As the proud owner of an expensive PCI-e SSD just for FSX I can tell you that for me it's worth it. http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227520With a PCI-e SSD card you are taking the Sata bottleneck out of the equation, faster loading time....I mean FASTER....on everything, do I get more FPS ....naaaa but I can tell you that when I switch view from outside to inside cockpit as fast as I can I don't have to wait for the texture to load it's there as soon as i hit the button and no blurries what so ever when doing so.So to me the bottom line is not about perf. vs $, if you want an SSD PCI-e or a regular one and you have the money for it go and get it, as for me you will never hear me say "I could have or should have".

As the proud owner of an expensive PCI-e SSD just for FSX I can tell you that for me it's worth it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227520With an PCI-e SSD card you are taking the Sata bottleneck out of the equation, faster loading time....I mean FASTER....on everything, do I get more FPS ....naaaa but I can tell you that when I switch view from outside to inside cockpit as fast as I can I don't have to wait for the texture to load it's there as soon as i hit the button and no blurries what so ever when doing so.So to me the bottom line is not about perf. vs $$, if you want an SSD PCI-e or a regular one and you have the money for it go and get it, as for me you will never hear me say "I could have or should have".

Holy moly... that is expensive! And I thought my mushkin sata 120GB was expensive lol

This topic appears to be pretty hot, so I suppose I will chime in. For those of you who missed the FSX stutter benchmark, storage edition thread a couple weeks ago, you should go check it out. I personally put an SSD to the test on a brand new FSX install and compared it to a 7200 rpm Samsung spinpoint F3 1TB. I saw no difference in min, max, or avg FPS. Digging deeper and plotting FPS for the FSXMark11 benchmark only gives one conclusion: there is absolutely no difference. See for yourself:Ignore the plot of CPU usage as it doesn't seem to have any sort of consistency or relevance as far as I know. Don't get me wrong - I love my SSD, boot times and program load times are awesome... but it was given to me as a gift, so I didn't have to fork out the $250 from my own pocket. Honestly, I would probably be wishing I had put the money towards a cooling loop, case, or video card if I had payed for it myself. SSDs are nice, but I would focus on making sure you have everything else EXACTLY as you want it before buying one.

Holy moly... that is expensive! And I thought my mushkin sata 120GB was expensive lol

LOL...it is expensive, my OS is on this one... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148362We only live once....

Fine, but some people will/do have different opinions than you :P

Absolutely! That's what this forum is for! And I value everyone's opinion on here more than any other forum. But I believe this particular thread was posted for the purpose of collecting those different opinions, so can't see why my posting my own opinion would be any harm! I feel that was unnecessary to remind me of this but, again, this is a place to share opinions.... :Black Eye: OPINION! (Guess which one I voted on without looking)

Thanks, will the ACHI setting affect my current 7200 rpm drives which I plan to bring over to my new system? They are already formatted in NTFS and have data on them (mostly pictures, videos, backup documents etc)And also confirm setting ACHI has nothing to do with RAID, because I won't be using an array.

I don't see a difference at all. I have two SSDs and 2 Vraps set up as AHCI. The Vraps did not degrade in performance from the traditional IDE set-up.RAID is a completely different set up. ACHI has nada to do with RAID.

Absolutely! That's what this forum is for! And I value everyone's opinion on here more than any other forum. But I believe this particular thread was posted for the purpose of collecting those different opinions, so can't see why my posting my own opinion would be any harm! I feel that was unnecessary to remind me of this but, again, this is a place to share opinions.... :Black Eye: OPINION! (Guess which one I voted on without looking)

Don't take it so personally. Time is money. I like to save time and I think faster is better. All my programs run better with my new SSDs. If you feel it's not worth the investment, that's ok. But don't imply that time is not valuable. It's the most precious thing we have.

Don't take it so personally. Time is money. I like to save time and I think faster is better. All my programs run better with my new SSDs. If you feel it's not worth the investment, that's ok. But don't imply that time is not valuable. It's the most precious thing we have.

I must be sending the wrong tone with my post... I'm being completely light hearted! I do, however, take the liberty of implying that 30 seconds is not a $250 value to me. That was the only point I had. Nothing more, nothing less. :Big Grin: Maybe I need to spend more time studying/simming than here expressing my views. Back to the discussion! :Peace:

I must be sending the wrong tone with my post... I'm being completely light hearted! I do, however, take the liberty of implying that 30 seconds is not a $250 value to me. That was the only point I had. Nothing more, nothing less. :Big Grin: Maybe I need to spend more time studying/simming than here expressing my views. Back to the discussion! :Peace:

It's only because PMDG hasn't released the NGX yet - so much bottled up energy

This topic appears to be pretty hot, so I suppose I will chime in. For those of you who missed the FSX stutter benchmark, storage edition thread a couple weeks ago, you should go check it out. I personally put an SSD to the test on a brand new FSX install and compared it to a 7200 rpm Samsung spinpoint F3 1TB. I saw no difference in min, max, or avg FPS. Digging deeper and plotting FPS for the FSXMark11 benchmark only gives one conclusion: there is absolutely no difference. See for yourself:Ignore the plot of CPU usage as it doesn't seem to have any sort of consistency or relevance as far as I know. Don't get me wrong - I love my SSD, boot times and program load times are awesome... but it was given to me as a gift, so I didn't have to fork out the $250 from my own pocket. Honestly, I would probably be wishing I had put the money towards a cooling loop, case, or video card if I had payed for it myself. SSDs are nice, but I would focus on making sure you have everything else EXACTLY as you want it before buying one.

Yeah, I got to that point. Couldn't see upgrading to SB for the possibility of 5 GHz, so I got an SSD. It does do one thing that I enjoy. It makes the radio calls in VoxATC very quick with no stutter. Is that worth $220? Well, none of this FSX stuff is an investment.KDub

Yeah, I got to that point...so I got an SSD...Is that worth $220? Well, none of this FSX stuff is an investment.KDub

Truer words were never spoken!

Hahaha. If you put it that way, no, it isn't an investment.I do seriously use FSX as part of my instrument proficiency, though. Invaluable when you figure doing as many approaches as I have on my sim would be somewhere around... Let me figure this... I'd be spending about $2,900 a month if I flew that much in the real aircraft. That's almost $35,000 a year!!! Constants in my value analysis: 6 approaches a week on average. The aircraft being a C182RG that's rented for $120 an hour.I truly shoot 6 a week in my sim. It leaves me very sharp when in actual IMC and helps keep my instrument scan "efficient". More IFR pilots should consider doing this. The point is, there's a reason I take this FSX so seriously and put so much time and energy into it (besides the fact it's a hell of a lot of fun building, tweaking, and flying). For the record, I voted "no" on the poll. :Whistle:

I also voted no on the pole. I have a 256GB SSD that I have soley for FSX as I knew I would be eating up real estate quickly with photoreal scenery. I also have several WD 600GB Sata3 Velops and to tell ya the truth, I cannot tell any difference in performance dealing with stutters, texture load times, smoothness, etc. What I think I will try is install the same large photo scenery on both a velop and on the SSD which contains FSX and try a flight switching back and forth to see if I notice any differences. I am doing a reinstall in the next week and based on my little "test", I may just move my OS onto the SSD and move my FSX onto one of the 600GB velops.Clutch

I voted yes. I have a 256 SSD for FSX only. I concur that it does not improve FPS but I really appreciate the quicker load times for FSX. I have a lot of scenery and addon aircraft and it used to take what seemed like forever to start FSX. The other thing I like about FSX on an SSD is no more defragging. I update my FSX several times a month and I hated the ritual defragging that was needed when I ran it on a hard drive. Uggh! Now when I install a scenery addon I just go start FSX and have some fun.

Hey guys, I actually find it incredible that there are actually people out there who voted 'No' that an SSD wouldn't benefit FSX. These people have not used one. Period. I purchased mine a month ago, and never has fsx run so smoothly. Blurries gone, load times are so much shorter..and the biggest surprise of all, the general game play, for example REX 2.0 clouds etc whilst in flight would just go past so smooth with hardly a visible stutter. Also understand I was running a great system and had researched heavily and performed all the right tweaks. Providing you put in some time to tweak your system, then an SSD can't not add to your performance! It makes sense..anyone who is still questioning this..just watch your HDD light as you fly through fsx, especially in built up areas.. An ssd removes the need for fsx to be slowed because the mechanical drive is searching the relevant sectors. One other pleasant side effect was recording with fraps.. again so much smoother as usually what causes stutters in fraps is the write speed of the HDD trying to get it written down. I know it's not the only factor.. But I was shocked when I saw how smoothly FRAPS was recording on the SSD drive. (Again, make sure you are using fraps properly and select the correct frame rates for your system..you can have a mind-blowingly good system and still have fraps run like crap because of poor setup. I know this because I had made this mistake ) :) Hope this gives everyone an un-biased view on SSD's. There are too many people here voting 'NO' simply because they don't own one, or are put off by the price. All the best, and happy landings to all :) John

Hahaha. If you put it that way, no, it isn't an investment. I do seriously use FSX as part of my instrument proficiency, though. Invaluable when you figure doing as many approaches as I have on my sim would be somewhere around... Let me figure this... I'd be spending about $2,900 a month if I flew that much in the real aircraft. That's almost $35,000 a year!!! Constants in my value analysis: 6 approaches a week on average. The aircraft being a C182RG that's rented for $120 an hour. I truly shoot 6 a week in my sim. It leaves me very sharp when in actual IMC and helps keep my instrument scan "efficient". More IFR pilots should consider doing this. The point is, there's a reason I take this FSX so seriously and put so much time and energy into it (besides the fact it's a hell of a lot of fun building, tweaking, and flying). For the record, I voted "no" on the poll.

Love this Zak, It's exactly what I point out to friends who are curious about the sim, who aren't gamers. It can be so much more than just a game or sim. It really is a true 'Simulator', and I used it to practice nav exercised when I was doing my real-world training. I hope your flight training in the real world and on the sim are going great for you :) John

It's a no from me here as well, and yes I do run FSX from a large and fast SSD. It's not that there are no differences when compared to a HDD, but imo they are so minuscule or insignificant, they don't warrant what is still a massive premium on these drives. There is really no improvement with them than the load times. If like me you fly almost exclusively in areas of photoscenery, then this may be worth it alone. What there is not, is any sort of increased performance in the sim itself. The read times on any drive is more than sufficient for the way in which FSX operates, so any decrease in blurries, texture tile loading or cloud draw, is possibly indicative of an installation not being tweaked accordingly (tile draw/LOD radius), or perhaps a HDD that was in bad shape. There is really zero difference between my vertex 2 and the old standard 500GB 7200rpm job I previously had my install on, other than sim load times. I had no slow tiles, general stutters or blurries on the HDD, nor are they there on the SSD. If I were to really dig for another difference, there are perhaps a couple of tiny stutters lasting a second or two when flying from an area of non photoscenery, into an area with lots of photoscenery. Since using a SSD these seem to be gone. 1-2 seconds of stutter doesn't really seem huge deal to me personally. If I were building my system from scratch again, yes I would still buy the SSD, but that's purely because I'm a sucker for having the best components. As a general opinion though, I'd definitely not recommend a large SSD dedicated to FSX, to anyone other than those of us who build a pc without any real budget in mind. Now a small system SSD, that's another story. Couldn't recommend one of those any more given the price/performance ratio.