So..What if i did 4 SSD's with Sims 3?

[Angelz]

Will the objects in Sims 3 load faster? For instance. Those of you who play this game and know what i'm talking about. You sit there for aaages waiting for clothing to load over and over everytime you put one on or change it's color. I'm looking for a way to increase The Sims 3 Loading. Like.. Just for accessories it takes 18 seconds to see them all. My Player Root Folder is almost 18GB big because i have a ton of mods and add ons. (not the main game root folder) So i would install all 4 SSD's to Marvell 6gb/s ports. The Motherboard is a Gigabyte G1 Sniper 3.

Own:
-Doing 2 HDD's in Raid Mode
-intel i7 Core 2600 (no K)
-Nvidia EVGA 670 GTX
-8GB Memory (Cheesy regular memory, nothing special)

I'm power hungry and want whatever is fastest that i can do. Funny thing is... Sims 3 and 2D games is all i ever use on this thing. I just loooove upgrading it every month.. lol

 

[Angelz]

Oh, and i plan on doing (depending on the replies) Four Samsung 830 128GB's javascript: validform(this);

 

[Angelz]

It would be great to get a sooner answer as i'm ready to buy :O

Hopefully someone who owns the Sims 3 would know about this too. They told me over at the Games Forum to ask here. I didn't get too much help there. x3

 

[ram1009]

Why do you need 4 SSDs? If you just have money th get rid of send it to me.

 

[Angelz]

LOL does this mean that 4 SSD's wouldn't really quadriple the power of 1 SSD?

 

[PlusOne]

670 GTX and you only play Sims 3 and some 2D games...?

I agree with ram1009. Get one large drive, move your OS and games over to it, and enjoy some nice boot/load times.

 

[Angelz]

Because i want Sims 3 to load super fast so i don't sit there annoyingly waiting for objects and clothes to load over and over.

It was just my newbie guess that 4 would make it 4x faster of 1. ...And i wanted to fill all 4 marvell ports. x3

 

[Angelz]

Well... I was gonna take the 2 HDD's off after i get an SSD and use one of the two for a second Storage Drive which will gemme another 1TB. I got a 500GB for storage and it's almost used up (like 8GB left)

If this is all a stupid idea then i was thinking maybe upgrading to an Ivy Bridge 3770k and just 1 SSD would be better?

 

[ahnilated]

Well I know my 2 SSD's in a raid 0 do reads in the 1GB/s area, going from 980MB/s to 1040MB/s.

 

[PlusOne]

Marvell is a company that makes memory controllers for HDD and SSD. You are talking about SATA III ports, of which you have 6.

And the best you are going to get out of 4 SSD's (as far as a performance boost) is probably much closer to a ~1.5x improvement, and even that is probably wrong. I've never benchmarked raid SSD's but I hear it offers no noticeable improvement. They don't multiply upon each other, especially since you don't have a dedicated raid controller.

So save your money and get 1 huge SSD.

 

[ahnilated]

Marvell is a company that makes memory controllers for HDD and SSD. You are talking about SATA III ports, of which you have 6.

And the best you are going to get out of 4 SSD's (as far as a performance boost) is probably much closer to a ~1.5x improvement, and even that is probably wrong. I've never benchmarked raid SSD's but I hear it offers no noticeable improvement. They don't multiply upon each other, especially since you don't have a dedicated raid controller.

So save your money and get 1 huge SSD.

Actually you are incorrect, they do multiply almost 100%. I went from 550MB/s to the amount stated above.

 

[GreyMouser]

Personally, I think you should just dedicate a single SSD to Sims3 and all of its files (program files plus save files.) You could also add some more RAM to your system and dedicate the memory to caching your SSD. (You could up your system to 32 GB, then dedicate 16 GB to FancyCache for the SSD) I've seen the results firsthand, and it will make a world of difference.

However, if you have money to burn, do whatever you want.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

RAID 0 is great for getting hi benchmark scores .... but that, video rendering, huge database manipulation and a few other specialized tasks are about the only things you'll get the bean counters to go for as having a measurable increase in productivity.

Never saw any published data showing it made any noticeable difference in gaming. Saw many, many, many articles saying no subjective or even measurable difference.

 

[Angelz]

Thanks for helping me here Plusone and ahnilated. At the moment i can spend 470.00 but i wanna know what's going to work. I like what you've done ahnilated. Did you do those on Intel Ports? I mean i heard good things about Marvell but i know Intel is better and i only got 2 Intel 6gb/s ports.

Oooh very nice Greymouser ^__^ I've been meaning to upgrade to those 1600 Corsair Vengence ones because i heard somewhere this is the max this board supposely supports. And i read that the crappy processor i have attached only supports up to 1333 BOOOOOOO

 

[PlusOne]

Actually you are incorrect, they do multiply almost 100%. I went from 550MB/s to the amount stated above.

In sequential read/write, they improve at about 100%, but in a real world application, where access tends more towards random read/write, they do not scale like that.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/kigston-hyperx-ssd-raid0_3.html#sect1

 

[Angelz]

Thanks guys.. I was looking at those HyperX SDD's (120GB) and they appear to be better than the Samsung 128GB so i might consider getting one i'm not sure yet. I heard the Samsungs have their own controller or something like that. lol

 

[ahnilated]

Thanks for helping me here Plusone and ahnilated. At the moment i can spend 470.00 but i wanna know what's going to work. I like what you've done ahnilated. Did you do those on Intel Ports? I mean i heard good things about Marvell but i know Intel is better and i only got 2 Intel 6gb/s ports.

You just have to get away from an X68 motherboards. I have one listed in my signature and switched to a Z77 motherboard and my speeds went up from 530MB/s to 980MB/s + on the Intel controller. The X68 motherboards seem to not have full SATA III support.

 

[Angelz]

I have a Z77 board. It's less than a month old. ^__^ It's a G1 sniper 3 from gigabyte.

 

[Angelz]

Best answer selected by Angelz.

 

[chugginmilk]

is this thread a joke? seriously trying to get all this gear just to play the SIMS!?!?!?!

 

[Angelz]

It's crazy what some people will do to play a game they really like. But i'm pretty serious about making this thing better. Overall i'll always be ready for any new games that come out.

When i received my first SSD on 8/9/2012 and my new Ivy Bridge 3770k Sims 3 did infact improve. It was all i wanted so my next plan is to Raid 4 SSD's on my Marvell Ports. Since i only have 2 Intel 6gb/s ports and finally see now how fast 1 SSD runs on an Intel and on a Marvell. (Marvell does stink but it's acceptable per controller) The 4 marvells will still beat the two Intels.