FAT32 or NTFS for games?

[Yoyoson]

Someone told me by-word-of-mouth that games run more efficiently on FAT32 parititions than they do on NTFS ones. I understand that this may vary a lot from game to game.. but does anyone know if this is true to any extent?

 

[LordM]

As far as I know, NTFS is only 'faster' on large drivers (more then 20 gig or something like that). But I don't really think game performace will change if you use FAT32 instead of NTFS... No matter what FS you're using, it's never good if your pc access the harddisk alot when you'r playing 😉

 

[Abzstrak]

NTFS is superior to FAT16/32 in every way, shape, and form... there is no reason to use FAT.

 

[Scouzer]

Despite the NTFS superiority, as forementioned, most games should not need to access the hard drive much at all. Anytime the game has to access the hard drive is a massive slowdown versus the RAM in any cases.

The FAT32 vs NTFS performance different is not much. Use whatever is most convienient...

 

[Derango]

If you're going to dual boot with another OS, use fat32. Other than that, there's no reason to use fat32, period.

They should have repalaced fat32 back in win95/98 (or whenever they first came up with NTFS🙂 )

 

[AndyHui]

Please read the FAQ: FAT32 vs NTFS.

I don't think the performance difference is measurable for games, so it's probably best to go with NTFS.

 

[TheWart]

gaming here on NTFS with nary a problem.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

FAT 16 owns all of them, it is by far the fastest. Too bad it only supports 2 GB partitions. Seriously, put windows (if you run 98 or 95) on a FAT 16 partition and it will fly. It is significantly faster than FAT 32 when i compared the two.