CPU upgrade time?

[kalston]

Removing the paging only hurts the OS stability, if the paging file is giving you trouble then there is something wrong with your system. Mine is set to 512mb initial size and it never grows (even when AoC uses 100% of my RAM), meaning my OS doesn't use it much but it's still there for the odd time when the OS needs it. With a recent SSD you won't even notice anything when the OS uses the pagefile anyway since SSD are so efficient with small reads/writes.

I also played AoC just fine with 4gb (I added another 4gb recently because of other things I do with my PC, and while AoC does manage to use up all my RAM that's just bad coding and the game still never crashed or slowed down with 4gb). AoC basically will end up using 100% of your RAM no matter how much you have if you play for long enough. But it's obviously just wasted and unnecessary RAM usage since the game can run flawlessly with max settings and 4gb in Khitai.

Actually if you look at it with Process Explorer you can see that AoC's 'working set' is actually not much bigger than about 2gb*, but for some obscure reason when playing the "physical memory usage" keeps rising - the game fills up your RAM but doesn't actually "use" more than about 2gb. Note that if you have Win. Vista/7 install with default settings the OS alone might use more than 1gb (which might be why you need more than 4gb to be comfortable then) but my slightly tweaked Win 7 uses about 800mb so I had really no issue playing AoC with 4gb.

*makes sense since AoC is still advertised as 32bit compatible (and it is a 32bit application)

[Shax84]

What does the HDD have to do with fps? Also, HDDs don't "get weary", unless they are failing. And he has 3 of them anyway.

Not quite sure how AoC determines fps. There are hidden numbers behind "fps". The game need to get new content for a new frame to be shown on the monitor, a very slow storage medium can often not provide low enough access times and read speed for all the data to be read, so effectively the same frame can be displayed a lot more than just once. Thus, the game feels laggy even if you have a high fps number. A SSD will always improve minimum fps over an old and slow HDD. With particles on, a SSD will load shaders and spell effects quicker into the game so it will look more fluent and the perceived fps will be higher though the number will not be higher. Utilization of a HDD will always be a lot higher than a SSD while gaming, and the advantage of a memory cell based storage medium over a physical harddrive is very big.

In addition, you get faster load times while zoning.

Some more information on this link: http://thessdreview.com/Forums/ssd-d....htm#post13088

[kalston]

But in most games data is loaded in memory early enough and a SSD will do nothing other than reduce loading times. And even when it's not the case, you'd need a really slow HDD to have a problem with that. I've played AoC on SDDs and HDDs and the only difference between the two was always just loading times, not fps nor the overall feeling (and even that difference ain't all that big when you have a properly partitioned & defragmented HDD, AoC is installed on the outer edge of my new 1tb HDD and gets 180-190mb/s sequential speed, it loads areas just as fast as my OCZ Vertex SSD did but for half the price and 10 times the storage capacity)

SSDs for gaming are still mostly a waste of money, unless you really can't be bothered with optimizing your HDD setup (HDDs basically suck at multi tasking, but if they have only one task they can do a great job for a very low price). And because the price difference is so large between the two mediums (the 1tb drive I'm referring to costs about 50€), I don't recommend anyone to get a SSD for games but for the OS and commonly used apps (browser etc) and then they can just get a cheap dedicated HDD for the games

Games will probably evolve and start making good use of SSDs at some point (or maybe not, since we have more & more RAM/VRAM they may as well just load everything in the RAM/VRAM), but it's certainly not the case with a crappy coded game like AoC

[Xenic]

AOC has always thrashed hard drives. Now that you mention it, I remember a few years ago a guildie changed to SSD from 7200 RPM and it was the single best upgrade he did.

I guess I should add this to the list of upgrades.

[FirepowahQQ]

Getting SSD for AoC was best performance experience ever.

Loading screens are almost instant. Game does not lag when lots of particles appear at same time. No lagging while loading rare spell particles. Minor lag while loading some quest item icons.

Also it does not lag while opening inventory

[kalston]

AOC has always thrashed hard drives. Now that you mention it, I remember a few years ago a guildie changed to SSD from 7200 RPM and it was the single best upgrade he did.

I guess I should add this to the list of upgrades.

Or you can just short-stroke one of your HDDs (since you have 3) and save some money. SSD is a great upgrade for a modern OS though (because of the amount of multi tasking the OS drive has to do).

Getting SSD for AoC was best performance experience ever.

Loading screens are almost instant. Game does not lag when lots of particles appear at same time. No lagging while loading rare spell particles. Minor lag while loading some quest item icons.

Also it does not lag while opening inventory

Those effects are still present on a SSD, just more or less reduced depending on the HDD you compare it to. For example the first time you zone in NG it's not instant, even on a SSD. And the very first time you open your inventory it's not quite instant either, even on a SSD. (after doing it once it's basically instant but that's true even with a HDD)

Most people don't really understand how a HDD works and thus don't optimize their setup around it : for those people a SSD is a massive performance boost.

But you can play AoC on a HDD and not suffer from it in the slightest: put the game on the outer edge of a HDD dedicated (of course not an old slow HDD, but most 7200rpm drives from 2009 and later will do) to gaming (the HDD MUST have only AoC to take care of when you're playing), defragment it (with MyDefrag, only defragmenting app worth mentioning) following initial installation and following every update, done.

[FirepowahQQ]

Only AoC and TSW benefits from SSD for me. It loads data faster right and when there is lots of happening on screen (loading customized characters, spells) It is just faster for me, yes that first time

[Shax84]

But in most games

AoC is not like "most games"... And I have never met anyone defending a traditional HDD like you are. And WOW! 170-180MB/s and you think that Xenic can get those speeds on his 5 year old 7200rpm 1TB drive? A normal 7200rpm 32MB cache 1TB drive could hit right above 200 MB/s burst speed while brand new. The averate read speed was normally around 80-100MB/s, while brand new. Even a Velociraptor 300GB could not give more than 110MB/s random read speed. But the speed is not so much of an issue as the access times. It's just so much less hassle with a SSD, and there is no discussion. It just performs a lot better!

[kalston]

We don't know how old or new his HDDs are, actually. And I'm only saying that the difference isn't half as big as most people say it is IF you know how to use your HDD. Of course SSDs are still faster. HDDs are old mechanical parts and are simply not plug&play devices like SSDs, you have to remember the laws of physics when using HDDs for something where performance matters. Basically, if you have only one partition on your HDD, you're doing it wrong. Most hardware sites don't benchmark their drives properly because of this btw.

Outer edge of a HDD has about 6-8ms latency btw (even older HDDs) and I didn't mention Raptors because they are noisy and quite expensive (and they don't perform that much better) but this isn't that important for games. And why do you keep saying "while brand new"? HDDs do not lose speed over time, that's an old myth and a misunderstanding (unlike SSDs who do lose speed as you fill them, TRIM only prevents them from slowing down too much but they still lose quite a bit of punch).
Basically HDDs have their peak speed at the outer edge of the platter and as you get closer to the inner edge the performance decreases and access times increase. The trick is to keep the data packed in one place on the drive, preferably the fastest area of course. If you have only one partition the data will tend to spread all over the drive (a Windows' weakness, sadly) resulting in decreased performance. That's what most people do wrong. But you can easily prevent this with partitions (and MyDefrag can also pack the data very nicely). This also reduces noise and power consumption and is a well known practice for companies ("short-stroking") and some hardware enthusiasts.

[Shax84]

If TRIM is active on a SSD, it does not lose performance. I have seen benchmarkers writing hundreds of TB to a SSD and the performance still being the same.

No, I do not know that his harddrives are 5 years old. But in 2009, either Spinpoint F1 or 7200.2 1TB drives was the most common to get and 2TB was just made available, so I simply took for granted that his drives was 5 years old. You need luck and good cooling for drives to last much longer than 5 years.

Also by doing as you suggest, you lose 90% of the capacity of the drive. So suddenly SSD is not that pricey after all.