About RAM/SSD/HDD improvements

[jonathan1107]

I'm hearing a lot lately about doing "ram disks" for games... or using SSDs... or Creating a "page file" I think it's called on your hdd...

The reason I'm asking is I'm starting to notice my RAM usage going up by a fair amount. I sometimes hover around 4.5-5gb usage during gaming (I have 8gb)

Have we come to the point where more than 8gb is needed (I game @ a 1440p res by the way)?

Are SSDs worth the investement when considering gaming purposes? From what I hear, them SSDs don't have a big lifespan so ... yeah, I'm not much of an expert regarding RAM and stuff concerning it, if yall feel like schooling may today, it's the perfect time to do it. I wanna learn

 

[AsRock]

I use 2.2GB just getting tot he desktop, how ever when you run a game superfetch will cache parts of it and other things making it look like the system is running out of ram.

When windows caches data is to speed the access when you need it again, how ever if some hting else needs that memory windows will release it for the other app.

Ramdisks are not worth it for gaming as you would have to tell the ramdisk program to save the data to HDD\SSD and depending on how often that the game files change you might have to save the data on every shutdown which would lead to a probable long shutdown process.

A SSD will allow data to be loaded faster and even smooth some games out a little if on the fly loading of the hdd is a bit to much for it but it will not improve the fps.


As when you are using a SSD i used to put the pagefile on the HDD but windows likes being a ass and changing it back to the boot drive so i just disable pagefile once again as i have had no issue playing any game. How ever with 8GB you may get away with it but it is close with the odd game.

 

[newconroer]

Just a warning about disabling page file.
I did that because I had Windows on an SSD and like many, assumed a page file was unnecessary because I had 8GB of RAM. It turned out to be causing issues in various games, to the point where they would crash or not run at all. Setting up an 8GB page file solved all the problems both large and small.

 

[Aquinus]

Just a warning about disabling page file.
I did that because I had Windows on an SSD and like many, assumed a page file was unnecessary because I had 8GB of RAM. It turned out to be causing issues in various games, to the point where they would crash or not run at all. Setting up an 8GB page file solved all the problems both large and small.

In rare situations I used to run out with 8GB of ram. Since I bought my i7 system with 16GB I have yet to run into a single issue having disabled the page file. I just wanted to throw that out there. I typically don't use more than 6-7GB at any given time but when I leave everything open 10-12GB isn't unrealistic and I can still fill it if I need to run a handful of VMs.

I don't game as much as I used to, but I haven't had an issue for years. So you really need to gauge it based on the software you use and how much memory you use at any given time. I have it disabled because I have plenty of memory and all of the things I use play nicely with it disabled.

 

[EarthDog]

I ALWAYS keep a pagefile. I have had trouble without one even with plenty of RAM. Some may not have that issue though as Aquinas said. I just set a 2GB PF regardless of my RAM and that has worked out well for me.

SSD lifespan is plenty long. THere are no worries there.

 

[newtekie1]

Have we come to the point where more than 8gb is needed (I game @ a 1440p res by the way)?

No. I've got 24GB in my main system, and when gaming I have yet to see it use over 8GB. With the major AAA games being designed with consoles in mind, and the consoles only having 8GB of RAM(combined system and vram), I don't see gaming requiring more than 8GB any time soon. The resolution you play at doesn't really affect this either, it affects the amount of vram you need, but not system RAM.

Are SSDs worth the investement when considering gaming purposes? From what I hear, them SSDs don't have a big lifespan so ... yeah

SSDs are not worth considering at all for gaming purposes. They won't help performance one bit. Load times will be shorter, but that's it. If you are looking for better gaming performance, an SSD should be the last place you put your money.

And SSDs lifespans are not as short as people seem to think. They'll last years. Heck, most manufacturers say you can write 20GB per day, every day, for 5+ years and not wear the SSD out. And remember, you are only wearing out the SSD when you write to it, reading from it does not shorten its life in any way.

I ALWAYS keep a pagefile. I have had trouble without one even with plenty of RAM. Some may not have that issue though as Aquinas said.

SSD lifespan is plenty long. THere are no worries there.

This. Even if you have an SSD there is absolutely no good reason to disable the pagefile.

My rule is if you have 8GB of RAM set it to 8GB, if you have 16GB of RAM set it to 4GB and if you have more than 16GB of RAM set it to 2GB.

 

[MustSeeMelons]

Well, an SSD will improve load times & make the system snappier. A RAM disk is not worth it in my opinion. Are 8Gb enough? Mostly, I very rarely use more than 8Gb, I can recall only one occasion when I was playing CoH2 with a MC server running in the background.

 

[Xcoool]

Depends on what u call RAM,it s not ram as RAM.I never saw more than 4gb in my system running.What is frequency of your RAM?If u re gaming in 1440p u need graphic card with 4gb dedicated RAM.SSD are 5x faster than new HDD and 10x more reliable cause they do not have any mechanical parts to fail.They also needs considerable less energy to run a do not produce any heat.

 

[EarthDog]

3GB is plenty on 99% of titles at 1440p.

SSD's are not 10x as reliable either...you are correct in saying the mechanical parts won't fail, but there are other parts that can. Here are some statistics...HDDs->
- Toshiba 1,15%

- Seagate 1,44% (vs 1,65%)
- Western 1,55% (vs 1,44%)
- Samsung 2,24% (vs 1,30%)
- Hitachi 2,40% (vs 3,45%)

SSD's

- Samsung 0,05% (vs 0,48% before)
- Plextor 0,16% (N/A)
- Intel 0,37% (vs 0,45% before)
- Crucial 1,12% (vs 1,11% before)
- Corsair 1,61% (vs 1,05% before)
- OCZ 6,64% (vs 5,02% before) / 2,92% without Petrol and Octane SATA 2 (vs 3,05% before when Octane and Petrol were not included)
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/893-1/taux-retour-composants-8.html

I don't see 10x there... but on average maybe 2x overall.


SSDs produce heat, just not as much as HDDs.

Sorry to split hairs and be literal, but your post can be misleading.

 

[Xcoool]

Well,sorry for typo SSD produce almost no heat.(very little).By the way your assumption is based on article which is 2 years old and those re numbers of customer returns,no necessary failures.Also it is for a period of 5 months.Based on those number samsung SSD is 29x more reliable than any of HHD.

 

[EarthDog]

That wasn't a typo...

Way to cherry pick results...

And while it's not the gospel, it's the best data we have. As you should be able to tell I made my point as it's backed up some data instead of conjecture.on the whole ssd are barely more reliable... Certainly not on the order of 10x.

Carry on, lol.

 

[jonathan1107]

thanks for the input...

as for my setup, I game @ 1440p most of the time, for competitive FPS games, I lower my res to 1080p hitting a solid 120FPS...
I have an msi Gaming GTX 970 graphics card (4gb) which should be plenty for most games.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

From what I hear, them SSDs don't have a big lifespan

The Tech Report is up to 2 PB (that's not Peanut Butter) on a couple of SSD's. That test that they're doing was eye opening for me. http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes

 

[Jborg]

I notice on BF4 with an SSD, in the Campaign it seems to Save and Load quite often. When it was on my HDD it would cause an annoying stutter everytime it loaded/saved mid game, and I thought it was my fps spiking. But after installing the game/OS on my SSD it is gone.

Also for BF4 multiplayer games... the load times went from 1-2 minutes to 9-20 seconds!

Photoshop and Vegas seem to load MUCH faster as well when starting up.

So yes, if you want your OS / Games to load alot faster, than an SSD is totally worth it.
Make sure to install the OS on the SSD tho.