Felt like sharing my results in case anyone is wondering if they should invest in a solid state drive. Wasn’t to sure to post here or the technical help section. If you want me to load test anything else in gw2 let me know!
The results are pretty impressive and to think how many times we have loaded into LA or anywhere else x999 and think of the time we could of saved just by having a Solid State Drive! End result if you don’t have a solid state drive go get one son!!
[EDIT] Sorry guys I mis-calculated my solid state drive time its actually around 20 sec not 12 sec but still my point is valid for the comparison.
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
SSD’s are always faster for loading. They make bootup very fast. They also generate less heat and carry less risk of breaking, especially in laptops. Though people are concerned about SSD’s becoming faulty after lots of rewrites, that’d take A LOT before any noticeable signs show.
But they’re always so expensive. Sigh.
Resident deaf elementalist – Tarnished Coast
Everyone needs a little optimism!
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
i7 BARELY performs better than i5. Stick with it.
Resident deaf elementalist – Tarnished Coast
Everyone needs a little optimism!
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
Sorry my bad yea in 10 – 11 sec I can load any part of the game most of the time. Well I wouldn’t think routing will make that much difference in the client loading but I guess a highly populated town such as LA would effect it some what. I live in Australia my ping is usually around 170 MS I would love to have your ping…..
This doesn’t explain why loading times into LA have increased exponentially since the game launched with the same hard drive.
Try reformating your system. Over time, your system is clogged up with all sorts of questionable usages. I know for one, when I formated my laptop, previously, I was experiencing about 10-15 FPS and after format, I was running the game at ~25 FPS (quite a decent improvement) considering all I did was format. So performance does decrease significantly over time if you’re not careful with what you click.
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
i7 BARELY performs better than i5. Stick with it.
For games yes that’s kinda true but I also video render a lot and i7 will beat an i5 any day also I brought my i7 when it was on sale…it was same price as an i5 pretty much!!
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
i7 BARELY performs better than i5. Stick with it.
For games yes that’s kinda true but I also video render a lot and i7 will beat an i5 any day also I brought my i7 when it was on sale…it was same price as an i5 pretty much!!
Yeah, should’ve clarified. i5 is for games and i7 for video editing. I gotta get a laptop with an i7 because I’m going to college soon to study graphic design.
Resident deaf elementalist – Tarnished Coast
Everyone needs a little optimism!
FWIW, graphics quality and latency to the servers will make a massive different to loading times also. Lower the detail, and port to a 0 population waypoint and you will see a very fast load.
I put together a new system several weeks back, core i7-4770, samsung 840 pro 512gb ssd, gtx780, 16gb corsair 1600mhz ram. It’s very obvious the ssd speeds make a decent difference, but once the loading is done it still takes me 7-10 seconds of no ssd activity just to connect to the servers, and likely because of being situated in west australia.
I do wish they would re-use a connection when porting between waypoints on the same map though. It looks like it disconnects and re-establishes a tcp session each time you use a waypoint (unless it’s visible already). Technical engine limitations I guess.
That is loading from the character select screen. I would be interest if you were popping in by the MF waypoint from a different zone for instance. I found that loading times were faster zone to zone than from character select to zone.
But still, that was really impressive. Amazing what 3 to 4 times faster transfer rate and 200-300 times faster access times translates into.
That is loading from the character select screen. I would be interest if you were popping in by the MF waypoint from a different zone for instance. I found that loading times were faster zone to zone than from character select to zone.
But still, that was really impressive. Amazing what 3 to 4 times faster transfer rate and 200-300 times faster access times translates into.
Yea I might make another one displaying that. I was absoulutly amazed how much quicker gw2 loaded on a solid state drive now I can fully appreciate it haha
FWIW, graphics quality and latency to the servers will make a massive different to loading times also. Lower the detail, and port to a 0 population waypoint and you will see a very fast load.
^This
People often points the loading speed only to the type of drive they have, and that’s not true. In fact, the loading speed is a combination of several aspects, directly or indirectly related to the physical machine.
While for the purpose of this test simply testing different types of drives with the same machine and with the same network, proves (as known), loading times are smaller in a SDD drive, we can’t compare however loading times in different rigs, as there are so many parameters that influences it, as i previously said.
Influencing the loading times we have:
- Server load;
- Network quality (Latency, Speed and Package loss %);
- Distance to server;
- Processors quality (CPU and GPU). Different processor architectures behaves differently in loading behavior;
- Rendering Load (As Biofrog stated, a lower setting will render faster as a full detail rendering);
- and so much more…
/cheers
—————— ~~ ~~ —-————-
Charr’s need more Love. All is Vain
—————— ~~ ~~ —-————-
FWIW, graphics quality and latency to the servers will make a massive different to loading times also. Lower the detail, and port to a 0 population waypoint and you will see a very fast load.
^This
People often points the loading speed only to the type of drive they have, and that’s not true. In fact, the loading speed is a combination of several aspects, directly or indirectly related to the physical machine.
While for the purpose of this test simply testing different types of drives with the same machine and with the same network, proves (as known), loading times are smaller in a SDD drive, we can’t compare however loading times in different rigs, as there are so many parameters that influences it, as i previously said.
Influencing the loading times we have:
- Server load;
- Network quality (Latency, Speed and Package loss %);
- Distance to server;
- Processors quality (CPU and GPU). Different processor architectures behaves differently in loading behavior;
- Rendering Load (As Biofrog stated, a lower setting will render faster as a full detail rendering);
- and so much more…
/cheers
You are right on all aspects of this but really having little more than double the load times with a HDD you can safely say that the time saved is mainly due to the solid state drive. I tried this test as well with my cpu at stock speeds vs oc speeds which only made like 1-2 sec difference. Im not the best over oc’er im pretty amateur so maybe i can squeeze more speed out.
Server load, network quality and stuff like that the average person cant really do anything about it but upgrading to a solid state drive is more of an easy task for a lot of gain.
FWIW, graphics quality and latency to the servers will make a massive different to loading times also. Lower the detail, and port to a 0 population waypoint and you will see a very fast load.
^This
People often points the loading speed only to the type of drive they have, and that’s not true. In fact, the loading speed is a combination of several aspects, directly or indirectly related to the physical machine.
While for the purpose of this test simply testing different types of drives with the same machine and with the same network, proves (as known), loading times are smaller in a SDD drive, we can’t compare however loading times in different rigs, as there are so many parameters that influences it, as i previously said.
Influencing the loading times we have:
- Server load;
- Network quality (Latency, Speed and Package loss %);
- Distance to server;
- Processors quality (CPU and GPU). Different processor architectures behaves differently in loading behavior;
- Rendering Load (As Biofrog stated, a lower setting will render faster as a full detail rendering);
- and so much more…
/cheers
You are right on all aspects of this but really having little more than double the load times with a HDD you can safely say that the time saved is mainly due to the solid state drive. I tried this test as well with my cpu at stock speeds vs oc speeds which only made like 1-2 sec difference. Im not the best over oc’er im pretty amateur so maybe i can squeeze more speed out.
Server load, network quality and stuff like that the average person cant really do anything about it but upgrading to a solid state drive is more of an easy task for a lot of gain.
True!
I was referring to players comparing loading times with SSD’s, which honestly can’t be of any valid conclusion.
Regarding your test and your data, it’s true! SSD’s are faster than HDD’s, and it highly influences the time. Making this change is a must for every gamer.
/cheers
—————— ~~ ~~ —-————-
Charr’s need more Love. All is Vain
—————— ~~ ~~ —-————-
FWIW, graphics quality and latency to the servers will make a massive different to loading times also. Lower the detail, and port to a 0 population waypoint and you will see a very fast load.
^This
People often points the loading speed only to the type of drive they have, and that’s not true. In fact, the loading speed is a combination of several aspects, directly or indirectly related to the physical machine.
While for the purpose of this test simply testing different types of drives with the same machine and with the same network, proves (as known), loading times are smaller in a SDD drive, we can’t compare however loading times in different rigs, as there are so many parameters that influences it, as i previously said.
Influencing the loading times we have:
- Server load;
- Network quality (Latency, Speed and Package loss %);
- Distance to server;
- Processors quality (CPU and GPU). Different processor architectures behaves differently in loading behavior;
- Rendering Load (As Biofrog stated, a lower setting will render faster as a full detail rendering);
- and so much more…
/cheers
You are right on all aspects of this but really having little more than double the load times with a HDD you can safely say that the time saved is mainly due to the solid state drive. I tried this test as well with my cpu at stock speeds vs oc speeds which only made like 1-2 sec difference. Im not the best over oc’er im pretty amateur so maybe i can squeeze more speed out.
Server load, network quality and stuff like that the average person cant really do anything about it but upgrading to a solid state drive is more of an easy task for a lot of gain.
True!
I was referring to players comparing loading times with SSD’s, which honestly can’t be of any valid conclusion.
Regarding your test and your data, it’s true! SSD’s are faster than HDD’s, and it highly influences the time. Making this change is a must for every gamer.
/cheers
yea ive seen a few people comparing SSD’s which is really useless for mmos just to many factors its not like HDD to Solid state
Run GW2 on Linux via Wine. Works fine, and you have an OS that doesn’t mysteriously slowdown/crash/is susceptible to viri over time/doesn’t need defragmentation. (There is also Teamspeak 3 for Linux, or run the Windows version via Wine same as GW2.)
Recommended Linux version for newbies: Linux Mint. (Close relative to Ubuntu Linux.)
Edit: Actually, according to WineHQ, GW2 has Gold status on Ubuntu, so specifically for GW2 I guess you may consider Ubuntu instead of Mint >_> although I’m not sure if this discrepancy is for real..
Colin ‘The Liar’ Johanson: “Everyone, including casual gamers, by 80 should have the
best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on equal power base.”
One of the slowest parts of a HDD is the time the read-head takes to seek data on the hard disk(s). You can minimize this by defragmenting the Guild Wars 2’s Gw2.dat file.
Note that this works for HDDs. Do Not defragment a SSD: It doesn’t help and it will reduce the life of your SSD.
Run GW2 on Linux via Wine. Works fine, and you have an OS that doesn’t mysteriously slowdown/crash/is susceptible to viri over time/doesn’t need defragmentation. (There is also Teamspeak 3 for Linux, or run the Windows version via Wine same as GW2.)
Recommended Linux version for newbies: Linux Mint. (Close relative to Ubuntu Linux.)
Im a big fan of linux and I do have a ubuntu partition on my laptop but haven’t really played around with it yet. I didn’t realize gw2 works so well in wine though…how much fps do you get ??
Well I’m playing on a quadcore notebook with switchable nvidia optimus graphics, so my framerate isn’t super great. I have most settings on medium and some turned off/low (shadows!), and am at 20fps in LA and 30fps in WvW. The resolution is 1920×1080 though, making the game look pretty good imo. I haven’t experimented with lower resolutions since this is the native resolution of my notebook screen.
I find the game very playable but I can imagine that some people insist on 60fps or something. I haven’t tested fps in sPvP.
Wine doesn’t necessarily reduce fps by much, although it can, depending on the game. I don’t have a comparison for GW2 because I don’t run Windows, but I know that some games reach even the same fps they have on Windows.
I’m not sure how “heavy” Ubuntu is though. It seems to have been stuffed with a lot of things over time (that’s why I recommend Linux Mint). I run a light Arch system with Xfce4 desktop.
I think I’m also the only person in Deso-TS where it says “Linux” in his client information field. :-p
Colin ‘The Liar’ Johanson: “Everyone, including casual gamers, by 80 should have the
best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on equal power base.”
I got an I5 3770K and a OCZ Vertex (4) ssd on a 6g SATA and my loading screens never last more that 10s. Under 5s for most areas, between 5 and 10 for LA.
Be careful what you wish for, Anet might just give it to you “HoT”
“…let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die;.”
I got an I5 3770K and a OCZ Vertex (4) ssd on a 6g SATA and my loading screens never last more that 10s. Under 5s for most areas, between 5 and 10 for LA.
You must live way closer to game servers then. Also im sure an i5 3770k doesn’t exist
Well I’m playing on a quadcore notebook with switchable nvidia optimus graphics, so my framerate isn’t super great. I have most settings on medium and some turned off/low (shadows!), and am at 20fps in LA and 30fps in WvW. The resolution is 1920×1080 though, making the game look pretty good imo. I haven’t experimented with lower resolutions since this is the native resolution of my notebook screen.
I find the game very playable but I can imagine that some people insist on 60fps or something. I haven’t tested fps in sPvP.
Wine doesn’t necessarily reduce fps by much, although it can, depending on the game. I don’t have a comparison for GW2 because I don’t run Windows, but I know that some games reach even the same fps they have on Windows.
I’m not sure how “heavy” Ubuntu is though. It seems to have been stuffed with a lot of things over time (that’s why I recommend Linux Mint). I run a light Arch system with Xfce4 desktop.
Oh there is one silly glitch on Linux you should know:
When a new build is released, often the GW2.exe file isn’t patched properly. The result of this will be:
The download will suddenly stall and stop at 0kB/s for no apparent reason and give an error message box.
The fix is to just delete the Gw2.exe file, rename Gw2.tmp to Gw2.exe, and then it will update fine.
I made a little script file for this task that I just run when it happens, consisting of only 2 lines:
(In theory the first line is redundant and can be omitted, but I’m doing this cleanly :-p)
Colin ‘The Liar’ Johanson: “Everyone, including casual gamers, by 80 should have the
best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on equal power base.”
The load times on an SSD are nice, but what’s much more useful is the texture load times. With an SSD you won’t see zones loading textures for the first 15 seconds upon entering the zone, or worse. With an SSD it should be pretty much instant.
Also, for people saying they are expensive, they really aren’t these days. They continue to come down, but are already very reasonable. If you can’t afford a bigger one, just get a larger drive for data retention, movies, music, etc, and install your games and OS to the C drive on your SSD. The bigger size you can afford, the more you can keep installed. I personally don’t leave a ton of junk installed, so I do fine with a 120gb SSD C drive.
My HDD must run at a higher RPM because I load into LA in half the time. SSDs are great and all but they are more expensive for less space. While I don’t know from personal experience, others who do speak from personal experience, have told me that you’re more likely to get a bad one from the factory. I’ve been to two different computer stores that do repairs on top of selling hardware. The guys at both places independently said that as far as hard drives problems go, they’ve seen more pc brought in for failed SSDs than HDDs.
When I get around to upgrading my HDD, I’ll just go with a high rpm HDD with SSD cache drive.
My HDD must run at a higher RPM because I load into LA in half the time. SSDs are great and all but they are more expensive for less space. While I don’t know from personal experience, others who do speak from personal experience, have told me that you’re more likely to get a bad one from the factory. I’ve been to two different computer stores that do repairs on top of selling hardware. The guys at both places independently said that as far as hard drives problems go, they’ve seen more pc brought in for failed SSDs than HDDs.
When I get around to upgrading my HDD, I’ll just go with a high rpm HDD with SSD cache drive.
Hybrid drives are good, but not many out there. I wish the tech would evolve some more.
That said, don’t buy a garbage SSD and you won’t have problems. First and second gen SSDs had problems, I have one in this laptop I am typing on now, that I have had all kinds of problems on. Finally stable after 50 firmware versions. The others I have have been great. Don’t buy the no name brand stuff, and you’ll be fine. Just do your research. You’re cheating yourself out of performance if you don’t move to one man. Get an SSD for primary, and a hybrid or just a big spindle disk for your non-speed sensitive data (movies, archiving, etc).
My HDD must run at a higher RPM because I load into LA in half the time. SSDs are great and all but they are more expensive for less space. While I don’t know from personal experience, others who do speak from personal experience, have told me that you’re more likely to get a bad one from the factory. I’ve been to two different computer stores that do repairs on top of selling hardware. The guys at both places independently said that as far as hard drives problems go, they’ve seen more pc brought in for failed SSDs than HDDs.
When I get around to upgrading my HDD, I’ll just go with a high rpm HDD with SSD cache drive.
Did they mention that defragging an SSD will kill it?
Resident deaf elementalist – Tarnished Coast
Everyone needs a little optimism!
This doesn’t explain why loading times into LA have increased exponentially since the game launched with the same hard drive.
I thought it was just my system. Interesting that someone else is seeing the same problem.
Most cities and locations load quite quickly, but LA keeps taking longer and longer.
Where are my gem sales? I want gem sales! Nerf EVERYTHING!
My HDD must run at a higher RPM because I load into LA in half the time. SSDs are great and all but they are more expensive for less space. While I don’t know from personal experience, others who do speak from personal experience, have told me that you’re more likely to get a bad one from the factory. I’ve been to two different computer stores that do repairs on top of selling hardware. The guys at both places independently said that as far as hard drives problems go, they’ve seen more pc brought in for failed SSDs than HDDs.
When I get around to upgrading my HDD, I’ll just go with a high rpm HDD with SSD cache drive.
Did they mention that defragging an SSD will kill it?
Not true, that’s an old wive’s tale. It will though, waste your time, and waste writes, as it has no benefit.
This doesn’t explain why loading times into LA have increased exponentially since the game launched with the same hard drive.
I thought it was just my system. Interesting that someone else is seeing the same problem.
Most cities and locations load quite quickly, but LA keeps taking longer and longer.
I don’t know the ins and outs of their engine, but I would assume this is because they keep adding texture, therefore loading the city with all the people in it, requires more textures. Dungeons and outdoor zones are relatively static and generally have many less people in them, and therefore less variety.
I would rather have more storage space than slightly faster load times. Not to mention, a 1TB HDD costs about half of what you will pay for a 250GB SSD.
Economy brah.
Those armadillos would be a lot cooler if they looked more like real armadillos. mmm armadillos
-BnooMaGoo.5690
You can only write data into flash a fix number of times before it can no longer be cleared. SSDs try their hardest in spreading the writes around to stretch life out as much as possible. So defragging, which does no good on an SSD because data isn’t stored sequentially because of sector remapping to spread the writes around, does needless writes which will reduce the life of an SSD ever so slightly. You may not be able to control many writes on your SSD but you can prevent this.
Its funny how people worry about ssd. They Have massive amount of times to wrights. unless your running a data server you’ll most likely never hit its max wrights. Yes first gen ones weren’t that good but they have come a long way. Also when kitten starts to fail you lose space when a Hd fails you lose everything…
JPSnow (main) – Necro, Sir Mezalot – Mesmer
Lieutenant Stabs – Thief
Night Vision (NV) – Blackgate
Whan an SSD fails on write it’s true that you can still read all the data on it. It’s like having a bad spot develop on your hard drive. You can read everything but files that are in that bad spot. But the failure on an SSD is absolute. All you can do is copy it to a new one and start again.
Yes, the amount of writes needed to cripple an SSD is extremely high and the average home user will likely replace the machine before experiencing it. This is a “I can drive on a paved road or take the old unimproved dirt and gravel road with all the rocks and ruts, which will wear my tires out faster” question. All I’m saying is if you can avoid the wear on the SSD, you should. Many newer defraggers are smart enough to not let you defrag an SSD.
I got an I5 3770K and a OCZ Vertex (4) ssd on a 6g SATA and my loading screens never last more that 10s. Under 5s for most areas, between 5 and 10 for LA.
You must live way closer to game servers then. Also im sure an i5 3770k doesn’t exist
Sorry about that I meant I5 3570k. Also runing on a 50kbs internet connection, don’t know how close I am to the server but I’m not going to be complaining about load times any times soon.
Be careful what you wish for, Anet might just give it to you “HoT”
“…let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die;.”
Sadly, your SSD can load any map MUCH faster than the game allows (assuming you have a high end PC/GPU), but the speed at which the server sends instance information is dismally low and will remain your biggest bottleneck.
Yeah, ssd is definitely faster, I’ve noticed that myself. But i think you have another bottleneck somewhere as it takes me less than 10s to load regardless of area or server load. My rig is not top of the line, I have a 3.4ghz Intel 15 processor with 8gb of ram and a gtx600 video card. I have all my settings on max.
I assure you I dont have a bottle neck of any kind, my rig is also pretty much top of the line 3770k @ 4.5 GHz / Nvidia 680 / MSI z77a-gd65 / 16gb ram etc etc…..
It was amazing how much an SSD effected the loading times in gw2 ive never really appreciated it till when I saw the results haha.
10s for a HDD to load any part of the game regardless or server load ?? Are you sure ?? Thats one dam fine HDD you got there son
No it’s an ssd and my rig is behind yours so I’m not sure why you’re getting longer load times than me, I was even thinking about upgrading to the i7 from my i5. My only other thought is maybe I’m closer to the server than you, or am getting better routing? Do you know your ping times? I get 20-30ms for the most part.
i7 BARELY performs better than i5. Stick with it.
Good to know, thanks.
I 7 has 4 cores plus 4 part cores. Unfortunately GW2 seems to be single threaded. That means the only performance gain is the difference in clock speed. If it was fully multi-threaded then there would be a performance boost.
Did they mention that defragging an SSD will kill it?
No it won’t. What it will do is cause extra wear for no advantage.
Old HDs use a disk that has to turn to read the next piece of information, if the data is scattered across the disk then the time taken to move between pieces builds up significantly.
Older SSDs do have an issue with writes ‘wearing’ locations, but not with reads. Each location on an SSD can only take so many writes before there is a chance it will be damaged, although this is many thousands of reads per sector. To stop this modern drives have an integral routine to mark sectors that have been written to when freed. It will then assign a new sector to the reference the OS thinks it is writing to. This massively reduces the issue but means that the computer isn’t writing to where it thinks it is. There is no way for the defrag program to make files continuous like it can on a disk. Nor is there any way to compact the programs to the fastest part of the disk, there isn’t one anyway. Because of this defragging is effectively useless and can be detrimental to the life of an SSD.
I would suggest anyone getting an SSD also switch off indexing in windows and move things like swap files to a second, normal HD. If you have enough real memory then this can be switched off completely too.
For that matter deleting data from an SSD is problematic, even with a specialist program. It will write over where it thinks the data is stored but is more than likely to miss it completely.
No the i7 has 4 cores and the hardware equivalent of mirrors to fool the OS into thinking that there is 8. It’s done to improve the overall efficiency of the core.
GW2 have numerous threads, over 40. It’s just that the 7 or so that use the most time, half use about 1/4 of a core’s total performance each with the remaining use 1/2 to an entire core’s performance.
Sadly, your SSD can load any map MUCH faster than the game allows (assuming you have a high end PC/GPU), but the speed at which the server sends instance information is dismally low and will remain your biggest bottleneck.
Yes thats right the latency is really the end factor for everyone that does have a solid state drive. But generally anyone that’s still using a HDD for gw2 will see a huge load time improvement regardless of their latency
yea in 10 – 11 sec I can load any part of the game most of the time. Well I wouldn’t think routing will make that much difference in the client loading but I guess a highly populated town such as LA would effect it some what. I live in Australia my ping is usually around 170 MS
I would love to have your ping…..