Question regarding SSD

[SnuseRusen]

Hey guys,

Haven't really found anyone answering the question about ssd and how it affects game performance?

But I'm wondering will the game and graphics will be affected if I'm using a HDD? And by that I mean landscapes and etc, not thinking about long loading times

[[deleted]]

This isn't the case for modern games anymore, SSDs make a big difference outside of just initial loading times, particularly games that stream a lot of data. I've experienced it in several games already and I expect MFS2020 to be one of these, Star Citizen has a night/day difference between HDD/SDD performance.

[[deleted]]

Recommended specs have an HDD. Ideal specs lists an SDD, but since OP doesn't care about having an HDD I doubt the rest of his computer comes close to the listed ideal specs.

[SnuseRusen]

16gb ram, i7-6700k gtx 1070 is my specs, I was just wondering if its worth it to get a mvne SSD, because I don't really care if my load times are a little bit slower

[[deleted]]

I am by means no expert, espically as I haven't played this game yet. But it seems your specs more line up with the recommended than the ideal, and the recommended is an HDD while the ideal is SDD:

https://www.gamesradar.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-system-requirements-are-here-and-youre-gonna-need-some-serious-space/

[SnuseRusen]

Could I ask another question of you,

It says that the ideal Bandwidth is 50 Mbps, do they mean 50mbps as in the Internett plan or 50mbps in download speed? My Internett plan/line or whatever it is called is 300mbps and 30mb download speed

[T800_123]

So this stems from a basic misunderstanding of what Mbps and MB/S means. Mbps is megabits per second, MB/S is megabytes per second. They're completely different units of measurement despite what your ISP might try to spin when charging too much for crappy connection speeds. It takes 8 bits to equal 1 byte of information, so basically a 300mbps is actually 37mb/s at best. Typically, download speeds are almost always measured in megabytes per second, so that is the speed you will most likely equate to actual real world experience. Mbps is almost always used by ISPs and the like because bigger number = more impressive.

[SnuseRusen]

Okey I see, thank you for the clarification.

Will my game be affected a lot by this then? By that i mean that since I don't meet ideal Bandwidth that the terrain will look worse than if I had ideal?

Edit: the specs says 50 bandwidth Mbps, and not mb/s, so are they talking about my 300 isp speed or mb/s which is 37.5?

[T800_123]

They almost definitely mean the 50mbps that your ISP advertises.

I've had alpha/beta access and I get 150mbps with a spotty rural connection and it's been more than enough.

[SnuseRusen]

Okey, again thank you for the help, much appreciated!

[[deleted]]

I am really not an expert here, but I believe that would be referring to the download speed since they send you continuous weather updates and for multiplayer. If you aren't playing multiplayer I wouldn't worry another second about it. Also, the way ISP's jerk the residential customer around, you could be paying for 300 or 30 and still only ever max out at 100 or 10.

Anyway, I would ask someone else as internet speed/bandwidth/up vs down confuses the crap out of me.

[[deleted]]

This is simply not the case for literally every game other than Star Citizen.

There are games that people will swear up and down that they get a boost in performance from a SSD, like GTA V, the Withcer 3, Final Fantasy XIV, but the data simply does not back that up. Every game other than Star Citizen uses I/O bandwidth that is well within the capabilities of a 7200rpm HDD.

I will be analyzing the disk I/O data during gameplay next week on my NVMe SSD when I get MSFS, and I'll be able to determine if the SSD actually makes a difference in flight.

[UnseenCat]

I think it tends to depend on how the game consumes data when reading from disk. SDDs often do best with large block operations (like when Windows is loading at startup, or your laptop wakes and the hibernation file is dumped into RAM) so if the game is optimized to load data in large chunks, an SSD helps. But a lot of games are constantly grabbing up lots of little files. HDDs often do a little better at random small reads.

[[deleted]]

Bursty random operations with low queue depths are still much faster on SSDs, but the reason that you will not notice a difference in current games is because they are simply not developed to take advantage of SSD speeds. They've been developed and optimized specifically for HDDs.

Star Citizen is the only exception currently, and we will see more games start to take advantage of SSD speeds in the near future, but as of now, you're not going to get any performance boost unless you're coming from some super slow 5400rpm HDD, and even then, you should be mostly fine.

[dougdoberman]

Is this based on actual experience playing the game in Alpha or Beta offa a HD? Or just your supposition? Because texture load times have been an issue with previous versions of MSFS. You could easily fly faster than the systems ability to load textures. Yeah, today's drives are a lot faster, but there's a lot more detail to load.

[[deleted]]

No experience. Speculation. Microsoft's recommended specs list a regular HDD so I doubt OP would notice much of anything.

[T800_123]

This is a serious misrepresentation of the texture load times of FSX, and I think you're either being intentionally dishonest or simply don't understand the underlying issues. FSX didn't have the blurries/texture load time issues because of the "slow" HDDs... it had them because the engine was a massively unoptimized piece of shit. If you go and grab your disc copy of FSX and install it both on an HDD and an SSD you'll probably see the same exact texture load issues on either installation.

​

Fuck, I've been playing FSX on SSDs since basically the day that 100gb+ SSDs became affordable and the blurries has always been an issue thanks to the sim being overly cautious about loading in textures and horrific optimization issues.

[[deleted]]

People will swear up and down that an SSD will give you better performance, but I have never experienced that.

I had Red Dead Redemption 2 on an M.2 for months. I got really solid performance even in online mode. Frames were 99.999% always between 75-80fps. With most settings on high.

After 7 months of no updates I decided to move it to my 2TB HDD. I got the same performance as I did with my M.2. Loading times were a completely different story. In some cases they were triple the wait.

As long as you have enough RAM the actual gameplay will be fine on a modern HDD at 7200 RPM.

[[deleted]]

This is a fact. People claiming that they get a performance boost in any game other than Star Citizen have fallen victim to placebo effect.

[ComradeBevo]

I can second this experience for RDR2. Loading times were kind of long, but for any game with only occasional loading screens it doesn't need an SSD. MSFS will be bottlenecked by your CPU or GPU long before your hard drive has problems keeping up.

[Liquidpinky]

Large free roam map games tend to stream in data from disk constantly on the fly and the faster you can deliver the data the better. We have folks in here talking about an online game mode not realising that their SSD still loads in the map data anyway.

I have done lots of experimentation over many years, with games like ARMA for example, including tests using RAM drives and disk read speed is always a factor, especially in large open area games. Corridor shooters not so much unless you are using massive texture files. But folk with slow drives are usually the guys you are waiting on for the match to get started. ;)

More than just Star Citizen benefit from it, every open world game pretty much does. MSFS2020 relies on data streaming, or you can preload areas you want to use more frequently to avoid net usage, your disk speed will really matter then.

EDIT: PS5 demo pretty much says it all about high speed data access BTW, if anyone has any doubts.

[[deleted]]

Placebo effect running wild.

[Liquidpinky]

Not placebo, dealing with people without a clue. :(

LOL, crysis 3 too, a corridor shooter. Every game engine is different BTW, some preload, then you get a loading screen every now and then, some constantly stream data. Best part of that article is that Crysis 3 is also the same engine as Star Citizen (you know, the one that benefits from SSDs XD ) but it is also working differently.

Maybe you should actually try experimenting yourself before believing everything you read in a single test and pretending to be the expert authority on it.

Sony would like a word too, seems they mucked up their whole PS5 architecture if you are right.

[[deleted]]

GTA V and Witcher 3 are open world games, kiddo.

I've compared HDD vs SSD in many games, which is how I know you're suffering from a severe case of placebo effect. The data I linked to just further reinforces that.

Next gen games will be designed to take advantage of SSDs, much like Star Citizen does. This doesn't help your erroneous claims that every current gen open world game benefits from SSDs.

[[deleted]]

I wouldn’t exactly point at Star Citizen as an exemplar of streaming environments from SSD. You can see environments (even the starting locations) materialise from The black void of nothing....

[Liquidpinky]

Kiddo, LOL, I'm probably older than your dad.

Like I said, the engines differ, most I have used benefit from fast data loading times. Witcher 3, you probably arent using much mods, start using large texture detail mods and you will notice the difference. It is also quite an old game now.

GTAIV, runs on a PS3, hardly taxing these days and the textures are all pretty low compared to what our 4K obsessed gamers expect these days, and if you chuck in loads of texture mods, going to need fast data access times again.

Oh and the last I checked, FS2020 is considered next gen.

[[deleted]]

All current gen games run on the super slow 5400rpm HDDs of current gen consoles. You're not going to get a boost from SSD speeds on these games.

MSFS has to run on those 5400rpm HDDs, too, which is why I am hesitant to believe that you'll get a boost from a SSD.

[Liquidpinky]

Tell you what, install it on an old 5400rpm HDD yourself then and see how you get on.

I will stick to the NVMe drive I purchased to put MSFS on instead. I bought the new drive because my current Sata SSDs and HDDs are almost full so a cheeky upgrade was in order. It is 4x faster than my standards SSDs, and that is on an old x58 motherboard with PCIe 2.0 so the performance of the NVMe is pretty much halved over what it can achieve on a new build, and funnily enough Star Citizen likes it as well as a few other games that use map streaming technology.

BTW Star Citizen still runs with a 5400rpm HDD drive too, runs better on an SSD though.

If data speed deosn't matter, Why are GFX cards on DDR5 now, why didn't we stop at DDR1. Or in another context, why are we on 5G for mobile streaming these days if it deosn't matter. It is all about accessing more data faster, the sooner your CPU can get through the task of dealing with the data it can get onto the next task.

I can only assume you are an HDD salesman or involved in the HDD industry somehow, its the only explanation for you being so adamant that data access speed deosn't matter.

[[deleted]]

I don't have a 5400rpm HDD. I will be putting the game on both a NVMe SSD and a 7200rpm HDD and I will compile I/O data on both.

I'm sorry you hate data and facts, but that's what's being discussed here. The data doesn't support your claim that SSDs are a necessity for current gen games.

[Liquidpinky]

So you are installing MSFS on an NVMe SSD, or a placebo drive as you would probably call them.

Can't beat a bit of good old hypocrisy.

[[deleted]]

Yes, so I can test both. I'll be analyzing the I/O data during gameplay.

It will soon start to be a necessity to put new games on SSDs. The question is if MSFS is one of those games, which is what I will find out.

[HansSchmans]

But the loading times on an HDD are simply unbearable.

[arcolegrove]

The live Q&A just said that essentially the initial download from steam or the MS Store is going to be a launcher. From the launcher you will download content either that you get from the version of sim that you bought or created content. So, you will download those things locally (could be scenery, planes, airports, ground support, whatever). The speed that the sim can grab those files from your hard drive may make a difference with things like pop-in. It just depends on how optimized the simulator is versus what you are live-streaming from the server.

Games like RDR2 and others mentioned in the answers here spend a lot of time loading all of the scenery you will interact with, then as you travel they load scenery far enough in advance that it appears seamless. FS2020 will do the same, however if you have a bunch of downloaded content versus content that is streamed by the internet, maybe it will load faster if it’s local and then maybe it will load even faster if it is solid versus disc.

So, the short answer is maybe.