SSD Real-world differences?

[karhumake]

Hey, i am looking to buy a big SSD to store games on, at the moment i am looking at a SanDisk Ultra II 960GB which is 210€. The other choice would be Samsung 850 Evo 1TB which is around 300€. The 40GB difference doesn't bother me, however i've heard that the real-world differences (loading times) don't have that much difference. So i would save alot of money if i'd go for the Ultra 2. My question just is, what kind of difference are we looking at?

 

[jimmysmitty]

Well the load times will only be minute for most games but some will benefit from it more.

As for the two brands, the difference is more than performance. Samsung makes a much better quality SSD and more reliable too. If you do plan on a SSD for game storage the Samsung is worth the extra cost.

The truth though is you don;t need to spend $300 bucks for 1TB of storage when you can easily get a 4TB HDD for 1/4 of the cost and have nearly the same load times.

 

[Virtue5333]

I respect your reply. whilst everything mentioned about the Samsung SSD being better quality & bang 4 buck is true, I would have to disagree with the final statement.

Speaking from experience,

The games and applications (Photoshop etc) that were loaded from my SSD were considerably quicker than when loaded from my HDD.
In that respect, SSD to HDD load times are not close to being comparable.
There is a very noticeable difference in load times.
Of-course it does also depend on the program you're loading & your overall system build also plays a factor.

 

[lodders]

Every time you are bottlenecked by your HDD, an SSD makes a massive improvement.
The biggest effects are
Boot up time
Windows updates
Installing new programs
Opening applications
Video editing.
Searching for files.
Opening folders with hundreds of photos in them

However, once you are in a game, you are limited by your CPU and GPU, so the SSD does nothing

 

[jimmysmitty]

I respect your reply. whilst everything mentioned about the Samsung SSD being better quality & bang 4 buck is true, I would have to disagree with the final statement.

Speaking from experience,

The games and applications (Photoshop etc) that were loaded from my SSD were considerably quicker than when loaded from my HDD.
In that respect, SSD to HDD load times are not close to being comparable.
There is a very noticeable difference in load times.
Of-course it does also depend on the program you're loading & your overall system build also plays a factor.

And I can speak from my own experience and games I have tested (250 in Steam plus non Steam games) and of all the games I have only one showed any noticeable improvement in load times on my SSD, which was Guild Wars 2. Every other game loaded the same.

The biggest problem is that SSDs get their best speeds with sequential large files, not small files which most games have small files as opposed to large files.

 

[karhumake]

Every time you are bottlenecked by your HDD, an SSD makes a massive improvement.
The biggest effects are
Boot up time
Windows updates
Installing new programs
Opening applications
Video editing.
Searching for files.
Opening folders with hundreds of photos in them

However, once you are in a game, you are limited by your CPU and GPU, so the SSD does nothing

What...? Obviously It doesn't increase frames per second or anything, but obviously it does increase loading times by a very significant amount.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Every time you are bottlenecked by your HDD, an SSD makes a massive improvement.
The biggest effects are
Boot up time
Windows updates
Installing new programs
Opening applications
Video editing.
Searching for files.
Opening folders with hundreds of photos in them

However, once you are in a game, you are limited by your CPU and GPU, so the SSD does nothing

What...? Obviously It doesn't increase frames per second or anything, but obviously it does increase loading times by a very significant amount.

Where do you get the significant load time differences from? Ask most any expert and they will state the same thing, that the load time difference is hard to justify the cost of the drive for just that. There are a few games that do benefit more from a SSD but the majority of them do not.

 

[karhumake]

Every time you are bottlenecked by your HDD, an SSD makes a massive improvement.
The biggest effects are
Boot up time
Windows updates
Installing new programs
Opening applications
Video editing.
Searching for files.
Opening folders with hundreds of photos in them

However, once you are in a game, you are limited by your CPU and GPU, so the SSD does nothing

What...? Obviously It doesn't increase frames per second or anything, but obviously it does increase loading times by a very significant amount.

Where do you get the significant load time differences from? Ask most any expert and they will state the same thing, that the load time difference is hard to justify the cost of the drive for just that. There are a few games that do benefit more from a SSD but the majority of them do not.

Exactly. I play a lot of bethesda/open world games that really benefit from SSD's. For example on my HDD it takes about 30 seconds to load in Fallout 4, with SSD about 10. Seeing as that game is full of load screens, it will be much better.