Loading FSX on an SSD Drive is Better
So I have this long conversation with a local compu-geek who tells me I should check out an SSD as an alternative for hard disk loading of FSX. He sez: Access times are four times faster with SSD's that are ported through a USB 2.0 socket and the textures in FS2004/FSX will load faster as a result. Better frame rates should appear.
I already own an IOMEGA 60GB micro that I carry on business trips so I deleted the old demo, reloaded onto my micro and sure enough it works better. A noticeable improvement in smoothness with a lot less stutter. I'm having an issue with saving my .cfg file, but I'll get it sorted out.
So how come we are still using mechanical hard drives at all? SSD's are faster, more reliable, more resistent to enviromental issues, and are only a little more expensive per Gig than the ATA100's. Just a thought.
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No external drive is as fast as an interal one. That said, I didn't see any problem with the demo on and external USB drive. FS is far more CPU and RAM-intensive than it is disk-intensive.
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probably you have insufficiant amount of ram and that the fast loading time was due to the fact that the pagefile is in a separate drive.
I thought of that and ordered an extra 1GB. I now have 2GB on board and that still gave the stutter-- even with the new video card! I did the services fix elsewhere mentioned and that helped a bit, but if I am in high-res on the textures, it just makes it too jumpy. Dunno.
Greystone, where would I go to find SSDs' for sale? I can't find any places that sell them, but have found actual manufacturers. If they are in fact only a little more expensive than mechanical hard drives I'm ready with the money to buy one to replace the hard drive I have in this laptop. Only problem is I so far can't find any for sale. eBay doesn't even have any.
Hah! You ask the 64 gazillion $ question. If you buy a 2 GB USB keychain flash drive, that's essentially an SSD. If you want a really big capacity one, I got a 320 GB desktop model from Iomega for about $200 and it's not that large physically. As far as replacing the HDD in your laptop, I do not believe the industry has caught up to this application yet. Could be the write-life issue that has yet to be fully resolved. It isn't a big deal for me, since I will use this SSD for work files and some programs like FS. I don't think I could possibly exhaust the write-life cycle in the normal three to four year timeline that I keep computer technology before upgrading to newer stuff.
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