OCZ Core 64GB MLC SSD Review.. (Testing in progress..)

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I just have one question: Do you have any thoughts wrt how this compares to say Vista 64 with 8G of RAM so you are RAM caching all those textures? I mean, on paper it seems like it should be a win.

I would think with Vista and 8GB of RAM, performance would be even better for 5-boxing since you'll have more RAM available to store loaded data. I'm still on the fence about upgrading to a Q9450, 8GB, Vista64, etc right now or holding off until Nehalem/i7 in 6 months or so. I'm leaning on holding off for awhile, since the performance difference with the new architecture should be worth it.

We just got a few of these in at work to test out as a local store for transaction logs... there's a spare, and I'm hoping to get my grubby paws on it for a few days if I can

It literally only took about 15 minutes for the install - if you could borrow one for a night that's all the time you'd need.

Do you think putting 2 of the 32gb versions in RAID0 would be better then the 64gb version? (I'm assuming yes here)

Definitely, but it'd cost much more. The 32GB version is around $199, and the 64GB version is around $250. That's why I went with 64GB - I didn't want to drop $400 on something that I hadn't tested yet. Now I can get another 64GB for 128GB of RAID0 loveliness. Keep in mind that most motherboards just allow for one RAID array, and I like my RAID0 Raptors. So I'd need a separate controller card to put in a RAID0 of SSDs. RAID0 of SSDs would easily improve the read transfer rates, so it would be faster for reading random data and large sequential data than one Raptor, but it'll still likely be slower than sequential reads than RAID0 Raptors and possibly slower on write speed than one Raptor. Do not get an SSD to be a drive you'll need to write to with any performance hopes - that means don't use them for OS/swap/full installs, even if you RAID0 them.

But if all of these textures are stored in RAM, there should be NO lag, regardless of how many toons you are running - or at least less lag than even an SSD.

Unless, of course, these textures take > 4-5G that an 8G system should have left over after 5 clients. Then you are still paging from disk. I just have a hard time believing there are THAT many, even in shat.

hmmm

I have a feeling that the data structures and algorithms the WoW developers have used limit performance on high-end machines in order to have decent performance on low-end machines. Beyond the OS's ability to cache data, I think WoW probably does too good of a job at releasing memory too soon..

The problem in question is Flying INTO SHattrah or Loading Alterac Vally
when its loading all those textures into your ram it takes a LONG LONG time to do it, while searching for each small texture file

once its in the memory everything is good, as long as there is no use of swap filing

This is true - it's the initial load of town that is bad, but I also find a boost in fps the entire time I'm in town. Unfortunately it varies too much due to the amount of players in town and how many polygons I'm trying to render to put a number on it, but I'd guess somewhere in the 10-40% range for an increase in fps after the initial load.

Great review... have been waiting for the price on these things to come down to more 'reasonable' levels
Quick question, why only put your wow/data directory on the SSD... why not put the OS and your complete WoW directories on the SSD?

Because SSDs are NOT better than Raptors for writing data, which the OS does on its drive, and you definitely don't want a swapfile on an SSD. A lot of writing gets done to your config/Add-On folders in WoW - keep in mind that SSDs have a limited amount of writes in their lifetime (millions of writes, so more likely a longer lifespan than standard hard drive anyway). The space isn't large, so I want more room available for other games as well. The main issue was solving the lag in Shatt/cities, and that's done. Other large files that need to be loaded - like the WoW.exe, will be faster on a RAID0 of Raptors since the transfer rate is higher - access time doesn't really come into play because it only has to find one file.

Don't bother with Raptors if you don't have them yet.

Doh! Curse my impatience....

Thanks for the enjoyable write-up. As I have no spare bays left in my main rig, I'm going to have to think very carefully about what to do if the shiny new raptors I have on order don't live up to expectations! I suspect they'll be shelved in favour of this setup to be honest.

Don't feel too bad about it - the Raptors are still the best option for an OS/swapfile drive. You can always easily add in a 32GB SSD later. That's what I've done - I still have my RAID0 Raptors. Honestly, the SSD is so small (think of about 10-15 credit cards stacked together), even if you don't have a spare drive bay, you could find some place to mount the thing. My main point was that if I were building a new rig and limited on cash, I'd get one Raptor (OS/swap/main installs) and one SSD (storing random data that needs to be quickly loaded) over two Raptors. The SSD has very limited use - you don't want to store data that will be read sequentially, since Raptors will be faster in loading sequential data. You only want to use the SSD for data that needs to be randomly read many times in short amounts. That makes it perfect for game data like WoW. Some other games, like Counterstrike maps, would be better stored on a Raptor RAID0 array, since the data is sequential and only has to be found once, then depends on transfer rate (RAID0 Raptors!) to load.