recomend SSD

[buzz456]

If you were looking for a HD to put your RW on what would you buy?

[RvA944]

I have three Kingston Hyper X 250gb drives

[arizonachris]

Maybe this will help, Buzz: http://www.abithelp.com/open-discussion/topic1842.html

[barnez]

My

My own rig is set up similar to what is discussed in the thread referenced @ Chris' tech site.

My SSD is small (only 60 GB) and contains Win7 and little else. However, the performance in bootup & loading the OS is outstanding.

RW likely would benefit from the faster load times as there is so much data loaded from each tile. However, most games would show little to no performance increase.

Worth it to put the OS on one? Absolutely. To put RW on? Maybe. I haven't yet, but it's something I'm considering.

One of the most important things to look for on an SSD is the Read/ Write speeds. Not all drives are created equal.

Myself, I have a Corsair SSD and I'm considering a second one.

-barnez

[dgallina]

Fwiw I have railworks on an ssd in my MacBook Pro retina and on a hard disk on my iMac. Railworks on the ssd is 4x or 5x faster loading. Doesn't really affect the frame rate when running, but makes you wait less to get there.

Diego

[Ericmopar]

I'm using a Samsung 56GB 830. It's been very reliable and quick loading of Railworks.
A SDD drive will smooth the game some but not a lot. Mostly you will get faster loading times and saves in editor, assuming you don't use V-Sync. V-Sync kills loading times in RW no matter what system a person has.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

I have had not so good experiences with SSD's. They tend to fail fast and without S.M.A.R.T. warning! That was 2 years ago, perhaps todays SSD's are more reliable?

Make daily backups if you also use that SSD for route/asset development just to be safe. If you only have the O.S. and Steam on it you can always install those fresh from your Windows DVD and let Steam take care of your purchase games.

Go for at least 128 GB capacity, as 60 GB is too small for any decent Railworks install that tends to bloat quite rapidly with each new piece of DLC nowadays coming with duplicate assets.
If you can afford two, have the O.S. and Steam on separate SSD's, or at least move the Railworks folder to that separate SSD.

One thing makes me wonder, do you still need a pagefile.sys with SSD's and 8 GB of RAM and a 64 bit O.S? Wouldn't it be better to have a separate (hidden) partition with its own mount point for the O.S.' RAM cache, like with Linux?

[barnez]

One thing makes me wonder, do you still need a pagefile.sys with SSD's and 8 GB of RAM and a 64 bit O.S? Wouldn't it be better to have a separate (hidden) partition with its own mount point for the O.S.' RAM cache, like with Linux?

Although I don't have a definite answer to this, I can say my own system is very much this profile. The only SSD I have is for the OS. My swap file resides in its own partition elsewhere by itself. Of the allocated space on that drive 8 GB is used. The pagefile was written to the last time my computer was rebooted.

-barnez

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Not having a pagefile.sys or hiberfile.sys (for hibernation) saves you 8 GB twice in the typical 8 GB 64 bit computers of today.

Most users have HD's and SSD's on different SATA channels in their computers, so one can sort of choose what goes where and even set up a daily incremental backup of the SSD to some HD partition. Once the OS is loaded, there is little need for disk action, so one should best save the SSD for disk operation intensive programs, like Railworks
There is no need to defragment a SSD, in fact you'd better not defragment it at all to reduce wear and tear. No low level formattng ever !!!
Major brands come with their own diagnostics tools to assess your SSD's health. Use these tools!

The parts of a SSD that break are not the SDRAM elements per se, but rather the memory controllers linking your computer's SATA channels with the memory elements.
Yes, electronics this nanometer size does wear out mechanically, the semiconductor structures are almost atomic size, and atoms do wander over time due to heat.

[Ericmopar]

Not having a pagefile.sys or hiberfile.sys (for hibernation) saves you 8 GB twice in the typical 8 GB 64 bit computers of today.

Most users have HD's and SSD's on different SATA channels in their computers, so one can sort of choose what goes where and even set up a daily incremental backup of the SSD to some HD partition. Once the OS is loaded, there is little need for disk action, so one should best save the SSD for disk operation intensive programs, like Railworks
There is no need to defragment a SSD, in fact you'd better not defragment it at all to reduce wear and tear. No low level formattng ever !!!
Major brands come with their own diagnostics tools to assess your SSD's health. Use these tools!

The parts of a SSD that break are not the SDRAM elements per se, but rather the memory controllers linking your computer's SATA channels with the memory elements.
Yes, electronics this nanometer size does wear out mechanically, the semiconductor structures are almost atomic size, and atoms do wander over time due to heat.

I will second this opinion.
I have my startup menu under control, so my OS Win 7 X64 boots in about 40 seconds, even on an older Western Digital Blue with only a 16MB cache.
I use the 56 gig SSD for Railworks and my Page File. It does make a noticeable difference to put the Page File on the SSD, even if windows is on the HDD. It's also very quiet set up this way.
People keep repeating what they've been told, to put the OS on the SSD and other programs on the HDD. After some experimentation, I now disagree whole heartedly with that opinion. I put the OS on the HDD and put things I need to operate fast like games and the Page File on the SSD.
This is of course talking about hybrid systems, that are a mix of SSD and HDD. If you are well off and can afford a large SSD or two. Then I'd go all SSD.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

People keep repeating what they've been told, to put the OS on the SSD and other programs on the HDD. After some experimentation, I now disagree whole heartedly with that opinion. I put the OS on the HDD and put things I need to operate fast like games and the Page File on the SSD.
This is of course talking about hybrid systems, that are a mix of SSD and HDD. If you are well off and can afford a large SSD or two. Then I'd go all SSD.

I second Eric in this. I have a copy of my working Railworks on a 60 GB SSB I can plug into an external SATA adaptor for use on my different computers. A SSD won't break if you drop it accidently.

Did you configure your O.S. to keep a fixed size pagefile? Pagefile.sys can be moved to another drive or partition, hiberfile.sys cannot.
Do you use hibernation with the SSD? How much does that bring in resuming Windows? It is a space/money vs. time/speed/convenience argument.

Buzz, you don't mind these technical discussions in your thread, which was about advice/purchase recommendation?

[up_8677]

Note that while SSDs do not need traditional defragmentation, they do need an operating system that supports TRIM to maintain speed. Basically, TRIM signals the SSD's controller about blocks of data that are no longer used (like when you delete something) so the controller can wipe it ahead of an subsequent write to the same area. The primary purpose of this is because an overwrite operation is significantly more expensive on flash memory than it is on a magnetic platter.

Anyway, all modern mainstream operating systems support it for SSDs and you shouldn't need to think about it.

[Ericmopar]

People keep repeating what they've been told, to put the OS on the SSD and other programs on the HDD. After some experimentation, I now disagree whole heartedly with that opinion. I put the OS on the HDD and put things I need to operate fast like games and the Page File on the SSD.
This is of course talking about hybrid systems, that are a mix of SSD and HDD. If you are well off and can afford a large SSD or two. Then I'd go all SSD.

I second Eric in this. I have a copy of my working Railworks on a 60 GB SSB I can plug into an external SATA adaptor for use on my different computers. A SSD won't break if you drop it accidently.

Did you configure your O.S. to keep a fixed size pagefile? Pagefile.sys can be moved to another drive or partition, hiberfile.sys cannot.
Do you use hibernation with the SSD? How much does that bring in resuming Windows? It is a space/money vs. time/speed/convenience argument.

Buzz, you don't mind these technical discussions in your thread, which was about advice/purchase recommendation?

Yep, I did configure it for a fixed pagefile size. I set it at a standard 12000 MB with 8gig RAM and to use my E: drive. I tried less, but Windows 7 seems to like that 1.5 times your RAM setting, even thought It doesn't really seem to use it all.
I've read on the tech forums that you don't need all that pagefile space with SSDs, but Windows seems to want it, whether it needs it or not.
I've noticed my frequently used programs start quicker with the page file on the SSD. Railworks runs a bit smoother with the pagefile on the SSD. RW must use the pagefile alot. As far as resuming from sleep I haven't noticed it being a whole lot quicker. The computer is much quieter with the pagefile on the SSD too. There must be a lot of file swapping going on with most pagefiles.
As far as TRIM and all that stuff, Windows 7 and up supports that automatically now, and using Samsung Magician software, and I've heard other SSD software, can actually create more headaches than they are worth.
After farting around with the software, I just let Windows take care of it and my 830 seems to run better on the Windows settings for a SSD, than with Samsungs own software.
Caveat on that last statement: Most SSDs don't need outside software with Windows anymore, but some still aren't seen by Windows without their software, and therefor TRIM ect won't work properly in those cases.
Also: there is a growing movement against TRIM usage. It creates more writes (wear on the drive) and some are saying makes no practical difference in drive speeds.
If you install a new SSD, you can go into the Device Manager and see if it's seen as a SSD under "Disk Drives". If it sees it as a SSD then Windows 7 and up will automatically turn on TRIM and turn off defragmentation for that disk.

I read an interesting article a few months ago about SSDs vs HDDs in server farm. The guy that wrote the article said that, the SSDs, even the early ones, were proving to be more reliable in the long run, than the HDDs. He said he never used TRIM or any of that and that the SSDs simply don't have any moving parts to wear out like a HDD.

[up_8677]

With newer controllers, the need for TRIM is probably reduced. I'm not up on current developments because I'm not in the market for an SSD right now. Controllers are a really bad single point of failure for SSDs though. If the controller dies, the data on the SSD is instantly irrecoverable (without 100k $ lab equipment anyway). This happened to me once; RMA'd the SSD and the replacement has been going strong ever since.

[peterhayes]

Eric
This is a very old setting:

Yep, I did configure it for a fixed pagefile size. I set it at a standard 12000 MB with 8gig RAM and to use my E: drive. I tried less, but Windows 7 seems to like that 1.5 times your RAM setting, even thought It doesn't really seem to use it all.

Mark Russinovich of MS sysinternals fame explains why this is an erroneous figure and it should be based on the "commit limit" or "peak commit charge".

He says quite bluntly: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinov ... 55406.aspx

Perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions related to virtual memory is, how big should I make the paging file? There’s no end of ridiculous advice out on the web and in the newsstand magazines that cover Windows, and even Microsoft has published misleading recommendations. Almost all the suggestions are based on multiplying RAM size by some factor, with common values being 1.2, 1.5 and 2. Now that you understand the role that the paging file plays in defining a system’s commit limit and how processes contribute to the commit charge, you’re well positioned to see how useless such formulas truly are

To set it:

So how do you know how much commit charge your workloads require? You might have noticed in the screenshots that Windows tracks that number and Process Explorer shows it: Peak Commit Charge. To optimally size your paging file you should start all the applications you run at the same time, load typical data sets, and then note the commit charge peak (or look at this value after a period of time where you know maximum load was attained). Set the paging file minimum to be that value minus the amount of RAM in your system (if the value is negative, pick a minimum size to permit the kind of crash dump you are configured for). If you want to have some breathing room for potentially large commit demands, set the maximum to double that number

IMHO if you are never going to use the crash dump file (I've never used in 15+ years windows computing) then the PF can be a lot smaller. I use 512MB on my system drive (SSD) and 2GB on my separate TS2013 SSD. MS have stated that the PF can be put on a SSD as there are 40X more reads to the PF than writes.

With regard to "TRIM" etc I agree I have a 3 yo OCZ Colossus that does not support TRIM and I use Perfect Disk to keep it tuned.
Regards
pH