Im finally to the point where i think i might consider getting an SSD drive that will hold all the addons/scenery/program files for p3d  (i have all that on a dedicated 7200 rpm drive now)..

 

I run the OS on another 7200 rpm drive..

 

What i'm wondering is if anyone has any hard stats on the change going from 7200 standard to ssd..

Did you go SSD on both the OS and the P3D drive (2 ssd's?).. 

Ideally looking for info on those running the OS on a standard drive and the p3d on an SSD.

 

Case example.. just off hand.. say in one scenerio with everything checked in Scenery.cfg.. it may take 8 minutes to load.. would simply replacing that P3D drive with an SSD (thinking samsung EVO with 500+ read/writes over sata III, 1TB) cut this time to say 4 minutes?

 

If the time reduction is only slight then i'm not sure its worth the effort.. also unsure if the golden fix is to do BOTH the OS and the P3D drive..

 

Thanks in advance for any info 

 

 

You'll get the most benefit from having the OS on the SSD. Do that first and then maybe consider an SSD for the sim.

I can only talk about FSX. Since I installed W7 and the complete sim on a 512GB SSD, my load times are about 4 times shorter. I would never want to go back to a non-SSD installation.

Im finally to the point where i think i might consider getting an SSD drive that will hold all the addons/scenery/program files for p3d  (i have all that on a dedicated 7200 rpm drive now)..

 

I run the OS on another 7200 rpm drive..

 

What i'm wondering is if anyone has any hard stats on the change going from 7200 standard to ssd..

Did you go SSD on both the OS and the P3D drive (2 ssd's?).. 

Ideally looking for info on those running the OS on a standard drive and the p3d on an SSD.

 

Case example.. just off hand.. say in one scenerio with everything checked in Scenery.cfg.. it may take 8 minutes to load.. would simply replacing that P3D drive with an SSD (thinking samsung EVO with 500+ read/writes over sata III, 1TB) cut this time to say 4 minutes?

 

If the time reduction is only slight then i'm not sure its worth the effort.. also unsure if the golden fix is to do BOTH the OS and the P3D drive..

 

Thanks in advance for any info 

 

When I decided to go to P3D v3 I purchased the same samsung SSD, ( have os on separate ssd) just done a quick test, 30s to get to the splash screen and a further 60s to get to the previous flight. Ftx norway running fokker f-27 at the moment. not put all my scenery back on yet but hope this helps.

 

bob 

I have my OS and my sims, both FSX-SE and P3D on the same 960Gb SSd which I partitioned, so am effectively on a 500Gb partition. Windows 10 Pro.Switch-on to logon screen 43s. Have has no issues with either sim loading up, etc, etc

SSDs only on my rig. It is noticeable faster and I would never go back to regular drives.

 

This year I'm building a new rig and will have my P3D installed on an PCIe SSD drive. They're even faster and will reduce loadingtimes significantly over regular SSD.

Thanks for the stats so far..

 

So maybe a 4 fold speed increase on load times ?  So if it took 5 minutes to load a flight before, now its 1.5 minutes or so?

 

I was trying to avoid buying two SSD drives, one for OS, one for the sim..   I guess i was really curious for those that just changed the OS alone with a separate standard drive for the sim.. what change in minutes/seconds there was for a given situation.

 

I'm partially surprised to hear that if i just change the drive for the sim and leave the OS old school, i might not see much difference..

 

That said.. what model drives is everyone using for the OS when they get one.. Samsung Evo's.. or better to go Pro with the better NAND (mlc i think).. or another model altogether.. not seeing many with TRIM or actually "garbage collection" in the spec unless you pay $100 or more.  I was hoping there was a 750GB model or something in the middle as well, for the OS.. 500 seems too small though it would make it, while 1TB is more useful for the sim drive.

 

I may jump on with one of these drives in the next day or two.. once i get something switched over ill try to report back load times before vs after each..

 

Specifically these are my current choices:

 

 

I spotted a $159 samsung 850 Evo thats 500GB (465 usable, might be just enough for me) for the OS.. TLC nand..

Then there is a $135 Sandisk that may be too slow from reading reviews.. and is 512GB..

Up from there is a Sandisk Ultra II, but many said there are issues with them going bad.. (1TB)..

 

Seems to suggest the other choice though 1TB is a samsung 850 evo there as well and its $289..

 

**

 

**edit there is a Cruicial 1TB that has MLC for around $365 shipped, about $75 more than the $289 Evo 1TB, not sure if worth the extra or not.

 

 

So if it took 5 minutes to load a flight before, now its 1.5 minutes or so?

Not necessarily so. Depends very much on how many aircraft and how many sceneries you load, but it is appreciably faster than a conventional HDD.

Looking at Read speeds ... SATA3 max is 300MB/s, SATA6 is 600MB/s ... Samsung EVO 850 will operate around 500-520 MB/s.  For good 7200 RPM HDD's speeds can be around 100-175 MBs.

 

So Samsung 850 EVO SSD on SATA6 should load about 3 to 5X faster than HDD.  M.2 drives (Samsung 950 Pro - 2500 MB/s) and/or PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives (Intel 750 2200 MB/s) would improve load times from HDD by 15-20X.  

 

Summary if it were just "read" limited:

 

HDD 7200 rpm: 8 mins

SATA6 SSD Evo 850: 2 mins 34 sec - 1 min 35 sec

M.2 / PCIe NVMe: 30 secs 

 

But keep in mind it's not all about "read time" from source (HDD, SDD, M.2) ... much of what is happening is indexed and load according to scenery order (layer system), that takes CPU time also ... so the above is perfect world, not actual world.  Also need to factor in that P3D isn't loading ALL your scenery into memory ... would be impossible with a 4GB 32bit limit.  If one's CPU and memory bandwidth can't keep up with the read performance then it'll be less of a difference going from HDD to SDD ... so as always, the equation MUST be a balanced one.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Looking at Read speeds ... SATA3 max is 300MB/s, SATA6 is 600MB/s ... Samsung EVO 850 will operate around 500-520 MB/s.  For good 7200 RPM HDD's speeds can be around 100-175 MBs.

 

So Samsung 850 EVO SSD on SATA6 should load about 3 to 5X faster than HDD.  M.2 drives (Samsung 950 Pro - 2500 MB/s) and/or PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives (Intel 750 2200 MB/s) would improve load times from HDD by 15-20X.  

 

Summary if it were just "read" limited:

 

HDD 7200 rpm: 8 mins

SATA6 SSD Evo 850: 2 mins 34 sec - 1 min 35 sec

M.2 / PCIe NVMe: 30 secs 

 

But keep in mind it's not all about "read time" from source (HDD, SDD, M.2) ... much of what is happening is indexed and load according to scenery order (layer system), that takes CPU time also ... so the above is perfect world, not actual world.  Also need to factor in that P3D isn't loading ALL your scenery into memory ... would be impossible with a 4GB 32bit limit.  If one's CPU and memory bandwidth can't keep up with the read performance then it'll be less of a difference going from HDD to SDD ... so as always, the equation MUST be a balanced one.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

Thanks .. 

 

I had seen the new M.2 drives.. the pro version of the 950 comes with what appears to be a max of 512GB for around $328, so about double the cost of a 512 regular, plus at least with my motherboard, i'd need a pcie controller card that could take those "drives" and there arent many out there, maybe a few on amazon for $30 i've seen and unknown as to how well they perform.. dont seem to be anything larger than 512 and even if there were it wouldnt be cost effective at this moment.. so i guess its standard SSD for me for now, so heres to hoping for 5x as fast read/write, but yeah not real world 5x faster.

IMHO, you notice the difference more in load times of the OS and load times of the sim. After that YMMV but usually you will get *smoother* performance, not necessarily faster.

 

 

 

Vic

I finally got around to posting my results on all this.. you can find the full blown article with all technical details here..

 

The short of it..

 

The samsung 850 evo drive i got back in January and tested with a ton of addons, reduced my "cold boot" load times for the KORS FTX scenery area from 11minutes down to roughly 3 minutes.

 

Warm boot times between SATA III and SSD SATA werent that drastic, but I tend to cold boot more than anything (cold load saved flights after rebooting/or long time passing).

Basically was a 77% speed up.. Putting both on SSD, the OS + SSD reduced it slightly more so, but not by a huge margin.