Do SSD help in mmo? confused (aion)

[Karribu]

Hello,

This is my system specs

Antec CP-850 850W Modular PSU
XFX HD 4890 XXX Edition 1GB DDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card
Western Digital WD1001FALS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache
Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Soundcard
Intel Core i7 920 D0 2.66GHz Socket 1366 8MB Cache
ASUS P6T iX58 Socket 1366 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) 1600MHz Triple Channel i7 XMS Memory Kit CL7 1.65V 16
Scythe Mugen 2 Socket 478, 775, 1366, 754, 939, AM2+ Processor Cooler
Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Full Tower Case



It's a question regarding Aion mostly. Like most people Im getting amazing fps (150+ in outside areas) with max settings exept AA which is set to x2. But once I go into a main city the game gets choppy. stop and starting. The fps sit around 24-58. But there are times where i have a steady 60 fps, it actually gets better fps sincce I turned the AA to x8 which was strange.
The Cpu sits at 17% So it's not being bottlenecked by that I don't think, The memory goes up to 87% at peak times in city. Ping is a bit crappy at times 240+ but sometimes 47ish :s

I have heard, especially in mmo's that the game can get choppy when loading new textures, ie walking around a corner or turning the camera fast and loading distant buildings. There are plenty of times where i have 60fps and the game stutters (not rubberbanding) and was wondering if upgrading eventually when the prices come down, to a SSD would help in the game.

I've heard people saying that SSD are good for OP times, and initial load times when entering cities but that's all.
Other people have said that It helps the game all the time you are playing it, loadign textures faster and reducing loading lag.

Could someone plz ease tell me what version is right? And any othe oppions you have on the SSD's?

Thanks. Ps, Of course I could just lower settings, but after paying so much for my rig it just seems wrong, atm im just hitting Shift+F12 when I enter cities.

 

[JasonAkkerman]

In my experience, if there are time when you see 60fps, then your pc should be able to handle 60pfs most of the time. I think your bottleneck is when the game loads all the different textures from the HDD when you enter a city. In the cities there are lots of other players. Each player has different armor, body type, mounts, whatever. It takes a while to load all that from he drive to the video ram.

Ann SSD will help with that because it has better seek times (100's if not thousands of textures need to be loaded), and throughput.

 

[JasonAkkerman]

Also, don't confuse network lag (ping) with system lag. If you are seeing large latency on your pings (300+) your FPS won't drop (well it shouldn't anyways, assuming the software is written correctly). You will, however, see mobs (other players, npcs, monsters) appear and disappear when they are moving. This happens because your PC can't keep sync with the server in real time. It's like you are seeing the world in one second snapshots instead of a smooth transition.

 

[sub mesa]

Nah same with world of warcraft. This is CPU-bound i suspect. Since its even more prevalent on Linux systems, as i run WoW in linux; Great FPS everywhere except with many players, like Dalaran.

Setting the CPU clock ratio to a lower clock speed, leads directly to lower framerates in the cities, while it has less effect when getting 60+fps in quiet places. So this would lead me to believe its ultimately CPU performance, though you do need a good GPU if you set details above minimum.

 

[Karribu]

Nah same with world of warcraft. This is CPU-bound i suspect. Since its even more prevalent on Linux systems, as i run WoW in linux; Great FPS everywhere except with many players, like Dalaran.

Setting the CPU clock ratio to a lower clock speed, leads directly to lower framerates in the cities, while it has less effect when getting 60+fps in quiet places. So this would lead me to believe its ultimately CPU performance, though you do need a good GPU if you set details above minimum.

Hmm true, but I have a brand new 4890 with what I think is a nifty little quadcore and I haven't OC it as yet. I just cant beleive that its my cpu or gpu for that matter, especially when The cpu never exeeds 17%

 

[brokenticker]

One possible bottleneck you might be having if I'm reading your system specs right is that you are using only 1 HDD. If that is true then you might consider adding another matching drive and putting it into Raid. You will in effect double your through put and reduce part of your lag issue having to do with loading times. Considering the current cost of SSD's a simple raid is a much better cost effective option to consider

Intel Core i7 965 Extreme
Gigabyte EX-58-UD5 Mobo
6GB Kingston Hyper-X
4 WD VelociRaptor 3Gbps(In Raid 0)
2 Sapphire HD 4870 x2(In Crossfire Mode)
Creative X-Fi

 

[sub mesa]

If you have a Intel quadcore capable of Hyperthreading or SMT, one thread with 100% usage would show as 100 / 8 = 12.5% CPU usage. So even with so low cpu usage, your cpu is bottlenecked.

I never used Hyperthreading CPUs with Windows though, but i'm guessing it calculates the CPU time versus the number of CPU cores, since it shows 50% for me having a dualcore without SMT. A quadcore CPU with HyperThreading will register as 8 virtual CPU's, so that's why you get such low % when your CPU is bottlenecked.

Remember, most games are single-threaded. WoW should be dual core optimized but its still one thread just going from one CPU core to another; no 2 threads at once on both cores. I imagine its the same with your game. This is why its better to have a dualcore than a quadcore for gaming, you can clock them higher, considering their price.

 

[Karribu]

brokenticker - Yeah you might have a point there given the price. Im happy to wait a while however to see if prices will drop again anytime soon. I don't know much about raid setups, does the HDD have to be the same make/size/speed etc?

sub mesa - Yeah, as I was re-reading what I wrote about the low cpu usage, that thought entered my mind. I suppose I could try and overclock my cpu, I think I have a pretty decent Heat sink to take it, and the antec 1200 has like a billion fans. Just wondering how much of an increase it would make, like, if it's really worth it.

 

[Karribu]

Well,

I overclocked my cpu from 2.6 to 3.8 (wohoo first time!) and there is the same jitters, especially noticeable when entering a new area. So is it safe to say the cpu is fine and maybe it is defiantly the hdd?

 

[renapd]

I play Lotro, and its the same deal there. Its texture loading. Does the stuttering stop after a couple of secs after you load the zone and all chars in it? I don't know if WoW has the a program out there like flashboost, but it essentially puts the textures on a flash drive ( a fast one ) so it decreases the loads and stuttering when entering a big zone.