Upgraded my CPU and am very pleased

So much different info you come across on the web.

Ok so the definite is that everyone says if you use a SSD for one drive and a HDD drive for the other... use the SSD for the OS and the HD for hard files, pics, media.

But on this forum I heard a couple of people say not to put this game on the SSD drive.
I believe someone went as far to say that it could even kill the SSD.
I am reading that on MOST games the SSD will only speed up load times.
HOWEVER...I am reading on MMOG it is different.. with the environment changing so much and other things that most other games do not have... the games like this one WILL run faster on a SSD.

What I am concerned about... and why I was going to get TWO HDD's instead of one HDD and one SSD, was because of the lifespan concerns of the SSD.
Now... if the SSD would NOT improve the performance of this game... I really do not think it would be worth trading the lifespan of the SSD for the speedup on Windows, and the load time only of a game.

I'm really at a crossroads here.
P.S.
Believe it or not.. one of the HDD's I was going to put in the PC:
600GB Gaming Western Digital VelociRaptor 10,000RPM SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache WD6000HLHX ,

costs ONE dollar MORE than this SSD drive:
120 GB Intel 510 Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 450MB/s Read & 210MB/s Write

and 114 dollars MORE than THIS SSD drive:
120 GB Intel 510 Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 450MB/s Read & 210MB/s Write

I thought the SSD's were supposed to be much more expensive?
And what about the SSD running THIS game faster than a HDD.. Yes? No?
Running a game on the SSD damaging it or making the life much shorter?
And the lifespan of the SSD being less and failure rates being a good big higher?

I REALLY don't know what to do!!!!!!!!

Specifically, you do not want your appdatta and your virtual ram on an SSD; that is, unless you research the SSD and make sure its not prone to high-use failures. Of course they will run faster on the SSD - and that is the point - however, about half the SSDs on the market still will crap out really fast under heavy use. Others, are fine. But its enough of them, by far, that without research / knowing the risk, you could shoot yourself in the foot. Another 6-12 months, it probably won't be an issue on new SSDs.

Hey man I just built a desktop from scratch, it was insanely fun and I have no regrets, even though I'm a poor student and it was a huge chunk of my student loans.

Check out the "how to build a computer" series on Youtube by the newegg.com people, they are really good and taught me a lot.

www.tomshardware.com is another good site, especially if you take the time to post on their forums

Let me know if you have any questions about anything.

Cheers,
Mark

Okay, so... Despite people saying I'm wrong...

I still say it DEPENDS ON THE BRAND OF THE SSD as to whether or not it will crap out. MMO's do a whole lot of disk caching. MORE than most games. Because of this, there is constant read-write. The key being constant.

In this game, there is a very specific file that ranges from 500mb to >1gb that caches a bunch of special effects. This file is placed in the APPDATA folder of the OS. People in these forums have stated that there is a noticeable increase in performance by placing this file on an SSD or RAMDISK (which is a little more involved).

However, it is my experience that an SSD will not show SIGNIFICANT increase over a really good HDD. The HDD you listed, the Western Digital, is in the upper range of HDD's in terms of RPM, Cache, etc. I would go so far as to call it really good. I suggest searching these forums for posts about it, to see what people are saying.

So. Will you see improvement by having this game on the SSD? Definitely in load times. Probably in high-traffic areas, probably not in low traffic areas, and definitely no in solo play. You will notice increase in performance if your APPDATA and your Virtual RAM are on your SSD, but again, probably not SIGNIFICANT.

Yes, you can use multiple HDDs instead of an SSD / HDD combo. It won't break anything.

That said, as to the whole controversy over SSDs, obviously it is still a controversy. Google will reveal multiple "reliable" sites that contradict each-other. My suggestion is to hit up websites like amazon that allow customer reviews and judge from there (though keep in mind, more people typically complain than praise). Personally? I would choose the SSD for my machine, but that's just me.

What has been said about the 2nd generation SSDs, is pretty spot on. They are MUCH more reliable than they were just a few months ago. They also used to be much more expensive. They have recently been dropping in price as more companies make them for retail purchase, and they become more popular. As to the brand specificly listed on the machines you posted for us, I couldn't say - it isn't one that I am intimately familiar with. This is why I urge you to research the brand specifically. You might find I am right - they crap out - or you might find they are among the most stable, in which case you won't regret getting one. Even so, if you look at price / GB, you will see that dollar for dollar you get more GB on a HDD than an SSD.

About the processors: Yes, you can upgrade the processor and/or the ram. However, at that level of processor you might not be gaining too incredibly much, and might consider getting the extra ram instead of the extra processor. the 8GB is definately more than enough, but then again, so is the i7 to begin with. Processors in general tend to be more expensive - so in the long run you might save money by upgrading RAM now, and processor later, when its cheaper.

2cents

you are COMPLETELY wrong

http://www.boallen.com/fps-compare.html


it's not about "frame lag", it's all about smoothness. And everyone should be able to notice the difference. If not... I don't know, maybe get yourself checked out

also read the little text at the bottom, that is why film runs at ~ 24fps and people don't care.
Playing a game emulates a "real" life like vision from the standpoint of your character though.

Real life application of your eyes is not limited at 60 fps (or even less)


Also the OP is lying BADLY. that system is midrange at best, large scale Ilum battles will have his system crawling into the single digits, 20fps at the very very most. stop lying.

The reason the SSDs are relatively cheaper right now is possibly due to the current supply shortage of HDDs due to the flooding in Thailand. You'll notice that HDDs prices are crazy high right now.

You are also mistaken. You are thinking about movies and the low FPS. Well in movies you have motion blur and this game does not. So to get the same smoothness as a movie with 25 fps you need around 3 times the amount. But most people settle for 60 fps since the increase in fps does not make it much smoother but does require much better hardware.

If you have a bit more expensive motherboard you can use both a SSD and HDD as a single drive. It will make a hybrid disk of it and the performance is really good. Not that good as a pure SSD but good enough that you won't ruin your SSD by storing stuff on it.

Reason you should not use MMOs on a SSD is that you are making LOTS of read and writes every second and you can wear out the drive in just a couple of days use.
Normal games and programs does not make lots of read and writes to the drive often and will not wear it out.

Also do not use it for peer 2 peer transfers either. Torrents will also do LOTS of read and writes.

And about your questions
1. Yes it will decrease the LOAD times if your HDD is really slow. When game was launched I tried running it from SSD, HDD and Ramdisk. Ramdisk was the fastest but the decrease in load times was not low enough for me to put the game on any other disk than my slowest HDD.
2. MMOs will wear out the disk faster than normal games. If you put games like League of Legends or Alan Wake you will not ruin your drive at all. But before you put a game on the disk you need to ask yourself if its worth to decrease the load times because that is what you get from playing with an SSD.
3. Yes. But with normal use and you stay away from games and applications that is doing lots of small read and writes your drive will last long enough before it breaks or gets really slow.

Do NOT get a velociraptor drive! Get a SSD and a normal 7200 rpm HDD. Put the most important stuff on the SSD and the rest on the HDD. This is going to be faster than the velociraptor and it will give you more storage space. Best of both worlds.

Correct. Drive speeds have nothing to do with framerates and the vast majority of games are designed to minimize any disk loading while playing.

Correct again... to a point. Since most MMOs try to limit the number of load screens, there is more "behind the scenes" disk loading going on. However, I haven't heard of an MMO that optimized this for SSD access (ie: extremely low latency or extremely high read speed). Most are designed to work well with normal mechanical drives.

To further drive this point home: I have an SSD tested at about 320MB/s read speed. I also have a 2TB WD Green that only spins at 5400rpm. I've tried putting the SWTOR files on both drives and there is no strong difference between the two. The only change I noticed was a slight decrease in world load time (perhaps 4-8 seconds). In game performance was unchanged.

You're free to make your own decisions, and SSDs should be considered perks/luxuries rather than required hardware, but....

You're buying into FUD and old information. New SSDs simply don't have the issues you're worried about. The people at Tom's complain about reliability because of bad drives from the manufacturer, not death-through-usage. Again, people who actually understand SSDs and how operating systems use them, recognize that the life of an SSD is almost invariably going to be significantly longer than the life of the PC it was bought for.

So long as you buy an SSD from a decent manufacturer, you're fine.

Of course.... you've got the same issue with hard drives. Buy a hard drive from a bad manufacturer or bad manufacturing line and the thing is going to have a short lifetime. The only difference is that if your mechanical drive dies, you're out a little less money.

Agreed... if there was a problem with the lifespan of SSDs.

Instead, its just a money/performance tradeoff. Having your OS on an SSD adds some serious quality-of-life improvements to computer use. However, it's not going to make your computer perform any better while gaming. If that's your main concern, then SSDs are probably a waste of your money.

I didn't buy mine for gaming. I bought it because I spend a lot of time at my computer between gaming, trying to explain things to people on forums, programming, running multiple VMs to test Linux configurations and working from home. All of those get improved slightly by an SSD.

I've had the SSD now for a year. Checking the drive statistics, I've got over ten more years of use on the thing before I run out of writes. And in the last year, I've installed windows on it, as well as about 40GB of games... plus a few dozen steam updates to those games.

Don't buy that drive.

It's like an SSD, but slower. It's overpriced (in the first place, but also due to shortage) and it's not going to improve your gaming at all. You get almost as much benefit from buying any other drive with a 32MB cache.

I feel your pain. Building (or "custom buying") PCs isn't easy.

If nothing else will convince you, just look at what most people are building. For all the complaints you see, remember that there are loads and loads of people who aren't complaining. SSD failure rates are somewhere around 2% (only a bit higher than HDDs)... but they get inflated by reporting on the internet.

Do you need an SSD? No. Absolutely not.

Would an SSD improve game performance? Only very slightly.

Could you use two HDDs instead? Absolutely. I'd recommend a smaller 7200rpm drive (1TB) and a larger 5400rpm drive (2TB+). Both should ideally have 32MB caches. The OS should go on the 7200rpm drive, with whatever applications you care about load times for.

If you get an SSD, should it hold the OS? Yes. It's a better use of the drive. Don't worry about lifetime. Other people have already tested that for you. You're fine.

Most importantly:

Every single option you've presented here is a good option. Seriously. All of them will work really well and you'll enjoy them. You're stressing out over which tires to put on your Ferrari. In the end, you should pick whichever one makes you comfortable and happy, because none of them are going to be bad choices. Pick something and enjoy your new computer.

[QUOTE=Theronlas;3202376]Unless you game on a CRT still, yes refresh rate will be 60Hz...

so im looking at my 120hz lcd dont need an old crt to have 120hz