Guild Wars 2

I just got SSD Hyper X 240GB 500MB/S and fresh Windows 8.1 install. Loading times were not that much faster versus HDD. Maybe 8GB system memory limiting?

And what is the problem?

It’s not like loading times are slow on HDD enough to feel crippled in any way.

It depends really.

Loading into old LA used to be WAY faster for me on my SSD. compared to my HDD friends at least.

However, loading into barren waypoints, often times they would load faster. If it’s crowded and highly detailed, I think the SSD starts to come into play. If it’s not, internet connectivity is going to be the main factor.

Its definitely faster for me. Was 7-10 secs on the HDD and now its 2-3 on my SSD. Same thing for all of my MMOs (three 512gb mushkin drives, 5 MMOs, 170 steam games, cheap and fast) and games really.

It is going to depend on your hard drive and (sometimes) where your copy of the data file is located. Your mileage will definitely vary, so that some people are going to see massive improvement from using an SSD and some people won’t really notice it.

I noticed a substantial decrease in loading screen time when going from my 7200 RPM HDD to a 240GB Mushkin Chronos SSD, especially going into LA or playing GTAV

There are definitely some very obvious gains from playing GW2 off of an SSD. The first time I loaded maps off my SSD though it took awhile.

I just got a 64Gb flash drive on USB3 and it is a huge difference on map load, especially onto busy maps.

Just so you know, Guild Wars 2 is 32-Bit, and is not PAE Enabled, and the 4GB Patcher doesn’t work on the game client or EXEs. It cannot see more than one or two processor cores, and will not use more than 3.2 GB of RAM.

Keep in mind that the trading post dialog isn’t part of the game client, and is its own process as well. Regardless of load times, SSDs will always be faster than HDDs, no matter how marginal.

Also, PCIe is faster than SATA, if you didn’t know. I’d really like it if they at least enabled PAE Support on the game, or develop it for 64-bit support. Crysis 2 already has 64-bit support, and Crysis 3 is fully 64-bit compatible, so I don’t see why more games do it.

it’s no secret that we will be making the jump to 128-Bit soon. Both Skylake / LGA 1151 and AMD’s upcoming AM4 / Zen architecture also have support for DDR4 RAM, which means we’ll have by default 2100 MHz without OC’ing, rather than 1333 or something.

Funny, I’m looking at my copy of GW2.EXE and the PE header Characteristics is 0×0122 which translates as Executable (0×0100), Large Address Aware (0×0020), 32-bit (0×0002).

Behellagh.1468:

Funny, I’m looking at my copy of GW2.EXE and the PE header Characteristics is 0×0122 which translates as Executable (0×0100), Large Address Aware (0×0020), 32-bit (0×0002).

Not sure why it doesn’t want to go over 1.3 GB of RAM then =/ like during Frozen Maw.

Well I’ve seen memory use directly related to the Character Model Quality and Limits settings. Also high res character textures being set. Even at medium settings for character model if gotten the game over 2.4 GB at times.

Don’t know what to say. It’s like that in both Win 7 and Win 10 for me.

Did you compare times after a reboot? Or some other way to emtpy the OS filesystem cache? Repeated loading times won’t differ on HDD vs SSD since most data comes from memory cache.

I’ve seen a huge improvement with an SSD. Like 15seconds down to 2-5.

I originally installed it on an SSD but tried moving it to an HDD and did not notice a significant difference in load times. WHich makes sense seeing as it is probably writing some stuff to my system folders on my SSD and it is not like it is loading all the data into memory.

I have plenty of space on my SSD. It is an enterprise-level 1/2 TB drive. The real estate on it is very expensive compared to my 3 TB HDD though so unless something needs/benefits from the SSD I prefer to keep it (especially if large) on the HDD.

if both the HDD and SSD are SATA’d with 6 GB/s support, you won’t see much of a difference unless the RPM on the HDD is low. (IE: Below 7200.) The most noticeable differences between SSD and HDD aren’t in the data transfers (Unless you’re going to an entire system on SSD without an HDD, or an HDD system without any SSD, then the differences can be staggering.) The most noticable differences are in heat generated (SSD is less) and power draw (SSD is far, far less.)

What SSDs buys you is the lack of seek times which is why random read times are so much higher with SSDs than normal HDs. Every time your HD needs to seek (move the r/w head) it is extremely slow relative to the normal transfer speed. One average seek takes as much time as 1-2 megabytes worth of data.

As for sequential speed, HD is still limited to spin rate and data density on the platter determines top sequential speed. SSDs can read at the maximum speed of the SATA 3.0 interface, if the flash allows it.

Popping over to Storage Review, the WD 6GB Black has a top sequential read speed of 214 MB/s but a 4K random of 0.325 MB/s. The 2GB Samsung 850 EVO has a top sequential read speed of 500 MB/s and a 4K random read of 40 MB/s.