SSD for gaming only?

[diotic2124]

Hi all, quick question here. I want to purchase an SSD for gaming, mainly for Swtor and BF3 because the load times are a little longer than I desire. My question is, I only want to put games on the SSD and not the OS. Will this affect how well the games load on the SSD not having the OS also on the SSD? Also, I don't want the OS on the SSD because I have an oem version and I don't have an install disk to reinstall it. Also I don't want to transfer it over. My specs are core i7 oc'ed to 3.8, 12gigs ram, gtx 570, 1tb hdd. Thanks for any answers.

 

[skitzodancer]

yes you will see a improvement having a SSD, these type of drives are very fast, it wont matter that your system isnt on the drive.

i would recommend you go for the ocz vertex 3 sandforce 120gb SSD, this has stunning performance at 550/mbs read and 500mb/s write. also the 120gb gives you room for plenty of games.

please do avoid buying two and putting them into a raid 0 array, this isnt fully supported by windows and in my experience causes a faulty SSD within three to six months.

i do suggest you buy two, one for your system and one for your games, then you can get booted and playing quickly

 

[kitsunestarwind]

BF3 loading from a SSD is nearly a 10x improvement (or at least feels like it)

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Tom's Hardware recently published a series of ssd articles that answer questions about real world performance.

The first article was about ssd's and gaming:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-rift-ssd,3062-14.html

 

[RetiredChief]

Yes, you can do that. Game Load times will be improved. Boot time and non game programes will not benifit from the SSD.

1) Don't sweat the "Benchmark" diff between the top rated SSDs, you will see a little real life diference between say the vertex III vs the crucial M4 and samsung 830 which have a higher reliability rating and a higher customer satisfaction.

2) You did not indicate MB - ie do you have Intel sata III or Sata II. If you have Marvel based Sata III controller on the MB you will have reduced performance.

2) The OEM version you have, If it is a windows 7 OEM disk you can use it to re-install windows.

 

[Lennert]

would installing games on ssd avoid this issue?
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/108893-25-stuttering-games
The lagspikes and stuttering in games

thanks

Lennert