What is the benifit of a SSD?

[mAAns]

I have a Samsung 850 EVO 250g ssd where I store most of my games and windows. I also have a 1 tb harddrive. Is there a point in getting a better ssd? What are the benifits of a better ssd? Is it just faster booting and starting games faster or does it affect performance in game??

 

Thanks in advance for any help!!

[tishous]

5 minutes ago, mAAns said:

Is there a point in getting a better ssd?

If you want more storage and are choosing between a HDD and SSD, I would say go with the SSD. 

 

5 minutes ago, mAAns said:

Is it just faster booting and starting games faster or does it affect performance in game??

It is just fasting boosting and loading times. It's not noticeable at all if you're just gaming, you get diminshing returns from going from SATA SSD to Nvme SSD if you're not transfering large files. If you don't mind waiting quite a bit longer to load games, just stick with the HDD.

[akio123008]

In theory better performance.

 

In practice mostly bragging rights.

 

In other words: I don't think you'd notice the increase in speed. Perhaps if you bought a lot of SSD storage you could have it replace the hard drive, which you'd definitely notice, but just going from one fast SSD to a faster one doesn't make that big of a difference in practice. Sure depending on what you do you might notice the difference but it's not the world of difference that you'd get from replacing a hard drive with an SSD, and likely not enough difference to be worth the upgrade.

[cm992]

Faster boot. More responsive and snappy use of Windows. Improved game loading times. For now basically any sata SSD is good but I expect future games to take advantage of fast PCIe4 M.2/Nvme SSDs since both the new consoles have high speed SSDs like that now and it will open up new opportunities for game developers who usually like to take full advantage of console hardware.

[mAAns]

Just now, cm992 said:

Faster boot. More responsive and snappy use of Windows. Improved game loading times. For now basically any sata SSD is good but I expect future games to take advantage of fast PCIe4 M.2/Nvme SSDs since both the new consoles have high speed SSDs like that now and it will open up new opportunities for game developers who usually like to take full advantage of console hardware.

with loading times do you mean for the game to start or less blackscreen after cutscene?

 

[j.son19]

As most people have said it is faster response times. If you have a M.2 SSD I suppose that you take up less space inside the case compared to a hard drive.

[cm992]

1 minute ago, mAAns said:

with loading times do you mean for the game to start or less blackscreen after cutscene?

 

Both depending on the game with the extent of the improvement also depending on the game.

[Windows7ge]

Going beyond a SATAIII SSD (to something like NVMe) unless you need the shear throughput that offers like loading very big files into main memory the decrease in loading times is relatively negligible. It's really all about how fast things load and snappiness. It won't give you a higher FPS or smoother mechanics or anything like that.

 

If your motherboard supports M.2 and you're looking to get a bigger drive for more games and the price is right (that's important) by all means go for it but don't look at it as an investment to make things go faster. Going beyond SATAIII the feeling of things being snappier kind of diminishes compared to HDD -> SATAIII SSD.

[cm992]

Just now, j.son19 said:

As most people have said it is faster response times. If you have a M.2 SSD I suppose that you take up less space inside the case compared to a hard drive.

Exactly one of the best things about M.2 is that its so easy to install, takes up less space, no power/data cables

[j.son19]

1 minute ago, cm992 said:

Both depending on the game with the extent of the improvement also depending on the game.

Yes because I believe some games which take ages to load that is because the load the whole map or game at the start rather than load it parts in the background when you get into the game

[Quackers101]

it will improve here and there, although HDD still has the cheapest TB amount for the price.

bigger HDD might have more faults with them if they go bad, and SSDs only has so much it can write?

so HDD or cloud makes a good way to store your data or games etc.

[mAAns]

Just now, j.son19 said:

Yes because I believe some games which take ages to load that is because the load the whole map or game at the start rather than load it parts in the background when you get into the game

like GTA XD that takes AGES to load

 

[RejZoR]

One way of utilizing hardware you already have is by using PrimoCache. Install everything to 1TB HDD, install PrimoCache, pair 250GB SSD as a L2 cache. You'll have 1TB of total space that has near SSD read speeds for stuff you use regularly. And it does this automatically so you don't have to worry about where you install what. You'll just install everything to that HDD and PrimoCache will do the rest automatically. It'll set you back $30 for lifetime license. You can keep that 250GB SSD and upgrade to larger HDD for more accelerated space.

 

As for benefits of SSD's, noise, speed, especially random access reads as well as sequential speeds in both directions. Even going with SATA SSD will give massive performance boost. Since I've been on 2TB SSD basically since the day they appeared many years ago, I'd go all out SSD if I were you. You can keep the HDD for data hoarding if you're a hamster like some of us and have everything else on larger SSD. 250GB SSD is a bit tiny for today's standards.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Storage Devices