The scenery is Sim Savvy 50cm California. Its run on WD Caviar Black 1TB X2 intel RAID0 160 MB/s and yes a single Velociraptor can reach these speeds.

 

 

 

HLJAMES

Thanks to all that replied. You've been a great help. I have moved all my scenery back to the C drive and use the Passport only as a back-up drive. Most likely will spring for a WD Caviar Black or a Velociraptor as my next purchase and will use exclusively for scenery.

 

Word Not Allowed do you think your tweaks would benefit my modest machine?

 

Slim

Velociraptor seems like an expensive way to go... a traditional fast harddrive or an inexpensive SSD

if likely going to do the job for you.

SSD is the most expensive/MB but will give you as god texture loading and load time as your CPU is capable of.

A velociraptor is cheaper/MB and will give you as fast texture loading as your CPU can give you but it will slightly restrict your load times.

A 5400rpm internal drive is cheapest/MB but will also restrict your texture loading and severely restrict your load times.

 

I have not tested with a WD black but given that I know that access time Is the most important factor and WD black are closer to the velociraptor than the 5400 drive in access time I would expect it to probably not restrict texture loading but it will restrict load times a lot more than the velociraptor.

 

It might even be that a regular 7200rpm drive has fast enough access time not to restrict texture loading but it will slow down your load times even more.

 

Given that an external drive will add latency you'll easily work out what effect using an external drive has.

 

So by the end of the day it comes down to how much you are prepared to pay/MB for your storage.

This is exactly why photoscenery has not been a commercial success.

A single 7200 rpm including Caviar Black HDD cannot deliver textures fast enough.

and a SSD does not have the capacity. Textures for the entire United States = 1.5 TB.

RAID0 is the only solution that can deliver the speed, capacity and cheap price point!

 

HLJAMES

This is exactly why photoscenery has not been a commercial success.

A single 7200 rpm including Caviar Black HDD cannot deliver textures fast enough.

and a SSD does not have the capacity. Textures for the entire United States = 1.5 TB. RAID0 is the only solution that can deliver the speed, capacity and cheap price point!

HLJAMES

Not that I've actually tested RAID0 but as far as I know it will only increase maximum transfer speeds significantly while access times remains pretty much the same.

 

A single velociraptor is enough to maintain maximum texture loading to what an i7 860 @ 3.8 Ghz can achieve. I also highly suspect that it can keep up full texture loading using a SandyBridge/IvyBridge in the 5Ghz region but I don't have the hardware to confirm that.

 

Never the less, the best thing you can do if you enjoy photo scenery is firstly to ensure you have it stored on fast enough storage.

Secondly that you increase the LOD above the maximum 4.5 you can set with the sliders.

And thirdly that you have enough cores and threads to load the scenery while flying anything that flies at a decent speed. Make use of HT if you have it.

I have had extreme;y bad experience with 10K RAID 0 disks. and there is no way I am going to RAID 0 or 10K. Been there done that.. a big freaking FAIL!

 

For me, I'd rather work in Mc D or shoveling cattle poop...on Sunday's to save money to get an SSD!

 

:)

Crucial's got a 128gb SSD for $114. Is the reliability there yet?? So far I've got about 80gb in scenery including the FSX default. 500gb Caviar Black is running about $90.

 

Slim

The effective space on a 128G SSD is around 100Gig so..if you are already around 90Gigs with your FSX and addons, you are right there with no space to grow.

 

Manny

You can span your FSX installation across several drives...

 

I would be tempted to buy the SSD and move whatever big scenery that

is less critical (or airplane add-ons for that matter) to a separate harddrive

as you pick up more stuff. Even better, delete things you do not really use!

 

I've got my FSX install on a 64 GB SSD, and delete stuff on a regular basis.

Works great!

You can span your FSX installation across several drives...

 

I would be tempted to buy the SSD and move whatever big scenery that

is less critical (or airplane add-ons for that matter) to a separate harddrive

as you pick up more stuff. Even better, delete things you do not really use!

 

I've got my FSX install on a 64 GB SSD, and delete stuff on a regular basis.

Works great!

 

Be aware that if you do that (span), you will kill the purpose of SSD. When starting, FSX scans through all addon folders that are in its library. And if they are on other drives, it will be almost like having no SSD for FSX booting. Also when flying, sometimes other sceneries are scanned for some to me unknown reason. I tested this a long time ago with Filemon.

 

 

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