im thinking of buying a momentus xt 750gb from scan for gaming the price is 102 quid which doesn't seem too bad. i have LOADS of games already on a 1tb drive but loads can be a little slow would this improve the speeds of games?
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im thinking of buying a momentus xt 750gb from scan for gaming the price is 102 quid which doesn't seem too bad. i have LOADS of games already on a 1tb drive but loads can be a little slow would this improve the speeds of games?
What 1TB drive do you have?
If you want fast loading of games, then you need to get yourself an SSD, you can get an 125GB SSD for £50 from Scan or an 250GB for £100+
Yep, modern games are just too big so the few gig of flash on a hybrid isn't going to help.
You want an SSD, failing that a performance 3.5in drive not one of the "green" ones.
okay thx for the info my mobo is z68 and supports that ssd caching thing. So, if I was to get two 60 gb ssd's and use one for my boot drive and one for my game drive could i enable the caching thing for both and would the speed gains be worth it? I have alot of games and really dont want to compromise on space if it can be helped and dont want to spend a ton on ssds so would it be a viable option?
One 60GB SSD isn't going to store a lot of games, you likely get 3 or 4 or less. What games is it that you play?
I would just get one SSD at 120GB and expand when you need more room and can afford an other one, if it becomes full, you can move games to and from your old drive to it. For example, I have two Steam/Origin installations, one on the SSD and one on my 1TB Mech drive. If I feel an game will work really well with the SSD, then I just copy and paste it to the SSD drive then delete it afterwards am done playing in X amount of time.
SSD's have a read time of 0.1 seconds etc, so that means logging into Windows is pretty much instant after the boot process is finished. Loading games is very fast, for example, if it took you one minute to load up a game, the SSD could half that time.
Just an example how fast SSD's are... on my Windows 7 installation on my old mech drive, it takes about 4 or 5 minutes even for the desktop to become fully responsive to my commands, takes just under 2 minutes from Off > BIOS > Windows then an other 2 - 4 minutes for the desktop to fully load up and everything to respond without any lag.
Starting Windows from my SSD takes just under 2 minutes from Off > BIOS > Windows, but once you see the desktop, it's loaded and ready. I don't need to stare at the screen for another 2 or 4 minutes for it to respond to my controls.
I normally load first in a game while everyone else is still loading up in L4D2 or BFBC2 but this is becoming rare these days since pretty much everyone has got an SSD for gaming.
i have loads of games too many to list; around 300gigs worth. intel have this thing called srt where you get a normal hdd and a seperate ssd(up to 60gb) and the ssd supercharges the hdd. im thinking of trying that out buying two 60 gig ssds(can anyone recommend reliable and fairly quick ssds) and trying out the srt thing
You need a bigger ssd try 180gb or 250gb and install windows on it and cache the rest on to your storage drive, best drives to go for are the western digital caviar black they got better performance and a longer warranty.
i got a ssd, corsair force 3, 2 1 tb drives one a caviar black for the games, and the other a samsung spinpoint f3 1 tb sata 3 for movies.
i never tried irst but felt that due to the reponsivness of the primary drive which is a ssd didnt need to do that.
Am rapidly losing space now so looking at a 2 tb hard drive western digital caviar black ticks all the box for me
The momentus XT has 8GB of SSD, so only 8GB of your most commonly used data will be stored on this. Usually these are recommended for laptops for non-gaming use, where only a few programs are regually used. 1 game will more than fill the 8GB of space, so you will only see a speed increase for this 1 (your most commonly played) game.Quote:
Originally Posted by erudito87
The Intel SRT works in a similar way to the momentus XT, but with a larger SSD cache.Quote:
Originally Posted by erudito87
At current prices an SSD isnt really a cost-effective solution for a game drive, as you'll probably need a 256GB or 512GB drive, which will set you back £150-£300.
Your best bet IMO is to use RAID 0. Get another 1TB HDD (preferably exactly the same as your current HDD), run them in RAID 0 and you will get v.close to double the read/write speeds that you currently have. You will also have a full 2TB of space to play with.
This will give you close-to-SSD speeds, for all 2TB of data, not just the 8GB or 60GB SSD cached in the momentus XT or Intel STR. Plus another 1TB drive will cost you around £50-60, so is by far the cheapest option.
If you still want an SSD, get a 60/120GB and use it as your boot drive (i.e. install windows & your core programs on it), and use the 2x1TB drives, in RAID0 for your games and media files.
This is the setup that most gamers (in my experience) use, and would recommend.