SSD's BF3 Boot times and setup questions

[chayes]

So I plan on getting a 120gb Mushkin SSD for increased speeds and to put BF3 and other games on.

I also have a 160gb HDD and a 750 HDD.

I'd like to make the SSD it's own drive and the other two drives "one drive". I am not sure if this is possible.

Also, does anyone notice an increase w/ joining games on BF3?

 

[willard]

What you're looking for is called a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks). It's a simple type of RAID array that has no redundancy. Never used one myself, but I imagine it would have all the drawbacks of RAID 0 with none of the benefits. Namely, lose a disk in the array and your whole array is probably hosed.

Personally, I'd just deal with the disks as they are. I segregate my data by folder anyway, so you may find that it's simple enough just to dedicate the 160 GB drive to one type of data and the 750 GB drive to another. The SSD should obviously be your system drive, 120GB is plenty for Windows and a couple big games.

In fact, I have the exact same SSD and use it for Windows and my two most frequently played games, along with all my small Steam games. You can move Steam games to and from the SSD easily using Steam Mover, a simple but very handy piece of software that creates symbolic links automatically so Steam can always find the games regardless of which drive they're on. Plus it handles moving the games between your drives easily.

My personal setup is a 120GB SSD, a 60GB SSD (bought it for my wife and her POS motherboard won't recognize it), a 400GB HDD, 1TB HDD and 1.5TB SSD. Media goes on the 1.5 TB drive. I rip all my games to ISO (installs faster after reinstalling Windows) and those go on the 1TB HDD, along with a bunch of miscellaneous crap. The 400GB drive is where my installed games live when I shift them off my SSDs.

I use a lot of storage...

 

[Razec69]

Sadly with Windows 7 Ultimate, SP1, and all updates including Office 2010, all updates.
That alone will take just about 30GBs.

BF3 updated another 15GBs. MW3 about 15GBs as well. I'm more than sure you will have more than just those 2 games.

I have a 256GB SSD and I have W7 Ultimate (all updates), Random drivers and programs I'd say 5-10 GBs. Office 2010 Pro 3GBs. Visual Studio 2010 with documentation ~10GBs. Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, and Dreamweaver about 6 GBs.
BF3, MW3, and in all I have just about 80GBs wasted.

I have a few games on my 1TB drive and other random things that when I do want to play or w/e I just transfer it to the SSD. And with the speeds it is fantastic.

So what I would suggest is. Make a nice clean install of your OS install updates, drivers, and any other random programs you use on a daily basis. Winrar/7zip, Benchmark tools, etc w/e. And make an OS backup on that 160 GB hard drive. Keep that for safe keeping lol. And then use that 750GB HDD for random movies or games you have backed up.

 

[Razec69]

Agreeing with Soldier37 here.

I wouldn't take Max Payne 3 in to sole consideration because yes it is a newer title, but all the cutscenes and extras built into the game is what make it 30GB. Take BF3 for instance the best looking game when you max it out, and that only takes up 15GB with all the patches to date.

A 256GB SSD offers more performance and the obvious more space. The performance comes in because it uses bigger chips to store all the data.

For a typical user 120/128 would suffice, but for a gamer 256 is a nice sweet spot. I don't know all the concrete info on SSDs, but I get a gist of what they are and how they operate. I wish I could remember the site I saw; with well over 30 pages of info and how to optimize an SSD and how they actually operate and how they are made up. When I get as I am in school right now I will post the link.

My true suggestion is to save up some more money and get a 256GB variation. I was on the same boat where I had more than enough for a 256GB but some of that money was for myself for school and to go out with my girlfriend so I waited about a week or two and finally had enough for my 256GB without going into my pocket money.

I am very happy with it and I am really considering getting another. I would also like to expand it more in the future when I get a job to put them in a RAID 1+0 array. It is highly beneficial and totally worth the money.

 

[Flareside]

I would go with what was suggested above and use your 750 as your primary data disk and use the ssd as your boot drive. I am currently using a 256ssd and have windows bf3 d3 TOR WoW EVE ME3 installed on it and have a second drive that has all of my steam games and other misc programs installed on it. THe load times in BF3 are great. I join into a game very quick and when the timer during map changes is up I go right into the game everytime with no addtional load times.

Flare

 

[Razec69]

Yes, same here. I typically have an initial load time of about 5-10 seconds on BF3. And as soon as the round end, and the timers goes down, I load instantly and I mean instantly. There are often times when I go to a Metro game and I can be taking the B flag before anyone on the other team has even taken their first or even on my team they aren't even loaded up. It's lonely and scary.

But seriously you will see many improvements. But also take into consideration which no one has mentioned as of yet. What is your current specs for your system.

CPU and GPU will play a factor on this as well.

I overclocked my CPU yesterday and ran a benchmark with Fraps in a Metro game I had an average of 119 FPS on Ultra no AA.

2012-06-03 17:39:45 - bf3
Frames: 141700 - Time: 1183798ms - Avg: 119.699 - Min: 56 - Max: 201

I am very happy with my current rig. I know the SSD was the last improvement. All I have to do is to get my temps regulated. I'm going to do a push and pull system with my fans.

 

[Flareside]

I agree on metro it is scary when you get there first. Besure to follow the guide posted in the HD section here at toms for optimizing you ssd to make sure it is running as fast as possible and to remove some of the stuff that causes excesive reads and writes.

Flare

 

[Razec69]

Flare do you have a link trying to find it but these school computers are too slow.

 

[Flareside]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911.html
Sorry completely spaced adding it.

Flare

 

[dicfeynman]

@willard its called span "a simple concatenation of multiple drives" not jbod.
@chayes getting a 120 gb for bf3 will suffice, i did the same and i am using windows vista + bf3 on it. abt the load time... once u have joined a server and r going to continue playing on it, the next map will definitely load faster compared to a non ssd. at the first load your internet connection acts as a variable... so ssd performance cant be measured per se. but obviosly it must help.

 

[Razec69]

Yes, thank you I found it, and it has the linke of that site dedicated to SSDs. Really great. Again thanks.

And original poster check it out yourself this will help you a lot.

 

[chayes]

Thanks for all your answers!
My currents Specs are:
i5 2400
6gb of ram (Single Channel)
2 7200 RPM HDD's
Radeon 5770 (Fixing to buy a GTX 470 from a fried).

I think I will get the 120 gb now because it seems to fit my needs, but will probably add a 256gb later down the road for faster drives!

 

[chayes]

Best answer selected by chayes.