Exploring “Frame time” measurement – Part 2 – Is the SSD “smoother” than the HDD in Gaming?

World in Conflict Soviet Assault

World In Conflict is set in an alternate history Earth where the Cold War did not end and Russia invaded the USA in 1989 and the remaining Americans decided to strike back. World in Conflict (WiC) is a real-time tactical/strategy video game developed by Massive Entertainment and released in 2007. The expansion, Soviet Assault, was released in 2009. Although it is generally considered a real-time strategy (RTS) game, World in Conflict includes gameplay typical of real-time tactical (RTT) games. WiC is filled with real vehicles from both the Russian and the American military. There are also tactical aids, including calling in massive bombing raids, access to chemical warfare, nuclear weapons, and far more.

Here is yet another amazing and very customizable and detailed DX10 benchmark that is available in-game or as a stand-alone. We use the full retail game’s in-game benchmark as it offers more settings than the demo and is fully updated by patches. The particle effects and explosions in World in Conflict Soviet Assault are truly spectacular! Every setting is fully maxed out and our display’ refresh rate is set to 120Hz in the Nvidia control panel as well as in-game.

Let’s go right to the graphs and first check the fps results with the default benchmark score using Fraps.

Here are the Fraps log runs:

There is a difference between the averages which is nearly 3% – at the limit of benching variability.  However, we see that the max frame rate is way higher on the SSD and it probably also affects the averages.

Lets’s look at the frame time chart for the HDD:.

Now check out the frame time chart for the SSD:

There is a little something going on at the end of the SSD’s particular run but there is about as much variety between the charts as there are between individual runs of World-in-Conflict.  Because of the human variability in starting and stopping Fraps, there will not be perfect charts that line up exactly.  Although the frame rates are variable, the stutters of the frame time charts remain very similar.

Here is the HDD ranking:

Here is the SSD ranking:

Although there is some variation, none of it can be attributed to using a HDD versus a SSD.