Does a SSD give gaming performance (fps) boost over HDD?

[neatfeatguy]

I can't say I've heard anyone claim that installing games on a SSD over a HDD has caused a jump in performance (frames per second) in games. Anything I do find asking a similar question says no to very little performance (fps) improvement.

I've heard people say they've noticed reduced loading time in games between menus and such, but not actual performance. I don't recall getting a fps performance increase in games when I moved to a SSD, though I wasn't doing a comparison when I went from a HDD to SSD so maybe there was and I just never noticed it.

TweakTown says otherwise: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/7911/upgrade-test-gtx-760-vs-1060-ssd-hdd-system/index.html

• HDD to SSD upgrade (with GTX 1060):
• 3DMark Fire Strike - 11.8% slower on SSD
• Heaven - 9.9% faster on SSD
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - 21.6% faster on SSD
• Grand Theft Auto V - no change from HDD to SSD
• Overwatch - 18.6% faster on SSD
• Battlefield 1 - 32.5% faster on SSD

I don't normally read through tweaktown, but I came across the link at another forum I browse through from time to time and I was curious if it was true. Does anyone have any actual data to back this up or heard of similar performance increases? Me, I'm too short of time to install Windows on an HDD, install games on it and then test a them, then to swap in a SSD, install the same games on it and test them again.

 

[FireFox]

I've heard people say they've noticed reduced loading time in games between menus and such, but not actual performance.

There you have the answer to your question.

Btw, when installing Games on a HDD better to go for those 7200rpm .

 

[RCoon]

The only time you'll get an FPS increase from an SSD upgrade is when the storage transfer speed becomes the bottleneck during gameplay. If a game is coded to drag textures back and forth from storage (most games load what they need into VRAM), then you may see a difference between HDD and SSD. If your VRAM is limited, and your system RAM is full and overflowing into the Page File (located on the primary C:\ drive), then you'd see a difference of FPS betwixt HDD and SSD.

I'd imagine in most cases there'd be no difference, especially on a custom build. The only cases I can see this being prevalent is if the system you're gaming on is woefully imbalanced/underpowered.

 

[cadaveca]

I can't say I've heard anyone claim that installing games on a SSD over a HDD has caused a jump in performance (frames per second) in games. Anything I do find asking a similar question says no to very little performance (fps) improvement.

I've heard people say they've noticed reduced loading time in games between menus and such, but not actual performance. I don't recall getting a fps performance increase in games when I moved to a SSD, though I wasn't doing a comparison when I went from a HDD to SSD so maybe there was and I just never noticed it.

TweakTown says otherwise: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/7911/upgrade-test-gtx-760-vs-1060-ssd-hdd-system/index.html

• HDD to SSD upgrade (with GTX 1060):
• 3DMark Fire Strike - 11.8% slower on SSD
• Heaven - 9.9% faster on SSD
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - 21.6% faster on SSD
• Grand Theft Auto V - no change from HDD to SSD
• Overwatch - 18.6% faster on SSD
• Battlefield 1 - 32.5% faster on SSD

I don't normally read through tweaktown, but I came across the link at another forum I browse through from time to time and I was curious if it was true. Does anyone have any actual data to back this up or heard of similar performance increases? Me, I'm too short of time to install Windows on an HDD, install games on it and then test a them, then to swap in a SSD, install the same games on it and test them again.

I see no differences in most applications with my own systems, but RCoon covered it pretty well.

Also, I want to point out that the numbers listed aren't entirely accurate. What do you care about - the max FPS, or the minimums? Some of those results that show SSD faster actually show the SSD lowering the minimum FPS, and that is NOT an upgrade in my books.

 

[neatfeatguy]

The only time you'll get an FPS increase from an SSD upgrade is when the storage transfer speed becomes the bottleneck during gameplay. If a game is coded to drag textures back and forth from storage (most games load what they need into VRAM), then you may see a difference between HDD and SSD. If your VRAM is limited, and your system RAM is full and overflowing into the Page File (located on the primary C:\ drive), then you'd see a difference of FPS betwixt HDD and SSD.

I'd imagine in most cases there'd be no difference, especially on a custom build. The only cases I can see this being prevalent is if the system you're gaming on is woefully imbalanced/underpowered.

That's kind of what I thinking - seeing as how the SSD is so much faster over a HDD, cached info into the paging file would clearly go faster with the SSD. I'm just not sure you'd see that big of an impact for fps boosts.

There you have the answer to your question.

Btw, when installing Games on a HDD better to go for those 7200rpm .

That's loading times, not actual fps increase. The article in tweaktown shows an increase in fps, not loading times.

 

[qubit]

No, there's no increase on fps, as the others have explained on here. Only loading times and hitching will be improved.

Looks like the TT writer was on crack when he showed there was a difference, or is just straight up lying. A 32% increase in BF1? Yeah sure.

 

[cdawall]

No, there's no increase on fps, as the others have explained on here. Only loading times and hitching will be improved.

Looks like the TT writer was on crack when he showed there was a difference, or is just straight up lying. A 32% increase in BF1? Yeah sure.

I am trying to figure out how anything storage related could increase it by 32%

 

[alucasa]

It is possible. The epeen effect of playing games on a SSD might make one feel that they are getting higher fps.

You know what. This is something funny. Console gamers play games. PC gamers are so focused on fps, temp, and load spikes meanwhile.

 

[FYFI13]

Arma series games is the only case where i have seen nice performance improvement when using SSD. While FPS remained about the same, gameplay felt much smoother since Arma is constantly streaming textures, especially if you're using tons of mods.

 

[cdawall]

It is possible. The epeen effect of playing games on a SSD might make one feel that they are getting higher fps.

You know what. This is something funny. Console gamers play games. PC gamers are so focused on fps, temp, and load spikes meanwhile.

I will say after playing fallout 4 installed on a raid 5 array vs my NVME SSD it is a completely different feeling. I swear I had enough time to go get lunch on some of the loading screens on a regular spinning disk. I think console gamers are just used to that peasantry.

 

[alucasa]

I donno. I have games on Samsung Evo 250gb as well. Haven't seen that much of an improvement if any improvement at all.

But then the my games are different than most play here: Football manager, sometimes Civ 5, Crusader kings, that sort of stuff - which is why I am happy with just 760.

 

[RejZoR]

Framerate, no. Framerate stability, possibly. I've seen less hitching and stuttering with Unreal Engine 3.x and 4.x games on SSD or SSHD than on HDD alone due to faster texture streaming. You'll also decrease initial level load by quite a bit.

 

[The Riddler]

Sometimes yes.

There are couple of instances about this. One of the biggest example is Batman:Arkham Knight which is based on Unreal Engine 3 and uses a lot of texture. Watch Dogs is another game that have these kind of issues. It stuttered many times when i installed it on HDD, and on SSD i never saw any stuttering. UE3 is very notorious on texture streaming from mechanical disk drives.

Megatexturing is not common and it never caused stuttering when the game is on HDD BUT if the game can't read virtual texture data fast enough there are some texture pop ups happen. You can install Doom on HDD if you want to observe. And RAGE was a worse story because fast SSDs are not enough too, you have to use RAMDISK to get rid of this problem.

 

[SomeOne99h]

So, texture streaming feature can be bad for HDD?
In Mount and Blade with Anno Domini mod, having texture streaming enabled is causing stuttering for me. Luckily, you can disable this feature on the options.
I guess if someone is gaming with an HDD, better to look in the game options for texture streaming and make sure to turn it off if possible.

 

[Jetster]

I think its fair to mention. If you have a system with minimal ram and high use of a paging file then you might see higher frame rates but I think this would be rare. The only real benefit would be large maps loading times are reduced. Like with BF4 maps would load in 20 sec compared to 90

 

[eidairaman1]

Ive always read that it helps in load times only

 

[TRUELOVE95]

I will say after playing fallout 4 installed on a raid 5 array vs my NVME SSD it is a completely different feeling. I swear I had enough time to go get lunch on some of the loading screens on a regular spinning disk. I think console gamers are just used to that peasantry.

I agree, I can claim the same with Fallout 4 on ssd. Other games, I did not bother trying to notice the difference.

 

[RejZoR]

So, texture streaming feature can be bad for HDD?
In Mount and Blade with Anno Domini mod, having texture streaming enabled is causing stuttering for me. Luckily, you can disable this feature on the options.
I guess if someone is gaming with an HDD, better to look in the game options for texture streaming and make sure to turn it off if possible.

It's not that easy or simple. Texture streaming resolves VRAM capacity issues or limitations. With texture streaming enabled, you can use super high resolution textures that are streamed to your VRAM on graphic card on the fly depending on where you stand in the game and game simply fetches the required textures. If you disable texture streaming, game has to load ALL needed textures into VRAM. Yes, it'll fix hitching and stuttering, but you'll need loads of VRAM. Because with texture streaming, it can work in a modern game with awesome graphics even on a model with only 2GB VRAM. If you turn it off, it just won't work or VERY badly. I have plenty of experience with this in Killing Floor 2 (Unreal Engine 3.x) where this stuttering and hitching was often experienced by HDD users. One way was disabling texture streaming if you have enough VRAM or increasing texture streaming cache or designating how much VRAM can be used, so it swaps textures around less often.

 

[biffzinker]

Skyrim Special Edition's installed on 2 SSDs in RAID0 shows the loading screen for a few seconds then I'm in game. When I played Skyrim before Special Edition I had it installed on a 1 TB Seagate 7200 RPM HDD, and there was plenty of time to read the text on the loading screen. Fast traveling in game benefits from the SSD as well.

 

[ASOT]

SSD only good for loading time on game,else is 0

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I don't think you can expect much regarding fps increases but since I use a ssd with games on mid level load glitches are reduced as well as some load times.

 

[jboydgolfer]

There's only one time where I've noticed a solid-state drive showing benefits in FPS or game smoothness and that's with a heavily modded Arma 2, and although I'm no professional I'm going to guess that's because Arma 2 calls to the hard drive for all those mods repeatedly during gameplay

And of course loading times but technically that's not anything to do with gaming In particular at all it just happens to be that the loading is in a game but that's not gaming related increase in performance

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

GTA V on ultra at 4k uses some gram(oh dear meant vram ,my mind yo) and is mostly what I was thinking of but doom using 1 GPU with villas bah Vulcan and everything ultra or nightmare @ 4k for example.

 

[ViperXTR]

hitching and long loading times are the only ones resolved in my case, no increase in overall framerate

 

[The Riddler]

So, texture streaming feature can be bad for HDD?
In Mount and Blade with Anno Domini mod, having texture streaming enabled is causing stuttering for me. Luckily, you can disable this feature on the options.
I guess if someone is gaming with an HDD, better to look in the game options for texture streaming and make sure to turn it off if possible.

Disabling texture streaming gives me black textures on Arkham City.