SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V
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Page 1:A Gamer's Guide To SSD Performance
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Page 2:Test Setup
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Page 3:Understanding Storage Performance
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Page 4:Is A Trace-Based Analysis Accurate?
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Page 5:Launching Crysis 2
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Page 6:Loading Levels In Crysis 2
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Page 7:Gameplay In Crysis 2
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Page 8:Launching World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
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Page 9:Loading A Realm In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
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Page 10:Gameplay In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
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Page 11:Launching Sid Meier's Civilization V
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Page 12:Loading Levels In Sid Meier's Civilization V
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Page 13:Gameplay In Sid Meier's Civilization V
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Page 14:How Does Storage Performance Affect Gaming?
Loading A Realm In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Overall Statistics | World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: Realm Loading |
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Elapsed Time | 00:18 |
Read Operations | 5 727 |
Write Operations | 124 |
Data Read | 127.58 MB |
Data Written | 1.18 MB |
Disk Busy Time | 0.93 s |
Average Data Rate | 138.15 MB/ |
Blizzard purposely designed World of Warcraft to have a more modular file system. Updates from Blizzard are distributed as MPQ archives, which are decompressed and extracted to their proper locations. This works well because adding a few files can easily expand the WoW universe.
However, this translates into storing a lot of individual files of varying sizes, which makes for a random I/O workload involving mixed transfer sizes. That’s what we see here when we load to Crushblow.
Random performance on a hard drive is still terrible, which is why WoW gamers are going to experience a bigger speed-up loading a level than Crysis 2 players as they ditch their disks in favor of SSDs.
I/O Trends:
- 88% of all operations occur at a queue depth of one
- 62% of all operations are random
Seek Distance
QD
Transfer Size
Summary
- A Gamer's Guide To SSD Performance
- Test Setup
- Understanding Storage Performance
- Is A Trace-Based Analysis Accurate?
- Launching Crysis 2
- Loading Levels In Crysis 2
- Gameplay In Crysis 2
- Launching World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- Loading A Realm In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- Gameplay In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- Launching Sid Meier's Civilization V
- Loading Levels In Sid Meier's Civilization V
- Gameplay In Sid Meier's Civilization V
- How Does Storage Performance Affect Gaming?
Does that mean if you had an infinitely fast disk, the level loading would take 56s? In which case, where is the bottleneck for level loading? Is it CPU bound? (if so, why isn't CPU usage at 100% when loading a level?) Memory? Graphics card?
Longer loading times are not crucial when all you want is to frag your enemies!
Doesn't this reduce the life of a SSD?
I'd like to see how the witcher stacks up with SSD. You are constantly having to load different areas the entire game so I made sure to have that on the SSD while playing it hoping to reduce the load times. Would like to see if that really paid off or not.
Does that mean if you had an infinitely fast disk, the level loading would take 56s? In which case, where is the bottleneck for level loading? Is it CPU bound? (if so, why isn't CPU usage at 100% when loading a level?) Memory? Graphics card?
1. Level loading with dragon age ( which dramatically improved over my 1 TB Samsung F3 , in reality the level loads 2x faster from 1 minute to around 22-28 seconds )
2. My OS which was transfer to the SSD ( which brought faster windows loading , extremely faster shutdowns , instant application lunch , and better multitasking because i have my browsers on the SSD )
If any of you don't wanna invest into a SSD believe me , IT IS WORTH IT !
If you wait for performance to not cost you , you will wait an eternity.
60GB SSD CORSAIR NOVA FORCE
- The more randomly data is accessed, the more performance boost is given by an SSD
- The higher the queue depth is, the more performance boost is given by an SSD
- The higher the transfer size is, the more performance boost is given by an SSD
- The more (less?) write operations you have, the the more (less?) performance boost is given by an SSD
Otherwise interesting read, thanks!
excellent point. i would like to know that too.
@andrewku
the end graph is not clear at all. can you add a bigger/better looking graph ?
I put Oblivion on my SSD and that was a fantastic idea, there are loading times at least every 20 mins or so in that one, and sometimes within 2 mins. Fallout would be another good one for it, similar load times and all. Witcher would be a good one, I'm wondering about NWN, Dragon Age and the Mass Effect series but it's been a little while since I've played those and can't remember what the load times are like.
I imagine since large capacity SSD are VERY expensive, most people use 2 or more middle-of-the-road SSDs in RAID 0 striping method...
I hear 10000RPM HDDs are very fast in loading when in RAID 0 configuration...
I imagine in real world situation, 2 of 10000RPM HDDs in RAID 0 are just as fast as 2 of the most SSDs in RAID 0....
Meh, the faster I can start Fragging, the better...
But while I can NOT live without an SSD as a boot drive, I CAN live with my games being on a 3-way RAID-0 of 10,000 RPM Raptors...