SSD Drive and New game Tera

[tkistre]

My son and I have virtually same computer...8GB Memory, AMD Phenom II x4 955 (3.2ghz) CPU, AMD 880G Chipset motherboards, AMD 6850 Video Cards on Windows 7 64bit OS. Only main difference is that I have a OCZ Agility 3 SSD drive and he has a 500GB 7200rpm HDD. He started playing the new game Tera (similar to WOW). Although he can play the game, he wasn't happy with performance. He felt FPS were not that good and some lag in gameplay. He did fresh install of Windows, loaded all up to date drivers for hardware, then loaded game. He saw some improvement, but very minimal.

Since we had same system, with exception of SSD, he loaded Tera on my computer. Of course game load time was faster... but now, gameplay was faster with NO LAG and his FPS increased quite a bit.

I've done some research on SSD and gaming but seems to be mixed opinions about gameplay and FPS being affected. So I wanted to ask readers here who have personal experience... If you upgraded to a SSD, aside from faster game load times, did you see FPS increases and better gameplay?

 

[mfenn]

The SSD itself shouldn't have any difference on the framerate. Obviously loading times will improve (which is significant), but that should be the extent of it. With regard to lag, how are the machines connected to your network?

 

[tkistre]

All of our computers are on a local home network...cat5e wiring, gigabit switch, gigabit router, on cable internet 10MB service. We have never had any issues playing online gaming related to bandwidth.

Although I would not think it would affect FPS, several reviews/articles I've read stated that it could actually raise framerates...something about the SSD giving the infomation to the video card faster without cacheing and so forth. Although I have technical knowledge, building and repairing computers...some things get technical over my head.

 

[tkistre]

I will not be home for a couple of days, but I intend to swap out our video cards, although they are the same, just different manufacturers. That way I can rule out his video card possibly being an issue.

I just feel that he had plenty of computer to run this game. His specs far outweigh minimum and recommended requirements.

 

[mfenn]

Although I would not think it would affect FPS, several reviews/articles I've read stated that it could actually raise framerates...something about the SSD giving the infomation to the video card faster without cacheing and so forth. Although I have technical knowledge, building and repairing computers...some things get technical over my head.

I could maybe see there being a difference if the game takes heavy advantage of streaming in content from the disk, but that should manifest as occasional stutters on an HDD, not constant low FPS.