Solid state drives

[Ant1981 0]

Is anyone here using SSD for FSX? Any reliability issues?Also, is it really THAT much faster? Noticable gains in FPS?

[BigBadBen 0]

I've never looked back since installing FSX on a dedicated SSD. No gain in FPS, but...Significantly better load times.No more defragging. And I've had no reliability issues with my Intel 120gb model.

[Ant1981 0]

No gain in FPS doesn't sell it to me, unless you already had 30 plus FPS.

[Guest jahman]

SSDs speed-up FSX start-up by a factor of 10x. If you have CTDs and your FSX installation takes 10 minutes to start because you have lots of scenery, an SSD can be a lifesaver. Cheers, - jahman.

[scott967 31]

Using an OCZ Vertex III for Win 7 and FSX. Both win and FSX boot/load much faster, so it's feasible to repeatedly reload FSX (good for scenery design work). I don't know if it makes any difference in FPS or smoothness -- I am external locked at 30 and it is pretty but not 100% smooth for me @ 4.4 GHz on a 2600k OCZ though is bugged with firmware problem and system will BSOD about once a week. OCZ has released a beta firmware 2.13 but seems to work for only about half of the users with previous problems. scott s..

[GHarrall 494]

Do the scenery tiles load faster with an SSD? That would be a big benefit.

[Ant1981 0]

OCZ though is bugged with firmware problem and system will BSOD about once a week. OCZ has released a beta firmware 2.13 but seems to work for only about half of the users with previous problems. scott s..

BSOD?

[ryanbatcund 4,373]

I use a 120GB Mushkin SSD. It's one of the older ones though. I love the speed at which FSX loads. I had built a new system from the ground up, so I decided to buy an SSD. It's about 55% full, using Orbx PNW/NRM, many airplane addons and a few FSDT FlyTampa addons. I also have GEX and UTX, but the trick is to install those on another hard drive. edit: BSOD = Blue Screen of Death

[scott967 31]

BSOD?

Windows 7 will blue screen with a 4F stop. If you try a reboot it won't find the SSD. You have to power-cycle the system then the SSD shows up again and all is well. Some OCZ speculation is that the problem is related to sleep states / power states and hot-swap settings (I don't see any way to turn off what I assume is hot-swap on my system, at least my drives show up in "safely remove hardware eject media" icon). I'm set to AHCI but it seems like IDE doesn't prevent the problem. scott s..

[Guest firehawk44]

Windows 7 will blue screen with a 4F stop. If you try a reboot it won't find the SSD. You have to power-cycle the system then the SSD shows up again and all is well. Some OCZ speculation is that the problem is related to sleep states / power states and hot-swap settings (I don't see any way to turn off what I assume is hot-swap on my system, at least my drives show up in "safely remove hardware eject media" icon). I'm set to AHCI but it seems like IDE doesn't prevent the problem. scott s..

Uh, I thought all SSD's had to be set to AHCI and IDE is definitely a no, no. I have never seen a BSOD relating to my SSD. Best regards,Jim

[Guest firehawk44]

Is anyone here using SSD for FSX? Any reliability issues? Also, is it really THAT much faster? Noticable gains in FPS?

I have the 256GB SSD and see no reliability issues. It is much, much faster loading FSX default w/o any addons. As I recall, loading times dropped dramatically when I installed MyTrafficX AI program as MTX has to load all AI aircraft and flight plans no matter where you are flying. Before that, I had MegaScenery addons installed and the load times were very, very fast. You will not see any gains in FPS vs a HD. Both should be exactly the same. The greatest advantage is the fact it cannot be defragged so, in that respect, files are loaded faster than a HD that hasn't been defragged. HD's require regular defragging and definitely after FSX/Acceleration are installed as the installation programs throw fsx files all over the HD in absolutely no logical order. If you like defragging all the time, then the old tech HD is for you. Best regards,Jim

[GSalden 2,513]

In my pc I have 4 SSD's.No extra fps , but faster loading times for all programs.Especially with all photoscenery I have it is very usefull using SSD's.

[jfri 11]

I've never looked back since installing FSX on a dedicated SSD. No gain in FPS, but... Significantly better load times. No more defragging. And I've had no reliability issues with my Intel 120gb model.

Do you also have the OS on the SSD? Does it need to be 120 Gb? What about 60 Gb will that go? Or is money for a 60 Gb SSD wasted money?

[BennyFSX 0]

I have the OS on a separate drive (actually the first 120gb partition of a 1terabyte standard drive). This is to ensure there is minimal repeated write activity on the SSD, which will marginally cause performance to deteriorate over time.By having the OS on its own partition on the HDD you can defragment regularly without having to do the same to all your texture files (GEX, REX, etc.), which you can put in a second partition.As for size, I went for 120gb as the certified speed was greater and I wanted to future proof for addon aircraft etc. (The raw FSX install is about 20gb I think, more like 30gb if you have added UTX, GEX, REX.) But 60gb will be fine if you are on a budget - it's a logical place to make savings without a performance hit.

[scott967 31]

Uh, I thought all SSD's had to be set to AHCI and IDE is definitely a no, no. I have never seen a BSOD relating to my SSD.

the problem is related to SandForce 2281 controller on Intel chipsets. It appears that intel RST driver might be involved. People ar playing with Trim on, Trim off, MS AHCI vs intel RST vs IDE etc trying to get stability. scott s..