case study
Intel® Solid-State Drives
Performance: Data-Intensive Computing
Delivering immersive gaming
Testing shows that Intel® Solid-State Drives can significantly reduce game load times and improve visual fidelity
Video game developers are constantly looking for new ways to enhance the end-user experience, enabling players to get into the game
faster and enjoy more exciting, immersive game play. A team of Intel engineers recently conducted tests to explore how Intel® Solid-State
Drives (Intel® SSDs) might improve the end-user experience by accelerating game load times and increasing visual fidelity. The results
were striking: Intel® SSDs sped up game loading by up to 78 percent while delivering more fluid character animation.
Challenges
•Accelerate game load time. Enable users to get in the game faster by reducing the
time to load games.
•Enhance visual fidelity. Deliver a more immersive game experience by improving the
fluidity of character movements.
Solution
•Intel® Solid-State Drives in end-user systems. Intel engineers demonstrated some
of the performance benefits of using Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drives
(SSDs) in end-user systems instead of hard disk drives (HDDs).
Impact
•Faster loading. Tests showed that using Intel® SSDs in end-user systems could
accelerate game loading times by up to 78 percent, enabling gamers to start
playing faster.
•Immersive gaming. Intel® SSDs deliver more fluid character animation than even the
highest performing HDDs, creating a more immersive gaming experience.
“If you want faster game
loads and better in-game
performance, upgrading to a
solid-state drive, such as the
Intel® SSD, is essential for
the most demanding gamers.”
– Vincent Greco,
Technical Coordinator,
International Production,
Ubisoft
Whether they are building mythical worlds
for gamers to explore, crafting new
science-fiction adventures, or bringing
the thrill of extreme sports to a PC, video
game developers strive to produce the
most exciting games possible—games
that can captivate and engage millions of
players around the world. Innovation is a
primary goal, but in creating tomorrow’s
game titles, video game developers must
always consider the potential limitations
of end-user gaming systems. The addition
of new game capabilities or graphical
elements will mean little to gamers if
their computers are unable to provide the
performance required to enjoy them.
To identify new ways for improving the
gaming experience, Intel engineers recently
conducted tests to assess whether using
Intel® SSDs in end-user systems could
enhance game performance. Comparing
Intel® SSDs with hard disk drives (HDDs),
the Intel team first measured game load
times for several popular games. The
engineers then studied the effects on
visual fidelity, determining whether and
how Intel® SSDs might contribute to a more
immersive visual experience.
Players get in the game faster with
Intel® Solid State Drives
“With an Intel® SSD, we can
add 20 to 40 textures per
frame in real time during
game play without any need
for scheduling. Latency is low
enough to load resources ‘just in
time,’ immediately before they
are accessed, so we can build
fundamentally more detailed
and interesting games.”
– Tim Sweeney,
Founder and CEO,
Epic Games
Intel® SSDs accelerate load times
up to 78 percent
StarCraft II, games loaded 70 percent
faster with a single Intel® SSD.
To test game loading times, the Intel
team compared a system using a single,
internal Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA
SSD against a system using a single,
internal Western Digital VelociRaptor*
10K RPM HDD—a very high-performance
drive. Engineers then tested a system
using two VelociRaptor 10K RPM drives in
a RAID 0 configuration. All test systems
were equipped with the Intel® Core™
i7 920 processor and 24 GB of DDR3
memory, and ran the 64-bit version of
the Microsoft Windows 7* operating
system. The Intel team evaluated the
loading time for several popular games,
including Far Cry 2*, Assassin’s Creed II*,
and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas*
from Ubisoft plus StarCraft II* from
Blizzard Entertainment.
Tracing the I/O behavior of drives during
game loads showed that the Intel® SSD
delivered better performance than the
HDD through each of the key stages of
loading. The Intel® SSD provided faster
read times for execution load, menu
navigation, and level load phases.
The results showed a significant acceleration of game loading time when using
an Intel® SSD (see Figure 1). StarCraft II
showed the greatest improvement, with
a 78 percent faster game load using a
single Intel® SSD compared with a single
HDD. A single Intel® SSD also significantly
outperformed two VelociRaptor HDDs in
a RAID 0 configuration. In the case of
The overall gains in load time would
be easily noticeable to end users. A
78 percent improvement in game load time
with StarCraft II means that gamers using
an Intel® SSD could start playing 15 seconds
sooner than if they were using a HDD.
Developers can further accelerate
loading by optimizing for Intel® SSDs
Optimizing games for Intel® SSDs could
decrease game load times even more. In
testing, the game engine for StarCraft II
used only 40 percent of the Intel® SSD’s full
bandwidth. Because today’s games were
designed primarily for systems with HDDs,
several tasks are executed in series. When
Intel® SSDs become standard for gamers,
developers can configure tasks to run in
parallel, delivering an even faster game load
load (see Figure 2).
Intel® SSD Load Time Improvements
Intel® X25-M SSD vs. WD VelociRaptor 10K RPM HDDs in RAID 0
Figure 1. Intel® SSDs significantly reduce
game load time compared with Western
Digital VelociRaptor HDDs.
Percent Faster Game Load
(compared to VeloclRaptor HDDs)
90%
80%
70%
60%
70%
Percent Faster Game load
compared to single HDD
40%
30%
34%
20%
10%
0%
2
78%
50%
20%
31%
47%
Percent Faster Game load
compared to RAID O HDDs
37%
18%
FARCRY 2
Assassin’s
Creed II
Tom Clancy’s
Rainbow Six
Vegas
Star Craft II
Intel® SSDs deliver a more fluid
visual experience
The Intel team next evaluated whether Intel®
SSDs could improve graphics performance
during game play. The tests focused on
frame-to-frame coherency—the change in
pixels from frame to frame over a certain
amount of time. Once again the testing team
compared Intel® SSDs with VelociRaptor 10K
RPM HDDs. The Intel team used the games
Assassin’s Creed II and Demigod*, developed
by Gas Powered Games, for testing.
graphics card, driving a monitor at 2560 x
1600 resolution. The gaming system used
either an Intel® X25-M SSD or Western Digital VelociRaptor 10K RPM HDD, while the
capture system used two Western Digital
VelociRaptor HDDs in RAID 0 configuration.
The PCIe card was an XtremeRGB-Ex1*.
The Intel engineers transferred 720pquality, uncompressed AVI video from the
gaming system to a capture system via a
PCIe capture card to measure frame-toframe coherency reliably.
When testing the HDDs, the Intel team discovered “hitches” in character movement—
discontinuities that occur when 0.1 percent
or less of the total display pixels change for
a duration of at least five frames. Using the
Intel® SSDs, there were zero hitches. The
character animation appeared more fluid, and
the character also moved faster, reaching the
same point on the map sooner than when
the game was run on systems with HDDs.
Both the gaming and capture systems
were configured with an Intel Core i7 920
processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295*
The Intel team evaluated hitch density
for HDDs compared with Intel® SSDs. Using
discrete hitch count (DHC), average frame
duration (AFD), and the total elapsed
frame count, the Intel team calculated
a score for hitch density through the
following formula:
(DHC x AFD)/(total elapsed frame
count)*100 = % score
Lower scores are better. For the Demigod
game play trace, the HDD system yielded
a score of 7 percent while the Intel® SSD
system had a score of 0 percent.
By tracing I/O, the Intel team found that
the hitches were caused by storage
bottlenecks. During the game-play
sequence, the timing of the hitches
corresponded to spikes in drive utilization
on the HDDs. Because the Intel® SSDs
avoid those bottlenecks, they can avoid
character hitches and improve the fluidity
of character motion (see Figure 3).
WD VelociRaptor HDD
Cumulative I/O
500,000
Total KB
400,000
Level Load
300,000
200,000
Exe Load
Menu Navigation
100,000
0
0
20
40
60
80
Trace Time (seconds)
100
120
Reads
Writes
Intel® X25-M SSD
Cumulative I/O
Figure 2. The Intel® SSD delivered better
performance than the Western Digital
VelociRaptor HDD through each of the key
load stages.
500,000
Total KB
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
0
20
40
60
80
Trace Time (seconds)
100
120
3
Developers plan for the
future of gaming
According to Tim Sweeney, founder and
CEO of Epic Games, the performance of
Intel® SSDs could help deliver more visually
appealing games by allowing developers to
add textures without the need for complex
content streaming and scheduling within
the game engine. “With an Intel® SSD, we
can add 20 to 40 textures per frame in real
time during game play without any need
for scheduling,” says Sweeney. “Latency is
low enough to load resources ‘just in time,’
immediately before they are accessed, so
we can build fundamentally more detailed
and interesting games.”
According to Vincent Greco, technical
coordinator of international production at
Ubisoft, the message from the Intel tests
is clear: “If you want faster game loads and
better in-game performance, upgrading to
a solid-state drive, such as the Intel® SSD, is
essential for the most demanding gamers.”
Users can get in the game faster and enjoy
much smoother, more responsive, and more
immersive gaming.
For developers, the tests highlight ways to
capitalize on Intel® SSDs to further improve
the game experience. Developers can
configure loading tasks to run in parallel
to take full advantage of I/O bandwidth
and further accelerate game load times.
And without having to worry about the
I/O bandwidth spikes that cause character
hitches, developers can create titles that
make the most of fast and fluid motion.
Performance: Data-Intensive
Computing. Support the most
demanding business data processing,
and computationally intense graphics.
Find the Intel® Solid-State Drive
solution that is right for your business.
Contact your Intel representative
or visit www.intel.com/go/ssd for
product information.
To learn more about other Intel
business solutions, please
visit the Reference Room at
www.intel.com/references.
Figure 3. With lower disk utilization than
HDDs, Intel® SSDs avoid the bottlenecks
that cause character “hitching.”
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Performance tests and ratings are measured using specific computer systems and/or components and reflect the approximate performance of Intel products as measured by those tests. Any difference in system hardware or software
design or configuration may affect actual performance.
Intel may make changes to specifications, product descriptions and plans at any time, without notice.
Intel, the Intel logo, and Intel Core are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
Copyright © 2011 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
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