SSDs Heavily Impact Seamless Gaming - Do You Need One?
With no end to the spindle drive price hike in sight, hardware analysts have pointed toward growing action potential for solid state drive price reductions. The question, then, is whether or not gaming machines utilize SSDs -- several of our forum users have asked "is an SSD worth it?" or "should I get an SSD?" lately, and having done some minor bottleneck performance calculations, GN hardware editor Patrick Stone and I have some great (demystified) answers for you (and a TL;DR at the bottom).
The term 'SSD' has a single, basic principle that is upheld universally: it doesn't have moving (spinning) components; however, SSDs do vary by means of connection interfaces (there are PCI-e and SATA III variations), reliability, and overall performance, of course. This article will look at the impact of budgeted SATA III solid-state drives on gaming, primarily the $100-$150 range. Let's start with some flowcharts for ease of reference.
The Basics
As demonstrated in our fancy chart above, the speeds are broken down once again below in order of transfer rate:
| Component | Speed |
| GDDR5 GPU | 160-224GB/s |
| L1 Cache | 65GB/s |
| L2 Cache | 30GB/s |
| L3 Cache | 20GB/s |
| PC3-12800 RAM | 12.8GB/s |
| SATA III Interface | 768MB/s |
| Average SSD (~$100) | 300MB/s |
| Average HDD (~$70) | 40 MB/s |
This paints a very clear picture, not that we gamers are much of painters, but the point is still valid: the 'average' SSDs are nearly ten-fold faster than traditional HDDs (there are much faster SSDs, of course, but the price skyrockets). These charts attempt to equalize for HDD inflation.
Whatever, it's faster -- will I notice an SSD when gaming?
It's clear -- 40MB/s is slower than 300MB/s. Everyone here knew that to begin with. The pertinent question, though, is whether or not that 10x increase in speed will actually increase gaming performance. The short answer is "yes."
If you've ever noticed a tick or hiccup when sprinting around in Skyrim or other open world games (and even large FPS games, like Battlefield 3), this is caused by your system loading up new graphics or modular components for a cell (effectively a 'zone') that you just entered; the transaction that occurs requires the HDD to retrieve the cell-specific data, then normally utilizes the graphics processor to display it on-screen.
An SSD will decrease that hiccup by just enough to make it unnoticeable -- it acts as the difference between a seamless experience and a staggered one. To quote GN Hardware Editor Patrick Stone, "a few seconds when loading can be enough to stop and think, 'Hey, I'm playing a video game right now,' versus complete immersion." He's correct: if you can chop your loading time in Skyrim down from seven seconds to two or three, it's barely even noticeable. Furthermore, loading textures while traveling in game (when dumping and retrieving an entirely new zone is not required -- such as going from outside to inside) could potentially be decreased so significantly that the 'hiccup' is spotted almost never.
All SSDs here are 120GB except the most expensive two, which are 240GB. The HDD is 500GB.
Every texture (especially those massive texture packs we used to beef up Skyrim), every 'zone' you go through, each cell, model, object, background image, or other stored graphics and calculations/transactions are accessed through the hard drive (sequentially -- these must go through all devices in a specific order, starting with the CPU and typically ending with the GPU). The request for the texture speeds through the pipeline down to retrieve that texture in the HDD, which then acts as a chokepoint (or bottleneck), slowing the transaction down to somewhere in the range of ~40MB/s from the memory's peak transfer speed of 12.8GB/s. That's gigabytes to megabytes.
The massive bottleneck here, of course, is the spindle drive itself. While the SATA III interface can support nowhere near the speeds of the CPU, memory, or GPU (holy mother of the spaghetti monster, they're fast now!), the interface is still significantly faster than all comparable HDDs and many affordable SSDs; PCI-e SSDs exist for those wishing to purchase even faster ones still, but we're going to leave those out (at least for now) with an eye on the price.
The current HDD prices make SSDs a more viable option than ever -- when a 500GB / 7200 RPM / 16MB cache drive costs $90 and a 90GB 500MB/s SSD costs $130, it's worth the space hit. You can always buy a larger HDD for storage when prices rebound (or throw a 320GB HDD from Fry's Electronics in for an extra $50).
But shouldn't I put that money toward a better video card?
The question of whether an extra $50 to $100 should go toward a video card or CPU upgrade is a popular one, and it depends largely on budget. Here's the simple answer: on a budget of $800 or more, you have very little reason to upgrade your CPU or GPU any further before upgrading your SSD - and the reasons that do exist are specific, so ask below if you fit in one of those categories. Your HDD will bottleneck your system so heavily that GPU and CPU upgrades start to hit a glass ceiling at one point or another, and while newer GPU and CPU technology is something we recommend, simply 'faster' variations are not necessary. Besides, GPUs are easy to upgrade at a later date and an extra $50 won't often buy you a better CPU (you can't really get much better than an i5-2500k in the ~$800-$1000 range).
If you're building our $430 budget build, though, it'd be in your best interest to save the SSD for a later date. It simply doesn't fit the budget and the other components should be invested in first -- primarily an upgraded CPU from an X3 to X4 or i5.
You probably get the point by now, enough text - right? First off, please comment below if you require assistance or post in our hardware forums for active support. We are here to help you. That said, here's the promised TL;DR:
TL;DR: SSDs on average are nearly ten-fold faster than spindle-based HDDs (300MB/s vs. 40MB/s) for an affordable ~$100-$120. SSDs will be the difference between a completely seamless and immersive gaming experience and one with tiny loading hiccups when textures are dumped and retrieved. $800+ budgets should absolutely get an SSD. The only immediate downside is storage capacity.
Enjoy your seamless gaming!
~Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke and Patrick "Mocalcium" Stone.
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2012-03-05 16:34:32 | guest
thanks for that it worked flawlessly!
but just one more thing.. since I'm using an SSD for the sole reason being it's performance is there an easy way to set it up for the Windows index scores??
My current HDD scored a 5.6 but I'm expecting a 7.5+ with this Crucial SSD!!!
I haven't really noticed a difference in gaming load times for example and i want to make sure its stats are up to par, otherwise i'll exchange this bad boy for a 1tb Western Digital HDD. Ya know!?
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guest wrote:I wasn't familiar with cloning software so i'll definetely check out that link! But basically i ordered a version of the Crucal 128GB SSD from Amazon which unfortunately doesn't come with a "transfer kit" as i've seen some others do..my current HDD is 250GB so I was planning to use the SSD as a "back-up drive" to store my games and OS (WIN7 OEM) if possible..I've already hooked up the SSD and installed the latest firmware updates via CD, and noticed it was listed in my BIOS settings under SATA6 but did not appear under 'my computer' when i booted my original HDD and Windows..this is my first storage upgrade so i'm assuming that i've missed a few steps as to how to get the SSD recognized and working properly. Will this cloning software fix the problem??
thanks for your help!
It sounds like you missed a step -- did you format the drive to an NTFS Windows partition? Do the following:1) Type "diskmgmt.msc" in the start search bar (alternatively - right click on computer -> manage -> disk manager).
2) It might take a minute to load. Locate your new drive once it does - it should be indicated by a black line if it is not formatted. Make absolutely certain that it is your new drive (should be "Unallocated" space somewhere between 100 and 128GB).Fair warning: Formatting a drive will completely wipe all data on the drive. It is necessary to use new drives as Windows cannot read it without formatting it to the correct file system. Make sure you format the right one.
3) Right click -> New Simple Volume -> Go through the wizard and choose 'quick format' if given the option.
4) You're done! :)
Hopefully that helps :D
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2012-03-01 11:25:09 | guest
I wasn't familiar with cloning software so i'll definetely check out that link! But basically i ordered a version of the Crucal 128GB SSD from Amazon which unfortunately doesn't come with a "transfer kit" as i've seen some others do..my current HDD is 250GB so I was planning to use the SSD as a "back-up drive" to store my games and OS (WIN7 OEM) if possible..I've already hooked up the SSD and installed the latest firmware updates via CD, and noticed it was listed in my BIOS settings under SATA6 but did not appear under 'my computer' when i booted my original HDD and Windows..this is my first storage upgrade so i'm assuming that i've missed a few steps as to how to get the SSD recognized and working properly. Will this cloning software fix the problem??
thanks for your help!
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2012-02-29 23:09:26 | Lelldorianx
@Guest: So you want to migrate your existing Windows installation from your "old" HDD to your new SSD? I'm working on a guide on this, actually... but it won't be out for a while, so I'll give you some info here:
Assuming this is what you want, you'll need cloning software. There's a great open source hard drive cloning utility out there -- http://clonezilla.org/, which will effectively move everything from the target partition to the new destination partition.
Basically, as long as your old partition will fit on your new SSD, you can "clone" the complete C: partition from your old drive and migrate it to the SSD. As long as you follow Clonezilla's instructions, you will retain data on both the old drive and you will have it on the new drive as well (without worry of reactivation).
That'd be your best path :)
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2012-02-29 22:06:07 | guest - so..
for upgrade purposes, what's the easiest way to install an OEM version of SSD's when using an existing HDD & WIN7 OS??
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mikagmann2 wrote:If I was to go out to WalMart and get an external USB 3.0 harddrive, and install swtor on it, would it be better than using a sata II HDD? What would be the comparison to a $100 SDD and this 3.0 external harddrive? I was thinking about getting one and hooking it up with the USB 3.0, and mounting it inside my case. Is this a good or bad idea? Just a thought.
While the USB 3.0 interface itself is faster than a SATA II interface, the hard drive will not utilize it to make a difference. As long as the hard drive is still a spindle-based (non-SSD) drive, you will be bottlenecked by the drive's transfer rates itself, not the interface's limitations.
It's definitely not a 'bad idea' to have an external USB 3.0 drive -- but unless it's a solid state device, it won't be any faster than an internal SATA HDD (this is also why HDDs rarely see a performance hike by using SATA III instead of SATA II -- the drives are so slow natively that the interface is almost inconsequential.
Hopefully this answered your question :)
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2011-12-18 01:09:27 | mikagmann2
If I was to go out to WalMart and get an external USB 3.0 harddrive, and install swtor on it, would it be better than using a sata II HDD? What would be the comparison to a $100 SDD and this 3.0 external harddrive? I was thinking about getting one and hooking it up with the USB 3.0, and mounting it inside my case. Is this a good or bad idea? Just a thought.
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2011-12-17 16:48:27 | Lelldorianx
@Jesse: the hard drive is still frequently accessed even after initial retrieval of data (aka loading), especially in games that routinely use large cells (as discussed above) that require rapid dumping and retrieval of new and excess data. While not all game engines are equal, the ones with which I am most familiar do not work through the specific means you detailed; for example, if I were to procedurally generate terrain with unique biomes to that sector, I would now have to retrieve those specific models and textures from the storage device as they are not preemptively stored in memory (amount of memory becomes largely irrelevant as game engines are spec'd by devs to be compatible with the lowest common denominator -- Skyrim cannot natively support more than 2GB of memory without the LAW settings configured (Large Address Aware), for instance.
From Around the Web
If you have a new gaming rig you need an SSD. Price isn't important. If you don't have the money, save up for it. You were able to shell out $600 to $1000 so an extra $100 should be no problem. The reasoning besides seamless gameplay as mentioned in the article, is that games have grown to be quite the behemoths and traditional disk drives can't compensate for this.
Starting certain games with the fastest SSD on the market still require load times unfortunately... it's just not like DOS days anymore where you hit Enter and have the game menu screen the next second.