Upgrade: Ram or SSD?

[frncix]

Hi fellas, I'm currently upgrading my computer via monthly or every 3 months, which path should I take, upgrading my 8gb ram to 16gb or buy and SSD? I'm into gaming btw.

 

[Deathcon51]

Personally, I would say upgrade RAM from 8 to 16GB. While I've seen a huge improvement from HDD to SSD, there hasn't been that much improvement when it came to gaming from HDD vs SSD.

 

[Scottray]

Monitor your ram usage while gaming. If you're running low on ram, then that would be the upgrade to do. If your ram usage is ok, get the SSD. It will definitely speed up your PC experience - faster starter up, faster game loads, etc.

 

[tlalotoani]

SSD all the way, your pc will have a noticeable boost in speed, 16 G of RAM, well, unless you have a LOT of programs open or you are serious video editor, you won´t see much of a difference.

 

[frncix]

Hmm, I'm into video editing also but not that hardcore. If I go SSD, what do you recommend?

 

[Blackink]

What's your budget?

 

[kag1999]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820147372

Best SSD for $100 imo. Throw your OS on this as well as programs and games you use often, and use your current hard drive for mass storage, such as games you don't play that much or large video files, since you do video editing

 

[cryoburner]

Most current games don't actually benefit from having more than 8GB of RAM. Unless you're leaving other RAM-hungry programs running while gaming, such as a browser with lots of tabs open, you probably won't see much performance benefit in today's games from moving up to 16GB. There are a handful of games that can benefit from having access to more memory when set to max graphics settings, but the vast majority of recent titles will perform the same whether you have 8GB or 16GB. You'll undoubtedly want more eventually, and I'm sure we'll see more games come out this year that will benefit from it, but if you're planning on upgrading every few months anyway, you should be in no need to hurry to add more RAM, unless you have some other immediate need for it. You can always check your current memory use in Windows Task Manager while gaming or doing other tasks that use lots RAM, so you can get a better idea of whether you're ever actually using nearly all of your existing 8GB.

An SSD won't significantly improve frame rates in most of today's games either, but they are significantly faster than hard drives, and should offer notably better load times, along with better general system responsiveness outside of gaming, so long as your OS and applications have been moved to the drive. In a system that has 8GB of RAM, I'd say moving your OS, applications and games from a hard drive to an SSD would likely provide more immediate performance benefits than adding RAM that you might not be making use of anyway.

Of course, the RAM should be the less expensive upgrade, unless you're going with a very low-capacity SSD. Some modern game installs require quite a bit of storage space, so you might want to keep that in mind, unless you're willing to leave some games on your hard drive. RAM should also be quicker and easier to install, since you'll likely just need to plug it in, while if you go with an SSD upgrade, you'll want to spend some time transferring things over to the new drive.

I would probably go with the SSD upgrade though. The other commenter pointed to the Samsung 850 EVOs, which are pretty good drives, though if you decide you need more capacity without spending too much, a number of other models offer around double the capacity with decent performance in the $120 to $140 price range.

 

[frncix]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820147372

Best SSD for $100 imo. Throw your OS on this as well as programs and games you use often, and use your current hard drive for mass storage, such as games you don't play that much or large video files, since you do video editing

I'm actually eyeing this one. thanks!

Since I'll get only the 250gb, is it okay if I install games like "witcher 3, dark souls" on my slave drive?

 

[cryoburner]

Some games benefit more from an SSD than others. Some might load two or three times as fast on an SSD, while others will be barely affected. A lot of it comes down to how the games load their data files, and how those files are compressed. You can find load time comparison benchmarks between hard drives and SSDs for many games, though keep in mind that they can vary based on the system's other hardware and graphics settings. If a game is unpacking compressed data, for example, it's load times could be more limited by a slow CPU than by the storage device. Also, the area near the start of a hard disk's platters will be faster than that near the end, so if a hard drive is mostly full and everything's in one partition, a game's files might get positioned near the end of the drive, slowing their performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCItBX8288Y

Here's one video showing some examples of load time differences between an SSD and hard drive in some relatively modern games on a system with somewhat lower-end specs. They provided links in the description to jump to each of the various games tested, in case you don't want to sit through the entirety of a video containing nearly 15 minutes of load screens.

 

[frncix]

Some games benefit more from an SSD than others. Some might load two or three times as fast on an SSD, while others will be barely affected. A lot of it comes down to how the games load their data files, and how those files are compressed. You can find load time comparison benchmarks between hard drives and SSDs for many games, though keep in mind that they can vary based on the system's other hardware and graphics settings. If a game is unpacking compressed data, for example, it's load times could be more limited by a slow CPU than by the storage device. Also, the area near the start of a hard disk's platters will be faster than that near the end, so if a hard drive is mostly full and everything's in one partition, a game's files might get positioned near the end of the drive, slowing their performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCItBX8288Y

Here's one video showing some examples of load time differences between an SSD and hard drive in some relatively modern games on a system with somewhat lower-end specs. They provided links in the description to jump to each of the various games tested, in case you don't want to sit through the entirety of a video containing nearly 15 minutes of load screens.

Wow. Thanks for a detailed answer. You just enlightened me to give up on ram and go for the SSD
Btw, my specs is
Mobo: MSI Z87-G43
GPU: MSI GTX 1050Ti Gaming X 4GB
CPU: i5 4590
Ram: Hyper X 8GB
HDD: WD 2TB