Wow on an SSD?

[Cilraaz]

So much misinformation in this thread.

The CPU is not the largest upgrade you can perform to your PC for WoW. In fact, World of Warcraft is one of the worst games on the market in the past half decade at utilizing CPU's. It can't even properly utilize a dual core CPU, let alone a four or six core CPU. Yes, getting a new one will make a difference, but progressivly get less impressive. For example, I have upgraded from an E8400 to a I5 2500k and the performance difference is virtually not noticeable.

Wrong. WoW is actually optimized for 3 cores. It consists of a large main thread, large sound thread, and then about 40+ smaller threads (check for yourself using Process Explorer). A quad core is perfect, as it leaves the 4th core open for background processes such as Ventrilo and a browser. Also, if you went from an E8400 to i5 2500K and noticed no difference, you either spend all of your time solo or are lying. In a raid, there would be a world of difference between the two.

A GPU can provide a large performance gain to a point. At 1680X1050 you will stop visually seeing a performance difference by the time you own a GTX 460. Even a 5770 will get to 100FPS outside of extremely highly populated cities (Stormwind, ORG). At 1080p the more expensive cards make sense, although a 5770 and 460 will still do well. Even with a 6950 you may experience slowdowns in some zones with shadows maxed simply because World of Warcraft at this point, is the coding equivalent of Frankenstein. Pieces of unrefined code lumped together over the years to create a monster.

In crowded cities and raids, your GPU is not what's powering your framerate. In an MMO there are too many calculations required (player/mob positioning, spell casts, damage done/taken, etc, etc). That's why the CPU is your biggest upgrade. Now, if you're standing alone in Ashenvale, then yeah, a better GPU would yield better framerate. Unfortunately, that's extra framerate when it's not needed, whereas a better CPU grants you better minimum framerate during intense situations, which makes the game more playable.

An SSD on the other hand is probably the largest performance boost you can provide to your system. The difference is immediately noticeably because World of Warcraft is constantly loading objects on and off your screen. Constantly accessing textures and models off your hard-drive and sending information to and from your PC. Once a computer gets to a certain point, the bottleneck becomes the hard-drive. Everything is improved once you have an SSD. Get slight stuttering when in Stormwind even though you are at 30+FPS? Thats the HDD. Waiting 10+ seconds logging into the game, into an instance, or bg? Thats the hard-drive. Textures a bit muddy upon loading in, and eventually go back to proper quality? HDD once again. At this point in time, an SSD provides the most noticeable improvement for users when it comes to gaming.

Once textures are loaded, the SSD grants you exactly zero fps. Good financial investment over a better CPU, which grants those extra fps during the scenarios where the difference between 15 and 30 might be the difference between a dead boss and a wipe.

SSDs are a quality of life improvement. Things load faster. Once those things are loaded, it sits idle and grants you no performance. If you already have a top of the line (or even second tier) CPU, enough RAM, and a strong enough video card, then yes, it's a decent addition to make life easier. It's not, however, the single largest performance boost for WoW.

[Wries]

Agree with Cilraaz and since shadows were brought up as GPU-dependent earlier in thread I'll just put my input here that the WoW shadows are oddly enough more CPU-dependent than anything else. Something I've always had a feeling that they were but when going from q8400 to i7 2600K it became very clear that it was the CPU holding me back from not getting to have highest shadow settings earlier.

When it comes to SSD, I agree it's great. Have one on my laptop and going from computer turned off to playing wow is a mission of one minute or less (think I'll go time it later). But I honestly can't complain on having WoW on a 7200 RPM WD caviar black. Loading times are pretty decent since windows 7 seemingly has pre-loaded some WoW into memory before I've even started the game.

[Deleted]

Used to have it on SSD, not anymore. I much rather keep my win7 pagefile and hibernate files there instead of WoW.

My Spinpoint F3 has a dedicated 50gb partition for WoW, which is more than enough. I couldn't care less if I have to wait 15seconds instead of 5 to get in the game. I never had any problems with texture loading after initial zone in anyway, I'd never waste my cash on SSD just for WoW.

i've had wow running off an ssd since just before xmas when i got my new system.

and ye - it dramatically reduces load and relog times and general load times in game (textures etc). i got a new mobo/cpu/ram/gpu also, so i cant say its purely my ssd coz now im gettin like 200+ fps everywhere with everythin on ultra and no problems at all, but ye - load times acorss the board at least are certainly noticable.

windows starts in like ~15 secs too, which is always nice.

i've got an ocz 120gig ssd with just win7/wow on it, its great

SSD gives 0 fps boost. Just reduces loading times. It's funny how people claim over internets they have "200+" fps everywhere with Ultra settings. It's not possible even with the best and most expensive equipment out there. I'm fairly sure I got a better gaming rig than you have, yet only having 100+ FPS in raids and 30+ in Orgrimmar during peak hours.

Depends... For WoW, I doubt many people would see a bigger boost in performance upgrading those over an SSD...

If your CPU, Ram, and GPU are all fairly up to date, getting an SSD would almost certainly be the best upgrade.

SSD gives 0 performance upgrade to WoW. It just reduces loading times.

expected life span is 50k hours, or, 137 years

all HDD's die, dont fool yourself

Yet a lot of SSD's are breaking already even though they have only been on market for couple years or so. So much for 137 years? You shouldn't believe everything those clever advertisement folk tell you.

[Cilraaz]

Yet a lot of SSD's are breaking already even though they have only been on market for couple years or so. So much for 137 years? You shouldn't believe everything those clever advertisement folk tell you.

First generation SSDs and faulty components are failing, yes. A current generation SSD with TRIM support enabled will easily last long enough to be replaced normally as an upgrade before failing (assuming a non-faulty component, also).

[BicycleMafioso]

SSD gives 0 performance upgrade to WoW. It just reduces loading times.

And how is that not a performance? You get, on average, 3-5 loadingscreens per hour. It's dreadfully boring to watch between games.

Yet a lot of SSD's are breaking already even though they have only been on market for couple years or so. So much for 137 years? You shouldn't believe everything those clever advertisement folk tell you.

And who've told you that the gen-2 SSDs would ever break?

And you've got a 50GB partition solely for a 15GB-game? I can imagine someone having 20-25, or even 30. But 50 is a bit too much of a waste in my taste.

[Mishaye]

Getting an SSD is one of the better investments I've done. It improved system performance a lot, especially for me that multitask a lot. The difference in response is amazing. I still got a couple of bigger HDDs for data storage, but Windows (and WoW, and a few other games I play a lot) is installed on my SSD (160GB so I can squeeze in some games). Sure, it was pricey compared to an HDD, but it was definitely worth it.

Even if you don't have WoW (or other games) installed it on, it is in my opinion worth it, for general system performance, to get a small SSD for your Windows install (or whatever other OS).

As for SSD lifetime. Yeh, eventually it will wear out and you won't be able to write to it, but you can still access the data on it after that happens, but the lifetime of current SSDs is high enough that it won't be a practical problem.
Also, performance used to drop over time (that also happens with HDDs when you start filling up the drive) but, again, it's not really that much of a problem on newer SSDs anymore because of TRIM-support or improved garbage collection. It still happens, not just to same extent. Of course, some drives are better than others (the newer Toshiba ones are amazing).

[wildemu]

How long do you think before they become more affordable? I am having a hard time investing $100+ in a 60gb drive when I just spent 50 on a 1tb drive.

[monkfish]

SSD gives 0 fps boost. Just reduces loading times. It's funny how people claim over internets they have "200+" fps everywhere with Ultra settings. It's not possible even with the best and most expensive equipment out there. I'm fairly sure I got a better gaming rig than you have, yet only having 100+ FPS in raids and 30+ in Orgrimmar during peak hours.



SSD gives 0 performance upgrade to WoW. It just reduces loading times.

i said i just got a new mobo/cpu/ram/gpu so i get loads more fps, which i know isnt 'boosted' by having an ssd. thats why i stated about having a noticable difference in load times across wow/windows.

i added in the part about my pc, just to sort of 'explain' the fact that its pretty quick now anyway, but with the new ssd, certainly is an extra difference.

i could screenshot you my fps + graphics settings if u wanted, even with the fraps 'fps' counter in the corner, i can assure you im running over 200 most of the time, dropping maybe to around 150 in raids, and sitting about 70ish at 'peak' times in sw..
granted i have shadows on low, but always have done - i knocked them upto ultra in sw just now (pretty busy) and im still at ~55.. so mmm.

anyway, point being, i know ssd wont improve fps, i was just adding in that although it does ofc reduce load times, i'd just got myself a new system so i couldnt 'compare' just how much coz it was more than a single upgrade..

[Lori]

"SSD gives 0 performance upgrade to WoW. It just reduces loading times."

Yep, THIS!

[Asera]

Luxury item is a luxury.

I bought a 60GB OCZ Vertex II. Between my previous WD Caviar Black, setup with a WoW partition at the front (fastest area) of the drive, with nothing else on the drive (empty space which I partition for backups then delete when I don't need them) I saw about a 5 second load time difference.

WD Caviar black cost $65CAD, Vertex II $120. That isn't worth 5 seconds at all.

Lots of people with poor partition and drive management skills in this thread. :P I even have 8-10 year old PATA drives that still work like they are brand new. Platter drives less reliable my ass.

[Titan]

Wrong. WoW is actually optimized for 3 cores. It consists of a large main thread, large sound thread, and then about 40+ smaller threads (check for yourself using Process Explorer). A quad core is perfect, as it leaves the 4th core open for background processes such as Ventrilo and a browser. Also, if you went from an E8400 to i5 2500K and noticed no difference, you either spend all of your time solo or are lying. In a raid, there would be a world of difference between the two.

There is almost no noticble difference because an E8400 can power WoW to a point where your FPS is above 60+ almost regularly. YOU can't see a difference in World of Warcraft after this point. If you start using software to monitor numbers then sure, but nobody is realistically doing this.

Now in terms of how many cores WoW uses, yes it uses more then two cores. However your post is extremely misleading. Two cores are used for almost your entire gaming experience. The last core is used to offload things like networking and audio. 90 percent of your gaming experience is coming from just those two cores. Which is why a higher clocked dual core will out perform a slightly lower clocked same generation quad core even with vent running. Hence the E8400 out performing the Q6600 and so on.

Wow is optimized like horseshit, which is why it's never used a benchmark. It's fickle, and the performance gained from obtaining a new CPU is not noticeable at a certain point. Like I said above, yes you can notice it in a SOFTWARE program, but visually the difference is nothing unless you are upgrading from complete trash to a new CPU.

In crowded cities and raids, your GPU is not what's powering your framerate. In an MMO there are too many calculations required (player/mob positioning, spell casts, damage done/taken, etc, etc). That's why the CPU is your biggest upgrade. Now, if you're standing alone in Ashenvale, then yeah, a better GPU would yield better framerate. Unfortunately, that's extra framerate when it's not needed, whereas a better CPU grants you better minimum framerate during intense situations, which makes the game more playable.

This is once again only true if you are using an old way out dated CPU like an X2 4200. The GPU is powering a huge portion of WoW in all aspects. Especially during raids with all the spell effects going on. Yes the CPU is handling all the calculation but they are trivial for any CPU from an E8400 moving forwards. You aren't in a weather simulator. If you are getting massive slowdown with a Core 2 Duo in a raid, or in Stormwind, it's not your CPU any longer. It's your GPU and hard-drive.

Once textures are loaded, the SSD grants you exactly zero fps. Good financial investment over a better CPU, which grants those extra fps during the scenarios where the difference between 15 and 30 might be the difference between a dead boss and a wipe.

SSDs are a quality of life improvement. Things load faster. Once those things are loaded, it sits idle and grants you no performance. If you already have a top of the line (or even second tier) CPU, enough RAM, and a strong enough video card, then yes, it's a decent addition to make life easier. It's not, however, the single largest performance boost for WoW.

[/quote]

This is correct in that it makes things load quicker, it's incorrect in the fact that things are loaded and never loaded again. The inherent way World of Warcraft works is loading things as you come in contact with them. The entire world isn't loaded at once. Every toon in Stormwind isn't loaded at once. Every texture and detail isn't loaded at one time. They all load as you come in-contract with them. It's very smilar to how the Hero engine works. the SSD may not improve FPS, but FPS isn't the only thing that makes a difference. the SSD will improve the time it takes all those things to load. Which is what causes slight stutters in World of Warcraft in $1500 gaming PC's. World of Warcraft is loading new objects CONSTANTLY. It almost never stops in any circumstance.

Something else you don't point out is bottlenecks. The CPU and the GPU can only work as fast as it takes them to access what they need to from your hard-drive(and other areas). Buying an SSD speeds this process up tremendously.

Your argument is very under-handed. It's true if you are speaking to people who have not built a computer since 2006-2007. Buy anybody who has built a good gaming computer (for that time) in the last couple years will see a massive difference using an SSD. For your argument to make sense the persons system has to be horse-shit.

[Asera]

This is once again only true if you are using an old way out dated CPU like an X2 4200. The GPU is powering a huge portion of WoW in all aspects. Especially during raids with all the spell effects going on. Yes the CPU is handling all the calculation but they are trivial for any CPU from an E8400 moving forwards. You aren't in a weather simulator. If you are getting massive slowdown with a Core 2 Duo in a raid, or in Stormwind, it's not your CPU any longer. It's your GPU and hard-drive.

I used to run an E8400. When I replaced it with a Phenom II x4 955BE I noticed a significant performance boost. On the same HD 4850. On the same WDC Black drive. We know WoW is optimized like a sack of crap, it just so happens that the K10.5 and Nehalem architectures handle that sack of crap better at the same clock than Wolfdales.

Go spew your misinformation elsewhere.

[zenkai]

Been playing WoW over a year now on a SSD, ill never go back

[Titan]

I used to run an E8400. When I replaced it with a Phenom II x4 955BE I noticed a significant performance boost. On the same HD 4850. On the same WDC Black drive. We know WoW is optimized like a sack of crap, it just so happens that the K10.5 and Nehalem architectures handle that sack of crap better at the same clock than Wolfdales.

Go spew your misinformation elsewhere.

You noticied a difference because you probably treat your computer like shit and the re-format sped everything up. the difference between a Phenom II X4 955 BE and a E8400 in non quad-core optimized games is very little. Go look at any benchmark on planet earth. In fact, on some gaming benchmarks for games not optmized for four cores (like WoW), the E8400 even outperforms it. The main difference you see in games that don't use more then two cores, is simply due to the 955 being clocked higher, and once again, the difference is basically unnoticeable.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=56

Please don't comment unless you know what you are talking about. Thanks.

[Deleted]

while I understand shortened load times I cant understand how one would get better fps with it. if you have a graphics card with 1gb of ram and +4gb ddr3 ram on a 64bit OS you shouldnt get any increased fps from faster harddrives.

I have a 7200rpm disk and if I go into a zone that Ive been to in the last hour its pretty much an instant load.

[wrathblade]

i'm not that into computers like most of you but does SSD mean solid state drive? if so why is it so much better? can it write and load data faster then normal harddrives because the don't got a rotating disc?

also if you get a SSD and put windows and wow on it and then put all other files inc other programmes on a normal harddrive would this work with making windows and wow allot faster with loading?

[Titan]

while I understand shortened load times I cant understand how one would get better fps with it. if you have a graphics card with 1gb of ram and +4gb ddr3 ram on a 64bit OS you shouldnt get any increased fps from faster harddrives.

I have a 7200rpm disk and if I go into a zone that Ive been to in the last hour its pretty much an instant load.

Your FPS doesn't increase with a SSD. It's the overall response and loading of whatever is on the SSD. Since it reads and writes significantly faster then a mechanical drive.

Gamers are programed to think the only noticeable difference when gaming is FPS, and the magical FPS number needs to be higher, higher higher. This isn't always true. If you are running under 60fps, yes you will want to increase that number, however if you are running over 60 fps regularly there are various things you can do to improve the performance of your PC, An SSD is one of them.

[scouser]

been using SSD'S while now win 7 boot up time 7 secs running them with 12gig cosair dominator
games are faster but not needed on SSDS. your better off just keeping your O.S and any editing tools you may use eg adobe paint shop pro ect .
i have a 60g cosair ssd with just WIN7 on nothing else and a 160 ssd with my hotel software for work WOW and cod-black ops.
everything else gos onto a standard sata2 1tb drive.

[Duskstorm]

You're incorrect on so many levels. Flash memory by design will -always- have a limited life span. They can only implement so many algorithms to shuffle data around on sectors before they run out of ideas. There's no getting around it. Most people don't even realize that their drive wont last more than 3 or so years when they buy it, and that the drive will have an ever decreasing amount of performance.

Not exactly sure why you're stating "just like every other single piece of equipment". I've had the same 10k raptor for 6 years now. I have a network drive that's on 24/7 that's been serving home media for almost 9. Hell, my mom's computer runs windows 98 and still works. Try running the same SSD for 10+ years and see how that works out for you.

You're closer, but still not on the target.

Yes, flash has a life cycle; so do hard drives. Flash wears differently, though, there's a reasonably predictable amount of write cycles available to each block. You are correct that vendors and driver developers have implemented "wear leveling" algorithms into the hardware and firmware, but you are incorrect in assigning a blanket life cycle in terms of years. It all depends on how it gets used. (I've personally written NAND flash drivers, the technologies limitations are well understood and easy to manage).

I don't know how to do this in Windows, but it's conceivable to set up your WoW/OS installation such that data only really gets rewritten when you update WoW itself. Update downloads and data that changes constantly can be offloaded to a cheaper conventional HD, for example.. but only then if it's needed.

Most of your character's "state" is stored server side anyways, so WoW lends itself well to SSDs from a lifecycle standpoint.

That being said, if I wanted screeching fast HDD performance in WoW, I'd use conventional HDDs with RAID before I tried SSDs. Better value, IMO.

[Deleted]

You're incorrect on so many levels. Flash memory by design will -always- have a limited life span. They can only implement so many algorithms to shuffle data around on sectors before they run out of ideas. There's no getting around it. Most people don't even realize that their drive wont last more than 3 or so years when they buy it, and that the drive will have an ever decreasing amount of performance.

Not exactly sure why you're stating "just like every other single piece of equipment". I've had the same 10k raptor for 6 years now. I have a network drive that's on 24/7 that's been serving home media for almost 9. Hell, my mom's computer runs windows 98 and still works. Try running the same SSD for 10+ years and see how that works out for you.

Everything has a limited lifespan. I see more broken HDD in my store than SSD, then again not everyone has an SSD but stil, everything breaks.