Over the years, SSD has become completely mainstream, especially when it comes to gamers. Costs are decreasing and in terms of performance, SSDs clearly show clarity of what HDDs can offer. While there is still a significant price difference when it comes to cost-capacity ratios, this is something that many gamers are prepared to overlook if their performance on their performance increases in line with gaming performance. The question is – does SSD really affect Gaming Performance? The answer isn’t as simple as you would possibly assume so continue to read more about What Does A Solid State Drive Do For Gaming?
What Does An SSD Do?
This section is for those who do not really know the benefits offered by SSD. If this is something you are familiar with, move on to the next part.
An SSD essentially reduces read/write time significantly compared to an HDD. When comparing the same price of SSD and HDD, you are bound to notice a difference in data access time that can go as high as a factor of ten or more.
Even the cheapest SSD is likely to improve your performance-oriented HDD when it comes to pure performance. Many of us already use SSDs to run our operating systems, allowing you to have a faster boot time and quick access to your desktop after removing your system.
On the other hand, SSD also uses less CPU power than HPD, leaving the CPU independent for other tasks. Therefore, on a system powered by SSD, you can see faster boot times as well as overall improvements in performance.
But it is not about the same feature for comparing between SSDs and HDDs. Do all these benefits affect gaming performance? In some ways, yes. In others, not so much.
Frame Rate
Let’s get this straight from the get-go – SSDs can’t give you better framers than HDDs, which have everything in common. This is something responsible for your GPU. So, if you are having problems with your framerates, you are better off choosing SSD over HDD to upgrade your GPU and take out better framers.
You don’t take our word for it. Try running a benchmark from SSD and HDD. In most cases, you will not see any significant difference in performance.
When it comes out, there is no difference between using SSDs and HDDs. This does not mean that SSD does not matter to gamers at all. There are some areas wherever they prove to be an advantage. So continue to read more about What Does The Solid State Drive Do For Gaming?
Loading Times
The skill of SSD lies in fast data access. A gaming experience in any case involves accessing data from storage on a computer, which would be faster on SSDs. Therefore, any game will boot faster. You will see a small loading screen. In fact, a special issue is called hitching, which is best done by moving your game to SSD.
Load hitching is where a game fails to load its assets at a speed that the player may have, resulting in a pause or a partially filled screen. So if you are facing these issues, yes, upgrading to SSD will definitely help you. Even without any special issues, an SSD will provide you with a low-loading screen and smooth-in-game asset loading.
Build
One particular thing of confusion when it comes to SSD vs. HDD debates for any build is the hard one. In terms of sheer longevity, HDD can be an SSD for five years or longer. Although SSDs have no moving parts, they come with fewer manufacturing defects and better life spans. On the other hand, an HDD will stick you with a stator under the display for years. With the passage of time, this issue also creates HDD noisier. For this, choose your choice based on your preferences.
Cost vs Capacity
Not everyone has a large budget to spend a fortune on building SSD-only gaming PCs. Games today are massive and require large hard drives to store. One advantage that still keeps HDDs alive is the low cost-to-capacity ratio they offer. On the other hand, you need to keep in mind that the premium you pay for SSDs is not just for speed, but also for increased reliability, lower CPU load, and power consumption, and in the event of failure, a backup speed is nearly 3 times faster. So continue to read more about What Does The Solid State Drive Do For Gaming?
So What Do You Do?
Get both! Which most gamers do. You can have a 250GB SSD operating system and 1TB HDD for your game. Even better, you can chase the games you are currently playing in your SSD to get the best of both worlds. However, you can say goodbye to HDDs if you offer rewards for everyone and cost is not a hindrance for you.
On the other hand, if you do not want the hassle of maintaining two separate drives and still want the benefit of both SSD and HDD, then you should go for Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD). On a common SSHD, a small amount of storage is solid-state, while the rest is in the form of a traditional hard drive.
It appears as a single device for a system, and a controller chip controls the storage of onboard data. Some SSHDs come with the ability to understand which applications you use the most and transfer them to the SSD portion of SSHD.
Their benefits make them ideal for laptops, however, they are also useful for PC builds, where you don’t want to know how to store your programs every time. When it comes to pricing, SSHDs fall between HDDs and SSDs but are closer to the lower end than SSDs. Keep in mind that a dedicated SSD is usually higher in terms of sheer performance.
Ok, But What About PCIe NVMe And SATA III?
You may have noticed that some PCs come with a PCIe NVMe SSD while others sport a SATA III SSD. In short, the former drives are faster while the latter is slower, but they are both still faster than a typical HDD. NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is the latest (and fastest) transfer protocol for data stored on disk.
This complements the PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) transfer interface, yielding a transfer rate of about 15.8 Gb / s. SATA III is the third iteration of the serial ATA transfer interface, which uses the AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) transfer protocol to achieve a transfer speed of 6 Gb / s.
It is faster than a typical HDD but faster than PCIe NVMe. You can’t do anything wrong with the SATA III SSD on your New PC, but a PCIe NVMe SSD is what you’re looking at at peak speeds.
