Hello All !I need opinions on two differents questions, here is the first:My FSX dedicated drive is approx 480gb full out of a 1tb WD 32mb drive; most space is from Megascenery Earth, MegaCities, ORBX etc.. if i buy an SSD and place just FSX folders in and leave Megasceneries files on the WD, will i slow FSX down when it tries to access those data ?Second question:I realized yesterday that with all the different parts i tried when i built the PC in my sig, i only need a case, mobo and proc and maybe an SSD to built another complete rig and gives this one to my son; would i see a gain in FSX with those new MB/processor from the I7 920 @ 4.0 i already have and if so, which combo you recommend ?thanks in advanceAlain from Montreal

Anyone ? i don't bite :Big Grin:

I wouldn't go SSD.I would go new comp, especially if you are overclocking. SB @ 5Ghz perform WAY better than 920s. Also GTX580.I jumped from GTX285 to GTX580 and from [email protected] to 2600k@5Ghz and I almost doubled the performance.

thank you Word Not Allowed for replying; I will probably wait till May to see what's good with the new version from Intel...Also, i favor Asus for a MB but with the not so good reports lately ?!?From a 285 GTX to a 480 GTX i saw an improvement in frame of about 10% to 15%, can someone who switch from a 480 GTX to a 580 chime in ?Alain from Montreal

thank you Word Not Allowed for replying; I will probably wait till May to see what's good with the new version from Intel...Also, i favor Asus for a MB but with the not so good reports lately ?!?From a 285 GTX to a 480 GTX i saw an improvement in frame of about 10% to 15%, can someone who switch from a 480 GTX to a 580 chime in ?Alain from Montreal

Don't understand why Word Not Allowed doesn't recommend SSD's. They are expensive right now and that's the only downside that I know of and there have been several discussions here showing/proving they are better than non-solid state HD's. I have one and have my MegaScenery and other large scenery as you describe on my secondary harddrive and I see no problems with reading/writing performance. I think it would be impossible to see any loss of fps with your scenery on a separate HD. About the only thing you will see performance wise with the SSD is the faster startup (Windows and FSX) and faster loading of the scenery when you click the "Fly Now" button. Otherwise, I don't think there's much of a difference between an SSD/HD. My 580 GTX performs great but the GPU won't necessarily increase fps as FSX depends more on the CPU (especially the speed), not GPU as in previous versions of MSFS. As you can see in my specs below my current specs, I had two GPU's in SLI mode in my other system and I see little or no difference in performance/quality of textures with just one 580GTX. The main thing you want to look for in a GPU is that the memory is 512MB or greater. The old 256MB GPU's will cause problems. Performance/quality issues in GPU's is hard to discern as, when you're riding on a 4.8GHz CPU, everything is sweet and smooth.There's a separate post I posted here in this forum about all the different P67 MB's. You might want to check that out. I don't think you can go wrong with an ASUS board. The "not so good reports lately" issue you might be describing has been fixed and it really didn't affect the performance of the MB as long as you didn't use the 3GB SATA ports (when you have several 6GB SATA ports, why use the 3GB?). And, even if any of the 3GB ports failed, you wouldn't lose any data and you could simply move your connection over to a 6GB port. I still replaced my board (as well as most others I believe) and the new boards have the problem fixed. Best regards,Jim

Don't understand why Word Not Allowed doesn't recommend SSD's.

Jim, simple answer: tested one and saw no real money -> performance ratio.It is faster yes, but my WD is already so fast, that only thing SSD improves is loading of the flight - but seriously, by what? Maybe some 30-40%? Now, how important is that? SSD cost 200€ for some 120gb or so, you get 600GB vrap for 180€. It's for me no relation - FSX eats space, especially with photosceneries, and those 10k rpm drives are quite enough for it. I can't imagine anyone not having enough time to wait couple of more seconds to load a flight...Inflight, I saw little bit more of snappiness and that's it. Not a FPS more, not a blurry less...What I'd do, if I had money to burn is put Windows on the SSD...

An SSD is not really worthwhile for your FS or Programs drive, a RAID 0 setup will work great for that, but it is BEYOND a good investment to have one for your windows root drive. A 60GB can be had for $130. More than enough space for windows and other stuff, and the performance is just amazing. I can load windows 7 completely in 8 seconds. Web browsing is smoother, emails open instantly, everything happens faster on the whole. Trust me, I'd make an SSD for your root drive a top priority, not just if I had money to burn.

Have 2x120g G.Skill Pheonix Pro SSD units, one for the OS and one for FSX. Sweet, fast, smooth and well worth it.Kind regards,

What controller are the G-Skills based on? I went for a Force60 as the sandforce controller has shown to be a better performer.

I'm just going to add my 2 cents on SSD. I bought one (120GB) for my new build. Just for fun, because I deserved it lol!The only neat thing is really does is decrease loading times. How much, not sure. Slicknick wrote his takes 30-45 seconds with two mechanical drives in RAID0. My SSD which is about 1/3 full takes about 20-25 seconds to load 4.5 LOD radius at payware airports. It takes about 45 seconds to load LOD 8.5 stuff.I'm glad I bought it - really a techy high end premium toy, and since I only do a new build every 3-5 years I figured I'd spend the extra cash.If you go mechanical, say 1TB, you'll save about $100+ change over a 120GB SSD.RE: the SSD for OS. About half my time loading the PC up to Win7 is POST stuff anyway, so I'd rather have the time savings with FSX.

It's not just windows booting, that is such a TINY part of it. Everything will run faster. Time savings with fsx like I mentioned before are not worth it. It's all about having your root drive on the SSD. Why get a 1TB drive? Two 500 GB drives in raid will be twice as fast........

Jim, simple answer: tested one and saw no real money -> performance ratio.It is faster yes, but my WD is already so fast, that only thing SSD improves is loading of the flight - but seriously, by what? Maybe some 30-40%? Now, how important is that? SSD cost 200€ for some 120gb or so, you get 600GB vrap for 180€. It's for me no relation - FSX eats space, especially with photosceneries, and those 10k rpm drives are quite enough for it. I can't imagine anyone not having enough time to wait couple of more seconds to load a flight...Inflight, I saw little bit more of snappiness and that's it. Not a FPS more, not a blurry less...What I'd do, if I had money to burn is put Windows on the SSD...

Understand. There's several who have money to burn and the technology is there so I guess some get the SSD. Couple other pluses I forgot to mention with the SSD is the fact you do NOT defrag the drive and it does not crash like a mechanical HD since it's digital. Prices will be coming down some time in the near future I suspect and more and more people will be getting them. Best regards,Jim

People need to stop looking at SSD's in terms of price per GB. Think price vs. Performance. I have $60,000 to spend. I can get a diesel 1 ton that can haul a sh*tload of stuff, or a Corvette. The corvette is WAY faster, but won't hold nearly as much. To get the best of both worlds, I run my OS on the SSD so the things that I really need are blazing fast, and my big stuff goes on the RAID array, so I have tons of storage. Problem solved.

Your opinion... SSD is a premium toy it what it boils down to :biggrin:The corvette is also a lot cooler than the pickup LOL!Is there data out there that shows performance of a 1TB drive in RAID 0? What if I decided at a later date to purchase another 1TB drive, and change my OS to the SSD? Does performance decrease if you have two large drives in the raid config? And how do I set it up, are there guides for this?Also, does the failure rate vs a single drive increase when in RAID 0?Also I've read about some users experiencing stutters with the OS on the SSD... and that you need a more expensive pcie raid controller to really get the benefit of a RAID setup.

RAID 0 doubles you chance of a failure rate, although I've been using 0 for over a decade now and have never had a failure. Still, keep all important files on a standalone drive, programs like FS that can be reinstalled easily will benefit from a RAID 0 setup. 2 1TB drives in RAID 0 will just show up as a single 2TB drive once setup in your BIOS. A PCI-E raid controller is not required if your motherboard has an onboard RAID controller already, which most do. Hard drive performance nearly doubles in a RAID 0 setup, there are more than enough benchmarks and tutorials on the web to inform you. You need to start with two identical CLEAN drives for a Raid setup, you can't just add a drive as you please.