SSD just for games

[siriuslee]

Morning people, i currently have a raid 0 set up with two corsair neutron gtx 250gb, because the storage amount is small on ssd and i play a lot games i was thinking of getting another sdd same size just soley for installing any games on, since games nowadays are 10gb+.

i know ssd are faster than normal hdd but because this one wont be included in the raid set up, will it impact the gaming performance, since it wont be as fast as the ones in raid, and if so will the delayed loading times be noticeable.

i have 3 games installed on the raid set up but would like the rest and furture games installed on the single spare ssd, but i dont know if it will impact the gaming/loading of the games in any way.

many thanks in advanced.
lee

 

[Murissokah]

Morning people, i currently have a raid 0 set up with two corsair neutron gtx 250gb, because the storage amount is small on ssd and i play a lot games i was thinking of getting another sdd same size just soley for installing any games on, since games nowadays are 10gb+.

i know ssd are faster than normal hdd but because this one wont be included in the raid set up, will it impact the gaming performance, since it wont be as fast as the ones in raid, and if so will the delayed loading times be noticeable.

i have 3 games installed on the raid set up but would like the rest and furture games installed on the single spare ssd, but i dont know if it will impact the gaming/loading of the games in any way.

many thanks in advanced.
lee

Usually RAID0 between SSDs is actually a bad idea. Aside from the lack of TRIM, you introduce the RAID controller latency and always work on the worst access time between them. I thought I should share this, but since you didn't really ask about it, here's what I think about a second SSD:

1. The perceived improvement of an SSD over the usual HDD comes a lot more from the near-zero access time than from the high sequential read/write people usually brag about.

2. A good single SSD will actually have a better access time than a RAID0 setup.

3. Big sustained reads are not that big of a part in loading games. Most of the loading is composed of lots of small reads. This means a big sequential throughput is wasted.

Here is a study about this, in which you can see a Vertex 3 (over 500MB/s sequential read) averages 220MB/s while loading. There is no point in a higher throughput.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-rift-ssd,3062-4.html

So, answering the question, a good single SSD will be just as fast.

 

[ram1009]

IMHO, you're wasting a lot of money on (slightly) faster load times. The only reason I use SSDs is for the increased reliability.

 

[siriuslee]

thanks ram, but i of been better off just using the 2 ssd in a normal set up

 

[popatim]

better off? IMO no.
You get the same space in a raid0 as two distinct drives.
Raid0 if 1 drive dies you loose all the data and the 1 drive. In distinct drives you loose all the data on the drive plus the drive. Think about this. say 1 drive is your boot drive and the others is your games drive. If the boot drive fails you have to reinstall the os and then all the games again anyways to get their registry entries. If the games drives dies you have to reinstall all the games. so in the end you only have a 50% chance of saving yourself some reloading.
The only other real drawback to raid is the raid initialization time at bootup.
Trim works on intel raid btw..

 

[ronintexas]

My advice, is to never use RAID for home use, unless you absolutely have to have a single volume across multiple drives. RAID 0 (striping drives only) will lose all data if one drive has a problem. RAID 1 mirrors the drives (duplicate copies of the data) and only gives you a volume the size of the smallest drive (they should be identical). RAID 10 combined RAID 0 and RAID 1 (striping and mirroring).

In a production environment, where up-time is absolutely critical, RAID is a necessary tool - RAID 10 allows for a single drive to fail, you replace it, and it rebuilds in a short amount of time. As compared to restoring from a backup, it saves time. But the downside - you are paying twice the price per GB for the RAID array.

For home use, with the advent of Windows Vista/Windows7/Windows8 - you have "libraries" where you can store data in multiple locations, but they are all accessible from a single place (i.e. documents, pictures, music, etc). You don't need to know this file is on the D: and this is on the E:.

With any drive system, RAID or not, the backup is most important safeguard of data...like Nike says, "Just Do It."

Just my opinion....