[SOLVED] Worth buying a SSD for gaming ?

Rui Neves

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Last games that are launched to the market already ask for a SSD on game requeriments .
I have used until now a SSD for OS and softwares and 1 HDD for games and files and 2 HDD 's for less important files and backups .
One SSD for games will really make a difference on gaming ?
My goal is play at 60 fps on high or ultra settings at 1080p , and I have been able to play like that on the games that I play ...
One SSD can really bring more stability to a game at this level of resolution and fps ,??


Pc specs :
Case NOX Coolbay SX Blue
AOC monitor with 21" and freesync , 75hz
Gigabyte b450 gaming X
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Kingston HyperX FURY DDR4 (with RGB) at 3200mhz with XMP profile 1 enabled
MSI RX 6600XT 8gb
Bitfenix formula gold 550w
3 hdd´s from WD ,(1 wd green , 1wd black ,1 wd blue)
1 ssd ( kingston a400 120gb)
 
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For me would worth the upgrade if for games the ssd made a difference between a stable and not stable Gameplay
Storage has very little to nothing to do with stability as such. All the data on your pc from storage first goes to ram, then cpu. Once it hits the ram, storage becomes moot point, so any stability is solely on the part of the drivers, the cpu, etc.

An SSD vs HDD isn't going to improve game play. What it will do is improve the perception and experience of the game. Running in/out of different maps in Skyrim was a pain on HDD with 15-30 seconds of load per map. Move to SSD took that closer to 1-10seconds, depending on the map. So the game didn't change, but my enjoyment did.

In CSGO, dropping always last meant many...

Math Geek

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you will notice the difference in load times going from a spinning disk hdd to an ssd. but there is very little real world difference between the ssd types. so a SATA ssd or an nvme m.2 drive are both about the same.

prices have come down on nvme enough that they are worth buying but don't get caught up in the pcie 4 vs 5 and all those benchmarks numbers as they are pretty much the same. get what is priced right for you and know it'll be good enough. your mobo only has pcie 4 so no need to spend any more than you have to.


keep in mind the only thing it helps is load times during the game. once the level is loaded into ram, any ssd speed is taken out of the equation.
 
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Last games that are launched to the market already ask for a SSD on game requeriments .
I have used until now a SSD for OS and softwares and 1 HDD for games and files and 2 HDD 's for less important files and backups .
One SSD for games will really make a difference on gaming ?
My goal is play at 60 fps on high or ultra settings at 1080p , and I have been able to play like that on the games that I play ...
One SSD can really bring more stability to a game at this level of resolution and fps ,??


Pc specs :
Case NOX Coolbay SX Blue
AOC monitor with 21" and freesync , 75hz
Gigabyte b450 gaming X
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Kingston HyperX FURY DDR4 (with RGB) at 3200mhz with XMP profile 1 enabled
MSI RX 6600XT 8gb
Bitfenix formula gold 550w
3 hdd´s from WD ,(1 wd green , 1wd black ,1 wd blue)
1 ssd ( kingston a400 120gb)
A ssd will give faster load times for the games and it will also help if there are overlays during the game.

Thought.
A connected hdd is not a good place to put backups.
 
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Rui Neves

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you will notice the difference in load times going from a spinning disk hdd to an ssd. but there is very little real world difference between the ssd types. so a SATA ssd or an nvme m.2 drive are both about the same.

prices have come down on nvme enough that they are worth buying but don't get caught up in the pcie 4 vs 5 and all those benchmarks numbers as they are pretty much the same. get what is priced right for you and know it'll be good enough. your mobo only has pcie 4 so no need to spend any more than you have to.


keep in mind the only thing it helps is load times during the game. once the level is loaded into ram, any ssd speed is taken out of the equation.
thank you for your explanation :)
 

Rui Neves

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I use sata ssds for my games. I’ve seen 2tb sata ssd drives for just over 100, I even saw a 4tb for 269. So at some point I may get a larger ssd for games.
were I live the more low budget 2tb ssd are about 160€ , 2tb is the minimum to get an ssd otherwise will be not enough in no time for games. . But you have seen any difference in games besides the load times ?
 

Math Geek

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were I live the more low budget 2tb ssd are about 160€ , 2tb is the minimum to get an ssd otherwise will be not enough in no time for games. . But you have seen any difference in games besides the load times ?

not really. the game runs from the ram. so once it is loaded into ram, the ssd sits there waiting to be asked for more data.

this is why there is only so much to gain from the faster storage. a nice big sata ssd is really all you need unless you find a good price on an m.2 nvme drive. no idea what games you are playing and how big the installs are, but 2 tb is usually a sweetspot for price. the larger drives go up in price real fast after 2 tb drives. at least for m.2 versions. your country prices and availability will of course be different than mine :)
 

Karadjgne

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Follow the data path. OS is on the ssd. Anything you use goes through windows, doesn't matter if it's on the ssd or hdd, the drivers and DirectX and everything else to support the game are on ssd. So the games run at ssd speeds anyway.

The only difference is in load times, when you change maps and need to pull data from the hdd, there's a longer waiting period for all that data to load into the ram and ssd cache. Saved games are already in the ssd, not on the hdd.

So running through town, shooting stuff, is at ssd speeds, but the initial drop time or going indoors requiring a different map takes longer.

CSGO is a prime example, the drop time was pretty bad, almost always loaded last, or next to it, even on the simple maps like Office, but once dropped game play never hesitated because it was all the same map. Skyrim was pretty bad, as it uses multiple maps, city map and house map and inn or store maps, so loading screens made it a decision whether or not I really needed to go inside, or out into the world etc.
 

Rui Neves

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not really. the game runs from the ram. so once it is loaded into ram, the ssd sits there waiting to be asked for more data.

this is why there is only so much to gain from the faster storage. a nice big sata ssd is really all you need unless you find a good price on an m.2 nvme drive. no idea what games you are playing and how big the installs are, but 2 tb is usually a sweetspot for price. the larger drives go up in price real fast after 2 tb drives. at least for m.2 versions. your country prices and availability will of course be different than mine :)
well in that case I think I don´t need an ssd for games , load times usually don´t bother me too much , I only can remember about GTA V bothered me a bit but I finished the game story mode anyway without stress out about that.. Any single player game nowadays seems to ask for 100gb or more of HDD space , even fifa 23 ask for 100gb ... that´s why I say 2tb is the minimum in my opinion , counting with some files too .
 

Rui Neves

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Follow the data path. OS is on the ssd. Anything you use goes through windows, doesn't matter if it's on the ssd or hdd, the drivers and DirectX and everything else to support the game are on ssd. So the games run at ssd speeds anyway.

The only difference is in load times, when you change maps and need to pull data from the hdd, there's a longer waiting period for all that data to load into the ram and ssd cache. Saved games are already in the ssd, not on the hdd.

So running through town, shooting stuff, is at ssd speeds, but the initial drop time or going indoors requiring a different map takes longer.

CSGO is a prime example, the drop time was pretty bad, almost always loaded last, or next to it, even on the simple maps like Office, but once dropped game play never hesitated because it was all the same map. Skyrim was pretty bad, as it uses multiple maps, city map and house map and inn or store maps, so loading screens made it a decision whether or not I really needed to go inside, or out into the world etc.
In that case I think I don´t need an ssd for games , load times usually don´t bother me too much , I only can remember about GTA V bothered me a bit but I finished the game story mode anyway without stress out about that... seems that no one have mention game stability or performance , so i am good with HDD then , I started the thread because I saw a video about the subject that said the HDD can cause stuttering on some games and because the games are asking for a SSD as recommendation too .
 

Rui Neves

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The Kingston A400 120Gb is a budget drive, it's mainly for home and office uses, a high performance system should never use this SSD as main drive.

In your case, the Kingston KC600 256GB is more capable for the job.
You may be right , it's not the fatest ssd for sure , but honestly for loading OS and my softwares is fine , it boot up my system in like 25s since I press the case button and I can open any software right after the boot without delay .
 
You may be right , it's not the fatest ssd for sure , but honestly for loading OS and my softwares is fine , it boot up my system in like 25s since I press the case button and I can open any software right after the boot without delay .

Sure it's like 20 times faster than your previous HDD.

But the fact that you only have 30GB left on your SSD might be a sign telling you that it's not enough space.

Experts say that you should always have ay least 50% of space available on your SSD at any time, it means 60GB in your case. Your SSD is already at 75% full, it's not good.
 

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you can run into issues with windows update if you don't have enough spare space. that's why your OS drive needs to have some extra space just sitting there.

but for a data drive it's not as big of a deal. but leaving some spare room is usually recommended for any ssd. something like 85% full or something like that if i recall right.
 

Karadjgne

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Making an SSD chip is like building in Hong Kong. It costs next to nothing to go upwards, it costs considerably more to go outwards. There's basically 4 types of chips or Nand.
S-nand is single layer Nand, the most expensive because you have to pack the entire drive space into a single chip.
M-nand is multi layer band, so 2x chips stacked on top. Smaller size in GB per chip, so cheaper to make
T-band or tri-nand is 3 layers.
Q-nand or quad nand is 4 layers high.

The Kingston a400 is Q-nand. It's a 4 layer chip, each chip of only 30Gb, so very inexpensive compared to a M-nand of 120Gb with 60Gb per chip.

Background said, the more layers, the lower the life expectancy due to things like heat transmission per layer, data transmission to each layer etc. More wear on the chip. To add to that is size wear. A 120Gb has an exponential sized wear compared to a 2Tb drive. For ease of math, figure each Gb as a memory slot. Every time anything is saved, it uses memory slots, and they rotate. So a single memory slot on a 120Gb drive is going to see far more use on a daily basis, the memory slots on a 2Tb might only see some use once a month instead.

What it boils down to is that Kingston a400 has a general use life expectancy before having issues, of @ 5years±. A good 2Tb Samsung using M-nand and the same use will last closer to 20years±.

The more full the drive stays, the higher the usage of those memory slots as data is moved.

Unless you just bought that a400, I'd not expect it to last very long, and one tiny corruption in the boot sector or windows system files can lead to a whole host of issues.
 
well in that case I think I don´t need an ssd for games , load times usually don´t bother me too much , I only can remember about GTA V bothered me a bit but I finished the game story mode anyway without stress out about that.. Any single player game nowadays seems to ask for 100gb or more of HDD space , even fifa 23 ask for 100gb ... that´s why I say 2tb is the minimum in my opinion , counting with some files too .
You don't need to have all of your games on an ssd...you can have your games on your hdd and only move games to the ssd that are really slow to load or give you drops when changing locations, so even a small ssd for games can be enough if it can take like 2-3 slow gigantic games.
Steam makes it super easy to move games around to other drives.
 

Rui Neves

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Sure it's like 20 times faster than your previous HDD.

But the fact that you only have 30GB left on your SSD might be a sign telling you that it's not enough space.

Experts say that you should always have ay least 50% of space available on your SSD at any time, it means 60GB in your case. Your SSD is already at 75% full, it's not good.
I know about that , but honestly I am fine with the space left on the SSD , I see no difference.
 
I know about that , but honestly I am fine with the space left on the SSD , I see no difference.

You bought your SSD for it performance, but you actually don't have it.

30GB left is too small if you know that sometimes Windows's pagefile (a temporary cache memory file) can reach the size of 10GB.

If your SSD becomes slow, the whole system's performance will go down with it.
 

Rui Neves

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You bought your SSD for it performance, but you actually don't have it.

30GB left is too small if you know that sometimes Windows's pagefile (a temporary cache memory file) can reach the size of 10GB.

If your SSD becomes slow, the whole system's performance will go down with it.
The performance is enough for me in the OS .... The question was if I had to have one ssd for games or not , do not now why my current SSD have to do with that , it only stores OS and softwares ... If it was needed an SSD for games I would buy a different SSD ....
 

Rui Neves

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You don't need to have all of your games on an ssd...you can have your games on your hdd and only move games to the ssd that are really slow to load or give you drops when changing locations, so even a small ssd for games can be enough if it can take like 2-3 slow gigantic games.
Steam makes it super easy to move games around to other drives.
I prefer to buy a larger ssd to store all games and not be moving games all the time ... That's why I have one 2tb HDD
 

Rui Neves

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Making an SSD chip is like building in Hong Kong. It costs next to nothing to go upwards, it costs considerably more to go outwards. There's basically 4 types of chips or Nand.
S-nand is single layer Nand, the most expensive because you have to pack the entire drive space into a single chip.
M-nand is multi layer band, so 2x chips stacked on top. Smaller size in GB per chip, so cheaper to make
T-band or tri-nand is 3 layers.
Q-nand or quad nand is 4 layers high.

The Kingston a400 is Q-nand. It's a 4 layer chip, each chip of only 30Gb, so very inexpensive compared to a M-nand of 120Gb with 60Gb per chip.

Background said, the more layers, the lower the life expectancy due to things like heat transmission per layer, data transmission to each layer etc. More wear on the chip. To add to that is size wear. A 120Gb has an exponential sized wear compared to a 2Tb drive. For ease of math, figure each Gb as a memory slot. Every time anything is saved, it uses memory slots, and they rotate. So a single memory slot on a 120Gb drive is going to see far more use on a daily basis, the memory slots on a 2Tb might only see some use once a month instead.

What it boils down to is that Kingston a400 has a general use life expectancy before having issues, of @ 5years±. A good 2Tb Samsung using M-nand and the same use will last closer to 20years±.

The more full the drive stays, the higher the usage of those memory slots as data is moved.

Unless you just bought that a400, I'd not expect it to last very long, and one tiny corruption in the boot sector or windows system files can lead to a whole host of issues.
Well as I already said for me the ssd when it comes to OS have been enough .... i only have paid 20€ on it , if it breaks I will replace with another ,. At this time one with 240gb .... My whole question was about having ssd for games , my system is fine ....