Why not? Moving from an optical to a hard drive can practically double your FPS. If you move your .iso's to the SSD they should see an increase in speeds... especially for loading levels and things and really for anything where you need to access data.

So yes =p even though it's more helpful for other thigns getting a SSD wil certainly benefit you for PCSX2.

(11-04-2010 03:12 AM)Hungry Man Wrote:  Why not? Moving from an optical to a hard drive can practically double your FPS.

That's only because optical drives are extremely slow compared to hard drives. 1x = 1,350 KB/s. Assuming you get a consistent 8x, that's just 10,800 KB/s. Even the slowest sequential read speed on modern 5400 RPM drives is faster than that.

(11-04-2010 03:12 AM)Hungry Man Wrote:  If you move your .iso's to the SSD they should see an increase in speeds... especially for loading levels and things and really for anything where you need to access data.

So yes =p even though it's more helpful for other thigns getting a SSD wil certainly benefit you for PCSX2.

Trust me, it doesn't really. PCSX2 emulation is horribly bottlenecked by either CPU or GPU that moving your PS2 ISO's to SSD wouldn't make much difference. I've got a G.SKILL Phoenix Pro 120 GB (SF-1222) and Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB (5900 RPM) installed on my computer and I get the same FPS regardless of whether the ISO is on the SSD or the HDD.

The SSD does help with boot times, application launching and load level times in games. Resuming from standby is also instantaneous with an SSD.

My analogy to the optical/HDD was a pretty exaggerated one =p I agree that if you're looking for increasing FPS that getting a SSD really shouldn't be the first thing you upgrade. I do think it's worth noting that load times should be faster and getting a SSD is one of the best "all around" upgrades someone can get (although of course if your whole system is crap it won't be, but I'm talking for an average user.)

I just think that he'd benefit greatly from it if he's looking for an upgrade =p

(11-04-2010 04:47 AM)Hungry Man Wrote:  getting a SSD is one of the best "all around" upgrades someone can get (although of course if your whole system is crap it won't be, but I'm talking for an average user.)

Actually, it still is. Assuming you don't do CPU and graphics intensive stuff on the PC, switching to an SSD is one upgrade that can make quite an impact. Your average user won't really care about FPS increases or 3DMark scores but moving to an SSD helps the "user experience". Boot times are decreased, applications launch instantaneously, background virus scans don't slow things down to a crawl - those are things your average user will notice and an SSD delivers that even if you're on a lowly Atom netbook/nettop. In fact, SSD's seem to have a more noticeable effect on low-end hardware than if you're already running a high-end rig (e.g. quad-core, oodles of RAM, 7200/10,000 RPM drive).

As for load times, I've never actually noticed any load times in PCSX2 when playing from ISO on the HDD (which is as it should be). If you can notice load times with an ISO (most HDDs now can deliver 50 MB/s minimum sequential read), can you imagine how much worse it would be on actual PS2 hardware (4x DVD, 5,400 KB/s)? Every second delay in PCSX2 would be equivalent to 10 seconds on the PS2 at best...

I'm well aware of the benefits of an SSD. I'm using one, aren't I? However, while it does help with the overall user experience (albeit that, too, depends on your usage patterns), it won't magically give you an extra 5 FPS in PCSX2, nor is it particularly useful for ISO storage.

P.S.
I'm curious, have you actually used SSD's? You seem to be pushing them quite a bit...

I'd think that high end rigs with faster RAM wouldn't notice it because of superfetch and other such things but I see what you're saying.

I didn't say it would give you 5FPS for PCSX2 =p but I don't see how it wouldn't cause the iso to load faster or for you to access it?

Nope, don't have an SSD and I'm not pushing anything. I just think that as an upgrade it's one of the better ones. HDDs are seriously gimped technology and drivers are still bein gsold at 5,400 rpm just as they were years ago. I just think that a lot of people don't know that buying a SSD is a really good upgrade.

You say HDDs are gimped technology yet I remember reading somewhere that even the latest Intel SSDs are only good for 3TB worth of write operations before the peformance degrades to below that of a magnetic drive. Assuming that Windows still doesn't disable things like superfetch and automatic defragmenting automatically when using an SSD, the average non-technical user might hit this limit within a couple of years - certainly before the MTTF of a magnetic drive.

The only thing I'd consider getting an SSD for currently is RAW HD video editing, but they're of limited use for this because I'd need a minimum of 256GB and this would set me back up to £500 assuming I wanted one with SATA-III support. For that price I could easily afford a Hardware RAID unit with its own CPU and buffer and a couple of 300GB 10K RPM drives to boot.

Superfetch is recommended to be disabled by some people =p I wouldn't bother. The larger your SSD the longer it will last. Their lifetimes actually average around the same time as regular HDD's ~~ 5 years, though larger ones with newer technology can last longer and of course older ones will not.

Most people get a small SSD (around 30GB usually) where they boot from and keep their operating system. There's space leftover for certain files like games or whatever you want.

I wouldn't suggest using JUST a solid state drive for most people, but buying a small one for your operating system is a nice upgrade... and wouuldn't be super expensive.

In fact newer SSDs are using cheaper parts, the only reason they might last longer is because of improved wear leveling algorithms. The previous generation Intel SSDs and all SLC ones used at least 10K writes per EC flash whereas modern ones from Intel and OCZ (or anything that uses the Sandforce controller) can only withstand 5K writes per EC.

Call me anal but having my OS on a drive smaller than 256GB would hamper my productivity. I'm used to treating my user area like a big truck that I can just dump something on, if you'll pardon the reference

That's why the next time I upgrade my storage I'm just going for some HDDs with single platters and large caches in a RAID 0 for my boot volume. I'm keeping my archive storage as a RAID 5, despite the horrid random write speeds. I can't live without the space to make a RAID 10 and I value my data too much for a straight stripe.

Well then perhaps a RAID 0 of HDD/SSD hybrids? They tend to have large caches.

Personally for my computer uses I certainly don't need my OS to be on a large drive =p

Of course to each their own I only suggest.

Yeah, I appreciate your opinion. I was looking into getting an SSD a few months ago but I had to spend the money on something else and a couple of friends have had bad experiences since with premature wear (one friend of mine who produces music wore out a RAID 0 of 2 SSDs in just over a year).

I'm also concerned about secure deletion on SSDs. I've read that they support the ATA Secure Erase command but I'm not sure how it works exactly and how much wear it causes to securely wipe a drive.