SSD performance in WoW dissected

[Bollwerk]

Interesting article on SSD performance as it relates to WoW, Crysis 2 and Civ V.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-gaming-performance,2991.html

[MiRai]

Dammit I'm not sure I'm going to have enough time to read this before I have to go to class....

[sabersmith]

Dammit I'm not sure I'm going to have enough time to read this before I have to go to class....
basically says loading the initial game very little difference.
loading realm big difference,
streaming in while you travel minor-medium performance boost.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Synopsis re: WoW:

WoW is mostly random data. Thus, SSDs will greatly improve your performance. Duh?

[Sam DeathWalker]

Overall Statistics

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: Gameplay
Elapsed Time
05:19
Read Operations
245
Write Operations
581
Data Read
2.86 MB
Data Written
31.42 MB
Disk Busy Time
0.12 s
Average Data Rate
276.91 MB/s

World of Warcraft: Catalysm looks more similar to Crysis 2 when it comes to gameplay. The majority of operations are sequential writes. The key difference from Crysis 2 is transfer size, as there’s a greater variety in WoW due to the game’s file structure.

This workload, however, reflects a very specific style of play: mainly, running around a single zone running quests and interacting with the environment. Just bear in mind that it might not be as representative of end-game raiding or flying around between zones, loading new textures on-demand.

I/O Trends:


82% of all operations are sequential
70% of all operations occur at a queue depth of one
38% 4 KB, 28% 128 KB, 9% 16 KB, 8% 8 KB
Well kinda usless information if they are saying there are 15X times the number of writes then reads. Loading new texTures on-demand is what we need to really know ....

But ya wow is mostly random reads (during gameplay running around in org) of 4K chunks.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

It's also relatively useless for multiboxers as we generally experience 3-10x the reads/writes of single-boxers like in this review, and have certain features enabled (junction point folder sharing for example) that change the way the disk accesses behave rather markedly.

[JamieW]

Indeed. In my setup, I have most of the textures and "static" data files on my SSD junctioned in to my normal game directory located on a HDD. The HDD then takes the brunt of any write activity in-game, and the SSD really only gets written to during patches.

[burningforce]

Indeed. In my setup, I have most of the textures and "static" data files on my SSD junctioned in to my normal game directory located on a HDD. The HDD then takes the brunt of any write activity in-game, and the SSD really only gets written to during patches.
then what is the point to using an SSD for WoW? if you put the textures data on the regular HDD, doesn't that slow down the loading of zones, players, gear, etc? That seems to defeat the purpose of putting the game on an SSD in the first place.

[JamieW]

then what is the point to using an SSD for WoW? if you put the textures data on the regular HDD, doesn't that slow down the loading of zones, players, gear, etc? That seems to defeat the purpose of putting the game on an SSD in the first place.

I don't think you read that right, or I didn't explain it properly.

I have the static/textures directory located on the SSD. The rest of the installation is on the HDD. There is a junction point created in Windows that maps the information on the SSD to look like a folder on the HDD, so that the software is none-the-wiser that it's really spread across two drives.

[Rhand]

I don't think you read that right, or I didn't explain it properly.

I have the static/textures directory located on the SSD. The rest of the installation is on the HDD. There is a junction point created in Windows that maps the information on the SSD to look like a folder on the HDD, so that the software is none-the-wiser that it's really spread across two drives.

JamieW - Can you provide a bit of 'how-to' or detail on how you're structuring things? I'm assuming it works just like unpacking the MPQ's and placing them in the work directory of WoW ... forget the folder name ... the game looks there first to see if it's already unpacked and if not goes to the MPQ to retrieve the textures etc. I get the unpacking but how are you doing the junction points in Win7?

[burningforce]

oh ok jamiew, I think I understand.

so how many less writes does doing this create? seems like a good idea.

[JamieW]

I'm not certain the setup for WoW, since I don't play WoW. I box Rift, used to box LOTRO and DAOC. Used a similar setup for all of them, so I'd guess you could set it up for WoW.

Here (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=23338)'s an older thread that got me started in the right direction. It discusses similar concepts for WoW.

Instead of leaving the textures/data folder in the original install directory, I just moved it to the SSD and symlinked it to all installs. As ISBoxer has improved to use virtual files for Rift, etc., the need for different directories went away, but I ended up keeping the link of the data on the SSD.