SSD or SSHD for Games

[Alciel]

What would be better, A SSD or an SSHD for gaming?

I was looking at the Seagate FireCuda 2Tb SSHD, But I don't know if I should go with an SSD instead.

Pros & Cons?

 

[Herc08]

I don't think you really need to get a Hybrid. For $150 you can get a 250GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive. SSHD are not as good because you cannot control what goes onto the SSD portion. At least with the 250GB SSD you can throw Windows, MS Office, and a maybe a few things.

EDIT: You have multiple hard drives, why not just get a 250GB/500GB SSD and call it a day?

 

[USAFRet]

You already have a bunch of HDD.
Get a 250GB SSD for the OS and applications.
Done.

 

[rhysiam]

So you understand it's just about load times, yes? Once a game loads everything it needs is in RAM, so your storage doesn't make any difference to FPS or anything like that (I'm sure there are edge cases here and there, but this is absolutely true generally speaking).

The pros/cons then are actually pretty straightforward.
An SSD is much more expensive per GB, but will reduce load times in some games.
A HDD (pure mechanical storage) is much cheaper per GB, but has longer load times.
An SSHD is a little more expensive than a pure HDD, and will usually have identical load times to the HDD. If you regularly play the same game for a period of time, the SSHD will be able to cache some of that data for you and will occasionally net you load times closer to an SSD. How often this happens is really difficult to say. I went looking a while back and couldn't find any vaguely reputable sites which explored this question. My hunch would be that very-occasionally the SSHD will net you close to SSD like load times.

I guess you decide which is better.

 

[USAFRet]

Right.
A specific recommendation would depend on exactly what this new drive will be used for.
Just games? OS and applications? Something else?
Where is the OS now?

 

[Alciel]

This drive would be strictly used for games. I have an SSD that houses my OS already. My current SSD is a Crucial 275Gb.

But I am looking for a drive that would house only games. I was told to go with a 500Gb SSD, But I don't know if that is the best option for me. Is there an SSD that around a the price for a 500Gb that's more GB? 1Tb, 750Gb for examples.

 

[USAFRet]

This drive would be strictly used for games. I have an SSD that houses my OS already. My current SSD is a Crucial 275Gb.

But I am looking for a drive that would house only games. I was told to go with a 500Gb SSD, But I don't know if that is the best option for me. Is there an SSD that around a the price for a 500Gb that's more GB? 1Tb, 750Gb for examples.

Size = price. There is no magic.

And whoever suggested a 500GB drive is just spouting a number. You are the only one who knows what your space requirement is for this.

An SSD for only games gains you faster level load times. Thats about it. Not an FPS increase.

 

[Alciel]

Alright, So the SSHD should be fine for what I need then. Since its going to be loading the same games over and over again.

 

[rhysiam]

You can get a cheap TLC ~1TB drive for just over $250: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/vLCwrH/sandisk-internal-hard-drive-sdssdhii960gg25

That's 25c per GB, which is about as low as SSDs go right now.

To put that in perspective though, that's more than 3 times the price of the same capacity SSHD, and over 5 times the price of the same capacity HDD.

 

[USAFRet]

Alright, So the SSHD should be fine for what I need then. Since its going to be loading the same games over and over again.

It's not necessarily "the game", but rather the specific blocks on the drive.
Open a level you have never been in, the SSD portion knows noting about it....it reads that off the platter, just like a regular HDD.

 

[Martell1977]

Alright, So the SSHD should be fine for what I need then. Since its going to be loading the same games over and over again.

But you need to understand that the levels wont load faster with a SSHD, just the game will start faster. It will only cache into the SSD portion what is used most. Since you will be loading various maps, they likely will not get cached. Is the HDD portion of the drive you are looking at 5400rpm or 7200rpm? If it's 5400rpm, forget it, it will be terrible. If 7200rpm, it will be average in level loading.

Avoid the SSHD's with 5400rpm HDD portions like the plague.

 

[Alciel]

Alright, I will keep this information in mind.

The drive I am thinking of is the Seagate FireCuda 2Tb, It's a 7200 RPM drive, But it also says "Performs up to 5X faster than 7200 rpm desktop hard drives".

I don't know if this is a true statement or not.

 

[USAFRet]

Alright, I will keep this information in mind.

The drive I am thinking of is the Seagate FireCuda 2Tb, It's a 7200 RPM drive, But it also says "Performs up to 5X faster than 7200 rpm desktop hard drives".

I don't know if this is a true statement or not.

Marketingspeak for that small amount of data which ends up residing in the SSD portion.

And that for only the read function.
Write function runs at the standard HDD 7200 RPM performance.

 

[dudeman509]

SSHDs are mostly useless for gaming if you're going to be running multiple games. They all get pushed out of the buffer and then you're stuck with a regular slow HDD. I tried using one with the same idea; my Toshiba 7200 is faster.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

SSHDs are just fine for their intended usage. In your case, since you have the option of a pure SSD, that is the option which will give you the best performance. An SSHD has a limited buffer for items that will be sped up. This is important if you have the space for only a single drive, but want the advantages of both space for storage and speed for your OS, such as on a laptop.

You will likely see the same or very similar performance from a 7200 SSHD as you would a standard 2 TB hard drive for gaming, making the extra cost rather pointless. An SSD however, will improve the read performance across every program stored on it.