Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - Flight Simulator moved to an SSD

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Flight Simulator moved to an SSD - Awesome Performance!

DVA7636
Senior Captain, L-1011-100
OLP

Joined on August 11 2009
50 State Club
Events Double Century Club
Burbank 250 Club
Quincentenary Club
Online Quintuple Century Club
Globetrotter
Black Pearl Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary

"Uses "Sparkly Eyes" Technique on ATC"
Channelview, TX USA

588 legs, 1,196.5 hours
572 legs, 1,164.8 hours online
586 legs, 1,192.9 hours ACARS
287 legs, 572.1 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 09:09 ET by Tracy Norris

I was in the local Fry's Electronics store a few days back to swap out my Matrox TripleHead2Go that died on me. The swap wasn't the problem, the issue was walking through the isles-upon-isles of the awesome computer stuff I told myself in advance that I wouldn't buy that day eek

ANYHOO... I 'accidentally' walked to the hard drive section and saw the 'new' Solid State Drives (SSDs) up on the wall and somehow, as if by magic, my wallet appeared! I already have a Western Digital 500gb single-platter drive so I didn't really *need* the space rolleyes

I ended up buying the Kingston SSDNow! 30gb drive ($79.95) for my boot partition and the Intel 80gb SSD ($199.95) for my games on the D: partition (Battlefield 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command & Conquer and most importantly, Flight Simulator 2004 with all the trimmings: ActiveSkies 6.5, Gobs of add-on scenery, a few payware aircraft and the entire DVA fleet library)

After purchasing Acronis Disk Director 11 (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/) to move my partitions I installed both 2.5" SSD SATA II drives and move my C: partition to it's own Kingston 30gb SSD and the D: partition to the Intel 80gb SSD.

Wow. That's the only word to describe it: Wow! eek

My boot times went from 1 minute 45 seconds to a mere 34 seconds and most of that is the time spent initializing the ton of USB devices I have hanging off the machine. Doing things in Windows XP Pro doesn't have any lag whatsoever, the programs simply 'pop' on the screen immediately. The dreaded Hourglasses are few and far between. This alone (to me) would justify the cost of the 30gb SSD.

Now to the fun part, my Games (errrrrr Simulations!) biggrin

Flight simulator took, because of all the extra terrain, libraries, aircraft, etc an average of 2 minutes, 11 seconds to get to the "Create a flight" screen with the old hard drive (properly defragmented). THAT now takes only 45 seconds. Once on the flight deck and changing airports used to take about 1 minute 15 seconds to load the scenery of the new location and all of the other stuff. This now happens in about 10-15 seconds depending on the complexity of the scenery. Looking at the 'hard drive' light flashing it's apparent that my processor is taking more time to construct the scenery than the load actually does. When flying around and changing views, there is no more 'tile building' as new scenery comes into view. It's simply 'there' as I pan the view around. When a new, graphics-intensive area comes into view (think LAX or JFK) there is no 'pause' as the buildings, etc are loaded. They just exist as if they've been there the whole time. In short, I'm awestruck! biggrin

In Conclusion:

Will these drives replace your monster 2tb drive already in your machine? Nope, the cost would be out of this world. Will they speed up your disk-intensive applications? Absolutely!!! Consider these drives an 'addition' to any drive you currently have. Simply move your most disk-intensive applications to them and leave everything else on your traditional hard drive. I averaged a 129mb/s transfer rate (sequential read) on my old hard drive and an incredible 239mb/s transfer rate from the SSDs with 0.3ms 'seek' times and get this: These are the "slow" SSD drives! The more expensive ones work even quicker! For this old fellow, I'm happy with what I have smile

Although the transfer rate is double, the actual performance increase is easily 4-6x since there is no 'seek' time for an SSD (no heads to move over the platters).

There are plenty of reviews for SSD drives but I wanted to tailor this one for my fellow pilots to illustrate what YOU can expect in your day-to-day flying here at DVA. In short (as if I know what the word means!) GET ONE NOW! You'll not regret it. I can honestly say this is THE single best purchase I've gotten for my PC in the last 6 years (and yes, that includes processor upgrades!).

My next upgrade is for my ancient HP ZV6000 laptop with an abysmal 29mb/s transfer rate! Going from that to 239mb/s should be an awesome ride!

Fly safe and hope everyone enjoys the info!

Tracy Norris

Senior Captain, L-1011-100

DVA6626
Captain, MD-11

Joined on November 07 2008
Six Century Club
Million Mile Club

""PROFILE CLIMB""
Las Vegas, NV

753 legs, 2,288.9 hours
28 legs, 55.2 hours online
747 legs, 2,255.7 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 10:03 ET by Michael Pare

Wow nice find, I didn't know they could be had for so cheap.

Michael Pare (DVA6626)

DVA3355
Senior Captain, B777-200

Joined on July 19 2006
Online Century Club
Flying Colonel
Everett 1500 Club
Four Million Mile Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary

"guiding you home..."
Denver, CO USA

1,959 legs, 8,711.6 hours
181 legs, 715.0 hours online
1,891 legs, 8,382.8 hours ACARS
18 legs, 67.1 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 11:05 ET by Daniel Hodnik

bet it's not this fast... that'll be my next purchase too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

Daniel Hodnik (DVA3355)

DVA7899
Captain, B737-800

Joined on October 29 2009
Online Double Century Club
Long Beach Century Club
Triple Century Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary

"PMDG or go home :)"
Springfield, MO USA

304 legs, 743.8 hours
283 legs, 682.2 hours online
303 legs, 740.0 hours ACARS
30 legs, 47.9 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 11:10 ET by Skylar Macminn

So I just looked at my FSX folder and realized it's 50GB. And that's not the only game I play. WoW is another 25GB.

So much for me ever getting SSD's at an affordable price

Skylar Macminn (DVA7899)

DVA7620
First Officer, B777-200
OLP

Joined on July 21 2009

"Dream"
NJ USA

66 legs, 105.0 hours
55 legs, 89.5 hours online
63 legs, 99.1 hours ACARS
16 legs, 31.4 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 19:07 ET by Neil Sarna

whats the difference with a ssd harddrive and a "normal harddrive"...just wondering sorry if i sound stupid.

Neil Sarna (DVA7620)

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 19:19 ET by Tracy Norris

Neil,

The SSD is short for Solid State Drive. Think of a huge USB thumb drive with no moving parts (and a LOT faster). A normal hard disk has platters that spin between 7200 and 10,000RPM and heads that move across those platters to get to the date you need. Since a SSD drive is just that, Solid State, there are NO moving parts. Think of it as a huge bank of RAM that retains information when the machine is powered down.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

Tracy Norris

Senior Captain, L-1011-100

DVA7620
First Officer, B777-200
OLP

Joined on July 21 2009

"Dream"
NJ USA

66 legs, 105.0 hours
55 legs, 89.5 hours online
63 legs, 99.1 hours ACARS
16 legs, 31.4 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 19:31 ET by Neil Sarna

oh wow thats amazing! that must really speed up just about everything ! ....got me hooked now. can i get one installed on a laptop???

Daniel Hodnik wrote:

bet it's not this fast... that'll be my next purchase too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

wow daniel this is insane!

Neil Sarna (DVA7620)

DVA043
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP

Joined on June 10 2001
Event Half Century Club
Online Double Century Club
50 State Club
DVA Twenty-Year Anniversary
Everett 1500 Club
Bi-Millennium Club
Four Million Mile Club

"Col. Panic"
Marietta, GA

2,307 legs, 9,292.6 hours
240 legs, 553.9 hours online
1,965 legs, 8,085.7 hours ACARS
75 legs, 196.3 hours event
2,343 legs, 9,427.5 hours total
91 legs dispatched, 66.4 hours

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 19:35 ET by Luke Kolin

Neil Sarna wrote:

oh wow thats amazing! that must really speed up just about everything ! ....got me hooked now. can i get one installed on a laptop???

Absolutely. I swapped out the 160GB drive in my MacBook for a 128GB SSD - it flies!

Cheers!

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

Posted onPost created on September 24 2010 20:03 ET by Michael Pare

The platter style HD is the slowest part of the computer, cant wait for prices to come down and capacity to go up.

Michael Pare (DVA6626)

DVA8158
Captain, B767-300
OLP

Joined on December 31 2009
Century Club
Online Century Club
50 State Club

"Eight hours bottle to throttle."
Newnan, GA USA

197 legs, 437.5 hours
161 legs, 329.8 hours online
196 legs, 435.9 hours ACARS
5 legs, 17.1 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 07:03 ET by Peter Bagrationoff

I bought an OCZ Vertex 2 100 GB when I built my new rig four months ago and while it wasn't cheap - it did dramatically decrease load times and overall performance in all applications.

Peter Bagrationoff (DVA8158)

DVA6824
Captain, B747-400
OLP

Joined on January 03 2009
50 State Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary
Globetrotter
Everett 250 Club
Black Pearl Club
Piranha Club
Quincentenary Club
Online Triple Century Club

Watlington, Norfolk GB

536 legs, 1,434.5 hours
315 legs, 538.9 hours online
525 legs, 1,402.4 hours ACARS
10 legs, 17.2 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 08:54 ET by Gary Morris

A couple of pointers I found out...

The best way to optimise the use of SSD's for FS is to

1. Do not exceed 50% of each drives capacity
2. If the files you have are going to exceed 50% capacity, RAID-0 two drives together, or just buy a bigger drive

I found that after 50% your load times start to fall...

Gary Morris (DVA6824)

DVA7666
Senior Captain, B747-400
OLP

Joined on August 18 2009
50 State Club
Online Seven Century Club
Two Million Mile Club
Globetrotter
Flying Colonel

"Food? Check. Ok, let's go."
Tyler, TX USA

1,500 legs, 5,694.3 hours
1,086 legs, 3,187.7 hours online
1,452 legs, 5,509.8 hours ACARS
77 legs, 201.9 hours event
3,500 legs, 11,636.4 hours total

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 10:27 ET by Jacob Miller

very helpful thread Tracy! thanks!

Jacob Miller (DVA7666)

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 10:28 ET by Skylar Macminn

Gary Morris wrote:

A couple of pointers I found out...

The best way to optimise the use of SSD's for FS is to

1. Do not exceed 50% of each drives capacity
2. If the files you have are going to exceed 50% capacity, RAID-0 two drives together, or just buy a bigger drive

I found that after 50% your load times start to fall...

How slow exactly did it get?

Skylar Macminn (DVA7899)

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 10:57 ET by Gary Morris

Not sure, I never got round to measuring it but it was noticeable... only when your asking it to load a lot at once though...

To be honest, if I had known this before i bought them, I might have just stayed with one. By RAID'ing them together yeah, your load times for windows etc. decrease but FS wise you dont really notice a difference unless your running a lot of payware/high end add-ons.

This was on a computer I built for someone... When it comes to adding them into mine, I think i'm going to go for a 32GB for windows and a 60GB for FS and keep them seperate.

Gary Morris (DVA6824)

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 11:00 ET by Skylar Macminn

I thought the same thing (two drives) but with the second drive needing to be so large for me (FS is ~50g give or take, WoW is another 25, and I play a few more games) it just isn't very practical. Rather expensive to do it that way. A 128gb SSD is cheaper that way, even if the performance isn't as nice.

Skylar Macminn (DVA7899)

Posted onPost created on September 25 2010 11:19 ET by Gary Morris

Yeah sounds like a good idea... I was looking at larger drives but my bank balance wont allow it smile

looks like a smaller one now and another one in a few weeks

Gary Morris (DVA6824)

Posted onPost created on May 31 2015 10:55 ET by Tracy Norris

Follow-up:

Since I wrote this in 2010, SSDs apparently rule the world now and everybody has one. Like anything else, SSD size has gone way up and the prices are way down - the price you pay for being a "first adopter" I guess wink

My rig has now been totally replaced but the little 30gb drive is still running strong in my new machine as drive "Y:" which holds nothing more than the windows swap/temporary files and gets wiped during each boot. Really speeds things up!

Likewise, the 80gb drive is still going strong and is used as my "C:" drive for Windows 7 OS use only. I try and keep the OS drive as de-cluttered as possible and install applications elsewhere).

My "D:" drive (where all my sims/games go) has been replaced with four SATA II 512gb WD SSD drives in RAID (striped) configuration. Awesome doesn't describe the load times, Instantaneous would be a better description. Cheap? Nope, but a lot cheaper than it USED to be!

Drives E: and beyond are four traditional 3tb SATA II drives in RAID for things such as CAD, programming, etc where space is the larger issue than load times.

Anyhoo, thought I'd give a follow-up review on the long-term reliability of the drives. In short, they are still going strong and will probably last through a few more computer upgrades even though they are "tiny" compared to today's capacities.

Fly safe!
Tracy

Tracy Norris

Senior Captain, L-1011-100

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