Game drive - SSD or HDD?

[jtvang125]

Can't decide if I should go with a budget SSD around 480-500GB for my game drive and a separate 1TB HDD for music and basic storage or a just a single high quality 2TB HDD (WD Black). I'll partition it down the middle, one for games and other for storage. Is faster load times really the only advantage of a SSD for games? Is that enough of a trade off for less capacity because many current games are hitting 30-50gb installs.

 

[UsandThem]

I only use SSDs now for everything (except for my external hard drive backups), but as long as your OS is on a SSD, that is the most important part. The differences between a fast HDD and SSD on loading games or programs isn't as big of a difference as having the OS on a SSD. Yes, they load slightly faster, but it is really up to you if it worth it. For me it was.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/12/10/hdd_vs_ssd_real_world_gaming_performance/5#.V7crRJgrJhE

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/12/ssd-for-gaming/

 

[Fardringle]

Since most newer games are constantly loading data from the hard disk, you should see a benefit having games installed on an SSD, especially for games that have large map/texture files that need to be loaded each time you enter a new area. As UsandThem said, it probably won't be a HUGE difference, but it will be noticeable. Then put your static data that doesn't need to be loaded fast (music, movies, etc) on a larger, cheaper, slower drive since they won't benefit from an SSD at all.

One example that I like to use since my daughter keeps reminding me of it, is Roller Coaster Tycoon. My daughter loves that game, and on a WD Black mechanical drive it took about 5 minutes to go through the initial load process where the game puts everything into RAM. Installed on a Samsung EVO 850 it takes about 5-10 seconds to load. It doesn't make much difference after that since everything is in memory at that point, but it definitely gets the game started faster.

 

[TemjinGold]

If you play online games, the difference is massive (when my brother first got his SSD a few years ago, he would always be the first one into a MMORPG map by a very large margin). If you only play singleplayer games, it's smaller.

 

[JimmiG]

It depends on the game. Some games load significantly faster from an SSD, with others, you hardly notice the difference. Some even stutter less because they stream data constantly from the drive.

I'd go with the 1TB + 500 GB option for sure. If there's a game that takes a lot of space, you can always put it on the HDD. 1.5 TB total storage is plenty unless you have a massive movie collection, high resolution pictures etc.

 

[Ranulf]

500GB + 1tb option is my vote. Drives can fill up fast these days but with some games, the load times are night and day.

 

[sdifox]

Games on ssd, movies and music on spinner

 

[BSim500]

Can't decide if I should go with a budget SSD around 480-500GB for my game drive and a separate 1TB HDD for music and basic storage or a just a single high quality 2TB HDD (WD Black). I'll partition it down the middle, one for games and other for storage. Is faster load times really the only advantage of a SSD for games? Is that enough of a trade off for less capacity because many current games are hitting 30-50gb installs.

I'd definitely get an SSD even if it's just a 256GB for a boot drive. The fluidity really is like night vs day. If you have a lot of games and like to install them all at once without the expensive of 1-2TB SSD's, then don't forget there are utilities out there that can cache HDD to SSD. From Intel's SRT to PrimoCache (both automatic but require multiple starts to learn) to SteamMover (more manual control and based around pre-caching). The latter works by basically installing all games on a large but cheap HDD, then "one-click" whatever games you intend to play and it moves them over to a designated folder on the SSD (say C:\GameCache) then creates a junction point from the game's original HDD install folder to the SSD. When you're done, one click it back, and it deletes the junction and moves the files back to the HDD. I know someone with this setup on a 256GB SSD + 3TB HDD and it's been rock-solid reliable, gives all the benefits of SSD startup times without the expensive 256GB -> 512GB -> 1TB -> 2TB SSD rat race people find themselves sucked into in this era of 50-60GB a throw game installs and game collections running into the hundreds.

As for what games benefit, some genre's will not benefit much (eg, point & click adventure, lightweight puzzle games, etc), however, it will significantly speed up many games, can reduce / eliminate sporadic stutter on fast paced FPS's / racing games, level loading times will be reduced, etc.