SSD Upgrade Results

[NoahBryant 26]

Hi guys - I jumped on the bandwagon and got myself an SSD to run FS. I'm pretty happy with the results and thought I'd share what I've found.My system:Win7 64bitIntel i7 2.93 ghz processor5 GB Ram2 Radeon HD 4850s with a total of 2GB of video memory powering 2 19 inch secondary monitors and a 22 widescreen primary monitor.I have REX, UT and all the FSDT Airports. Previously, I had FS installed on my main hard drive (along with the OS and other programs etc) which is a Velociraptor 10,000 RPM.I purchased the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD and installed nothing but FS/scenery on it. My findings:0 Blurries. And I'm not exaggerating either. I use Megascenery Earth, and before, I would always have blurry textures somewhere. No matter what, the system could never keep up with my plane. Now, the textures are fully loaded, everywhere, all the time. It's quite remarkable. 0 stutters. I never experience FPS stutters anymore, which is also pretty cool. And now for FPS...Across the board, I've seen maybe about a 10% increase in my FPS. Which is good considering I didnt expect my FPS to change at all. What I found interesting is that the FPS increased quite a bit with the ORBX PacNW scenery. Before the upgrade, my FPS with a PMDG MD11 at KSEA was 10 or less. The ORBX scenery just killed my machine and I couldnt use it with good payware jet. Now my FPS jumped to about 12-14. While that's still not great, I can actually fly my MD11, J41 or 747 inside the PacNW scenery and before I couldn't. In other areas, I get 15-20 FPS on the ground, depending on the airport, and 20-30 in the air.

[Tabs 2,790]

I'd be curious to see the explanation for why FPS increased... it really shouldn't theoretically, FS precaches stuff during the loading, FPS should be almost solely a function of the CPU and GPU.

[NGXfanatic 85]

I can see session and texture loading speeding up significantly, not sure how FPS can increase. But if it does, that is great news indeed. Does anyone here have all of their FSX install (not just scenery) on a SSD drive? How fast does FSX load? Is it a matter of seconds, vs. minutes for us on the old platter technology?

[DickB 6]

I can see session and texture loading speeding up significantly, not sure how FPS can increase. But if it does, that is great news indeed. Does anyone here have all of their FSX install (not just scenery) on a SSD drive? How fast does FSX load? Is it a matter of seconds, vs. minutes for us on the old platter technology?

Hi Noah - interesting post. I have been thinking about going down the same route. Question - do you have to uninstal FS/Scenery etc on your hard drive when you do this ? Or can you just instal it on the SSD and run it from there as if the original didn't exist ?Apologies if this is a dumb question !

[Pegasus1 1]

Hi to @ll,I am also working with a SSD. One time, I installed FSX on the SSD for testing purposes. I did lots of test, time measurements, FPS comparisons, etc... my conclusion after 2 days work is --> I had absolutely "NO GAIN" when used FSX on the SSD, or right now using it on a standard hard disk.Greetings,Pegasus.

[Virtualwombat 4]

No gain for me I'm afraid, although loading times are much shorter.Cheers,Noel

[jjjallen 37]

No gain for me I'm afraid, although loading times are much shorter.Cheers,Noel

Correct, my load time is now around 10-15seconds.  One thing that I did notice after the SSD install, about a year ago - is no more blurries.jja

[NoahBryant 26]

Hi Noah - interesting post. I have been thinking about going down the same route. Question - do you have to uninstal FS/Scenery etc on your hard drive when you do this ? Or can you just instal it on the SSD and run it from there as if the original didn't exist ?Apologies if this is a dumb question !

Yes you should re-install everything, which took me half a day but it was worth it. Perhaps the increase in FPS is due to just having a clean install but I doubt that would account for the FPS gain with the PacNW scenery. Keep in mind, thats really the only place that the increase is really noticable. A 10% increase is really only 1-2 FPS which could possibly have to do with just having a clean install (who knows how many tweaks and re-tweaks I had with my old install) but there's no doubt there's a substantial increase when using the PacNW scenery.I just flew into KSEA last night in the MD11 and it looked great.

[greggerm 312]

I received no FPS gain for me as well when I went through the exercise several months ago. I was running FSX on a VRap, then I went to an SSD and found HUGE loading time improvements, but zero FPS improvements. Based on this I placed my OS on the SSD, and put FSX back on a traditional hard drive. This gives me FANTASTIC day-to-day performance with the SSD running all my apps and OS items, with no losses on FPS with the simulation. FPS gains with an SSD are a bit unusual!

[shimedawg 0]

0 Blurries. And I'm not exaggerating either. I use Megascenery Earth, and before, I would always have blurry textures somewhere. No matter what, the system could never keep up with my plane. Now, the textures are fully loaded, everywhere, all the time. It's quite remarkable. 0 stutters. I never experience FPS stutters anymore, which is also pretty cool. And now for FPS...Across the board, I've seen maybe about a 10% increase in my FPS. Which is good considering I didnt expect my FPS to change at all. What I found interesting is that the FPS increased quite a bit with the ORBX PacNW scenery. Before the upgrade, my FPS with a PMDG MD11 at KSEA was 10 or less. The ORBX scenery just killed my machine and I couldnt use it with good payware jet. Now my FPS jumped to about 12-14. While that's still not great, I can actually fly my MD11, J41 or 747 inside the PacNW scenery and before I couldn't. In other areas, I get 15-20 FPS on the ground, depending on the airport, and 20-30 in the air.

Very Bizzare. Earlier this year PC Pilot did a very thorough study on this very subject and found that the only benefit was load time. Their very scientific results showed zero FPS gain, which is what I found when I upgraded myself.Are you sure of the gain or are you just estimating? Sometimes our minds see what we hope to see.

[Limp 0]

I saw better load times and maybe a bit less blurries but that's all...

[NoahBryant 26]

Very Bizzare. Earlier this year PC Pilot did a very thorough study on this very subject and found that the only benefit was load time. Their very scientific results showed zero FPS gain, which is what I found when I upgraded myself.Are you sure of the gain or are you just estimating? Sometimes our minds see what we hope to see.

Like I said, the overall 10% or so gain is real, however, it's certainly possible that it's because of something else, such as it being a fresh install with less add ons or because it's now on it's own hard drive as opposed to sharing the hard drive with the OS and a bunch of other stuff (although I didnt think that would help with the FPS). However, there's also no doubt that the Pacific NW area has gone from unplayable in a high end add-on aircraft - to playable in a high end add on aircraft. My FPS went from high single digits to the mid teens which is a pretty awesome increase. I dont have any other ORBX sceneries so I dont really have anything else like that to load up and compare the difference.

[Mace 1,902]

The "no blurries" thing has me most interested. Can you elaborate (i.e. were you getting them with a VRap before?)By the way, a big HELLO to all of you guys. Forum looks nice.To me, having no blurries would be worth moving the FS install to an SSD. But then again, if one is running a clocked i7 with decent sticks, that might in and of itself reduce blurries to a very low level.Also, load times were always annoying to me, especially when I was designing scenery and had to constantly re-load the sim to test something. Despite my fears of the long-term reliability of SSD technology, I may have to look into them a little bit more.

[NoahBryant 26]

Yes i had a VRap before and sounds like I have a similar system to yours. I did get blurries all the time with the photo sceneries and now I get absolutely none.

[Guest craig1998]

no fps gain here but load time is a little better with SSD and scenery loads perfectly. 0 blurriness. definitely worth an upgrade to Ssd if that's what you guys are debating.