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How different HDDs and SSDs performs with FSX

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So, here is my updated look at SSD vs HDD.

 

I decided to post it as a separate topic however it is an update to my previous topic “Texture loading + HDD vs SSD”.

 

You might need to look at this original topic in order to understand a few things. I hope this answers a lot of questions with regards to SSDs and where to install FSX that pop up all the time on the forum.

 

There are still a few more configurations I would have liked to look at but the fact that a plastic piece on the SATA power connector on my Velociraptor broke and me moving house stopped me from further testing and presenting the results are long overdue as well.

 

What I have looked at is a combination of 4 different drives. You’ve already seen the ATTO results from the first 3 (80GB Toshiba 2.5” 5400rpm drive, 160GB Intel X25-M G2 and 1TB Velociraptor 10000rpm). But I’ll post it again here.

 

 

The fourth drive is a 30GB OCZ SATAII SSD. This drive is a rebranded Samsung SSD and is one of the first mainstream consumer SSDs and has been well used inside my Netbook since 2008. With today’s standards this is a very slow SSD when it comes to transfer rates.

 

I also created a separate partition on the slowest 10% sectors on the Velociraptor to see how much the reduced transfer rates at the innermost sectors would impact FSX performance.

 

These are the ATTO results for the OCZ SSD and also for the 10% slowest sectors of the Velociraptor.

 

 

As you can see, when you compare the OCZ SSD to the Intel SSD, the Intel one is capable of more than double to triple the transfer rates depending on file size.

When comparing the 10% slowest sectors on the Velociraptor to the fastest sectors you can see that transfer rates have been cut by a third apart from at the smallest transfer sizes.

When comparing the OCZ SSD with the Velociraptor you can see that the Velociraptor is capable of 2-3 times the transfer rates of the slow SSD.

 

HD Tune gives these access times for the drives.

5400rpm HDD: 17.2ms

Velociraptor HDD: 7.19ms

OCZ SSD: 0.290ms

Intel SSD: 0.177ms

 

As you can see, the Velociraptor is 2.4 times quicker than the 5400rpm drive. Not bad, but the SSDs play in a different league. The “slow” OCZ SSD is still 25 times quicker then the fast Velociraptor. And the Intel SSD is a whooping 100 times faster than the 5400rpm when it comes to access time.

 

I have tested with these different drive configurations:

FSX+OS on 5400rpm HDD

FSX on 5400rpm HDD, OS on Velociraptor

FSX+OS on the Velociraptors 10% slowest sectors

FSX+OS on Velociraptor

FSX+OS on Intel SSD with the photo scenery installed on Velociraptor

FSX on OCZ SSD, OS on 5400rpm

FSX on OCZ SSD, OS on Intel SSD

FSX+OS on Intel SSD

FSX on Intel SSD, OS on 5400rpm

FSX on Intel SSD, OS on OCZ SSD

 

I have changed the result spreadsheet a bit. I have added a column labelled Launch (s). This is the time it takes to launch the FSX application. It is timed from clicking on the FSX icon until the start-up screen is shown. It’s measured with a stopwatch. Launch time is dependant on your CPU, your storage combinations, and what add-ons you have installed. The more add-ons you have, the longer it will take. It is however not affected at all by the AffinityMask as the load time is.

 

I have also reorganised a bit.

At the top I now have the HyperThreading=Off, AM=13, LOD=4.5 (max setting with sliders) results where I also provide Launch, FPS and stutter values. Remember that the Launch values can be applied to the cases below as well.

In the middle I have the HT=On, AM=249, LOD=4.5 results.

At the bottom I have added HT=On, AM=249, LOD=9 results.

 

The results are also grouped as Cold, Superfetch and Hot.

Just a reminder what it means.

Cold=Just after a re-boot. All data will be red from the storage drive. This is how FSX will read its data for normal, non benchmark flight.

SuperFetch= Re-booted system that has idled for a while. It has already learned the repeated pattern of starting FSX and benchmarking. It has therefore prefetched a lot of the data in to the RAM. The Launch and Load time in this case might be of interest if you have an HDD and have a regular pattern to what and when you use FSX and don’t turn off your computer.

Hot=All the data has already been red from the disk during a benchmark and is now kept cached in the RAM by Windows. This is actually non dependant on your storage and shows how much more improvement you could possibly add to your system with the help of faster storage. For day to day usage it’s only valid when reloading a flight or if you have already had FSX up and running previously and Windows is still keeping the data cached.

 

A few of the timed results have a shaded background. This is so we can fully compare Apples to Apples. All the non shaded results are done with a fresh Windows 7 install while the shaded results (with the OS on the Intel SSD) are done on my ‘old’ Windows 7 install that also has antivirus installed that switches to silent mode when FSX is started up. It will also have a few other settings within the OS different to the non shaded results This “old” Windows install is adding 2-3 seconds to the Launch and Load time so bear that in mind.

All results are however from a fresh FSX install having the same add-ons installed.

 

So here are the results:

 

 

This is my analysis.

First of all, average FPS is unaffected by storage.

 

The stutter value stays around 30 for all different configurations. But that doesn’t actually mean that storage doesn’t affect stutters. Far from it, but I come back to that later.

 

Texture loading is only affected when having FSX on the slow 5400rpm drive. In all the other configurations it’s unaffected. So it is possible for the storage to cause blurries.

 

Where storage makes the most noticeable impact is when it comes to Launch and Load time.

 

Let’s look at the two top results comparing how having FSX+OS on the 5400rpm vs having FSX on the 5400rpm and the OS on a separate drive. Basically what we’ve done here is that we’ll have improved access time for FSX to its storage by not having the OS requesting access to the same drive, having FSX to wait for its turn every now and again. The improvements for Texture loading, Launch and Load time are big.

You might think that not having the OS on the same drive gives FSX access to the absolute fastest sectors on the HDD and that this might have a big effect. But when we look at the Velociraptor Vs the Velociraptor 10% slowest sectors we can see that using the absolute slowest sectors don’t really have much of an impact at all. Access time is what matters the most.

 

Cutting the access time in half with a Velociraptor does a lot but you can still do more. Putting in a SSD with its 25 times faster access time is however not yielding a 25 times improvement. With an SSD we have basically completely removed the access time as the bottleneck and it’s now something else holding us back. The good thing with this is that it doesn’t matter if you combine the OS on the same drive as FSX on a SSD. The access time is fast enough to handle that.

 

For some reason Load time is reduced with around 2-3 seconds when FSX is installed on a separate drive from the OS irrespective of what storage it’s loaded on. This is really notable in the Hot case when everything is red from RAM and not from the storage.

 

You can also see that the drive that the OS is stored on makes a small impact on Load time but a lot bigger impact on the Launch time. There’s still files on the OS drive that requires too be red even when FSX is installed on a separate drive. Once again, access time is most important initially.

 

So what about transfer rates of different SSDs? Yes it does make a notable impact to Load time. But it doesn’t scale that well giving you less and less return the faster SSD you get. This is because it’s now your CPU that is the main bottleneck when you have an SSD. Sure enough, the faster the CPU using more cores/threads, the more your transfer rates will matter to Load time. But don’t expect to cut your load time in half by using twice as fast SSD. Remember to compare the Cold result with the Hot result to see how much you could ever gain with the help of storage. In the case of the Intel SSD it’s already very little on my overclocked Lynnfield system.

 

Now let’s come back to the stutters. The stutter value is simply counting any stutter that is above 10ms and tells how many you get per minute on average. It doesn’t care how much over 10ms it is. So when it comes to the impact of storage it doesn’t give a good picture.

 

It’s a bit different when we look in to the stutters in more detail.

 

Here you can see a more detailed analysis of the stutters in 3 different cases.

To the left you can see the stutters we get having FSX on the Intel SSD and the OS on OCZ SSD. Compare this to the stutters in the middle where we still have FSX on the Intel SSD with the OS on the 5400rpm drive. There are a number of hard stutters caused by having the OS on the slow access time drive. Several of these hard stutters are >30ms as you can see at the top so many of these extra stutters will be noticeable even with the half rate V-sync tweak applied and maintaining 30 FPS. The absolute hardest stutters aren’t worse than with the OCZ SSD for the OS. But there are a lot more hard stutters. This doesn’t apply only in this case. It applies every time the OS is put on the 5400rpm drive, no matter what drive FSX is on. These stutters are not present when we don’t include the 5400rpm drive in our setup.

Absolute worst case is having FSX+OS on the 5400rpm drive as shown on the right. With that setup we also get a very hard stutter lasting more than 0.4 of a second when overflying SETAC. I believe it has to do with loading a sound file. This will also show up as a low minimum FPS in the benchmark. Having FSX on a separate 5400rpm drive improves this stutter a little bit but it’s still very hard. The stutter is almost gone with the Velociraptor and removed when we use the SSDs (compared to the Hot case). Superfetch doesn’t remove this stutter with the mechanical HDDs.

 

Moral of the story, stay away from high access time drives for both FSX and the OS unless you don’t mind stutters and blurries.

A low access time is the key on a mechanical HDD.

A Velociraptor doesn’t give you blurries, but it’s still restricting load times quite a bit. It can’t beat even a slow SSD capable of less than half the transfer rates.

 

Hopefully I’ll be able to test with FSX on the Velociraptor with the OS on the Intel SSD soon as well. By the look of things, putting the photo scenery on the Velociraptor while having FSX+OS on the Intel SSD seems to be the best compromise only reducing Load time slightly while still offering loads of space for my photo scenery. It might be that I get the same result having the whole FSX install on the Velociraptor.

 

Regards

Lars

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Holy cow, someone has been busy. Gonna have to go get me a drink before I try to absorb all this. Well done!!!

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Regards

Lars

 

Lars,

 

I would like to have OS & FSX on the same drive in order to make backups/clones easier. From your research, do you have a sense of what penalty I would incur here if I used a high-end SSD for this approach? Right now I have them on separate HDDs.

 

Many thank in advance for sharing your expertise :O)

 

Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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Lars,

 

I would like to have OS & FSX on the same drive in order to make backups/clones easier. From your research, do you have a sense of what penalty I would incur here if I used a high-end SSD for this approach? Right now I have them on separate HDDs.

 

Many thank in advance for sharing your expertise :O)

 

Noel

Noel, it's perfectly fine to have both OS and FSX on the same SSD. There's no real penalty for only having one SSD. If you have two separate drives the OS seems to save a set amount of CPU cycles every time you load a flight. So that's the only difference you get from having 2 SSDs instead of one. Nothing I would be the slightest bothered about.

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So just to clarify. Reliability, support and price/GB are more important factors than transfer rates when choosing a SSD for FSX today. Todays modern SSDs are all fast enough to perform great in FSX with very small differences in load and launch time between them.

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Noel, it's perfectly fine to have both OS and FSX on the same SSD. There's no real penalty for only having one SSD. If you have two separate drives the OS seems to save a set amount of CPU cycles every time you load a flight. So that's the only difference you get from having 2 SSDs instead of one. Nothing I would be the slightest bothered about.

 

Thanks for that--I will go ahead and use this model then for my next build. I have many decent HDD's and will save them for clone purposes and for data storage only. I'm looking forward to Haswell--though this machine still does a fabulous job for me.

 

Noel

 

Noel, it's perfectly fine to have both OS and FSX on the same SSD. There's no real penalty for only having one SSD. If you have two separate drives the OS seems to save a set amount of CPU cycles every time you load a flight. So that's the only difference you get from having 2 SSDs instead of one. Nothing I would be the slightest bothered about.

 

Thanks for that--I will go ahead and use this model then for my next build. I have many decent HDD's and will save them for clone purposes and for data storage only. I'm looking forward to Haswell--though this machine still does a fabulous job for me.

 

Can you recommend a highest-end SSD? I'm thinking I'm going to need at least 256Gb if not more.

 

Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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Thanks for that--I will go ahead and use this model then for my next build. I have many decent HDD's and will save them for clone purposes and for data storage only. I'm looking forward to Haswell--though this machine still does a fabulous job for me.

 

Noel

 

 

 

Thanks for that--I will go ahead and use this model then for my next build. I have many decent HDD's and will save them for clone purposes and for data storage only. I'm looking forward to Haswell--though this machine still does a fabulous job for me.

 

Can you recommend a highest-end SSD? I'm thinking I'm going to need at least 256Gb if not more. It appears PCI Express 2.0 is maybe the high end?

 

Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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Interesting. I'm using an Intel SRT setup - Samsung HDD + OCZ SSD. I'm wondering if I'm in any disadvantage doing it like so. SSD prices are dropping like mad, so I might just spurge on a 500 GB SSD when the time is right. But what about failure rate??


Soarbywire - Avionics Engineering

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But what about failure rate??

 

Pretty rare... Just stick with the big ones and you will likely be fine. (OCZ, Samsung, Crucial, ADATA, etc)

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But what about failure rate??

I wouldn't be worried about failure rates as long as you follow the golden rule: don't be an early adopter. That includes firmware updates as well as brand new drives. Let someone else bite that bullet.I've had way more HDDs failing on me than SSDs. Probably because I've only bought 3 SSDs so far but and neither of them have had any problems over the last 4 years. I've had to replace 3 HDDs during that same time...

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I'm not seeing the attachments in the OP. For example, all I see for the first set of data mentioned is:

 

 

Is it just me, or have the attachments been removed?


Vic

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