from my former D drive and the results were not promising, it was obviously corrupted in some way.
Today I reconnected the former C drive and copied TRS2009 from there - it took about ten minutes AND the results exceeded expectations....it sings like a bird! Loading times have reduced from about 3 minutes for the bigger of my 2 routes to seconds.
When running a train FPS are almost surreally smooth even in the most high detail areas - its like the other guy said "night and day".
It looks like I was lucky again, even though it is early days.
nugget2225
Active member
dont waste your money
dont waste your money on such a high capacity ssd drive, buy a couple small 64 gig drives and raid them , or buy a couple cheap mechanical drives in raid 0, you shouldnt waste your money , what is that drive 300-400 not worth it
dont waste your money on such a high capacity ssd drive, buy a couple small 64 gig drives and raid them , or buy a couple cheap mechanical drives in raid 0, you shouldnt waste your money , what is that drive 300-400 not worth it
It's already bought for the cost of 10 weeks cigarettes and i am happy with it. I don't see the logic of buying two smaller drives since they are bound to be more than the cost of a single drive of the same capacity plus there is the increased risk of failure of one of them plus you have twice as much cabling.It's true that they are expensive but if you want the best you have to pay for it.
Curious, I want one - what kind of results do you get from the www.hdtune.com/ benchmark test?
That's the difference between the original Maxtor HD and this new Western Digital I have hooked up as a secondary drive, TS2010 loads faster, runs smoother, and has less freezing and pausing in surveyor when I run from the WD drive.
I ever get some buckazoids I want one of them solid state drives, because I fully agree - spend a few hundred on CPU, RAM, and video card upgrade, it runs REALLY REALLY REALLY FAST! then stops dead waiting for the hard disk to find the next bunch of files so all that expensive stuff can process it REALLY REALLY REALLY FAST! then take another coffee break while the hard disk is looking for the file set after that. :hehe: The hard drive is where all that data comes from, it's the biggest bottleneck in any gaming system, yet people always ignore it in favor of video cards, CPU, and RAM - all of which will have to wait until the hard drive sends them the data before they can show off their speed.
That's the difference between the original Maxtor HD and this new Western Digital I have hooked up as a secondary drive, TS2010 loads faster, runs smoother, and has less freezing and pausing in surveyor when I run from the WD drive.
I ever get some buckazoids I want one of them solid state drives, because I fully agree - spend a few hundred on CPU, RAM, and video card upgrade, it runs REALLY REALLY REALLY FAST! then stops dead waiting for the hard disk to find the next bunch of files so all that expensive stuff can process it REALLY REALLY REALLY FAST! then take another coffee break while the hard disk is looking for the file set after that. :hehe: The hard drive is where all that data comes from, it's the biggest bottleneck in any gaming system, yet people always ignore it in favor of video cards, CPU, and RAM - all of which will have to wait until the hard drive sends them the data before they can show off their speed.