SSD: P3D AND OS? Or one for each?

[AtlanticAviator 1]

Hi All,

 

I'm currently on the market for SSD(s) as an upgrade to my (archaic, as some may call it) HDD. However, I'm not sure whether I should buy one 500GB SSD for both the OS and P3D to be stored on at once (I thought this would be best?), or else buy two 256GB SSDs and have one dedicated purely to the OS and the other to P3D, or reluctantly buy one 256GB SSD and use my HDD for the OS.

I say reluctantly for the latter idea as wouldn't I then only be partially utilising the full capabilities of the SSD due to access speeds from the OS and such?

 

Anyway..I have already looked through countless other posts for an answer but I'm still not convinced I know what I'm doing. 

 

As a side-note, would anyone be able to confirm that, by putting P3D on an SSD, the loading of textures (in particular, ground textures) would be far quicker on an SSD? The reason I ask is because I have always had blurry textures on both FSX and P3D and nothing I have tried has worked (maybe this is the solution?).

 

Any advice is appreciated.  :smile:

 

 

[Poppet 703]

Its a good question, often thought the same.  Sounds so much easier putting everything on one drive

 

As a side-note, would anyone be able to confirm that, by putting P3D on an SSD, the loading of textures (in particular, ground textures) would be far quicker on an SSD? The reason I ask is because I have always had blurry textures on both FSX and P3D and nothing I have tried has worked (maybe this is the solution?).

 

 

Using an SSD will load the P3D start screen quicker but will not solve the ground textures loading or blurries.  I ran x-plane and P3d on a hard drive 7200,  for me anyway it was the same using an SSD.   Apart from the quicker loading times.

 

I could be talking through my foot,   i'm sure im rite though 

[neucoas 82]

Depends on the load of addons you have also. For me, 256GB for P3D or FSX is totally overkill. The same for the OS. I'm still running W10 on a 60GB old ssd, with 25GB left

 

If I were you, i'd go with 2 SSD, but only because i like to have my SIM is his "own" drive (or partition, you could particionate the 500GB SSD)

[Nuno Pinto 1,394]

SSDs are way too fast for you to notice any issues by having P3D on the same drive as the OS. They can load 20 programs at the same time without struggling.

 

I have my OS and P3D on the same 512GB drive and also use a 256GB for work/downloads/etc plus a third 512GB SSD for extra sceneries i might add.

[Psybear 23]

If money isn't an issue get two. But as with most things it depends on your interest in the devilish details

 

http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html

 

I've been seeing some good sales on Samsung 850 Pros and Evos lately at the popular sites.

 

Cheers,

C

[martin-w 3,234]

I don't take much notice of this multi-drive fetish to be honest. I've always dumped it all on one drive and experienced great results.

 

For my new build, it's a single 1TB 850 Evo and be done with it.

 

As NaMcO said, it's not a consideration you should be worried about.

[Jimm 437]

Also consider that if you place your sim on the same drive as the OS, you do have a pipeline of data writes to take into account.  Having two drives, one for OS and the other for sim, allows the system to write to two different channels instead of one.  While that doesn't sound like there is a difference, you must also take into account that unless your rig is for a sim only, you have other programs running, all requesting data.  The Windows OS is always writing data in the background, albeit small bits here and there.

 

I personally utilize two drives, call it paranoia from the old days when OS's crashed repeatedly.  I never trusted OS's back then and I still don't trust them now.  If you have tons of content for your sim, consider the protection factor of having it on a dedicated drive, in case of any issues with the OS, or even the physical drive itself.  Costs of SSDs these days are much lower now so think about affordability, security, longevity.

 

-Jim

[AtlanticAviator 1]

I don't take much notice of this multi-drive fetish to be honest. I've always dumped it all on one drive and experienced great results.

 

For my new build, it's a single 1TB 850 Evo and be done with it.

 

As NaMcO said, it's not a consideration you should be worried about.

 

 

Also consider that if you place your sim on the same drive as the OS, you do have a pipeline of data writes to take into account.  Having two drives, one for OS and the other for sim, allows the system to write to two different channels instead of one.  While that doesn't sound like there is a difference, you must also take into account that unless your rig is for a sim only, you have other programs running, all requesting data.  The Windows OS is always writing data in the background, albeit small bits here and there.

 

I personally utilize two drives, call it paranoia from the old days when OS's crashed repeatedly.  I never trusted OS's back then and I still don't trust them now.  If you have tons of content for your sim, consider the protection factor of having it on a dedicated drive, in case of any issues with the OS, or even the physical drive itself.  Costs of SSDs these days are much lower now so think about affordability, security, longevity.

 

-Jim

 

I could not quote everyone, however I have considered everything that has been said.

 

Thanks a lot for the very informative advice guys. I'm surprised to hear that the use of an SSD did not, in fact, improve the loading of or help the blurriness of textures for some people.

So, the verdict would be to have two separate 256GB SSDs, with one storing the OS and the other storing P3D. 120GB could potentially be sufficient (for P3D), but it's too big of a worry when you consider how quickly space can be used up.

 

However, I'm still yet to convince myself that it will be worth the investment, meaning that I will see advantages beyond faster loading times or eliminating the need for defragmentation. I was expecting some minor in-flight improvements, such as faster loading of textures/reduction in blurriness which could then potentially reduce stuttering. Maybe that would be too good to be true? Anyway, it's something to think about and continue researching until I'm fully convinced the move will be worth it. As always, the help is much appreciated. Cheers All.  :smile:

 

Kriss

[Jimm 437]

I could not quote everyone, however I have considered everything that has been said.

 

Thanks a lot for the very informative advice guys. I'm surprised to hear that the use of an SSD did not, in fact, improve the loading of or help the blurriness of textures for some people.

So, the verdict would be to have two separate 256GB SSDs, with one storing the OS and the other storing P3D. 120GB could potentially be sufficient (for P3D), but it's too big of a worry when you consider how quickly space can be used up.

 

However, I'm still yet to convince myself that it will be worth the investment, meaning that I will see advantages beyond faster loading times or eliminating the need for defragmentation. I was expecting some minor in-flight improvements, such as faster loading of textures/reduction in blurriness which could then potentially reduce stuttering. Maybe that would be too good to be true? Anyway, it's something to think about and continue researching until I'm fully convinced the move will be worth it. As always, the help is much appreciated. Cheers All.  :smile:

 

Kriss

I once visited this thought before P3D came along.  I had spinning drives in my rig as well as an external HDD.  I installed FSX into my primary HDD with the OS and took a tally of stats, and then I installed it to it's own drive (internal secondary) took some stats and then installed it to the external drive.  I really didn't see any performance improvement, even with FSX installed on the external.  

 

I suppose if you didn't have anything cpu and data intensive running at the same time as your sim, you can get away with installing the sim anywhere and it'll be fine.  I only resorted to all SSDs recently due to lowering any heat buildup in my rig, which seems to have helped a lot.  It's a tough call as to what is the optimal setup to work with, but in the interests mentioned above, two drives can't hurt.

 

-Jim

[AtlanticAviator 1]

I once visited this thought before P3D came along.  I had spinning drives in my rig as well as an external HDD.  I installed FSX into my primary HDD with the OS and took a tally of stats, and then I installed it to it's own drive (internal secondary) took some stats and then installed it to the external drive.  I really didn't see any performance improvement, even with FSX installed on the external.  

 

I suppose if you didn't have anything cpu and data intensive running at the same time as your sim, you can get away with installing the sim anywhere and it'll be fine.  I only resorted to all SSDs recently due to lowering any heat buildup in my rig, which seems to have helped a lot.  It's a tough call as to what is the optimal setup to work with, but in the interests mentioned above, two drives can't hurt.

 

-Jim

 

It's interesting that you say. The only potentially cpu/data intensive program that would be running simultaneously with P3D would be my anti-virus. However, It can be easily disabled so that isn't really a problem at all. I think I'll go ahead an upgrade my GPU, determine where to go from there with regard to loading times etc. and perhaps make the purchase. Good, honest advice. Thanks Jim. 

 

Kriss