Would an SSD Hard Drive make a difference?

[AndyKay]

Would an SSD Hard Drive make a difference with Trainz 2010?

Im in the process of building a machine ready to start my first experience of Trainz:
Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz 1333Mhz Bus (going to OC to about 3.5)
2GB RAM (Im guessing I will need 4GB)
soon to buy: Radeon 5830 1GB graphics

Has anybody found that upgrading from a standard HDD to an SSD Hard Drive improves Trainz? If so, what does it improve: FPS or just loading speed?

Thanks in advance!

 

[lewisner]

I read a review of one of the Western Digital SSD's and not only were they INCREDIBLY expensive but the makers admitted that their nominal "speed" actually declines with use!

 

[johnwhelan]

Running from an SSD compared to a 10,000 raptor using a i7 quad core and 6 gigs of memory gives less than 1 fps increase on average, however I have seen a graph that shows that with some games you get an improvement when the scene changes or the game has a lot of items on the screen.

So yes there is an improvement but it isn't life shattering, if you're running TC3 or S&C it might make more of a difference as some of the TC3 rolling stock including my own was built before some performance information was released by Auran so it has a larger machine impact and probably more disk accesses than it could have done.

Cheerio John

 

[clam1952]

I remember reading a review on SSD drives that also indicated that number of writes the drive can do was a lot less than a normal drive thus giving it a shorter life span. I would say if you can afford a SSD drive buy a 10,000rpm raptor instead, probably get a couple for the same cost.

 

[AndyKay]

OK thanks for your replies

Looks like I wont need an SSD then!

 

[LieLestoSbrat]

Much of an improvement in Trainz, not really. Improvement in system load times and time taken for programs to load, Hell yes. 1:30secs approx for my system from cold to load up and that's including 114 programs in the startup folder. No mater how fast a HDD you get their is no way it would be able to show that sort of performance. SSD's don't have much of a wear problem if they support TRIM and the OS supports TRIM. SSD's are a hard sell in terms of GB/£ but performance/£ as mentioned they blow HDD's out of the water. Best way to have them in a system is have an SSD has a boot & programs drive and then have all you personal data, music, downloads etc on a nice big HDD. The Western Digital SSD's are particularly good when compared to the many other brands available.

Rob

 

[AndyKay]

I see where you're coming from.
I've just loaded a fresh copy of Windows 7 on the machine, so there's hardly anything on here at the mo, so not too fussed about load times. I have a portable Western Digital HD for all my personal stuff like MP3s etc.

I think when my load time increases, it'll be time to get one.