How many of you use your SSD for games?

magick · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:35

And how do you have your SSD setup, like say SSD as boot drive and a few games installed or do you have a dedicated drive for games?

How do you go about installing steam games on a OS drive with such limited space or do you install steam into your os drive and only keep a few games loaded at a time?

StonedPenguin · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:39

I have an SSD as a OS (W7 x64) drive. With games on it, Only a couple of games though (Dirt 3, MW2, BFBC2) with all windows updates and a few lightweight programs installed I have about 30GB free. I have installed 90% of applications/games on a WD 2TB drive but have the most played games on the SSD.
My direct download folder for everything is on the SATA drive, not the SSD. Dont have steam sorry
Will this affect the life of the SSD do you think?

Madals · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:41

Personally, I have found games to not be much better on a SSD over a decent HDD.

Its because unlike an OS, games tend to do in-frequent large reads off of the disk rather than frequent small reads (a map is only loaded once per game) and therefore the difference in speed for the SSD isn't as noticeable.

psychas · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:41

mainly boot drive and few programs , keep games on 1tb cavair black dont really need loads games fast enough and less hassle when reformatting. would keep few games on ssd but to much hassle splitting steam folder up some how

NqR · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:46

Madals said:
Personally, I have found games to not be much better on a SSD over a decent HDD.

Its because unlike an OS, games tend to do in-frequent large reads off of the disk rather than frequent small reads (a map is only loaded once per game) and therefore the difference in speed for the SSD isn't as noticeable.

That's what i noticed too. Basically it's not worth it.
Better buy a small ssd just for the OS and put games on a HDD

panyan · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:50

i keep my game on the ssd, i only play one game at a time, when i get bored i uninstall it and install a new one

EDIT: btw, i will play the same game for a few months until i get bored

Madals · 12 Jun 2011 at 16:50

I unfortunately can't remember where I read it, but I seem to remember something about most SSD being about equal in speed for large reads such as games (might be mistaken).

|Thomas| · 12 Jun 2011 at 17:15

The only game I've got on my ssd is starcraft 2, which isn't really much better than a hard drive, but I can't be bothered to move it

.

I've experimented with symbolic links for various steam games and haven't found any which are significantly faster running on the ssd. I think having a hard drive dedicated to running the game, with the ssd managing the os, is pretty damn fast in itself.

AshenShugar1873 · 12 Jun 2011 at 22:27

60gb ssd for win7 and black ops. Map load times faster than friend with identical setup except 1tb hdd, but not so much he misses start of round. Another friend with older hardware is always late in. I just slaved old 1tb and run the steam exe from there for old games, have new copy of steam on ssd for black ops.

Creelers · 12 Jun 2011 at 22:28

I'd like to get ArmA II on a SSD with Windows, but a drive big enough for that is a bit expensive.

RJC · 12 Jun 2011 at 22:31

I only have the operating system and drivers and the odd program, I have my games on the normal HDD.

spleenharvester · 12 Jun 2011 at 22:49

AshenShugar1873 said:
60gb ssd for win7 and black ops. Map load times faster than friend with identical setup except 1tb hdd, but not so much he misses start of round. Another friend with older hardware is always late in. I just slaved old 1tb and run the steam exe from there for old games, have new copy of steam on ssd for black ops.

Now there's an idea, how's it let you install though? Surely regkeys clash?

Confused Stu · 12 Jun 2011 at 22:50

I've got some of my games on a second SSD (128GB C300 for OS, 128GB V100+ for games) but the only game there is a noticable difference in loading times so far is GTAIV, and even then it's only slight.

I ended up with a second SSD due to an RMA on a broken X25-M taking over 2 months (not fron OcUK!), by which time I'd bought a replacement SSD anyway, but I definitely would say it's not worth buying one just to run your games off it unless there's a particular game that is known to benefit from it that you play a lot. In general, get a fast HDD and stick your games on that.

Confused Stu · 12 Jun 2011 at 22:54

spleenharvester said:
Now there's an idea, how's it let you install though? Surely regkeys clash?

I found it easiest to use Steam Mover to set Junction Points in my Steamapps directory, so I am able to move individual games onto the SSD while leaving the majority of them on the HDD. So far as Steam is concerned the game folder is in the right place (e.g. D:/Games/Steam/Steamapps) but the folder itself is actually located on the SSD (E:/Games/ ).

http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

JasonM · 12 Jun 2011 at 23:12

If you run an SSD and want to improve performance of files on your HDD, then read my post below.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18262214

TheGedi · 12 Jun 2011 at 23:15

Only reason to put a game on a SSD would be ProMod if you are obsessed with getting scope every time. Can't think of many others.

Zarf · 12 Jun 2011 at 23:34

Got 160gb of raid 0 ssds which is plenty for OS, Apps and everything I'm currently playing.

BoxOfTrixx · 13 Jun 2011 at 00:07

ArmA 2 benefits from ssd

Before I got an SSD, I had quite a lot of stuttering and slow texture loading (resulting in missing textures like totally white faces or buildings and such, then stuttering and finally textures getting rendered in front of my eyesI. I got an Intel X-25M G2 160GB SSD for windows 7, ArmA 2. Now there's a lot less stuttering, texture pop up has almost disappeared, only in some rare cases does it happen and launching any program installed on SSD is way faster than it was on my Samsung F3. SSD drive is most likely the best upgrade you can get for your computer.

Philtor · 13 Jun 2011 at 08:29

I use my SSD as a boot drive and also for FSX. I have a normal HDD installed for Music, Pics and Videos etc.

AshenShugar1873 · 13 Jun 2011 at 09:36

spleenharvester said:
Now there's an idea, how's it let you install though? Surely regkeys clash?

Doesn't seem to be a problem, I've since installed Operation Red River and it runs fine no problems. Only thing you need to do is take files from the Steam folder that are shared, e.g. half-life files, and copy them to your SSD, same with save game files which need to be copied over to your user profile.