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Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Solid State Drives?

DVA9677
Captain, B737-800
OLP

Joined on April 11 2011
50 State Club
Online Double Century Club
Quincentenary Club

"American 1482, your APU is leaking baggage."
Kissimmee, FL USA

543 legs, 735.9 hours
247 legs, 299.2 hours online
538 legs, 725.6 hours ACARS
2 legs, 2.8 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 04 2011 15:36 ET by John Anderson

Thinking about upgrading to a 32gb Solid State Drive with a few more improvements for better NGX performance.

Does anyone have SSD experience? Would it be worth the $ ?

John Anderson (DVA9677)

DVA9638
Captain, B777-200
OLP

Joined on March 31 2011
50 State Club
Century Club

"Now... Where did I leave my keys?"
Roy, UT USA

163 legs, 449.4 hours
11 legs, 14.6 hours online
163 legs, 449.4 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on September 04 2011 16:14 ET by Chris Wetzel

Yes it would but you will wanna get a bigger drive.. Ive read the smaller ones are crap for pretty much and maker... I have a Crucial 128.. works greeat

Chris Wetzel (DVA9638)

Posted onPost created on September 04 2011 18:04 ET by John Anderson

Thanks, Chris.
My thought was to have nothing on it but FSX / FS9. That's why I was thinking small . . . Plus the price.

Anyone have experience with a small one (that I could afford wink

)
Is what Chris has read true?

John Anderson (DVA9677)

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

2,314 legs, 9,320.7 hours
240 legs, 553.9 hours online
1,972 legs, 8,113.8 hours ACARS
75 legs, 196.3 hours event
2,350 legs, 9,455.6 hours total
91 legs dispatched, 66.4 hours
CURRENTLY LOGGED IN

Posted onPost created on September 04 2011 18:42 ET by Luke Kolin

You'll find a 32GB to be too small rather quickly. I got a 240GB Vertex 2 which was in retrospect a little too big - 128GB or 160GB is the sweet spot I think.

Cheers!

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

Posted onPost created on September 04 2011 19:17 ET by John Anderson

I see now.
FSX with iFly, LDS, PMDG and all the other add ons, is alone 32.8gb then FS9 is another 16.8.

Guess I could have answered my own question along time ago.

John Anderson (DVA9677)

Posted onPost created on September 05 2011 11:15 ET by Chris Wetzel

No worries J... sometimes a different perspective is all you need.. smile

Posted onPost created on September 05 2011 14:44 ET by John Anderson

So, keeping in mind that I've always been a bit behind the power curve when it comes to my computer ('cause I'm trying to stay AHEAD of the financial curve.), I've decided to upgrade from a Biostar a780L with 2gb of ram to:

MSI 890GXM-G65 with 4gb DDR3 dual channel RAM at 1333mhz (stepping up from 2gb DDR2 dual running at ~ 667mhz)
and
an SSD, specifically for running FSX and FS9.

I'll be keeping my 500gb HDD for data and my GeForce 210 Graphics card with 1gb on board memory.

Now, the question is . . . with Windows XP, 32bit? 64bit? I don't know enough to know if I can go 64 or if there would be an advantage.

John Anderson (DVA9677)

Posted onPost created on September 05 2011 15:11 ET by Chris Wetzel

I dont have alot of information for you on all that but I can tell you what I run...
I7 870 Win7 64
ASUS P7p55D-elx Mobo
500G HDD
128 SSD
8GB 1600 mhz DDR3 RAM
GeForce GTX 580 GPU

Ive ran FSX and FS9 on both Drives... I think FS9 runs better on the SSD and FSX on the HDD. FS9 on the SSD because it takes up far less space even with all the addons. Purely you own personal choice... I like mine that way.

Obviously FS9 runs like a champ with 0 hiccups.. as far as FSX, Im still not convinced what I run can handle it pefectly... It runs good but I know it can be a ton better, but that is why I may upgrade my CPU in the future... (hearing great things about the 2600 chipset)

Just a little food for thought

Chris Wetzel (DVA9638)

Posted onPost created on September 07 2011 17:54 ET by John Anderson

So I went cheap, but . . .
I replaced my DDR2 MOBO with a Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H
I'm going to transplant my Athlon II processor to this board with 4gb of DDR3 running at 1600mhz (stepping up from 2gb DDR2 at 667mhz)

I expect to be able to finally fly my NGX ! ! !

John Anderson (DVA9677)

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 07 2011 22:08 ET by Peter Bagrationoff

I have a 100GB OCZ Vertex II and the only thing I have installed on it besides Windows 7 is FSX. I have about 50 gigs of space left over. You don't want to fill up a SSD competely though because it negatively affects the drive's ability to use the TRIM feature. TRIM allows the drive to determine which blocks of data are no longer being used and allows them to be written to. You don't have to defrag the SSD with TRIM support. Honestly the performance of the SSD in FSX is only slightly better than a regular SATA drive but for all your other apps that need fast read/write performance it really does improve things.

Peter Bagrationoff (DVA8158)

AFV348
Captain, B747-400

Joined on April 13 2006
International Tourist
Diplomatic Mission
50 State Club
Online Two Fifty Club
Quinticentenary Club

"fly a heavy or dont fly at all"
Northeastern United States

536 legs, 1,889.5 hours
443 legs, 1,401.1 hours online
515 legs, 1,789.3 hours ACARS
20 legs, 68.7 hours event
842 legs, 2,782.9 hours total

Posted onPost created on September 08 2011 01:04 ET by Michael Schlabowske

here was my difference from going from a regular Raptor HDD to a 120 OCZ Vertex II, using almost identical flights and conditions. all sliders were on max for these benchmarks as I knew that the HDD was on its way. I would say that there was HUGE jump in fps. Just for kicks I installed fsx and all my addons back on my Raptor and was right back to 10-15 fps with max settings

Without:
http://www.afva.net/pirep.do?id=0x7282
With:
http://www.afva.net/pirep.do?id=0x7749

Posted onPost created on September 08 2011 06:13 ET by John Anderson

That's a MAJOR frame rate jump, Michael.
I Checked out NGX last night after the install and even without putting the SSD in yet, the performance was vast.
FS9 was where I saw the most though. I was a bit optomistic and set the FPS slider to 60. I was jumping from 45 to 60.
I've locked it around 35 now. Stable but good. Can't wait to get that SSD in now . . .

How long have you had that OCZ, Peter? I've read some bad reviews, but saw that theirs is the most economical. That's the main reason it's not in my system yet . . . I think I need more research.

John Anderson (DVA9677)

DVA8777
Captain, B777-200
OLP

Joined on June 17 2010
Online Century Club
50 State Club
Triple Century Club

"777-200LR..."
Toronto, ON Canada

300 legs, 884.6 hours
108 legs, 232.3 hours online
298 legs, 874.7 hours ACARS
2 legs, 4.8 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 08 2011 08:09 ET by Moiz Shakeel

Hmm, this thread is pretty interesting, I thought that an SSD would only increase load times and texture loading but not FPS. Guess the stats don't lie, I might just start looking into an SSD, plus the faster boot times and such are always handy wink

Posted onPost created on September 08 2011 13:58 ET by John Anderson

It actually kinda makes sense when you think about it, Moiz.
With the processor not having to wait as long to get data from the drive, it frees up some resources for the graphics.

John Anderson (DVA9677)

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