SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V
Table of contents
- 1. A Gamer's Guide To SSD Performance
- 2. Test Setup
- 3. Understanding Storage Performance
- 4. Is A Trace-Based Analysis Accurate?
- 5. Launching Crysis 2
- 6. Loading Levels In Crysis 2
- 7. Gameplay In Crysis 2
- 8. Launching World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- 9. Loading A Realm In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- 10. Gameplay In World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm
- 11. Launching Sid Meier's Civilization V
- 12. Loading Levels In Sid Meier's Civilization V
- 13. Gameplay In Sid Meier's Civilization V
- 14. How Does Storage Performance Affect Gaming?
There are a ton of terms used to quantify storage performance. If you're a gamer, you have to be wondering how such dry terminology can apply to having fun. Rather than telling you, we're going to dissect three popular titles to show you instead.
SSDs cost a lot more than hard drives; that much is well-established fact. Depending on the drives you're comparing, the difference in price per gigabyte can be as much as 30x.
So why on earth would anyone want to buy a solid-state drive, then? Shave down Windows' boot time? Fire up applications faster? Accelerate file transfers? Sure, on all accounts. But if you're a gamer, first and foremost, you want to spend your money on the components that'll give you the best possible performance. And if that means giving up CPU or graphics budget to score an SSD, you want to know if the trade-off is worth it, right?
| Storage Type | Magnetic | Solid-State |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | Seagate | OCZ |
| Model | Barracuda | Agility 3 |
| Capacity | 1 TB | 120 GB |
| Price | £37.07 | £143.04 |
| Price Per Gigabyte | £0.04 | £1.19 |
That evaluation isn't an easy one to make, though. When you read through an SSD review, you typically see a handful of measurements that try putting performance in context compared to other solid-state and magnetic products. But you generally don't get any frame of reference when it comes to gaming. Those familiar metrics include:
- 4 KB random writes
- 4 KB random reads
- 128 KB sequential reads
- 128 KB sequential writes
But what do input/output operations per second and megabytes per second really mean to the enthusiast interested in knowing how storage technology affects the launch times and game play of the latest and greatest first-person shooter?
In the lab, we’ve already seen situations where dropping in a cutting-edge SSD doesn't have a big effect on performance. The reasons why aren't particularly complicated. However, we thought it'd be a good idea to break down the way three popular games affect storage performance in order to give you a better understanding of how they tax your storage subsystem. Crysis 2, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and Civilization V are all going to get tested.
It might surprise you to learn that the "one size fits all" approach doesn't apply to SSDs and it doesn't apply to games. If you want to better understand storage reviews when it comes to gaming, this information will help you make a more informed purchase.
- SSD Storage,
- Storage,
- OCZ,
- Seagate,
- ssd ,
- gaming ,
- performance
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Thanks for the very interesting and informative article, I was most interested in the game play data, quite surprised me that write operations were the predominant feature. I wonder if the emphasis will change with games that rely of texture streaming during game play, the forth coming Rage with megatexture streaming springs to mind.
I was also interested in where the gameplay writes are being written to in a multi disc set up.....for instance I have my OS installed on a magnetic hard drive and use a small ssd as a game instal drive....are the game play writes written to the game instal directory or somewhere in the OS which in my case would be on traditional hdd?
Probably one of the best articles on Tom's in a while! Interesting to see what's going on in terms of storage as you play a game. There are a few things I would love to see though if you guys do a follow up:
- What games can stutter do to read/write performance and what is the minimum performance needed to avoid this?
(For example can a "green" low rpm drive cause a game to stutter and can this be improved by storing games on fast mechanical drives? Are there any games that actually require an SSD to play smoothly or visibly benefit from one? - I would doubt the last, but curious to know for sure)
- When running everything off of one drive (especially 1 HDD), can hard drive performance cause games to stutter when multitasking (i.e. playing music and downloading off the internet at the same time as gaming?) Is is possible to avoid this by having a dedicated OS drive and one or several storage drives?
I am sure a lot of us readers already have opinions on these questions but it would be neat to see them put to the test. One thing that is really popular now is to use a low capacity SSD for a boot drive and have 1 or more storage drive. A real-life comparison of this vs running everything off of 1 HDD would be cool, especially if you test running several apps at once including a game.
I've just been experimenting with crysis 2. With the OS installed on the C drive and the game installed on the D drive. Just looking at the disk activity with resource monitor during game play it seems that all the write operations are on the C drive and only reads coming from the D drive.
As having the game play efficiently is more important to me than just having faster launching and loading then I'm going to reassess my storage set up.
would have been interesting to compare a hdd install vs ssd install of WoW under more challenging conditions with lots of character and texture loading.
Pretty interesting article.
Even more interesting, is the fact that WOW has some dynamic loading, (er, it loads x miles around you) and most people will barely notice any stutter at all, or loading screens. (Need for Speed Underground 2 behaves like that too, thankfully.)
You only get kicked to a loading screen when you teleport, which I guess, it means a larger chunk of scenery has to be loaded in a single punch. Traveling on the gryphons (which is repeatable, and a good recorded run in my opinion) shows that, because you can travel an entire continent on fluid gameplay. That's the exact opposite of Half-Life 2, where some portions of the game are loaded in a lock-up, loading screen. Using noclip allows you to inspect "behind the scenes" and learn the boundaries of each map, and learns that actually it is comprised of a series of maps strung together, and you are "teleported" from one to the next, which is disruptive.
So, for suggestions, there it goes:
Open world titles, like Need for Speed, either Most Wanted or Underground 2, are good examples. GTA would apply too. When going *really* fast you can face loading screens in Underground 2.
Half-Life 2, as mentioned above.
Diablo 2, where even teleporting won't give you a loading screen. Are our platforms too fast, or are they keeping the home town of each stage already in memory? An oldie, for comparison.
Starcraft 2, which has lengthy loading screens. Would SSDs speed it up?