![]() ![]() ![]() To gather some data from a lightweight indie game, we tested all eight drives against loads in the first episode of Life: Strange 2, and even the fastest of our SSDs roundup shaved a mere ~5 seconds offloads compared to the slowest HDD. Testing reveals an even narrower gap when you consider indie titles. Contrast that with the WD Black 2TB: 16 seconds longer to load Metro Exodus, with twice the storage capacity and a lower price. However, a high-end Optane AIC is ridiculously expensive, and we'd stick with something more reasonable, like the XPG SX8200 Pro, which is nearly as fast. Those results might look pretty stark if you're considering the best effect against the worst. On the SSD side, the top-performing 480GB Intel Optane 900P add-in card delivered Taiga in just over 22 seconds, while the slowest of the SSDs we tested, the 500GB Western Digital Blue 3D SATA, took just clear of 33 seconds. Using the RDY ELIBG205 as a testbed (packed with a powerful Geforce RTX 2080 Ti and Core i9-9900K) and loading into the Taiga section of the primary campaign, the slowest of the HDDs (a Western Digital Blue 1TB) took just over 48 seconds to get us in-game, with the most fleet of the HDD pack (Western Digital's 2TB Black) loading gameplay in 40 seconds. Testing a range of top SSDs, including add-in cards, NVMe, and SATA drives, against the best of a crop of 7200 RPM HDDs in Metro Exodus produced some significant results. It's undoubtedly not imperceptible, but we're talking in terms of seconds rather than minutes. The practical difference for gamers between SSDs and HDDs isn't as mind-blowing as the hyperbolic marketing copy from manufacturers would have you believe. There's a lot of sequential data to read, and usually, you're not running a ton of other stuff in the background that's hitting your storage. Windows boot times are one thing, but games tend to behave differently. HDD vs SSD: SSD performance gains in games aren't that staggering Many people (including most of us at PC Gamer) refuse to use a PC that doesn't have an SSD boot drive. We've said it before: using an SSD for your boot drive is one of the most noticeable upgrades you can make on an older PC. ![]() And for just about any good SSD, booting in well under 10 seconds is typical. On a slower WD Blue 2TB HDD, under the same circumstances, boot times are typically 30-40 seconds. With a clean Windows 10 build and a fast WD Black 4TB HDD, boot times (from the end of the BIOS POST sequence to being at the Windows 10 desktop) can take 20-30 seconds. As files get written, edited, and deleted, over time, this can slow down access to data on hard drives, especially for things like booting Windows. On a hard drive, the heads have to reposition the correct sector to read each fragment and then wait for the right part of the platter to spin under the drive head. That means SSDs don't suffer from degraded performance due to file fragmentation (where a file gets placed in non-sequential sectors). There are no moving parts or spinning platters, making access times substantially quicker, almost instantaneous in some cases. There are multiple reasons SSDs are faster than HDDs. (Image credit: Microsoft) HDD vs SSD: Having an SSD for your boot drive is essential Given the durability and reliability of modern HDDs, they're still the single best solution for backing up your precious data. Should you need to restore from a backup, sure, it could save you several minutes, but restoring from a backup in the first place will be far more painful. There's no need to back up your PC to high-performance SSD storage. Consider traditional backup and media storage. It's not all just fun and games, however. But if you keep a large collection of games installed, that 1TB can go fast. That's one-eighth of a 1TB SSD! The good news is that a 1TB-class SSD can be had for $100, so you're 'only' dedicating about $10-$15 of storage to even the giant games. Where 40-60GB install sizes used to be typical, large modern games often weigh in at over 10GB currently and often climb to more following the release of patches, seasons, and updates. Games in the next generation will likely breach 150GB, and some already have. With the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S making a point of including fast SSD storage, the shift is likely to result in another significant spike in AAA titles' size. (Image credit: Steam) HDD vs SSD: The growing size of games and other dataĪs anyone with a digital game library can attest, modern games storage requirements know no bounds, with new games including updates and add-ons easily pushing up to and in some cases beyond the 200GB mark-looking at you, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() Quickly, The Daily Nick and the weekend Try to defeat the rest of the world in the latest new developments!Įnd of rejection Create your event in “Custom Mode” using any combination of seven cities of the game, nine game modes, various weapons and tens of thousands of vehicles. ![]()
![]() ![]()
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |