SSD - Is it worth keeping my Steam folder on it?

[Black Panther]

Or would that be overkill?

It's not that I'm that critically out of space, on my desktop apart from a 1TB NAS I've got

I run almost everything from the e-sata Seagate, nearly all programs, Firefox etc... even benchmarking programs like Furmark and Unigine.

On the SSD I have Win 7, drivers, Steam, and a couple of other games.

I know of the procedure on how to transfer the Steam folder to another location, that isn't the problem.

But would you think there are advantages outweighing the disadvantages if I move all games off the SSD?

True with only 42GB available the SSD space is close to running out... But then I'd be ok with removing a couple of games to add a couple more ...

To be honest, I don't think I saw any (visible) performance increase from playing my games off the Seagate to now that I'm playing them off the SSD. (Originally the Seagate had been my main internal drive with OS and everything on it. After I bought the SSD I also bought an enclosure, formatted the Seagate and connected it e-sata).
The only game which sees improvement, only in loading times, is the one my kid plays on my pc i.e. The Sims 3 --- the loading times of that game makes one cry but on an SSD they're somewhat more acceptable. So I also keep that on the SSD using up ~ 11GB of it

Will the game data re-writing on the SSD wear it out much quicker?

Does gaming on a SSD give better fps (I didn't check out before & after myself)?

 

[slyfox2151]

Or would that be overkill?

It's not that I'm that critically out of space, on my desktop apart from a 1TB NAS I've got
http://img.techpowerup.org/110413/Untitled777.png

I run almost everything from the e-sata Seagate, nearly all programs, Firefox etc... even benchmarking programs like Furmark and Unigine.

On the SSD I have Win 7, drivers, Steam, and a couple of other games.

I know of the procedure on how to transfer the Steam folder to another location, that isn't the problem.

But would you think there are advantages outweighing the disadvantages if I move all games off the SSD?

True with only 42GB available the SSD space is close to running out... But then I'd be ok with removing a couple of games to add a couple more ...

To be honest, I don't think I saw any (visible) performance increase from playing my games off the Seagate to now that I'm playing them off the SSD. (Originally the Seagate had been my main internal drive with OS and everything on it. After I bought the SSD I also bought an enclosure, formatted the Seagate and connected it e-sata).
The only game which sees improvement, only in loading times, is the one my kid plays on my pc i.e. The Sims 3 --- the loading times of that game makes one cry but on an SSD they're somewhat more acceptable. So I also keep that on the SSD using up ~ 11GB of it

Will the game data re-writing on the SSD wear it out much quicker?

Does gaming on a SSD give better fps (I didn't check out before & after myself)?

FPS, i doubt it unless the game is running out of Ram/VRam.

best option would be to have either backups of games you dont play on the seagate and games you do play on the SSD.... or have steam installed in two locations. one for games that take a long time to load (put them on the SSD), the other for the rest of the games....





i VERY MUCH DOUBT it will wear out the SSD at all really...... how often do games even write to the hard drive? once every 5 mins to save your game? your OS will wear out the drive 1000s of times faster then a game.

 

[TechnikL]

Steam on SSD

Hey BlackPanther, nice logo I use that same one!

I used to have my steam folder on my 120GB OCZ Vertex 2, games definately load faster but other than that there was no advantage in FPS.

I ended up moving it back to my RAID 0, just cause I was getting low on space on the SSD.

I wouldn't worry about SSD usage too much, even if you are a heavy user you should get several years out of it.

If only I could afford a 1TB SSD

 

[AsRock]

If ya not noticing any difference put them on your HDD as it will allow you to store more on it with out the need of deleting or moving them off the SSD.

With games and SSD's it's all about loading times and i load all my games of SSD as it's just faster although more with some than other like COH when ya loading those bigger maps.

And if i run out of space i just move the games to another drive and move them back when needed.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

true that


and i would say that in some games on v high settings when a systems being pushed on a select few scene loading games you may avoid stutters between game sections i did notice this much on crysis 2, on raid 0 i got slight stutter between some sections on ssd its gone

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

BP, I would not use your SSD for steam games for many reasons. They are:

• Continued download and rewrite of maps and scripts. This happens many many times over the course of any game Valve has made. This will wear out the SSD faster.
• Loads of junk is stored in the Steam folder. I don't even have that many games and I have around 50gb of files, just because Valve updates TF2 each weekend and leaves behind old content.
• You won't be gaining a ton of performance, it really relies more on ram. Can you wait an extra 1 second for the game to load? I think so.
• You won't gain any FPS that will give you a noticeable increase.

In short, I think you won't gain enough benefits to sacrifice the lifespan of your SSD. As you said, it is overkill.