Loading KSP on an SSD for the first time

[dudester28]

I just built a $900 gaming PC which was a huge improvement over my 6 year old Gateway PC. Among other things, I installed the operating system and few games on a solid state drive. I have to say, load times have been reduced DRASTICALLY. From loading modded KSP (B9, KW, Ferram) in 5 minutes on the old system, I managed to get the game up and running in less than a minute! Also, for the first time, I could max out the settings of a game and still have it run smoothly.

Moral of the story: SSD's have really fast read/write times

[Whackjob]

Aye. I've got two leftover from the laptop I burnt up. One for OS and programs, other for other programs. I'll never not use an OS on SSD. Or at least until something impossibly faster comes along.

[Duke23]

Congrats on the new system! May it be trouble free for as long as possible. I recently bought an SSD myself (240gb Samsung 840 Evo) and I only noticed minor improvements in load times for KSP specifically, but the improvement for Windows itself and most applications was quite impressive. What kind did you get? Any benchmarks? I'm pretty new to the SSD craze so I wondered how various models performed, or from system to system. I have some floating around if you're interested.

[Creature]

Always a happy occasion After a year and a half of owning an SSD I'm still amazed that my computer just switches on and is almost immediately ready when I press the power button.

[Alshain]

Since the early 2000's hard drives have been the bottleneck in computers while other technologies (CPU, Video, RAM, USB) kept getting faster and faster, so I always get a chuckle when someone feels so surprised by how much an improvement they get from an SSD.

Sadly the once great Hard Drive companies seem to be in denial or something, it's going to be their doom. The companies taking the charge on SSD are memory companies, which that's kind of logical, but Western Digital, Seagate, and the others that depend soley on hard drives are about find themselves in bankruptcy if they can't adapt. Prices are going to get cheaper, drives are going to get bigger, and their product will quickly become inferior.

[Madrias]

I'm still impressed with a pair of 10k RPM hard disks in RAID, so I have no real desire to move to an SSD yet.

[Duke23]

Since the early 2000's hard drives have been the bottleneck in computers while other technologies (CPU, Video, RAM, USB) kept getting faster and faster, so I always get a chuckle when someone feels so surprised by how much an improvement they get from an SSD.

Sadly the once great Hard Drive companies seem to be in denial or something, it's going to be their doom. The companies taking the charge on SSD are memory companies, which that's kind of logical, but Western Digital, Seagate, and the others that depend soley on hard drives are about find themselves in bankruptcy if they can't adapt. Prices are going to get cheaper, drives are going to get bigger, and their product will quickly become inferior.

I don't think I can argue any of that. Right now it's impractical to not have a hard drive but that will soon change. I do agree that the hard drive companies are stupid if they don't get in on this while they still can. If this technology keeps growing like flash drives did (I distinctly remember having a 64 megabyte one I was proud of... doesn't seem that long ago) and I have no doubt it will, they're really going to have something to contend with in a few short years unless they can start to offer cheap storage in the 10-20 terabyte range without it being obnoxiously slow. Then again the first time my SSD decides to derp out and corrupt everything on it for no obvious reason like I've seen flash drives do pretty consistently under the right (or wrong) conditions, I might have to run over it with a car.

[Mipe]

I'm still impressed with a pair of 10k RPM hard disks in RAID, so I have no real desire to move to an SSD yet.

That's got to be noisier than mating bonobos. Anyway, trust me when I say this: even 10k RPM RAID are nothing compared to SSD's blazing speed. It's like using RAM as a HDD!

[Duke23]

That's got to be noisier than mating bonobos. Anyway, trust me when I say this: even 10k RPM RAID are nothing compared to SSD's blazing speed. It's like using RAM as a HDD!

Well, relatively speaking. Although I'm curious as to just how fast those 10k RPM drives are... Not curious enough to have a jet engine inside my computer, but yeah

SSD vs HDD (Samsung 840 EVO 250GB, not in "RAPID mode" vs WD Blue 1TB 7200 RPM)

RAMDisk (G.Skill Ripjaws 1600mhz, 8-8-8-24)

Hm, guess I just couldn't resist whipping those out after all.

Edited July 1, 2014 by Duke23

[Kasuha]

There's no doubt SSDs are faster than HDDs but I still think that on a well maintained HDD, KSP loading time is limited by CPU rather than by disk transfers. The emphasis lies on "well maintained". Most people don't even know HDDs need some maintenance and let the contents pile up on their disk without any order. No wonder such drives get slower over time.

[katateochi]

That's got to be noisier than mating bonobos. Anyway, trust me when I say this: even 10k RPM RAID are nothing compared to SSD's blazing speed. It's like using RAM as a HDD!

Western Digital Raptors Madrias?

That's what I've had for a long time as my OS and game disks. They are fast and they're actually pretty quiet about it too (actually they make a really cool sound), maybe having 4 in a RAID might get a bit intense!.

I recently moved up from using the raptors to an SSD and I have to say I was not really blown away by KSP load times. My OS's load much faster but KSP still takes pretty much the same time to load.

This is the average loading time over three tests with the exact same (very modded) copy of KSP being loaded onto either disk.

250GB WD Raptor - 2m03s

500GB Samsug SSD - 2m10s

tbh Madrias might be getting faster performance with a raid of raptors depending on how its setup.

I do recommend SSDs, but if you already have high end HDs you might not be as amazed as someone making the transition from a standard drive.

There's no doubt SSDs are faster than HDDs but I still think that on a well maintained HDD, KSP loading time is limited by CPU rather than by disk transfers. The emphasis lies on "well maintained". Most people don't even know HDDs need some maintenance and let the contents pile up on their disk without any order. No wonder such drives get slower over time.

I totally agree. Keeping the HDs maintained helps a lot. So does maintaining windows. I run a very lean windows that only runs the bare essentials and that helps a lot with both loading time speeds and also in-game stability.

[Aghanim]

No way the storage is bottlenecking KSP. I have tried putting KSP inside ramdisk and it doesn't load much faster

[_Aramchek_]

I just built a $900 gaming PC which was a huge improvement over my 6 year old Gateway PC. Among other things, I installed the operating system and few games on a solid state drive. I have to say, load times have been reduced DRASTICALLY. From loading modded KSP (B9, KW, Ferram) in 5 minutes on the old system, I managed to get the game up and running in less than a minute! Also, for the first time, I could max out the settings of a game and still have it run smoothly.

Moral of the story: SSD's have really fast read/write times

Yeah, but SSD's don't actually speed the loading of this game up by much..your tremendous speedup is due to the other upgrades faaaar more so than the ssd.

I think I lost 5 seconds off of loading the game switching from a wd 1tb drive to a vector 150 ssd.

[Duke23]

No way the storage is bottlenecking KSP. I have tried putting KSP inside ramdisk and it doesn't load much faster

According to my bad math, if you assume 50mb/s for the hard drive read (which is a bit slower than the reported average for writing my entire ~2.1gb KSP folder TO a hard drive) it should take only 40 seconds to load 2gb of data, which is almost twice as much as my actual data folder in KSP. So yes, the bottleneck is somewhere else. That said I thought I noticed a slight improvement with the SSD but I just timed them both and they were nearly identical -- 1m11s give or take the time it probably took my finger to hit the button at the correct time. *shrug* It did seem to alleviate some of the stuttering as the main menu pops up or when you first load a new craft / location.

Edited July 1, 2014 by Duke23

[KvickFlygarn87]

I got an SSD too, love it. One question for the general public though, if I have KSP on an HDD but Windows on an SSD, would KSP boot faster? I'm guessing no, but you never know.

[Lilleman]

I did a quick test, using a vanilla install. I don't have precise value, I just used a chronometer from my phone, started at the same time I hit the "Enter" key to start the game.

Results are disappointing: Booting KSP from SSD (Kingston V300 120GB): ~25 seconds, booting from a classic HDD (Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM): ~25 seconds...

Maybe the CPU or RAM clock speeds may have influence on those, but I'm not really willing to overclock my system just to gain a few seconds every once in a while.

[cantab]

Yeah, there are a few people who report a drive upgrade speeds KSP's loading times, but most find little effect. Something else is limiting it.

The biggest impact on loading times comes from the parts. Add lots of heavy parts mods and you'll be waiting around.

[NFUN]

My computer has a hard drive and an SSD. I've tested moving the KSP data between the two, but the start up load time was exactly the same (24 seconds). Maybe the difference would be more apparent if I tried it again having mods, but I didn't notice any improvement with an SSD over and HDD. Don't worry, I have the OS loaded on the SSD though.

[Greenspan]

My computer has a hard drive and an SSD. I've tested moving the KSP data between the two, but the start up load time was exactly the same (24 seconds). Maybe the difference would be more apparent if I tried it again having mods, but I didn't notice any improvement with an SSD over and HDD. Don't worry, I have the OS loaded on the SSD though.

Yeah same exact results here. Spent a couple G's building a gaming rig earlier this year. I actually had 2 installs of KSP one on SSD and one on HDD and didn't notice a difference. I suspect if your going from Old Computer to New Computer the loading times will dramatically improve due to CPU, RAM, etc. which is probably what the OP saw. I'd suggest keeping KSP on the HDD to free up space on the SSD.

Edited July 2, 2014 by Greenspan

[katateochi]

I got an SSD too, love it. One question for the general public though, if I have KSP on an HDD but Windows on an SSD, would KSP boot faster? I'm guessing no, but you never know.

I don't think that it will boot faster, but you have a more stable machine setup like that. Where possible its best to dedicate 1 drive for the OS and put other things on another drive(s). Then if the OS needs to access its disk it doesn't impact on the read/write times of the other disks and if the OS disk fails your stuff isn't tied up in a frantic recovery operation.

[NecroBones]

No way the storage is bottlenecking KSP. I have tried putting KSP inside ramdisk and it doesn't load much faster

I think you're right. My new system using a regular HDD, and my load times are usually under a minute... but where mine is shining right now, is that it's overclocked to 4 Ghz (about as far as I could push it on the stock cooler).

[Smorfty]

Got two installs of kps. One on my SSD and one on my HDD.

I haven't measured the loading times but they seem to be about the same actually.

5 min startup time is waaaay too long even on a normal HDD. There must have been some other thing wrong in your setup.

SSD's are nice but they don't have the extreme speed some people seem to think they have.

[-RanZ-]

love SSDs, I will never go back to a HDD for anything other than static file storage