KSP on SSD?

[Johnny Wishbone]

I know that KSP is mostly CPU bound but I was wondering if anyone has their game installed on a SSD and if it makes any difference at all? Currently I'm playing the game off a pair of mirrored 7200RPM 1TB drives and I'm looking for any boost I can get.

I ask about SSDs because my company recently upgraded some hardware in the datacenter and the old "junk" has these industrial grade, 4GB flash cards with SATA II interfaces. At 4GB, the're too small for any real use, so they'll sit on a shelf in the basement collecting dust for a couple years until we do a cleanup and then send them to the recycler. Boss has no problem with us poaching old hardware headed for the junk pile anyway, so I was thinking that 4GB would be more than enough for a KSP install if it will make any difference. Any thoughts?

[Corw]

If I'm not mistaken, KSP loads everything to memory at start. So SSD would speed up your load and that is it.

[Johnny Wishbone]

That's what I figured, but I didn't know if it was doing any other dynamic loading or swapping during gameplay.

[RocketPilot573]

If I'm not mistaken, KSP loads everything to memory at start. So SSD would speed up your load and that is it.

Maybe by a fraction of a second, I don't notice the difference what-so-ever when on my SSD.

[Tank Buddy]

I have KSP loaded onto my SSD. I have not had it loaded on a hard drive recently that I could compare with. After 1.0.0, the load times literally disappeared. I'm pretty sure this had to do with software changes. I don't see a reason that KSP wouldn't run faster on an SSD; any time the game needs to pull something from its files (Save games, mods, craft files, etc.) it will be faster than on a HDD.

I personally use KSP so often that it is one of the games I have on my SSD (256 GB). I'm not familiar with the hardware you are talking about, but KSP should never become larger than 4 GB, so give it a shot.

[boxman]

I know that KSP is mostly CPU bound but I was wondering if anyone has their game installed on a SSD and if it makes any difference at all? Currently I'm playing the game off a pair of mirrored 7200RPM 1TB drives and I'm looking for any boost I can get.

I ask about SSDs because my company recently upgraded some hardware in the datacenter and the old "junk" has these industrial grade, 4GB flash cards with SATA II interfaces. At 4GB, the're too small for any real use, so they'll sit on a shelf in the basement collecting dust for a couple years until we do a cleanup and then send them to the recycler. Boss has no problem with us poaching old hardware headed for the junk pile anyway, so I was thinking that 4GB would be more than enough for a KSP install if it will make any difference. Any thoughts?

The only difference will be a few seconds at best unless you are using a slow 5400rpm drive and have the game installed on OS/swap drive.

Since I have 16gigs of ram I even tried installing it to a ram disk which is much quicker than a SSD and that made hardly a difference as well, so the bottleneck seems be with the way the game loads. It seems you will get more benefit from faster cpu than faster disk.

[Johnny Wishbone]

For what it's worth, here are the flash cards I am talking about:

http://www.e-itx.com/aps25m5a004g-pt.html

The stats aren't tremendous (145MB/sec sustained read, 50MB/sec sustained writes), but the price (free) is hard to beat!

It sounds like it won't be worth the effort, since the game already loads pretty quick to start with off my HDDs, and that's about the only place you'd notice any improvement.

[tutike2000]

That's what I figured, but I didn't know if it was doing any other dynamic loading or swapping during gameplay.

If it did, we probably wouldn't have much problem with 32-bit KSP using too much memory.

[Foxster]

Not worth the bother.

But a proper big SSD makes a nice difference to everything, including KSP. I have a 250GB one that I use as my boot drive and it has my main programs on too. Windows starts within a few seconds and KSP in about 5.

[Space.exe]

SSD's load things. It will increase the speed of loading of the game. Some people put their OS on it to load/copy files faster. Also you might want to look into the speed of them. As it sounds yours are Old/Outdated/Slow. I wouldn’t think that it would increase it by much.

If your looking to increase your fps or mods your going to want to get about 4+ ram. Currently the game is stuck at 32-bit and you can use more than 4gb ram(more like 3.6gb ram.) Unless you use mods/addon's to get 64-bit and once you do that you can use 8gb+ so for now if you dont use 64-bit tweaks you only need 4Gb Ram.

Cpu I use a Intel i5-3330 3.00GHz and only crashes i have had are on the ram(I have 8gb but i crash at 3.6Gb due to 32-bit restrictions.) Cpu cores can help here is what you should look for. Intel i3, i5 or i7 3.00Ghz or 3.4Ghz single core

Gpu Ksp is not very gpu intensive i have been told not to sure never been able to test it i know ksp runs really nice with a Nvidia Gtx 660.

[boxman]

SSD's load things. It will increase the speed of loading of the game. Some people put their OS on it to load/copy files faster. Also you might want to look into the speed of them. As it sounds yours are Old/Outdated/Slow. I wouldn’t think that it would increase it by much.

If your looking to increase your fps or mods your going to want to get about 4+ ram. Currently the game is stuck at 32-bit and you can use more than 4gb ram(more like 3.6gb ram.) Unless you use mods/addon's to get 64-bit and once you do that you can use 8gb+ so for now if you dont use 64-bit tweaks you only need 4Gb Ram.

Cpu I use a Intel i5-3330 3.00GHz and only crashes i have had are on the ram(I have 8gb but i crash at 3.6Gb due to 32-bit restrictions.) Cpu cores can help here is what you should look for. Intel i3, i5 or i7 3.00Ghz or 3.4Ghz single core

Gpu Ksp is not very gpu intensive i have been told not to sure never been able to test it i know ksp runs really nice with a Nvidia Gtx 660.

But the disk is generally not a bottleneck unless you run it on your system disk. People have shown this time and time again with comparisions.

The best you will get is a few seconds improvement. So it would be better idea to get SSD for other reasons than KSP where it does not really matter.

[keeper]

KSP takes about 20 - 30 seconds on my SSD. With about 10 small mods.

Took about 2 mins on v0.9 with about 25 crazy mods. Never tried it on a normal hard drive but guarenteed it will be quicker loading.

Couldn't say if the loading between scenes are quicker, (probably should be in some way) but gameplay i doubt will be affected at all.

But SSDs' yes, not for KSP but because windows loads in about 6-10 seconds. Everything is so fast

[Space.exe]

In his case it sounds like he is trying to use a old/slow small storage SSD so if anything he will get +1 second to his load time. It wont increase his fps in game all it will do is load the game a small amount faster and since its a old/slow ssd the increase will most likely be unnoticeable. And the SSD he has is pointless to install its like 4Gb.

@boxman

[mikegarrison]

My machine is SSD, but since I've never played it NOT on SSD, I can't tell whether it makes a difference or not.

[Space.exe]

This will help if you want a SSD for KSP. https://goo.gl/kSW23x

[boxman]

In his case it sounds like he is trying to use a old/slow small storage SSD so if anything he will get +1 second to his load time. It wont increase his fps in game all it will do is load the game a small amount faster and since its a old/slow ssd the increase will most likely be unnoticeable. And the SSD he has is pointless to install its like 4Gb.

@boxman

Like I said earlier in this thread.. I have 16giggs of ram and even tried copying the entire game and launching it from a ram disk. It makes very little difference at all.

I think the only people who notice a difference are those with 4gigs or less of ram, have a slow 5400rpm drive or run it from the same disk as the OS is on.

Of course plenty of other reasons to upgrade to SSD, but KSP in itself will not benefit much from it no matter how fast it is.

[hellion13]

Went from a 5400rpm drive to a Samsung 840evo recently. The initial load screen speed increased dramatically. Somewhat less dramatically with the in-game screens but noticeable nonetheless.

As far as timing it? Two or three minutes down to less than 15 seconds. Modded can take upwards of 30 seconds.

[Leszek]

I have used both SSD and HDD. The only noticeable difference is that the game pauses for a second when it loads music. The HDD on my system is for raw storage space and isn't the fastest, my other computer runs KSP off HDD's and it doesn't have any such pause.

[obsidian_x]

As others have noted it makes a small difference during load (and I assume save) but overall it's fairly marginal. I moved my install from a spinning platter disc to a ssd and barely noticed any changes in load times.

[FancyMouse]

Bottleneck is still at CPU (even loading), so SSD is just like a placebo.

[J.Random]

I bet not a single SSD user noticed any slowdown caused by the parachute log spam.

Edited July 2, 2015 by J.Random

[Brofessional]

I've had KSP on both SSD and HDD. There's a small increase in the initial loading time, but it's barely noticeable.

I highly recommend a ~240GB+ SSD for use as a primary drive for your OS, apps, and a handful of games though.

[Streetwind]

I know that KSP is mostly CPU bound but I was wondering if anyone has their game installed on a SSD and if it makes any difference at all? Currently I'm playing the game off a pair of mirrored 7200RPM 1TB drives and I'm looking for any boost I can get.

I ask about SSDs because my company recently upgraded some hardware in the datacenter and the old "junk" has these industrial grade, 4GB flash cards with SATA II interfaces. At 4GB, the're too small for any real use, so they'll sit on a shelf in the basement collecting dust for a couple years until we do a cleanup and then send them to the recycler. Boss has no problem with us poaching old hardware headed for the junk pile anyway, so I was thinking that 4GB would be more than enough for a KSP install if it will make any difference. Any thoughts?

Do the following to see a real benefit:

1.) Grab one of them 4 GB flash cards

2.) Hook it up to your computer

3.) Move the Windows pagefile onto it, set it to a fixed size that fills the drive, and disable to pagefile on your magnetic disks

4.) Profit, no questionmarks required

[J.Random]

Do the following to see a real benefit:

1.) Grab one of them 4 GB flash cards

2.) Hook it up to your computer

3.) Move the Windows pagefile onto it, set it to a fixed size that fills the drive, and disable to pagefile on your magnetic disks

4.) Profit, no questionmarks required

Waste of time and money, unless you're talking about fancy PCIe flash accelerators. which would still be a waste of even more money for a home PC.

Oops, haven't noticed the quote. Old flash cards may be good. Depends on how old are they. If they're not dead, they'll die fast under the swap.

Edited July 2, 2015 by J.Random

[Dilli]

Bottleneck is still at CPU (even loading), so SSD is just like a placebo.

I had previously put KSP on my SDD, its now back on my 7200 HDD; I didn't notice any difference between the two.

Changing from a old Core 2 to a new i5 + plenty of ram did make a huge difference - loading seems to be more CPU (and probably RAM throughput) dependent

If there are a whole lot of those SDDs which are identical you could try grab a few an stick them in a RAID setup; better be good about backups though.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Dilli