Does it make sense to have a HDD as a main drive and SSD as a game drive?

[hsjj3]

I have a standard 1TB WD 7200RPM SSD. To be really honest, in daily tasks such as MS Office and opening 30 tabs on Firefox and watching videos etc, there is basically nothing that feels slow. Even my PC boots up in under 60 seconds.

 

However, in gaming...I start feeling it. Larger games takes long time to load, and sometimes open world games experience "hitching" when I max out my textures. I have a 6GB GTX 1060...the VRAM is more than sufficient. But it seems like the textures cannot be streamed fast enough from the HDD and cause hitching.

 

For this reason I want to get a SSD for my games. But my OS etc work just fine...I want to leave it as is. Will that be possible? Will I still reap the benefits of a faster SSD if my primary drive is a HDD?

 

Thanks!

[chckovsky]

Your games may load faster on an SSD. So yes.

However...

2 minutes ago, hsjj3 said:

Even my PC boots up in under 60 seconds.

Mine boots up in like 12 seconds...

[EarthWormJM2]

In short, Yes. You will reap the benefits if you buy an SSD and just put your games on it. But I do recommend putting your OS on an SSD especially if you are using Windows 10 as it is designed with SSDs in mind. A lot of background processes require faster read/write speeds to load at start up in 10 and you will notice a huge leap in performance on your OS. But if you are ok with how it runs now, then yes, go ahead and use a SSD just for games and the load times will decrease significantly.

[hsjj3]

2 minutes ago, chckovsky said:

Your games may load faster on an SSD. So yes.

However...

Mine boots up in like 12 seconds...

With all due respect, I know how fast an SSD boots up. I had a first gen Lenovo U300s Ultrabook back in 2011 and it used to boot in 11 seconds.

To me it doesn't matter if it is 11 or 60 seconds, I only boot up my PC at most once a day, and often just leave it to sleep overnight.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hello hsjj3, 

 

It is definitely true that applications will load faster and also there are ways to transfer your operating system from your HDD to a new SSD. One thing you need to know is that only the wait-times-to-load is what is going to improve but in the actual gaming experience you are not going to notice a difference, games will only open/load faster.

[hsjj3]

2 minutes ago, EarthWormJM2 said:

In short, Yes. You will reap the benefits if you buy an SSD and just put your games on it. But I do recommend putting your OS on an SSD especially if you are using Windows 10 as it is designed with SSDs in mind. A lot of background processes require faster read/write speeds to load at start up in 10 and you will notice a huge leap in performance on your OS. But if you are ok with how it runs now, then yes, go ahead and use a SSD just for games and the load times will decrease significantly.

I would love to run Windows but I'm just afraid it will require a complicated setup and eventually I lose my W10 license and my important files/apps.

[NinJake]

Windows 10 licenses are tied to the motherboard, so you don't have to worry about losing the license. The biggest pain will be the clean install and reinstalling all of your apps, but sometimes a little spring cleaning goes a long way to optimizing your computer.

[hsjj3]

2 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

Hello hsjj3, 

 

It is definitely true that applications will load faster and also there are ways to transfer your operating system from your HDD to a new SSD. One thing you need to know is that only the wait-times-to-load is what is going to improve but in the actual gaming experience you are not going to notice a difference, games will only open/load faster.

I have been told minimum framerates will definitely increase in large open world games where the texture sizes are large and VRAM usage is heavy. I mean, unless I have been wrongly informed.

[EarthWormJM2]

3 minutes ago, hsjj3 said:

I would love to run Windows but I'm just afraid it will require a complicated setup and eventually I lose my W10 license and my important files/apps.

If you buy a Samsung SSD, they have a tool that copies all your data over, OS, license, all apps, everything for you and you just reboot and everything continues to run as normal, just now on your SSD.

1 minute ago, hsjj3 said:

I have been told minimum framerates will definitely increase in large open world games where the texture sizes are large and VRAM usage is heavy. I mean, unless I have been wrongly informed.

You are correct to a point, in large open world games where it is constantly loading things in the distance and sometimes drops frames or lags for a second on an HDD, that will stop, so yes, minimum frames will get better but it wont be a HUGE difference, mostly just load times.

[userzero]

7 minutes ago, NinJake said:

Windows 10 licenses are tied to the motherboard, so you don't have to worry about losing the license. The biggest pain will be the clean install and reinstalling all of your apps, but sometimes a little spring cleaning goes a long way to optimizing your computer.

No they're not. Unless its a manufacturer made OEM machine/lappy.

[TechyBen]

What size SSD are you looking to get?

 

What size is your OS install? What games/how many do you play?

 

I put the OS (migrate from HDD, no worries) over to SSD, then the games I wish to play (I use Steam, so easy to migrate games). Games + PC + Windows + Chrome etc all load quicker off the SSD. I still use older or massive games on the HDD, if I have to. Games I play daily, means I load into the matches MUCH quicker, or load the big open world games quicker.

 

We can talk you through the transfer process if you wish to keep all your current data.

[chckovsky]

Just now, userzero said:

No they're not. Unless its a manufacturer made OEM machine/lappy.

My experience has been that it IS tied to MB. At least with W10.

[Spaceman_Wil]

14 minutes ago, hsjj3 said:

I have a standard 1TB WD 7200RPM SSD. To be really honest, in daily tasks such as MS Office and opening 30 tabs on Firefox and watching videos etc, there is basically nothing that feels slow. Even my PC boots up in under 60 seconds.

 

However, in gaming...I start feeling it. Larger games takes long time to load, and sometimes open world games experience "hitching" when I max out my textures. I have a 6GB GTX 1060...the VRAM is more than sufficient. But it seems like the textures cannot be streamed fast enough from the HDD and cause hitching.

 

For this reason I want to get a SSD for my games. But my OS etc work just fine...I want to leave it as is. Will that be possible? Will I still reap the benefits of a faster SSD if my primary drive is a HDD?

 

Thanks!

You might consider trying out a Hybrid Drive. The Seagate 2TB FireCuda SSHD is $91 and a normal HDD of the same size is only a bit cheaper. I don't know a whole lot about it but from what I understand, they're pretty neat. Programs and games you use the most it will put on the SSD part of the drive automatically and will adjust and tweak the more you use it to make your programs load faster. 

[seagate_surfer]

10 minutes ago, hsjj3 said:

I have been told minimum framerates will definitely increase in large open world games where the texture sizes are large and VRAM usage is heavy. I mean, unless I have been wrongly informed.

The SSD decreases load times, that is os boots quick, games load quickly, and that's pretty much it, performance partially improves so storage doesn't affect gaming that much. Gaming is mostly CPU, RAM, and GPU.

 

If you are looking for both capacity and speeds then go for a SSHD. Or else go for a hdd now and for a ssd later on when you can spare some cash.

[NinJake]

2 minutes ago, userzero said:

No they're not. Unless its a manufacturer made OEM machine/lappy.

I should note you can also have the license tied to a microsoft account, however I'm fairly certain you can make hardware changes and still have the license.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change

[NinJake]

3 minutes ago, Spaceman_Wil said:

You might consider trying out a Hybrid Drive. -snip-

I would avoid hybrid drives and either get a SSD or a HDD and eventually upgrade to a SSD as @seagate_surfer recommended. If you are sticking to a HDD I'd make sure the drive is at least 7200 rpm.

[DemionicGin]

Which games do you play??

I used to have 16gb ram in my previous system. But after I switch to 32GB(Adata xpg 2133) all of my game's loading times decreased drastically.

[Spaceman_Wil]

2 minutes ago, NinJake said:

I would avoid hybrid drives and either get a SSD or a HDD and eventually upgrade to a SSD as @seagate_surfer recommended. If you are sticking to a HDD I'd make sure the drive is at least 7200 rpm.

Honest question, why sly away from Hybrid Drives? I had been considering getting one myself.

[EarthWormJM2]

5 minutes ago, chckovsky said:

My experience has been that it IS tied to MB. At least with W10.

As userzero said, it is only OEM motherboards. If you buy a Win 10 license and install it on a non OEM board, you can move that license freely to another computer. Windows is trying to move away from OEMs holding the license on the board and tie it to your MS account instead. But we just bought some Dell desktops at work, and its tied to the board.

[Peskanova]

For high load time games yes, games like path of exile , pubg.... if a game has a load that is in the middle of the game its a 100% yes , I've use to play archeage and if you wont load fast you maybe be dead when you load, try to play path of exile hardcore with a hdd and tell me...  or play pubg or fortnite to load directly to the plane/bus 

Is not only the performance on fps , load times can affect the flow of your game, depends on the game but if it has a loading screen its very likely to improve and a lot your experience.

 

EDIT : I can notice if a game is on the ssd or the hdd only playing it , if that is not performance tell me what it is

[EarthWormJM2]

Also, you can look into getting an Intel Optane module to compliment your current HDD, but that is only if you have a newer motherboard that supports it.

[NinJake]

2 minutes ago, Spaceman_Wil said:

Honest question, why sly away from Hybrid Drives? I had been considering getting one myself.

If you want the benefit of "solid state" speeds, just save up for a SSD. If you are scrapping change from the ground to buy a drive, get a HDD. SSHD's are nice and while I do not have any personal experience with them, I'm not sure how large the "Solid State" capacity is on let's say a 1TB SSHD, I just doubt it's anything larger than 5-10GB of this hybrid capacity.

[EarthWormJM2]

4 minutes ago, Spaceman_Wil said:

Honest question, why sly away from Hybrid Drives? I had been considering getting one myself.

Because with the recent price drops on SSDs, you're not saving THAT much $$ and the performance of a full SSD is still way better then a hybrid drive. Not saying they aren't better then a standard HDD, but not near SSD speeds

[seagate_surfer]

46 minutes ago, Spaceman_Wil said:

Honest question, why sly away from Hybrid Drives? I had been considering getting one myself.

I wouldn't say it that way, for traveling definitely external SSDs are better because they don't have moving parts and that makes them less vulnerable but if the drive will stay always in the same place an SSHD will give you back what you are paying for, storage plus leverage during load times. Some people wouldn't like the idea but it all resumes to a personal point of view, the best time to get a SSHD is when you need one, when you need more storage then go for HDD, if you need speed then go for SSD, if you want to have benefits of SSD plus storage then go for SSHD.

[Spaceman_Wil]

2 minutes ago, NinJake said:

If you want the benefit of "solid state" speeds, just save up for a SSD. If you are scrapping change from the ground to buy a drive, get a HDD. SSHD's are nice and while I do not have any personal experience with them, I'm not sure how large the "Solid State" capacity is on let's say a 1TB SSHD, I just doubt it's anything larger than 5-10GB of this hybrid capacity.

Ah I understand your point. The benefit I see with them is getting a bit more storage space (given it is HDD Space) and having the drive itself do the managing of programs and files it stores on the SSD part, that way, if there is are files that I unknowingly am using quite frequently that are hurting my load times, the drive takes care of it for me. But, once again, I totally get your point. I would Almost recommend paring a Hybrid Drive with an SSD. That way, the games that you feel have crazy load times, you can toss on the SSD and then let the Hybrid Drive take care of any micromanaging and general storage. Might be nice.