SSD vs HDD, big difference

[Dillon 2,197]

I broke down and purchased a 2TB SSD drive for FS after my 1TB drive was filling up.  Before the change I noticed stuttering performance at some ad-on airports and the ATL area in general.  Upon copying over my data to the new SSD drive those issues are gone.  Taking care of the load times from a legacy drive really made a difference in MSFS performance. 😏🍺

At this point I'd recommend anyone using a legacy drive with MSFS seriously consider an SSD drive.

[Bobsk8 12,683]

16 minutes ago, Dillon said:

I broke down and purchased a 2TB SSD drive for FS after my 1TB drive was filling up.  Before the change I noticed stuttering performance at some ad-on airports and the ATL area in general.  Upon copying over my data to the new SSD drive those issues are gone.  Taking care of the load times from a legacy drive really made a difference in MSFS performance. 😏🍺

At this point I'd recommend anyone using a legacy drive with MSFS seriously consider an SSD drive.

Even faster  is an M.2 SSD. 

[sonny147 579]

And even faster an M.2 NVME lol

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

20 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Even faster  is an M.2 SSD. 

True, but now we are into deminishing differences.. so if your motherboard does not support M2... the SATA route is still a good way to go.

[St Mawgan 1,359]

18 minutes ago, sonny147 said:

And even faster an M.2 NVME lol

And some M.2 NVME drives are even faster than others 🙂

[sidfadc 1,344]

See my thread here....I'm trying to speed up my launch of MSFS... - Page 4 - Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) - The AVSIM Community

So its been a good few days since I said the SSD did NOT improve my load times but I was wrong.  After some consistent testing my load times are now about 7.5 mins, this is down from anywhere between 10-15 mins depending on which day of the week it is.

What I have noticed however, and this is after testing with the Fenix, PMDG and A310 is that my sim definitely does not stutter much now, prior to the SSD particularly in the Fenix at heavy airports on approach/departure I used to see 1-2 minute "pauses" with some stuttering on the ground.  I've not witnessed this yet since putting the SSD in.  Sure my frames haven't improved (wasn't expecting them to) because my hardware is still ancient (i7 4790k / 16GB / 1070) but the overall smoothness of the sim seems better.  Aircraft (particularly the Fenix) also load to the gate from the main menu a lot quicker.

So anyone still running on a HDD with no mileage for any more upgrades (bar a full PC rebuild) like me, defo stick an SSD to give you a little boost.

[Bob Scott 7,720]

26 minutes ago, sonny147 said:

And even faster an M.2 NVME lol

And even mo' faster better is a PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVME.  😉

[Dave_YVR 973]

This is like a retro thread from 4-5 years ago. 😉

[turbomax 3,285]

3 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

And even mo' faster better is a PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVME

forget PCIe 5.0:

"at Synopsys we are already working with designers on the development of new SSD devices that will take advantage of the PCIe 6.0’s 64GT/s data rate."

😀

https://semiengineering.com/pcie-6-0-nvme-and-emerging-form-factors-for-storage-applications/

------------------------

@Dillon - SSD can mean even as slow as SATA HDD, depends on connector etc. But as we can see in task manager/performance, transfer rates in MSFS are typically way below max. SATA transfer speeds, so you wouldn't notice a difference going to NVMe PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0

"In December 2009, Micron Technology announced an SSD using a 6 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) SATA interface."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

Edited June 4, 2023 by turbomax

[tup61 1,556]

I think it's been 8 years or so ago since I unplugged my last old fashioned HDD. I've been using SSD's ever since. And even those old ones were noticable faster already. I have to say that going from HDD to SSD (SATA at that time) was the biggest step forward. I am now using NVMe SSD's but in all honesty... the differences between various SSD's are mainly noticable in benchmarks. For a regular user any SSD will do. Don't expect miracles and wonders when you go from a SATA SSD to a NVMe SSD. Obviously I bought NVMe ones when I created my current PC but even if you can't get those (because for instance you are using an older motherboard) I would advice everyone to forget about HDD's and get SSD's.

BTW Speed isn't the only benefit: so is noise! And so is being able to move them! My old HDD's were really audible, you could clearly hear them spin up (something SSD's won't have to do either btw) and I also never dared to move the case out of fear the HDD would crash. SSD's make no sound at all and you can thrown them around during use LOL (My first SSD's were actually hanging on their SATA cables in my old case because there was no way I could pin them down!)

I honestly don't understand why people would still buy HHD's (other than for external backups perhaps). Whenever I see people buy a brand new PC with 4090 Ti's and whatever and then add a HDD to it... Ouch. I just don't get that.

SSD's are a godsend and one of the best things ever to happen to computers. (Along with my 1000 mbps up AND down internet connection btw LOL)

Edited June 5, 2023 by tup61

[Lucky38i 1,095]

For those suggesting NVME, it makes no difference cause there's probably 2 games atm that can even try to saturate PCIE speeds (By using DirectStorage) and MSFS isn't one of them. Whether you have a SATA or NVME SSD, you're going to get roughly the same performance in MSFS.

Scratch that, the DirectStorage API has very very negligble differences when using PCIE as opposed to SATA, so it won't even get close to saturating it.

Edited June 5, 2023 by Lucky38i
Further info

[turbomax 3,285]

17 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

This is like a retro thread from 4-5 years ago. 😉

I got my first SSD for P3D 11 years ago.

[Bobsk8 12,683]

i remember the HD days when I would defrag the hard drive periodically to get max speed. Some of the first people that bought an SSD used to defrag them too, until they found it it was bad for the SSD. Don't miss those days at all. 

[sidfadc 1,344]

My current build is about 9 years old I built it with an SSD boot drive but a bigger HDD.  At the time high storage SSDs were really expensive.  As time has passed I’ve upgraded my RAM and Graphics card.   In hindsight I could have installed SSD as my main storage a while back but never bothered.  So dont scoff so easily about it being a retro thread etc ha.

[Fielder 3,665]

If anyone is upgrading drives, and you only are going to have one drive, then a 2TB drive is a much better purchase choice than a 1TB drive. And the prices on drives are much cheaper than 2 years ago. With all the updates from MSFS, my MSFS is over 800 GB (official + community).