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Gary1124

Prepar3d on HDD

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Is anyone running P3d 4 or 5 well on an HDD or is an SSD practically necessary for smooth performance? I don't mind a couple minutes of loading time as long as running performance is acceptable. Just gathering Intel before buying.

Thanks

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SSD all day long, it is not just initial loading times but also during flying it will be loading scenery all the time so way better than a HDD......

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30 minutes ago, Gary1124 said:

Can an abundance of ram mitigate the loading?

Thanks.

No. A HDD is mechanical and will take longer for the data to be read and loaded however much RAM you have.

Given the price of SSDs is so low there's no compelling reason not to use them. Load times with an HDD will be very long.


Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
Cheadle Hulme Weather

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37 minutes ago, Gary1124 said:

Can an abundance of ram mitigate the loading?

Thanks.

Not really. P3D will not load more textures from further away if you just have RAM available - it will stick with the maximum texture load distance per the settings. If you increase this distance it'll help, but that will put more stress on the CPU and GPU. It's swings and roundabouts.

It does depend on what sort of scenery etc you are using. But for the likes of True Earth or any ortho / satellite scenery, you want the fastest transfer speed you can get. To be honest, I've found SATA SSDs to be not brilliant; better than HDD, sure, but definitely inferior to NVMe storage attached directly to the PCI bus. I've gotten significantly better overall smoothness from my sim since I traded up from 2TB SATA SSDs to 2TB M.2 NVMe. If I could go to PCI Gen 4 (when I finally replace the motherboard / CPU in each machine) then I'll be able to get a further boost up to about 5Gb/s sequential read speed. I already have 3.5Gb/s. Not to be sneezed at!

If it's a question of where to invest money for best effect, that depends on your overall specs. But if you already have a fast CPU and at least 16GB RAM (32GB better) and a reasonable GPU, then faster and more storage is probably the best upgrade you could do. 

Edited by neilhewitt

Temporary sim: 9700K @ 5GHz, 2TB NVMe SSD, RTX 3080Ti, MSFS + SPAD.NeXT

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3 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

Not really. P3D will not load more textures from further away if you just have RAM available - it will stick with the maximum texture load distance per the settings. If you increase this distance it'll help, but that will put more stress on the CPU and GPU. It's swings and roundabouts.

It does depend on what sort of scenery etc you are using. But for the likes of True Earth or any ortho / satellite scenery, you want the fastest transfer speed you can get. To be honest, I've found SATA SSDs to be not brilliant; better than HDD, sure, but definitely inferior to NVMe storage attached directly to the PCI bus. I've gotten significantly better overall smoothness from my sim since I traded up from 2TB SATA SSDs to 2TB M.2 NVMe. If I could go to PCI Gen 4 (when I finally replace the motherboard / CPU in each machine) then I'll be able to get a further boost up to about 5Gb/s sequential read speed. I already have 3.5Gb/s. Not to be sneezed at!

If it's a question of where to invest money for best effect, that depends on your overall specs. But if you already have a fast CPU and at least 16GB RAM (32GB better) and a reasonable GPU, then faster and more storage is probably the best upgrade you could do. 

Funny that you should say that! My experience with an M.2 is that it is no faster than a SATA SSD. (Just taking benchmarks, in actual practice maybe it is better?)


Intel i7 6700K @4.3. 32gb Gskill 3200 RAM. Z170x Gigabyte m/b. 28" LG HD monitor. Win 10 Home. 500g Samsung 960 as Windows home. 1 Gb Mushkin SSD for P3D. GTX 1080 8gb.

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9 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

Not really. P3D will not load more textures from further away if you just have RAM available - it will stick with the maximum texture load distance per the settings. If you increase this distance it'll help, but that will put more stress on the CPU and GPU. It's swings and roundabouts.

It does depend on what sort of scenery etc you are using. But for the likes of True Earth or any ortho / satellite scenery, you want the fastest transfer speed you can get. To be honest, I've found SATA SSDs to be not brilliant; better than HDD, sure, but definitely inferior to NVMe storage attached directly to the PCI bus. I've gotten significantly better overall smoothness from my sim since I traded up from 2TB SATA SSDs to 2TB M.2 NVMe. If I could go to PCI Gen 4 (when I finally replace the motherboard / CPU in each machine) then I'll be able to get a further boost up to about 5Gb/s sequential read speed. I already have 3.5Gb/s. Not to be sneezed at!

If it's a question of where to invest money for best effect, that depends on your overall specs. But if you already have a fast CPU and at least 16GB RAM (32GB better) and a reasonable GPU, then faster and more storage is probably the best upgrade you could do. 

I have a 

Ryzin 5 3600   Asus b450 ma

32 gig adata ddr4 xpg 3000mhz

Radeon RX580 8 gig

240 gigabyte SSD drive C

2tb 7200 rpm drive D

I do have 3 titles on my HDD. A second Steam library because Win 10 and FSX-SE and related have Drive C 80 percent chewed up. 

On D the HDD, I have Trainz 2019, DCS, and Civ 6.

DCS and Trainz 2019 seem to run okay but they take a minute to load. Haven't tried DCS on multi yet. Civ 6 is turn based so it isn't a good reference. I'm going to try XP 11 demo on HDD. See how that goes. 

I want an NVMe drive but I read where a bios adjustment me be needed to recognize it.

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The SSD is the way to go. But I just have to say again that there will be NO noticeable difference in performance once the initial load is complete. The key word here is "noticeable". This has been proven over and over again yet the myth persists. The argument raged for a couple of years when the price of SSD's was a major consideration but, as said above, the cost of SSD's  is so low today that there is really no need even talk about it any more (IMNSOH.....).

Edited by W2DR
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Intel 10700K @ 5.1Ghz, Asus Hero Maximus motherboard, Noctua NH-U12A cooler, Corsair Vengeance Pro 32GB 3200 MHz RAM, RTX 2060 Super GPU, Cooler Master HAF 932 Tower, Thermaltake 1000W Toughpower PSU, Windows 10 Professional 64-Bit, 100TB of disk storage. Klaatu barada nickto.

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Concur with W2DR, once it's running no difference.

 

 

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I have P3D on an SSD but my scenery on an HDD just because I don't have a big enough SSD to hold my photo scenery. I have one area of photo on the SSD. I have to say that the initial loading of P3D to the gate is faster when using the SSD photo scenery but it doesn't feel any faster once I've started flying. No difference in smoothness.

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Intel I7 6700k @ 4ghz, nVidia 3070ti 8gb, 16 gb ddr4 @ 1066mhz,  500 ssd, 2tb hdd, 2tb ssd, ASUS z170-E mb, Samsung 24" @ 1920x1080, P3D 5.4, MSFS

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On 5/14/2021 at 7:12 AM, neilhewitt said:

Not really. P3D will not load more textures from further away if you just have RAM available - it will stick with the maximum texture load distance per the settings. If you increase this distance it'll help, but that will put more stress on the CPU and GPU. It's swings and roundabouts.

It does depend on what sort of scenery etc you are using. But for the likes of True Earth or any ortho / satellite scenery, you want the fastest transfer speed you can get. To be honest, I've found SATA SSDs to be not brilliant; better than HDD, sure, but definitely inferior to NVMe storage attached directly to the PCI bus. I've gotten significantly better overall smoothness from my sim since I traded up from 2TB SATA SSDs to 2TB M.2 NVMe. If I could go to PCI Gen 4 (when I finally replace the motherboard / CPU in each machine) then I'll be able to get a further boost up to about 5Gb/s sequential read speed. I already have 3.5Gb/s. Not to be sneezed at!

If it's a question of where to invest money for best effect, that depends on your overall specs. But if you already have a fast CPU and at least 16GB RAM (32GB better) and a reasonable GPU, then faster and more storage is probably the best upgrade you could do. 

Did you have to edit your bios settings for you board to recognize the NVMe drive? My Asus B450 has a M.2 PCIe jack. Between the CPU pedestal a d the GPU slot. I would think being on the PCIe bus that windows would detect it on it's own.

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Yes no difference at all. But the constant reading / writing from the SSD used during the ‘game’ will shorten the lifespan of your SSD. 5 years if you’re lucky. Degraded performance after 3. 
I’ve got cheap ol’ HDD’s running solid after 20 years. I regret installing a SSD in my system at all. 

 

 

 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, abarter said:

I have P3D on an SSD but my scenery on an HDD just because I don't have a big enough SSD to hold my photo scenery. I have one area of photo on the SSD. I have to say that the initial loading of P3D to the gate is faster when using the SSD photo scenery but it doesn't feel any faster once I've started flying. No difference in smoothness.

That may be advanced for my nearly senior citizen PC skills.

Don't think I would go for photo. Looks good from airliner flight levels but most of my hours are A2A GA at 4000-8000 feet. So, I prefer 3d even if generic. I try to parallel real world experiences. I'm learning in a C182 IRL. A2A's model is very close. My instructor has 530/430 which I have RXP for 

I do cheat with the V-tail though. Can't get near one in real 

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5 minutes ago, Doug47 said:

Yes no difference at all. But the constant reading / writing from the SSD used during the ‘game’ will shorten the lifespan of your SSD. 5 years if you’re lucky. Degraded performance after 3. 
I’ve got cheap ol’ HDD’s running solid after 20 years. I regret installing a SSD in my system at all. 

 

 

 

 

 

So, bios edit not needed? If I plug in a WD Black ar 500 gig to 1TB or what I choose then win 10 will detect it once I boot?

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6 minutes ago, Doug47 said:

But the constant reading / writing from the SSD used during the ‘game’ will shorten the lifespan of your SSD. 5 years if you’re lucky. Degraded performance after 3. 

Reading has no impact on the SSD. Writing does but why would the sim keep writing back to the SSD? Autosave in FSUIPC will but not normal flying.

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Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
Cheadle Hulme Weather

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