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Can a slow HDD cause FPS drops?

TheFriendlyHacker
By TheFriendlyHacker
in Storage Devices
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On 3/3/2019 at 5:02 AM, Lord Xeb said:

It is possible and I have seen it happen. I would backup your drive and replace it to be safe. You could do a read test on the drive to confirm. Use HD Tune and post a screenshot here. I can tell you if it is going. Also check smart. 

As it turned out, my CPU was the bottleneck all along. I recently upgraded to Ryzen (R5 2600x to be specific), and almost all of the framerate inconsistencies immediately went away, despite the fact that I'm using the exact same HDD for games. 

 

Turns out that (from what I've read), a lot of modern games don't really take full advantage of / work as well with the old FX chips. So even though there was plenty of CPU power leftover to spare, it just wasn't using it. But the Ryzen chip, in addition to being more powerful overall, doesn't appear to suffer from that problem. 

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As the title states, if a game is running on a 5400 RPM hard drive, could it possibly result in FPS drops?

 

From what I've researched so far, the general consensus is "no, it can't". But I wanted to see what you guys have to say about it. 

 

I have a 500GB SSD + 2TB HDD @5400RPM. All of my games are installed on the HDD. Surprisingly, I've seen speeds up to 150MB/s on this HDD (eg, when copying 30GB of music from the SSD to the HDD), which seems impossibly high for an HDD. 

Two years of IT experience. But at the end of the day: I dunno, I just work here Dave. 

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7 minutes ago, Slottr said:

It can cause freezing and stuttering 

Ahh. Maybe that's it. Many games I play will have frequent stutters/fps drops when rendering a new part of the world (especially FarCry 5 and New Dawn). When this happens, neither the CPU or GPU are even close to being maxed out. 

 

Think it could be because of the hard drive?

Two years of IT experience. But at the end of the day: I dunno, I just work here Dave. 

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It is possible and I have seen it happen. I would backup your drive and replace it to be safe. You could do a read test on the drive to confirm. Use HD Tune and post a screenshot here. I can tell you if it is going. Also check smart. 

Be sure to @Pickles von Brine if you want me to see your reply!

Stopping by to praise the all mighty jar Lord pickles... * drinks from a chalice of holy pickle juice and tossed dill over shoulder* ~ @WarDance
3600x | NH-D15 Chromax Black | 32GB 3200MHz | ASUS KO RTX 3070 UnderVolted and UnderClocked | Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX X570S | Seasonic X760w | Phanteks Evolv X | 500GB WD_Black SN750 x2 | Sandisk Skyhawk 3.84TB SSD 

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On 3/3/2019 at 5:02 AM, Lord Xeb said:

It is possible and I have seen it happen. I would backup your drive and replace it to be safe. You could do a read test on the drive to confirm. Use HD Tune and post a screenshot here. I can tell you if it is going. Also check smart. 

As it turned out, my CPU was the bottleneck all along. I recently upgraded to Ryzen (R5 2600x to be specific), and almost all of the framerate inconsistencies immediately went away, despite the fact that I'm using the exact same HDD for games. 

 

Turns out that (from what I've read), a lot of modern games don't really take full advantage of / work as well with the old FX chips. So even though there was plenty of CPU power leftover to spare, it just wasn't using it. But the Ryzen chip, in addition to being more powerful overall, doesn't appear to suffer from that problem. 

Two years of IT experience. But at the end of the day: I dunno, I just work here Dave. 

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36 minutes ago, TheFriendlyHacker said:

Turns out that (from what I've read), a lot of modern games don't really take full advantage of / work as well with the old FX chips. So even though there was plenty of CPU power leftover to spare, it just wasn't using it.

That's the fun quirk of FX, they have one floating point unit per two cores, which really sucks for gaming. Ryzen seems to have been the result of trying to rectify this, as opposed to having loads of cores but fewer resources, they just have loads of cores.

I WILL find your ITX build thread, and I WILL recommend the SIlverstone Sugo SG13B

 

Primary PC:

i7 8086k - EVGA Z370 Classified K - G.Skill Trident Z RGB - WD SN750 - Jedi Order Titan Xp - Hyper 212 Black (with RGB Riing flair) - EVGA G3 650W - dual booting Windows 10 and Linux - Black and green theme, Razer brainwashed me.

Draws 400 watts under max load, for reference.

 

How many watts do I need? ATX 3.0 & PCIe 5.0 spec, PSU misconceptions, protections explained, group reg is bad

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Interesting. Good to know and glad you figured it out. well done. @TheFriendlyHacker

Be sure to @Pickles von Brine if you want me to see your reply!

Stopping by to praise the all mighty jar Lord pickles... * drinks from a chalice of holy pickle juice and tossed dill over shoulder* ~ @WarDance
3600x | NH-D15 Chromax Black | 32GB 3200MHz | ASUS KO RTX 3070 UnderVolted and UnderClocked | Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX X570S | Seasonic X760w | Phanteks Evolv X | 500GB WD_Black SN750 x2 | Sandisk Skyhawk 3.84TB SSD 

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