Anyone using SSD w/GameEx?

[Necromancyr]

Just curious if anyone is using a SSD w/GameEx and how it impacts list loading and general interface speed.

While things are currently working well on my system, if I can get a huge speed boost for list loading, caching at load, etc., I'd love to do so.

Also, what do you have on the SSD - everything (art, roms, etc.) or just GameEx? (I'm guessing everything would be needed to get any real boost, but just curious).

[nullPointer]

Hi Necro

I use a small SSD as my boot drive and have GameEx installed to that (this one right here actually). The loading and caching take place very quickly, so that's awesome. All my ROMs and artwork (with the exception of Steam artwork) reside on a separate hard drive though so I can't speak as to whether there would be any noticeable speed increase there (that stuff tends to load pretty quickly anyway), I have wondered from time to time if archived ROMs requiring the Zip/7-Zip/GoodMerge/RAR feature in GameEx would get a speed boost during decompression from being located on the SSD (disc images in particular take a while to uncompress), but in my case it's not really an option due to the limited size of the SSD.

[Necromancyr]

One thing I wasn't sure of is how artwork is cached - wondering if having it on an SSD would be useful or not. The major delays I get (and by major, I mean noticable - not problematic) are at start and when switching between emulators and when I select a game for the 'info' screen to come up. It's most likely just me being anal rentive about speed...but, hell, if I can enhance it might as well.

[Draco1962]

Anything you can do to speed-up your OS and applications should show a noticeable increase in other items loading. Some things, such as external or network drive speed, network speed, etc. may show some improvement or not much at all if dealing with older equipment (i.e., 5200 rpm HDD vs. 7200 vs. SSD, 10/100 vs. gigabit network). as you are probably already aware.

[Necromancyr]

Yup. Everythings on a local 5200RPM drive now. Just upped the memory on the machine and that did assist some. Defiitely not an issue, just looking for experiences before I drop $$$ on a drive and then it does nothing.

[ClassicGMR]

I have a Crucial M4 256GB SSD as my primary HDD in my laptop. With fastboot enabled in the BIOS I go from power on to login screen in 7 seconds. Everything is installed on the SSD except for the games and AVI snaps(the biggest files). There is a major difference in load times on most applications. GameEx loads the databases faster but still has to deal with a 7200 RPM SATA drive for loading and ROM lists.

Overall it is a DEFINITE improvement! With 256GB SSD drives selling as low as $140 in the U.S. I couldn't pass up buying a few.

[Tom Speirs]

Im using SSDs here. Note with recent versions of Gameex it caches file locations for media and artwork so it should work very well with assets on network locations.

Speed increase from SSD for GameEx itself will be mostly related to initial startup including loading database etc.

Everything flies for me here, which is not always a good thing as I don't always get the indication about how it performs for others.

[Necromancyr]

Hrm...actually that brings up an interesting point about caching - how frequently does GameEx 'recache' (read: delete & rewrite the cache) things? If it's often, that could be an issue w/a SSD over time if it's caching a ton of images. If it's just the locations..shouldn't be a big deal.

And all of my stuff is local so...

...hrm. Lemme go see if that thing is still on sale.

...and...of course not. Next time.

Thanks all!

[Draco1962]

Hrm...actually that brings up an interesting point about caching - how frequently does GameEx 'recache' (read: delete & rewrite the cache) things? If it's often, that could be an issue w/a SSD over time if it's caching a ton of images. If it's just the locations..shouldn't be a big deal.

And all of my stuff is local so...

...hrm. Lemme go see if that thing is still on sale.

...and...of course not. Next time.

Thanks all!

Since it is caching the locations and not the actual image files themselves that shouldn't be as much of an issue.

[nightwulf]

I use a Crucial 64GB SSD as the only non-optical drive in my HTPC. GameEx and all the emulators are very snappy. All ROMs and assets (and music, videos, etc.) are on a RAID0 array in my file server (nothing fancy, Slackware with Samba) hardwired with gigabit ethernet. I think there's more delay due to the theme animations than anything else. That's not a complaint; I like them.

Veering off-topic, but at this point SSDs are a no-brainer investment. With DDR3 RAM practically free and CPU speeds at a wall, there's no better bang for your buck. If you're worried about sudden data loss, practically anyone can buy and use a fileserver with spinning drives. I hear Windows Home Server isn't a bad product and is cheap, and a little headless machine with two or more hard disks, a DVD drive, and nothing else would probably set you back ~$200. Well maybe more as hard drive prices never dropped to what they were, but still relatively inexpensive ...

[RIP-Felix]

If you have the doh to go ssd, get off the fence. It's the single most dramatic performance boosting upgrade you can make. I prefer Intel for the premium NAND flash memory and 5 year warranty's. I highly recommend the 180GB intel 520. They are a little more expensive, but the reliability is unmatched.

As far as GameEx is concerned. It loads quick (under 2 seconds for me) and I have no wait times for page transitions. I recommend SSD for boot drive/programs. Use big cheep spinner for data, artwork, roms, and etc.

Warning:

If you hate slow computers now, you will hate them even more once you go SSD. You have been warned.

[Discrepancy]

My friends and I just built a MAME-only cabinet using an SSD as the system drive. GameEx is indeed installed there and is quite snappy - during testing I tried installing all of the ROMs we had at the time (<30GB), plus all other resources (artwork, vids, etc.) onto the SSD since there was room. The speed difference was negligible - I'm sure it was snappier, but it was already fast enough that it didn't make an appreciable difference. I think it is sufficient to have GameEx installed on the SSD and either use another internal HDD or even a network-attached drive for ROMs and resources. I have been pleased with the caching.

Unfortunately, even having everything on the SSD did not make an impact on the random "long freezes" when exiting games back to GameEx, and sometimes in exiting GameEx itself. That battle goes on, but I have been otherwise quite pleased with GameEx on the SSD C: drive and everything else on a 7200 RPM D: drive.

Edit: I should also point out that I installed the emulator (MAMEUI64) on the SSD as well.

[Necromancyr]

So, resurrecting this from the dead. Finally got the SSD (256gb Toshiba one) - the speed increase in GameEx is amazing. The big question I have now is caching and writing to the drive - want to make sure GameEx isn't wearing down the SSD due to some setting I've left on or have one that's causing excessing writing. Any thoughts on that? Any caching I should shut off?

[Draco1962]

Caching is a necessary part of GameEx and there is little that you can shut off, although the changes to the cache files should be minimal. If you are not using the karaoke or music, there are probably some settings there you can disable via Setup Wizard. I would recommend, perhaps, installing your emulators and having your snaps, vids, etc. on your secondary HDD.

[Necromancyr]

Ah, but that would slow down them being pulled...unless everything is cached. That's kind of my confusion point. I'll take a look at settings and see. Thanks!

[Draco1962]

Tom pretty much answered the question with SSDs here. GameEx caches the locations, but not the files themselves. Depending on your setup, the speed to access the actual files from an HDD should be nominal. I will be going to SSDs shortly and intend to have all of my media on a larger storage HDD.

[Adultery]

I was gonna point out that I play my ROMs off a mapped network drive and don't have any issues at all. No crazy caches or anything like that, no noticeable lag of any sort.

If that's of any help.

[Tom Speirs]

Yeah, it generally does not do anything excessive when running it will basically load artwork and game lists and not much else. Artwork folder locations are cached in ram so it does not have to search for matches.

Artwork also runs okay from a network drive.

[Adultery]

Good to know, I debated moving my artwork over.

[KRC]

I thought I would put my input here.

I use my Samsung 250gb SSD as my primary drive and run my OS, GameEx, Steam, Gimp and the whole Adobe Suite off there and it runs at a blistering pace, I also have a secondary 60gb SSD which has nothing on it at the moment.