What determines the loading times of games installed on an SSD or HDD?

[Paul Rudd]

As in, what spec is responsible for this?

 

The read/write speeds? The cores? The cache?

[da na]

Read/write speeds mostly

[Enderman]

To a certain point, both sequential and random read speeds of the storage drive.

After a certain point it is just the CPU bottlenecking because it has to process all the data being loaded.

That's why load times between HDD and SATA SSD are huge, but  SATA SSD and NVME SSD are not that far apart, if not identical.

Depends on the game obviously though.

[Paul Rudd]

4 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Read/write speeds mostly

 

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

To a certain point, both sequential and random read speeds of the storage drive.

After a certain point it is just the CPU bottlenecking because it has to process all the data being loaded.

That's why load times between HDD and SATA SSD are huge, but  SATA SSD and NVME SSD are not that far apart, if not identical.

Depends on the game obviously though.

Then how come in this video...

...the difference in loading times between the SATA SSD and the M.2 SSD are as tiny as can be but the read/write speeds of the SATA SSD are around 550/500 and the read/write speeds of the M.2 are around 3500/3300?

 

The read/write speeds of the HDD are around 150-200/150-200.

 

Are you sure it's the read/write speeds? Even Horizon Zero Dawn had the exact same loading time, so that indicates a bottleneck somewhere right? The CPU as you mentioned right?

Something is directly contributing to a 0-2 second loading time between the two SSDs, and I don't see how it's the read/write speeds when the M.2 is over 6x as fast.

[da na]

7 minutes ago, Paul Rudd said:

 

Then how come in this video...

...the difference in loading times between the SATA SSD and the M.2 SSD are as tiny as can be but the read/write speeds of the SATA SSD are around 550/500 and the read/write speeds of the M.2 are around 3500/3300?

 

The read/write speeds of the HDD are around 150-200/150-200.

 

Are you sure it's the read/write speeds? Even Horizon Zero Dawn had the exact same loading time, so that indicates a bottleneck somewhere right? The CPU as you mentioned right?

Something is directly contributing to a 0-2 second loading time between the two SSDs, and I don't see how it's the read/write speeds when the M.2 is over 6x as fast.

Random read/write. Not sequential. 

That's really what matters. 

[Kilrah]

12 minutes ago, Paul Rudd said:

The read/write speeds of the HDD are around 150-200/150-200.

That would be for sequential reads but what matters is the random read speed, which is trash on an HDD because of the need to actually move a head to a given location and wait for the right disk sector to pass under it, while an SSD can access anything almost instantly. With very random accesses your HDD can fall down to single digit speeds.

[tkitch]

A combination of:

Amount of data that has to be loaded.  (If it's only loading 1GB at a time?  Any decent SSD Can load that in a second or two.)

How much processing power does that loaded data take?  If it's 3 seconds of data loaded, but it takes 10 seconds to process the data you loaded?  That 3 seconds doesn't matter much, the 10 does.

Random Read/Write speed:  That's a big one for the drives, since data is rarely stored in a sequential chunk.

[Paul Rudd]

6 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Random read/write. Not sequential. 

That's really what matters. 

 

6 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

That would be for sequential reads but what matters is the random read speed, which is trash on an HDD because of the need to actually move a head to a given location and wait for the right disk sector to pass under it, while an SSD can access anything almost instantly. With very random accesses your HDD can fall down to single digit speeds.

 

2 minutes ago, tkitch said:

A combination of: Amount of data that has to be loaded.  (If it's only loading 1GB at a time?  Any decent SSD Can load that in a second or two.) How much processing power does that loaded data take?  If it's 3 seconds of data loaded, but it takes 10 seconds to process the data you loaded?  That 3 seconds doesn't matter much, the 10 does. Random Read/Write speed:  That's a big one for the drives, since data is rarely stored in a sequential chunk.

Got it, thanks for all this information. Makes sense now.

 

Just learned two things...

1. What makes a game load for a specific amount of time. For some strange reason I never thought to actually look into what makes this happen until today. Which is strange because I learned a long time ago just how long the actual time difference is between storage devices and specific games. It's not as long of a difference as some people might think for lots of games.
2. Why people always talk about random read/writes when reviewing an SSD. I remember looking into what makes sequential read/writes important but totally forgot and never realized that I need to look into random read/writes. Now I know one reason why random read/writes are important.

Thanks again, you learn something new everyday.

 

Now I guess I gotta figure out what actually makes specific games loading times shorter/longer than another game. For example, the 14 second difference from the HDD vs the SSD in the video above in Horizon Zero Dawn but getting a 41 second difference in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

[da na]

5 minutes ago, Paul Rudd said:

Now I guess I gotta figure out what actually makes specific games loading times shorter/longer than another game. For example, the 14 second difference from the HDD vs the SSD in the video above in Horizon Zero Dawn but getting a 41 second difference in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Size of game, distribution of files throughout drive

[Paul Rudd]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Size of game, distribution of files throughout drive

What specs on an SSD contribute to the distribution of files throughout the drive? And if it's more than one spec, which spec contributes the most? The cores? The controller? The random read/write speeds? What?

[Kilrah]

1 minute ago, Paul Rudd said:

What specs on an SSD contribute to the distribution of files throughout the drive? And if it's more than one spec, which spec contributes the most? The cores? The controller? The random read/write speeds? What?

None, it has nothing to do with the drive but everything with how the game is stored/packed and manages its files. FS uses tons of small files which is what's worst on an HDD.

 

[da na]

Just now, Paul Rudd said:

What specs on an SSD contribute to the distribution of files throughout the drive? And if it's more than one spec, which spec contributes the most? The cores? The controller? The random read/write speeds? What?

That's not how that works. That depends on how the game distributes its files.

SSDs aren't seen as "cores" they're seen as just one big volume by the OS. 

[tkitch]

Data on an SSD is migrated around the drive as it's read/written, in order to 'balance' wear and tear on the drive.

So, imagine file <GameIcon47.JPG> is at sector 1337 of the drive (simple numbers for reading)

If the game has to load / reload that file repeated as you zone in and out of different places, that sector will get a lot more wear and tear than others that don't get used often at all.

 

So, the SSD Controller will move the data from 1337 to 4785 to 0783 to wherever is next, to spread out the R/W wear and tear on the drive.

When dealing with larger files, a single file can be scattered across hundreds of different areas in the NAND Flash. 

[Mark Kaine]

Its the read speed primarily,  write isnt that important,  a game typically doesn't write anything , except for saves occasionally. 

As for why there are differences between games, each game is different,  with a different structure so it depends.  Generally a ssd will load far quicker, also depending on the game there will be less texture pop ins and such.