Paradox SSD vs HDD?

[Soyaman]

Hey guys.

Quick question.

Is there any point to downloading games to SSD and HDD when it comes to paradox games?
I understand the saving is generally part of the most intensive action but is this relevant when the game is installed on an HDD and it saves onto a windows SSD drive like many configs?

Thank you

 

[Esoteric Rogue]

6 weeks ago I installed EU4 on my SSD, but it was still saving to MyDocuments which is a HDD. Only this week have I changed the save location to SSD via userdirt.xt. [edit: I feel obligated to improve the smoothness of my system in mp games where I am usually hosting.]

I can't notice any difference (apart from the the fact than my 4TB HDD has a 10-second spin up time when it falls asleep, but that wasn't regularly the case during play.)

Maybe it's 15% faster; I can't tell as I didn't do benchmarks in a lab. Your mileage may vary.

Afterthought: I will install it on my HDD next time.

 

[uberjedi]

I have everything on SSD nowadays.
Feels faster.

 

[EU3NOOB]

Hey guys.

Quick question.

Is there any point to downloading games to SSD and HDD when it comes to paradox games?
I understand the saving is generally part of the most intensive action but is this relevant when the game is installed on an HDD and it saves onto a windows SSD drive like many configs?

Thank you

Honestly, if you're using an SSD as your main drive then just install there.

It can't hurt to have there and will likely help!

 

[Soyaman]

Honestly, if you're using an SSD as your main drive then just install there.

It can't hurt to have there and will likely help!

I know.
It was just a case of whether or not I could save space for other games

 

[EU3NOOB]

I know.
It was just a case of whether or not I could save space for other games

How big is your SSD?

 

[Soyaman]

How big is your SSD?

Well I've got a 120 for Windows and another 240 for games.

But I play a lot of games

 

[Sindai]

It's not going to affect frame rate since Paradox games don't seem to do asset streaming during play. It probably won't even affect load times too much since I think most of the load time of Paradox games comes from having to parse the human-readable script files, which is a CPU task.

 

[FulmenTheFinn]

You don't need SSD for PDX games. I recently finally ordered an SSD (275gb), but I'm going to reserve it for my OS and games where fast load times are important like BF1, RO2, CoH 2 etc.

All my PDX games are on my HDD and my load times are usually very short.

 

[Alliegorical]

If you're saving the game onto an SSD to speed your game up, you should stop. SSDs have much faster read times than HDs, but slower write times.

Ideal games for an SSD are generally large games with lots of load times and various textures. The difference is usually small. The only game I've seen drastically improve when moved to an SSD was World of Warcraft. Total War games use them pretty well too. As a good rule of thumb: the more memory a game demands, the more it can benefit from being on an SSD. (Don't expect it to replace your memory per se; they're just both good for the same reasons)

If you're going to be recording gameplay, or doing anything that demands heavy duty writing to your storage device, get a fancy top notch high-RPM HD.

 

[durbal]

I'm honestly amazed at all the comments saying you don't need an SSD. For writing (autosaves) no you don't, but the load times when opening the game on an HDD are significantly longer. My HDD took 1-2 mins to get to the main menu, while my SSD does it in 15 seconds.

 

[jdrou]

SSDs have much faster read times than HDs, but slower write times.

Do you have benchmarks for this? For laptop drives at least all my testing shows SSDs outperforming spinning disk even on sequential writes. There's no comparison at all on random writes; a low-end SSD can outperform a 7200rpm drive by 50x. The oldest SSDs may have been slower writing than disk but today they are at or beyond the limits of the SATA interface (which is why they are moving away from SATA to direct PCIe [NVMe] connections). I've seen a benchmark of Samsung 950 Pro using NVMe doing 1500 MB/sec sequential writes. I don't think you're going to get that from any single spinning disk.

The major argument against SSDs is cost. And cost/GB of a high-rpm disk like WD VelociRaptor is comparable to SSDs.
(2nd argument would probably be reliability; make sure you make backups and watch for firmware updates.)

One other thing to keep in mind with SSDs is that often larger drives are significantly faster than lower-capacity models in the same product line.

 

[dur]

You could also invest in some ramdisk software. I use a ramdisk for EU4 and it loads to the main menu before the drums start in the metal version of the main theme.