Brothers of Arms

[Magman]

I am looking at a new hard drive.

I was looking at the Crucial M4 128 GB SSD, two of those in raid 0 or one Crucial M4 256 GB SSD.

What would you guys do?

I would use that as my main windows boot drive and for AoC.

Thanks

[Mistery]

Just bought 1 OCZ Vertex 3 128GB. Will be delivered end of the week. Should be enough for both windows, main programs (drivers, browser) and AOC.

[Gert]

I've got a Corsair F120 SSD and can recommend it - got Windows, AoC and apps I use frequently...

256GB for a SSD seems a bit excessive - esp if just for Windows & AoC - my one is half full (64GB free) and can't see filling it up any time soon...

[Magman]

I got one 128 Crucial M4. I'm thinking I will or get an other one and go in RAID 0, or I was lookingat that... even if it's expensive:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodr ... s-ssd.html

[Alb]

depends really how much yuo want to invest into it ... M4 looks interesting so.


Bit tech (which you probably know if you read Custom PC): http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storag ... ew-120gb/7
Oki it is not the X2


so not sure how they are seems a bit like a niche atm as OCZ seems to only company that I've heard that from beside the on board SSD thingy ...

[Erekose]

My OCZ Vertex 2 is getting a bit old now but 128 is plenty for all the important stuff. Raiding SSDs is probably a step too far at the moment - unless of course you have nothing else to spend your money on.

[Gert]

Btw, going RAID with SSD and Windows 7 will mean you lose TRIM (and the performance that brings).

[Magman]

So I went with one SSD for windows and the OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB as a second storage device. I also have a Maxtor 10k RPM in RAID 0 on the SATA 2 controller of my board.
The boot SSD is connected to the 6GB SATA on my motherboard.

The OCZ Revo is a 4xPCI-E card that has 4 23GB SSDs in raid 0 on a card. It has its own controller and it's not connected to any SATA port but to a PCI-E 4x (in my case the second 16x) slot on the motherboard.

Everything is really fast I must say. OCZ forums seems to say I don't have to worried about TRIM on the RevoDrive X2 because they have some kind of garbage collection system. The only think I have on the RevoDrive is AoC for the moment. I have to say it is extremely fast, loading even northern grassland is incredible. I even think I have a bit more DPS over Ben due to my revo drive...

In all seriousness, I did notice one strange thing. In the first about 10 to 20 minutes of playing every time I start a new session, there is some kind of hesitation that lasts a few mili seconds about 5 to 10 times a minute for about the first 10 to 20 minutes of game play and then it just goes away. I am not sure if it comes from my OS on the SSD or from the game being on the Revo Drive.

I was thinking of going in the BIOS of the Revo Drive and low level format it, clear it all up, destroy the built in RAID 0 partition and create a new one and re-install the game on it.
Also, the way I installed the game, is I downloaded the FunCom installer and ran it. I it installed the basic files I then copied my backed up original setup from my mechanical drive to my Revo to avoid having to download GBs of data. Could that be the reason? Is there some cache files I should delete? Has anyone seen this effect? The hesitation is like if the screen and sound stops just for a fraction of a second. It kind of look like it will crash but immediately comes back to life. The even more strange thing, is that it stops doing it after about 30 min of game play. So this is perfect for BoA raids, cause they always start 30 mins late… eheheheeh :P

If anyone has any suggestions for this, please let me know.

Thanks

[Kyynelkeiju]

So I went with one SSD for windows and the OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB as a second storage device.

I just bought and installed same model with 240GB size. (needed to install both windows and linux on it hence the big disk). Been using it over a week now. It is only RAID disk i'm using.

The OCZ Revo is a 4xPCI-E card that has 4 23GB SSDs in raid 0 on a card. It has its own controller and it's not connected to any SATA port but to a PCI-E 4x (in my case the second 16x) slot on the motherboard.

<clipped>

In all seriousness, I did notice one strange thing. In the first about 10 to 20 minutes of playing every time I start a new session, there is some kind of hesitation that lasts a few mili seconds about 5 to 10 times a minute for about the first 10 to 20 minutes of game play and then it just goes away. I am not sure if it comes from my OS on the SSD or from the game being on the Revo Drive.

<clipped even more>

If anyone has any suggestions for this, please let me know.

Thanks

I haven't faced any of the those freeze issues.

You have installed your SSD into 2nd pci-e 16x slot (and i guess that your GPU is installed on 1st x16). Some (low price) mainboards may share some bus pins between these slots... and cause conflicts or slow down.

I installed my SSD into 3rd PCI-E 4x slot and left 2nd slot empty. That way SSD does not also slow down air flow of GPU. If your GPU overheats because of weaker cooling then it would cause those 1s freezes (GPU halts until temperature is low enough again).

There fore is suspect GPU overheating or some interrupt/bus conflict. Both can be resolved by trying another pci-e slot.


I don't see any reason why lowlevel format would do anything useful because SSD are "lowlevelformatted" by design. Your bios offers the choice, but it is meant for real disks as the same software is used for disk generally.

[Alb]

I had some issues when I installed the original game and copied the resource database over. However that was ages ago and not sure if they were similar to your problem Mag.

[Magman]

I installed my SSD into 3rd PCI-E 4x slot and left 2nd slot empty. That way SSD does not also slow down air flow of GPU. If your GPU overheats because of weaker cooling then it would cause those 1s freezes (GPU halts until temperature is low enough again).

There fore is suspect GPU overheating or some interrupt/bus conflict. Both can be resolved by trying another pci-e slot.


I don't see any reason why lowlevel format would do anything useful because SSD are "lowlevelformatted" by design. Your bios offers the choice, but it is meant for real disks as the same software is used for disk generally.

Yes, perhaps this is it. I only have 2 16x PCI-e the others are 1X so I can only put it in the second PCI-E 16x.
But before the OCZ, I had SAS controler in the 2nd slot controling two SAS drives. I did not have these issues.

I think I will remove the card and try the game from a mechanical drive that I have. If I have the same issue than I know it's not the OCZ card.

Thanks Kyy, it gave me ideas.