FFXI + HDD Vs. SSD

Im currently thinking about building a new computer and weither or not to get a small SSD to go along with my 500GB HDD. Im just wondering if there will be a signifigant performance increase from running FFXI off a general SSD compared to a 10,000RPM 6gb/s HDD (idk the seek time)

Too many questions about FFXI performance. FFXI is based on a 10-year-old engine, your grandmother's typewriter can run FFXI at 30 FPS.

Get SSD if you can afford it.

I doubt it. However, you will notice significant gains with other games/applications if you get a high quality SSD.

Forgot to mention: Also planning on using it for other games, mostly FFXIV

SSD wont affect a game as much. You should get a 32GB SSD and put your OS on it, that will improve performance a lot. Then, get 2 of the same hard drive and run them on RAID 0 so you have 2 controllers running what looks like 1 hard drive. That would be a great setup for less of a price then a large SSD.

Well the main reason i was getting a SSD was to hold the OS for better boot times... and to boot Photoshop in less than 2 seconds. Was jw if maybe there were enough benefits to consider going for a larger SSD.

And then you have double the chance of losing all your ***when one of your HDD's dies <_<

RAID is great, I'm just paranoid about it since I have had a HDD randomly go corrupt on me. But yes SSD's are great, but put your OS on them first and foremost. They should improve the performance of damn near any program you install on them, but you're only talking about load times, which for games, is basically just zoning and loading CS's I think. Considering the cost of an SSD, do you really want to waste the space on it for FFXI?

Homeservers for backup FTW... if ur rich :P

lol any hard drive can go corrupt at any time, thats what backups are for. i assumed we were talking pure performance here.

Solid state drives aren't really much faster than disc drives. The primary differences are involving power consumption because there are no moving parts, so it's efficient for a laptop to have a SSD. Speed of transferring small files is faster on SSD, but large files faster on a normal disc drive. The boosts in performance can only reach a certain point due to the restrictions of bandwidth (on se's side) and the engine used. Hard drive access is rarely used in this game, just to load a new zone. Most lag and poor performance is related to the engine and speed at which SE transfers the mesh of data.

Currently running Samsung SSD 2nd Gen. 128 Gigs with FFXI.

Game load about 1 sec to log in stage and after that you would not notice a single different. Even the zone inbetween time is just the same. I Duo box one with HDD and my main with SSD and I can tell you they both load exactly the same time.

Same experience here.



Don't waste money on an SSD. They're not worth it. The markup on them is insane since manufactures know consumers are idiots willing to pay a ton of money for something "new". It's why you see companies that usually don't manufacture HDs, mass produce SSDs (Intel and Corsair for example). The extremely high profit margin.


If you're willing to pay upward of $500 for an SSD, spend $300 on a HWRAID card and $200 for 3 1TB drives and RAID 5 them. You'll learn something truly useful and the end option is much more feasible compared to an overpriced SSD with 8 times less storage space.

+ Edit: Bottom line imo is you're spending $200-$600 to save 60 seconds here and there. If you don't generate $25,000USD/hour, it's not an attractive return on your investment.