I'm starting to question the logic behind having older games with much smaller textures and i/o needs on these drives; 1) because I rarely play them, and 2) because I doubt I would notice much difference.
There are two issues - how much faster it objectively loads and how much you subjectively perceive the benefit:-
1. "Measured" objective times depends a lot on how they're structured. Eg, a 1GB size game installed as 4,000 files will often benefit far more than a similar sized 1GB game arranged into 14 "packed" files as they'll be far more random reads vs sequential involved. And when you're loading a game, you're "unpacking" into memory as opposed to just blind copying, so real-life read speeds are often lower than SSD's peak benchmark as seen by the fact the
950 PRO has zero advantage over even cheap 850 EVO's / MX200's even in a lot of large newer games. I tested "old games on SSD vs HDD" a while ago and there was often only 1-2s difference in load times in "fewer large file" installs, but up to 40s difference on games with a ton of tiny files regardless of the age of the game. If a game "streams" in textures, there may be some stutter reduction advantages with an SSD. OTOH, games like Deus Ex or Serious Sam can pre-cache the whole level anyway and even if they didn't, many older smaller sub-1GB games will often completely fit into a RAM drive or at least Windows can "retain" the whole game in the Windows file cache.
2. "Subjective" perception. There's a "threshold" where a game loads either fast enough or slow enough on both that it isn't an issue. Eg, a 54s vs 27s load time is far more obvious than a 4s vs 2s (same "ratio"). It's also why beyond a certain point, arguing over 9s vs 12s SSD vs SSD Windows boot times is equally pointless when most people stop caring below 15s. Likewise unskippable intro movies will also narrow the gap. I think it's Quantum Conundrum I tested where the difference in load times was something like 45s SSD vs 47s HDD, of which around 43s of both were due to an endless stream of unskippable intro movies, epilepsy warnings, etc. It's annoyingly long enough on both that an SSD isn't really that much benefit.
As others have said, you don't need every single game on premium SSD space and you might as well use your HDD as extra cheap space for games that either don't benefit that much or load quickly enough you don't notice in non side by side comparisons. There's also
Steam Mover where you can easily cache a game installed on a HDD onto an SSD with a single click then move it back again when you're done with another single click. Useful if you like having all your games installed and your HDD is far larger than your SSD but you only play some of them say once a year or less. Likewise, one thing you can do to speed game load times on any disc is disable the intro movies either by official ini tweaks or unofficial means (eg, replacing otherwise unskippable intro movie files with dummy single-frame ones of the same codec & format). Same with music & video files - unless you spend all day editing, the ultimate "bottleneck" for most people is the fastest media playback speed that still "makes sense" (1.3-1.5x) not the actual storage read speed.
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