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Exploring SSD Performance In Battlefield 3, F1 2011, And Rift

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We use a ton of terms to quantify storage performance. If you're a gamer, you have to be wonder how such dry terminology can apply to having fun. Rather than telling you, we're going to dissect three more popular titles to illustrate for you instead.

Launching Rift

Overall StatisticsRift: Launching
Elapsed Time00:33
Read Operations9 233
Write Operations268
Data Read202.32 MB
Data Written2.36 MB
Disk Busy Time1.31 s
Average Data Rate156.34 MB/s

Our WoW installation borders on 25 GiB, and it grows with every update. In comparison, Rift is much smaller, only consuming 9.5 GiB. The latter, however, turns out to be a little more storage-intensive than the former during the launch process. According to our summary stats, the exact figure is a little over 200 megabytes consisting of pure reads.

Overall, both MMORPGs have similar I/O characteristics. Most of the accesses are randomly organized, scattered among various transfer sizes, and at a queue depth of one. That's still great news for SSD owners, since they excel in random transfers. As such, your guild mates gaming on hard drive-equipped systems might not load into the game as quickly.

I/O Trends:

  • 81% of all operations occur at a queue depth of one
  • 65% of all operations are random
  • 16% of all operations are 4 KB in transfer size
  • 40% of all operations are 16 KB in transfer size
  • 27% of all operations are 32 KB in transfer size

99 Comments Comment from the forums
  • asnorton44 25 November 2011 11:14
    Interesting to see it won't imrpove all gameplay
    Reply
  • clonazepam 25 November 2011 11:44
    Makes sense. I'll install sw:tor to the ssd after i figure out how to make its 20GB fit on it lol... the rest go to the HDD...

    Good read. Thanks for being so thorough.
    Reply
  • 25 November 2011 11:46
    IMO, a WD Caviar Black or a Samsung Spinpoint F3 would have been a better test drive than the Green one.
    Reply
  • christoforo 25 November 2011 11:50
    Thanks to all the reviews you made here guys. A couple of months ago I started planning my ssd purchase, and i decided to buy a Kingston HyperX 240gb bundle kit. I cant wait till it arrives. I have advanced computer skills, so many things I thought from personal experiences are published here, like I knew some games are more write dependant or read dependant from and HDD, and about the apps on the background on WIN7, and many many more. I already ordered my SSD, but its nice to have a serious review about ssds on gaming performance. Its all about the speed that the apps can be done by write/read on a ssd on the background that really matters, from this simple thing is that anyone willing to upgrade to an ssd can benefit with a smoother playable experience.
    Reply
  • gmcizzle 25 November 2011 12:07
    Storage can actually make a difference in FPS in certain situations. Only put in 2gb or so of RAM in the test system and rerun Battlefield 3, and the difference in frame rates will be different between HDD and SSD as the game switches to secondary storage once RAM is exhausted.
    Reply
  • Supernova1138 25 November 2011 12:20
    True, but it is much more cost effective to add more RAM to your system in that circumstance than to get an SSD large enough for your OS and a couple of games. With RAM so inexpensive these days there is absolutely no reason to be running low on it under any gaming scenario.
    Reply
  • cumi2k4 25 November 2011 12:22
    Agreed with xyzqwerty, please do another test with faster drives such as wd black or the f3. Comparing the ssd with green version is like racing your turtle with the neighbor's hare.
    Reply
  • acku 25 November 2011 13:09
    cumi2k4Agreed with xyzqwerty, please do another test with faster drives such as wd black or the f3. Comparing the ssd with green version is like racing your turtle with the neighbor's hare.
    I'm a little confused why you would want to see that comparison. We established there was no diff between a slow HDD and a fast SSD. And you expect a difference between a fast HDD and fast SSD?

    Cheers,
    Andrew Ku
    TomsHardware.com
    Reply
  • silverblue 25 November 2011 13:36
    asnorton44Interesting to see it won't imrpove all gameplayI see what you did there. :P
    Reply
  • FunSurfer 25 November 2011 14:09
    9523292 said:
    I'm a little confused why you would want to see that comparison. We established there was no diff between a slow HDD and a fast SSD. And you expect a difference between a fast HDD and fast SSD?

    Cheers,
    Andrew Ku
    TomsHardware.com


    He probably want to see that comparison on the "Hard Drive Performance Comparison" page, where is a big difference between SSD and HDD performance (the HDD up to 477% slower)
    Reply