Edit: if you have 2 ssd, you really need to look into setting up RAID 1? think raid 1... You will get even faster speeds than you do now, plus some additional data integrity protections. ofc, you get 1/2 the space though.
How to Set Up RAID on Your PC | PCWorld
edit: just started sim from 2016... same league/settings - forgot to check however, 2017 took 2minutes on the hdd. so 103years of history and 16k retired players adds about ~40seconds - no news, but keeping mlb stats/splits in case it aids the AI. (28t 156g league with default full fictional minors)
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side note: there are ~16,000 retired players. no news/logs etc kept... the # of players should be similar to at least a bit of news. stats and history are 103 years deep(2119 is test year). so, there's a bit of fat to aid the test. the custom data path was pointed to the correct drives each time. since i merely copied the game directoy. "user" folder is on OS, but i'm not re-installing an os on the hdd for this test... also, most who have an ssd will have the OS on it regardless.
ssd took ~6-7sec to load to main menu and about ~5s to load my league. hdd took ~6-7sec to load to main screen and ~5s to load the league.
I can admit when i am wrong... absolutely no difference loading the game or league.
jan 1 through autosave completion. Every settings, player, team, ALL is the same, including the year of the league -- except one difference. one is on the ssd, one is on the hdd.
SSD Run:
Start-5:09:06
End---5:11:43
Total 2:37
HDD Run:
Start--5:15:45
Finish-5:18:31
Total 2:46
an entire 9s saved... not too far off my prediction of a matter of seconnds, eh? the game likely fluctuates a bit by nature. maybe give a +/-2s to that total per year with similar settings.
even thogh i have all that stuff not being stored, it still writes all that stupid news / transaction / injury logs during the year.. then it's cleared during the end of year processes, i assume. so those read/writes are still occurring. keeping those logs will ONLY affect the auto-save time... as i said during processing of the simulation virtually zero perfomance gain.
Relative to more normal gameplay - playing day-to-day or simming smaller portion of the year until a personal message interrupts - the savings are so insignificant. a human can not distinguish any performance gain while playing out 1 day,r 1 week, or likely 1 months for that matter... 9s spread out over a sim-year...
Long-term simulations will have a modest benefit. it will finish a little faster... but your likely not staring at a pc in these situations... i know i come back to it long after it finishes already.
The earlier you are in your league, the less the savings - educated guess. this was 100+ years of history and retired players. sim times on the hdd were ~15s less at leageu inception. (edit, wrong ... about ~40s less on hdd)
i could predict this because i know more than just the spec sheet when it come to real world results. specs are 'theory' not reality. in many cases they are total BS - relative to what they feed the consumer... behind closed doors 'they' know better, but they understand the importance of marketing... if someone else says it's 6gbits/s then they also have to say so even though that pathway on your pc will never reach it... ever.
I'm sure richw can find something to argue about or why he is actually right regardless of these pesky facts. don't let reality get in your way, bud. you know your right because you can "feel" it.