SSD Becomes a System Requirement, 100GB SSD Required for WoW Shadowlands

[EmperorOfFinland]

It all depends on the size of the games ofcourse, i have couple that hit 100-200GB per game. 2TB used to be plenty of space before but now its kinda low amount of space. personally i cant justify adding smaller than 2TB drives for my system for anything else than os since thouse drives are just a waste of a sata or nvme slot.

Im not sure how the way the new consoles load their textures is going to change games for the PC
But i know the mass adoption for SSD's for gaming is when the 2TB drives will drop to about 130€. they are still about 100€ from that though.

 

[bug]

Why would they need the faster access time? Is some disk thrashing incoming?

 

[EmperorOfFinland]

well i would not count it out, last time i heard anything about it they were supposed to stream the textures from the SSD, so if its what i think its probably disk trashing constantly.

 

[AsRock]

About damn time.

It is but it is annoying when your trying to read the tip on a loading screen and POOF it's gone, you never had a chance haha.

Did MS fix SSD\HDD bug in the new win10OS ?. might actually stop you from playing it.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Is a RAID0 from 3x 970EVO 250GB running all at x4 PCIE lanes + another 970EVO 500GB for OS ok?

In all honesty, RAID 0 arrays generally hurt random reads and writes, so I actually wouldn't recommend a RAID 0 config for an OS drive.... That's why I'm really surprised to see a number of gaming laptops going for this configuration, but I assume it's scritcly a marketing thing/a way of trying to show up other brands. Even Intel Optane drives in this configuration either result in random r/w stagnation (no increase) or at worst degradation in performance. For example, I have a Highpoint Storage Solutions SSD7103 3.0x16 Bootable 4xm.2 raid adapter (RAID on chip, not software RAID) with four HP EX950's in it and although it was always intended to be the top storage tier in my DIY server/NAS, of course I wanted to see what it was like to run an OS from it since it is Bootable, but synthetic tests showed no great benefit to random r/w's and it certainly didn't feel subjectively faster, not to mention the added risk of having your OS spanning 4 different drives with respect to drive failure.

 

[delshay]

HDD are for peasants. I don't use them in my PC anymore. The wow subs are very low at the moment 1.7M, not too long before it is free to play with in game shop.

Sorry, HDD are very useful for backup. That is what I use it for here as my 2TB SSD is full. Can't install any more games so i'm having to de-install to make room for any new games that are released. My next upgrade will be 4TB SSD, 2TB is just to small.

 

[bug]

well i would not count it out, last time i heard anything about it they were supposed to stream the textures from the SSD, so if its what i think its probably disk trashing constantly.

Reads are ok, they don't wear the disk. I'm afraid of them trying to checkpoint everything, resulting in frequent writes.

 

[B-Real]

I'm assuming the recommended specs stand for the 4K setup, as there are no major visual upgrades in SL compared to WotLK and Cataclysm (or MoP, can't remember now). And my RX 570 can easily run it on FHD with 8/10 quality and CMAA enabled, usually reaching the 60 fps cap I set. And NV counterparts run the game even better.

However, I can justify the recommendation of the SSD. I switched to a second SATA SSD in my desktop PC for games 2 weeks ago (just a 240GB one) to be able to run WoW from it. The loading times changed this way:

load time from launcher to main screen:
HDD: 11 sec
SSD: 4-5 sec

load time from launcher to character choice screen:
HDD: 19 sec
SSD: 10-11 sec

and the most important: load time from character choice screen to game (Boralus or Dalaran, can't remember):
HDD: 66-67 sec
SSD: 15 sec

Game runs on potato PC, requires SSD

Well, you get a 50+ sec load time decrease with a single cheap SATA SSD. So yes, it is quite important for this game.

 

[Frick]

HDD are for peasants. I don't use them in my PC anymore. The wow subs are very low at the moment 1.7M, not too long before it is free to play with in game shop.

Finally. I mean finally we draw closer to the end of WoW.

 

[mahirzukic2]

Reads are ok, they don't wear the disk. I'm afraid of them trying to checkpoint everything, resulting in frequent writes.

Which is bound to happen at some point.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Totally agree with you 2TB SSD is not enough anymore.

I still have 500gb free on my 2TB, with over 70 steam games installed on it.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Finally. I mean finally we draw closer to the end of WoW.

Well, since it can run on a potato... I don't think WoW will die anytime soon, especially not with hardware prices like they are today. The art style is also very unique.

 

[EmperorOfFinland]

The current setup i have at this moment contains a 500GB M.2 SSD for OS, 2TB SATA SSD for games, 4TB 7200RPM HDD drive for some backups. 4TB 5400RPM External HDD, for backups. videofiles and games that i want to transfer around. i also recently got 2x 3TB 5400RPM HDD's for free so i will be adding them to my system for extra videomaterial/music storage. So the extra space is needed on this system atleast, i usually keep my things around since they might contain modded installations for games and so forth that would take really long time to configure similarly, or might be impossible to if the said mods are no longer available.

But what the computer really needs is another 2-4 TB SSD, probably even a M.2 SSD since i have one spare slot on my motherboard. but that is going to be really expensive. Anywhere between 350-500€ for a 2TB M.2 SSD and if i want a 4TB one, well that is going to be way more expensive than 500€. A normal person will not be paying more than 100-200€ for a drive. I would have added a 2TB M.2 SSD if it would not have costed 380-500€ for one in finland. that gets you a 4TB SATA SSD. Meanwhile 300-500€ gets you 8-12TB of HDD storage in a single drive. So when the drives in the system start to cost more than the rest of the system itself it starts to be painful for getting SSD's Atleast i have trashpicked 3 of thouse harddrives for free so its not that expensive but the whole cost for all the drives in my system as new would be about 700€ in total. I simply cant afford enough storage in SSD form to keep me going if i also want to upgrade the computer aswell.

So if something has to happen, its that the price of the SSD's would have to drop massively.

 

[noel_fs]

imagine not only asking for 100gb but requiring an ssd


not even MSF2020 and its an actual masive game

 

[Makaveli]

Is a RAID0 from 3x 970EVO 250GB running all at x4 PCIE lanes + another 970EVO 500GB for OS ok?

if that is PCIe 2.0 lanes

Not impressive.

And do people still play this game?

iirc, Star Citizen also recommends an SSD

lol why that game will be stuck in development forever considering the constant feature creep.

 

[delshay]

I still have 500gb free on my 2TB, with over 70 steam games installed on it.

I have nowhere near the amount of games you have, but most of my games are 25GB+. Example backup of Ark Survival Evolved which was free some months ago from Epic is 100GB. & you have GTA5 which is 80GB+ which was also free from Epic some months ago.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Here is the biggest one i have installed from steam, plus wow and ghost recon wildlands too. Still got 556gb free

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

PC oriented game so I see no reason for adapting it to an SSD... and don't forget it's 15+ year old so I'm not expecting some streaming issues.

You do realize that they upgrade graphics, models, animations over time, right? The game is more demanding now than it was 15 years ago when it released.

Game runs on potato PC, requires SSD

Go find a potato PC and let me know how that works for you right now at end game.

HDD are for peasants. I don't use them in my PC anymore. The wow subs are very low at the moment 1.7M, not too long before it is free to play with in game shop.

Where did you find that number since Blizz doesnt share that information anymore?

Finally. I mean finally we draw closer to the end of WoW.

WoW isnt going anywhere. They have more expansions planned for the future. It's going to be around for more than 20 years.

 

[Makaveli]

My stream library with just

GTV 5
Killer instinct
L4D2
Mortal Kombat 11
Soul Calibur VI
Street Fight V
Streets of Rage 4

Is 304GBs right there.

Then outside of steam

Batman Arkham Knight is 67GB
Battlefield V 88GB
Apex Legends 50GB
Remnant from the ashes 35GB
Starcraft 2 35GB
Call of Duty Modern Warefare 97GB
Predator Hunter Grounds 19GB
World War Z 40GB

431GB's

So about 735GB on my 2TB volume for games.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

You also have to take into account the loading time cost for loading addons which makes loading the game significantly SLOWER on mechanical hard drives.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

You do realize that they upgrade graphics, models, animations over time, right? The game is more demanding now than it was 15 years ago when it released.


Go find a potato PC and let me know how that works for you right now at end game.


Where did you find that number since Blizz doesnt share that information anymore?


WoW isnt going anywhere. They have more expansions planned for the future. It's going to be around for more than 20 years.

Here- https://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/world-of-warcraft-wow-subscription-numbers-battle-of-azeroth-1932930#:~:text=On its Twitter account, WeakAuras,worldwide excluding China, it claims.

Obvs i took it with a pinch of salt, but it is probably still far below the numbers of old. I still have it installed, and subbed, i still play classic, not played regular since classic though

My stream library with just

GTV 5
Killer instinct
L4D2
Mortal Kombat 11
Soul Calibur VI
Street Fight V
Streets of Rage 4

Is 304GBs right there.

Then outside of steam

Batman Arkham Knight is 67GB
Battlefield V 88GB
Apex Legends 50GB
Remnant from the ashes 35GB
Starcraft 2 35GB
Call of Duty Modern Warefare 97GB
Predator Hunter Grounds 19GB
World War Z 40GB

431GB's

So about 735GB on my 2TB volume for games.

My steam folder is over 1TB

 

[Makaveli]

Here- https://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/world-of-warcraft-wow-subscription-numbers-battle-of-azeroth-1932930#:~:text=On its Twitter account, WeakAuras,worldwide excluding China, it claims.

Obvs i took it with a pinch of salt, but it is probably still far below the numbers of old. I still have it installed, and subbed, i still play classic, not played regular since classic though



My steam folder is over 1TB

I was close to 1TB but I uninstalled some games I don't play recently and also the Avengers Open PC beta. With the size of games these days i'm not sure my 2TB volume will be enough going forward.

 

[EmperorOfFinland]

Hmm.. i have a Athlon 64 x2 6000+ System. i could install the game on it just for fun. although i think it will probably eat more than 4GB of ram at this point so it might not even run properly.

My steam on M.2 SSD is 112GB, on the backup drive its 905GB, i also have 150-200GB of other games on the disk itself. so thats 1.1TB and my SSD has 200GB in use for games. so thats 1.3TB, if i would push it into the SSD itself. now the 2TB ssd is only 1.6TB in size so that means that i would only have 300GB left. so i would definately need more space for games.

I dont even play that much Triple AAA to begin with and i still have enough games installed to fill the SSD
Now with a normal game that is not modded you can uninstall it and install it again.although unless you have over 100mbs connection it will take a long time to download a big game like that.
With modded games it might take entire day to mod it back together so its better to keep thouse installed if you play them couple times a year.

 

[Paganstomp]

Planned obsolescence.

 

[dirtyferret]

Game runs on potato PC, requires SSD

Not any more, it's actually pretty demanding and it's needed a SSD for the last three expansions (regardless if Blizzard admitted it or not).

Why would they need the faster access time? Is some disk thrashing incoming?

zones, audio, and video for eight expansions plus their "shard" tech to keep zones populated. All that fits into a 70GB client.