PC games are starting to require SSDs

SPARTAN VI said:
Nothing but SSDs in my builds since 2018.

View attachment 577178
Click to expand...

I bought my first SSD in late 2009 - early 2010 some time.

For about a year or so I kept a secondary hard drive in the build for mass storage, but after that I moved to a dedicated NAS for that, so my clients have been all SSD since at least 2011.

NAS is now up to 192TB (12x16TB drives)

I almost can't believe people are still putting hard drives in client machines in 2023. It feels like this should have died over a decade ago, given how transformational the switch from Hard Drives to SSD's was.

I still have SATA SSD's in various laptops and light machines around the house, but my main workstation/desktop has been all NVME since since 2015 when I picked up my Intel SSD 750 PCIe drive. Current machine boots off of a 2TB m.2 Samsung 980 Pro, with a 2TB m.2 Sabrent Rocket 4 as a secondary drive, and a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO as a tertiary drive.

This motherboard has plenty more slots for NVME drives, but I just haven't needed them yet.
 
Last edited:
bigdogchris said:
I wonder if game engines and developers will start to change how they build their game files out knowing SSD's are there.
Click to expand...
SSD sequential read is still so much faster than random and both compression-decompression algorithm and hardware for it getting better they will probably continue the trend of trying to be sequential as much as possible, next gen only consoles games are made with SSD in mind and seem to have continues,
both the trend to try to have 32-64 random read when not sequential and sequential as much as possible could very well continue (specially with the fast nvme style):

index.png
Samsung-980-Pro-1TB-CrystalDiskMark-1GB.png
\

Yes the cost of RND4K is not that dramatic so they could get sloppy without paying as much but it still much slower.

6786/87.95 = 77 slowers
190/0.9 = 211 slowers

It is much faster in a very similar way, and DirectStorage is build to take advantage of both type and a lot of random access game do can be a bit out of the gamedev control (OS systems, runtimes files)
 
LukeTbk said:
SSD sequential read is still so much faster than random and both compression-decompression algorithm and hardware for it getting better they will probably continue the trend of trying to be sequential as much as possible, next gen only consoles games are made with SSD in mind and seem to have continues,
both the trend to try to have 32-64 random read when not sequential and sequential as much as possible could very well continue (specially with the fast nvme style):

View attachment 577203View attachment 577204\

Yes the cost of RND4K is not that dramatic so they could get sloppy without paying as much but it still much slower.

6786/87.95 = 77 slowers
190/0.9 = 211 slowers

It is much faster in a very similar way, and DirectStorage is build to take advantage of both type and a lot of random access game do can be a bit out of the gamedev control (OS systems, runtimes files)
Click to expand...

I think there are two things we ahve to talk about when it comes to drive speed and game performance.

1.) Initial load time. This is often going to be very sequential read dependent.

2.) In-game performance, especially in large open world titles where game assets need to be loaded as you go along. These are going to be very low queue depth rnd4k dependent. Yes, the assets may be packaged inside gargantuan files, but they aren't going to read the entire package just to grab that one model, texture or shader they need. They are still going to find the specific one, and read it.

With #1, the consequence of having a slower drive will just result in a longer load time. It can be annoying, but it isn't the end of the world, unless it is so slow that you are missing the start of a multiplayer game round.

With #2 it is more critical to in game performance, as you are likely to have stutter when game assets load which can harm the game experience.

I'm betting these SSD requirements, especially coming as they are from big upcoming open world titles, are mostly trying to address #2 primarily.
 
Maybe they could saving ram with obsessing less with sequential read than before, but because how much faster sequential will be (specially pcie 5 nvme numbers) versus slower random, in a ratio not that dissimilar to HDDs....

What they will do with higher bandwith could change more than the games assets files strategy-system used.
 
t1337duder said:
I'd be curious to see what happened if you winged it with a faster HDD. I've had my PC's exclusively outfitted with SSDs for a few years now (SSD's seem to fall into your lap when working at an PC repair shop...). Love HDDs in my NAS. But last I remember trying HDD for games, I was surprised by their performance (similar to SSD).
Click to expand...
It’s more for loading and texture swapping, the protocols and features on the IO controllers between mechanical drives and SSD (newer models) are quite different and the controllers on SSDs and NVME drives can support retrieval methods for direct loading that traditional HHDs simply can’t.
Game engines and such though still have to maintain backward compatibility which does add significant overhead and can reduce performance for everyone. Removing support and even the calls themselves from newer engines can do a lot for “optimizing” which is something a lot of people seem to think is the problem.
 
Last edited:
Given prices now for 1-2TB drives (especially sata ones), this argument makes more sense. Even just 2-3 years ago it didn't. Then again, we now have games that take up 150GB+ of space. The eternal free space dance continues ever onward.

I recently picked up an 8TB WD black hd for $120 or so. Plenty of space for games and items that don't need ssd speeds. At least we have some mobos with more than two m.2 slots as they get rid of sata ports.
 
I don't think I have had an HDD as a primary drive since my old Q6600 setup, and even then I eventually threw an SSD in it to run windows and games once they started coming out. I have NVMEs or SSDs in all of my setups now and have for a long time to run the OS and games. The only HDDs I still have in operation are simply for file backups where speed does not matter and cheap space is what I desire.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
I don't think I have had an HDD as a primary drive since my old Q6600 setup, and even then I eventually threw an SSD in it to run windows and games once they started coming out. I have NVMEs or SSDs in all of my setups now and have for a long time to run the OS and games. The only HDDs I still have in operation are simply for file backups where speed does not matter and cheap space is what I desire.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I remember getting a WD raptor 36GB 10k drive. Aside from the impressive whine, it was pretty disappointing. Then when the 80GB intel x25m came out I got that. Single largest performance difference I had ever seen in day-to-day general windows use. Now I think it's rediculous that there are ANY PCs that come with a primary mechanical drive (my last job gave me a laptop with mechanical drive, the very first thing I did was goto IT and request an SSD).
 
Armenius said:
People on Steam are going to be whining about it. One of the most popular CPUs in their hardware survey is still the FX-8350. You think people still running that CPU are going to be using a SSD?
Click to expand...
Actually yes I do think they will have an SSD. They're a common upgrade even for older systems because they're cheap and the performance boost is huge. I have put them in far less powerful systems than that. Might not want to splurge on the fastest one, but there's loads of options these days.

They can cry about it all they want. This is really no different than a new game requiring a faster GPU, more ram, etc.
 
THRESHIN said:
Actually yes I do think they will have an SSD. They're a common upgrade even for older systems because they're cheap and the performance boost is huge. I have put them in far less powerful systems than that. Might not want to splurge on the fastest one, but there's loads of options these days.

They can cry about it all they want. This is really no different than a new game requiring a faster GPU, more ram, etc.
Click to expand...
Yep. You can get a nice 1tb for $40 these days, 2tb for $80-100. There's really no excuse to claim you can afford a bunch of $70 games but not an ssd imo.
 
Unabomber said:
That's a valid statement for today's games.

The same will hold true for future games. Even the fastest mechanical drive will eventually get to the point where it can't keep up with the sheer speed advantage of even your lowest end SSD. You'll still be able to play it, until you get to a point where you have to have that stream of data coming in, at which point, you'll stutter, lag, etc.

One day, when I get a chance, I may just hook up that old 10K RPM 36.7 GB Ultra 160 SCSI drive I have in a drawer, assuming I can find a controller that will work on today's computers, just to test it. That was easily my fastest mechanical drive I've ever owned, and when games get to that above critical point, I'll certainly be curious. Now, of course, if the game requires more than 36.7 GB (entirely possible...) then that's a scratch...



Back in the 90's, though, you still had quite a few people using 16 bit computers (80286-based), and many a game started to require a 32 bit processor. For example, the Ultima 7 games simply couldn't run on a pure 16 bit platform, nor could X-Wing, Doom, etc.

When I refer to 32 bit processors, though, that only meant the internal workings, and yes, even those 386 SX CPU's (32 bit internal, 16 bit external) could run most of those games. Some, such as Ultima 7 and Ultima 7 part 2, ran OK, and X-Wing on absolutely lowest graphic settings, could be somewhat playable when the action was light.

Doom took forever to load, and even on the smallest screen on low detail, it would still get choppy. I think it was the equivalent of using a 4" diagonal monitor (assuming your standard 14" CRT monitor of the time).

Heck, even Rise of the Triad could be played (not decently at all) on those 386 SX platforms, again if you minimized the screen to the smallest size. The folks at Apogee, though, put a not-so-subtle message in red letters around the border of the smallest screen size that said "Get a 486."
Click to expand...
I remember playing Sid Meier's Pirates! on a Mac with a monitor that wasn't high enough resolution. So the right side and bottom of the screen which had almost the entire UI on it completely missing for me. I still had a blast playing it though.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I bought my first SSD in late 2009 - early 2010 some time.

For about a year or so I kept a secondary hard drive in the build for mass storage, but after that I moved to a dedicated NAS for that, so my clients have been all SSD since at least 2011.

NAS is now up to 192TB (12x16TB drives)

I almost can't believe people are still putting hard drives in client machines in 2023. It feels like this should have died over a decade ago, given how transformational the switch from Hard Drives to SSD's was.

I still have SATA SSD's in various laptops and light machines around the house, but my main workstation/desktop has been all NVME since since 2015 when I picked up my Intel SSD 750 PCIe drive. Current machine boots off of a 2TB m.2 Samsung 980 Pro, with a 2TB m.2 Sabrent Rocket 4 as a secondary drive, and a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO as a tertiary drive.

This motherboard has plenty more slots for NVME drives, but I just haven't needed them yet.
Click to expand...
Running KDE Neon, I run my root file system of a 250GB NVME SSD and everything else, including my home partition, off 14TB of spinning rust - And my system runs great. I game on this setup not a problem in the world, according to MangoHUD's OSD frametime graph there's no hitching or frame pacing issues even under titles running native 4k via VKD3D.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Running KDE Neon, I run my root file system of a 250GB NVME SSD and everything else, including my home partition, off 14TB of spinning rust - And my system runs great. I game on this setup not a problem in the world, according to MangoHUD's OSD frametime graph there's no hitching or frame pacing issues even under titles running native 4k via VKD3D.
Click to expand...

It's very very title dependent. Also, Linux does disk caching very differently than Windows does.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Yep. You can get a nice 1tb for $40 these days, 2tb for $80-100. There's really no excuse to claim you can afford a bunch of $70 games but not an ssd imo.
Click to expand...
I completely agree that it's not an unreasonable requirement these days but I doubt many of those playing on ancient systems are buying $70 games.
 
Ebernanut said:
I completely agree that it's not an unreasonable requirement these days but I doubt many of those playing on ancient systems are buying $70 games.
Click to expand...
Or they are on ancient systems playing 70 dollar games. I'd be curious to see a survey result from steam that shows OS, Graphics and Drives.
 
Top 100 games played on steam is mostly game that would run well on old system, there is some Eldeng Rin, Modern warfare 2, Cyberpunk in it but there a giant amount of fallout 4, skyrim, PUBG, factorio, dota, team fortress, apex, GTA, counter strike, rocket league, RimWorld, Crusader Kings and so on.

So even if a vast proportion of steam user are not on up to date hardware that does not mean they are the one trying to run Cyberpunk (could be, but there a lot of fortnite , pubg, Blizzard games going on that would have a steam account).
 
Last edited:
LukeTbk said:
Top 100 games played on steam is mostly game that would run well on old system, there is some Eldeng Ring, Modern warfare 2, Cyberpunk in it but there a giant amount of fallout 4, skyrim, PUBG, factorio, dota, team fortress, apex, GTA, counter strike, rocket league, RimWorld, Crusader Kings and so on
Click to expand...
And most of the biggest games aren't played through Steam and are made for lower end systems too. Fortnite, League of Legends, every Blizzard game, shitloads of asian games that look like something from 1999.
 
LukeTbk said:
Top 100 games played on steam is mostly game that would run well on old system, there is some Eldeng Ring, Modern warfare 2, Cyberpunk in it but there a giant amount of fallout 4, skyrim, PUBG, factorio, dota, team fortress, apex, GTA, counter strike, rocket league, RimWorld, Crusader Kings and so on
Click to expand...

I didn't want to believe you, but I looked at the top 100 list and good lord is there a lot of unadulterated casual garbage on there.

Only ~6 games that I am either now or ever have been interested are on that top 100 list. The rest are IMHO junk.
 
Ebernanut said:
I completely agree that it's not an unreasonable requirement these days but I doubt many of those playing on ancient systems are buying $70 games.
Click to expand...
actually I have often done exactly this. Combination of reasons. I like to run my systems into the ground, I use 1080p monitors still and I'm very insensitive to framerate. If I have to turn the details down to play a new game I'm fine with that because if it's a good game I'll play it again when I eventually get new hardware. It's like a new game.
 
People still install games on a HDD? Not sure when was the last time I actually installed a game on a HDD, let alone an OS installed on a HDD. Anyway, good to see SSD's being more affordable, they are pretty much the future. The downside to most SSD's is the cache limit, once you copy or move files and once the cache limit has been depleted, your SSD will see a performance decrease which is annoying. But I don't regularly do a lot of writes anyway so this isn't really a major issue for me but can be an inconvenience,
 
We had family over a few weeks back . We played fortnite with the kids. All on PCs. Bro in law had fortnite installed on his laptop on a spinning disk. It took him ages to get in match while we on ssds were in in seconds.

No point to be made. Just a story. People still use mechanical drives and have no concept of ssds.
 
tangoseal said:
We had family over a few weeks back . We played fortnite with the kids. All on PCs. Bro in law had fortnite installed on his laptop on a spinning disk. It took him ages to get in match while we on ssds were in in seconds.

No point to be made. Just a story. People still use mechanical drives and have no concept of ssds.
Click to expand...
;((
 
I have all my Steam Library installed/locally backed up. I'd need an SSD array lol. I move a couple games to a 1TB NVME when ready to play (and remux UHDs on there)
 
Last edited:
ChronoDetector said:
People still install games on a HDD? Not sure when was the last time I actually installed a game on a HDD, let alone an OS installed on a HDD. Anyway, good to see SSD's being more affordable, they are pretty much the future. The downside to most SSD's is the cache limit, once you copy or move files and once the cache limit has been depleted, your SSD will see a performance decrease which is annoying. But I don't regularly do a lot of writes anyway so this isn't really a major issue for me but can be an inconvenience,
Click to expand...

Spend some time on one of these groups. You'd be surprised the vintage hardware that is still in active use out there:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/OfficialPCMR/
 
THRESHIN said:
actually I have often done exactly this. Combination of reasons. I like to run my systems into the ground, I use 1080p monitors still and I'm very insensitive to framerate. If I have to turn the details down to play a new game I'm fine with that because if it's a good game I'll play it again when I eventually get new hardware. It's like a new game.
Click to expand...
If there's any disadvantage to storing software that's often upwards of 50GB's specifically on SSD's I'd love to hear it, as I store my games on the larger capacity spinners and see very little in the way of problems. One time I even tried storing BF4 on an SSD vs HDD in the hope that maps would load faster, only to find the difference wasn't as great as one would imagine in relation to real world loading times considering the overall loss of outright capacity.

I swear there was a linked article on [H] a while back that stated that outright capacity was an important impending factor related to gaming that most gamer's weren't prepared for.

The next time I installed BF4, I just used the larger capacity HDD which had the advantage of storing all of my games on the one volume which was tidier and easier to back up. Having said that, as stated earlier I run Linux, and Windows file system performance is questionable under certain circumstances.
 
Last edited:
Mazzspeed said:
If there's any disadvantage to storing software that's often upwards of 50GB's specifically on SSD's I'd love to hear it, as I store my games on the larger capacity spinners and see very little in the way of problems. One time I even tried storing BF4 on an SSD vs HDD in the hope that maps would load faster, only to find the difference wasn't as great as one would imagine in relation to real world loading times considering the overall loss of outright capacity.

I swear there was a linked article on [H] a while back that stated that outright capacity was an important impending factor related to gaming that most gamer's weren't prepared for.

The next time I installed BF4, I just used the larger capacity HDD which had the advantage of storing all of my games on the one volume which was tidier and easier to back up. Having said that, as stated earlier I run Linux, and Windows file system performance is questionable under certain circumstances.
Click to expand...

Shouldn't be any downsides outside of the good old "SSD's are more expensive" and "consuming write cycles" thing, which really isn't worth worrying about anymore, as in anyhting but outright abusive write heavy applications your SSD's will be undesirably obsolete before they wear out these days.

As a temporary solution if you don't have enough SSD capacity for your library, you can maintain a library on spinning rust, and one on SSD, and just move the game to the SSD library before playing it.
 
Or use an ssd as a drive cache with a large HDD, people did that for a while when SSD were still quite expensive (or wanting those large 8-14tbb type of space)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Shouldn't be any downsides outside of the good old "SSD's are more expensive" and "consuming write cycles" thing, which really isn't worth worrying about anymore, as in anyhting but outright abusive write heavy applications your SSD's will be undesirably obsolete before they wear out these days.

As a temporary solution if you don't have enough SSD capacity for your library, you can maintain a library on spinning rust, and one on SSD, and just move the game to the SSD library before playing it.
Click to expand...
Point being: I don't experience any real world performance disadvantage running my games off large capacity spinning rust, especially when we're told that we're going to need more capacity to store the latest and greatest AAA titles in the future.
 
HDD to SSD is such a game changer.

I recently 'fixed' my buddy's mom's 6 year old laptop that was taking forever to do anything. Just web browsing and such.

One $25 SSD and windows install later and she swears it is a totally new machine.

At the recent price point I am considering transitioning my Plex server to SSD's within the next year or so. Maybe keep the spinners for backups.
 
Dark12 said:
HDD to SSD is such a game changer.

I recently 'fixed' my buddy's mom's 6 year old laptop that was taking forever to do anything. Just web browsing and such.

One $25 SSD and windows install later and she swears it is a totally new machine.

At the recent price point I am considering transitioning my Plex server to SSD's within the next year or so. Maybe keep the spinners for backups.
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone's stating that under Windows there can't be huge gains in overall system responsiveness running the OS off an SSD. I simply question the notion that at this point in time there is any largely notable real world benefit to running a game off an SSD considering the usual tradeoff in overall drive capacity.

When it comes to Plex, you're only really going to see gains running the metadata database off the SSD, meaning thumbnails and blurbs will appear faster. A HDD of reasonable specification should be more than adequate regarding transcoding and streaming.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I don't think anyone's stating that under Windows there can't be huge gains in overall system responsiveness running the OS off an SSD. I simply question the notion that at this point in time there is any largely notable real world benefit to running a game off an SSD considering the usual tradeoff in overall drive capacity.

When it comes to Plex, you're only really going to see gains running the metadata database off the SSD, meaning thumbnails and blurbs will appear faster. A HDD of reasonable specification should be more than adequate regarding transcoding and streaming.
Click to expand...
Yea definitely already taking advantage of that.

I was thinking more for reduced noise and power and increased longevity.
 
Mazzspeed said:
If there's any disadvantage to storing software that's often upwards of 50GB's specifically on SSD's I'd love to hear it, as I store my games on the larger capacity spinners and see very little in the way of problems. One time I even tried storing BF4 on an SSD vs HDD in the hope that maps would load faster, only to find the difference wasn't as great as one would imagine in relation to real world loading times considering the overall loss of outright capacity.

I swear there was a linked article on [H] a while back that stated that outright capacity was an important impending factor related to gaming that most gamer's weren't prepared for.

The next time I installed BF4, I just used the larger capacity HDD which had the advantage of storing all of my games on the one volume which was tidier and easier to back up. Having said that, as stated earlier I run Linux, and Windows file system performance is questionable under certain circumstances.
Click to expand...

I noticed a noteworthy load time decrease going from HDD to SSD for BF3. My HDDs that aren't for backup have been WD Black and have been for the last 15 or so years, so my HDDs were not slow. Still, they are slower load times for most games. But the main problem is minor hitching and stuttering that happens when running around quickly or when things load in like a checkpoint or trigger. I haven't bothered playing a game off an HDD for a long time, unless it was from the early 2000s. Those still work fine on an HDD of course. But anything from 2013 or so seemed to run better on an SSD.

I still have a WD Black HDD for storage. SSDs are still not cheap enough for 6GB, and the HDD works fine for basic files.
 
Last edited:
Ranulfo said:
Given prices now for 1-2TB drives (especially sata ones), this argument makes more sense. Even just 2-3 years ago it didn't. Then again, we now have games that take up 150GB+ of space. The eternal free space dance continues ever onward.
Click to expand...
Well nothing says you have to have your entire game collection on your drive at the same time. Internet speeds are definitely up there to a point where reinstalling from Steam (or whatever) is a realistic possibility
 
Mazzspeed said:
I don't think anyone's stating that under Windows there can't be huge gains in overall system responsiveness running the OS off an SSD. I simply question the notion that at this point in time there is any largely notable real world benefit to running a game off an SSD considering the usual tradeoff in overall drive capacity.
Click to expand...

It probably depends on the title, but I have noticed significant decreases in map load times in some titles. In Red Orchestra 2 this was huge, because all the desirable classes were always taken by those who connected first.

In most cases the load times are more than twice as long with a hard drive compared to an SSD



In most cases, the difference between NVMe drives and SATA SSD drives is mostly negligible. A second or two one way or another. A hard drive - however - usually more than twice as long.

This can range from insignificant in a lighter single player title to really problematic in a game like RO2 mentioned above, if you consistently join late, and all the good classes are always taken.

As long as you have patience at load time, I suspect the only time a hard drive might be a problem will be in large open world titles that load game assets on the fly. I'd expect momentary stutters as these assets are loaded using a hard drive, whereas on an SSD you might avoid a stutter all together, or at the very least it would be smaller.

The thing is, SSD's are so cheap these days, that it's really one of those "why not" propositions.

I mean, a 256GB Samsung SATA SSD costs like $39 these days. You can get a 2TB NVMe drive for $65. There just isnt much of a reason to still be using hard drives in a client.
 
I have a ton of big spinners still because media/mass storage/archive/etc works best on them - big sequential IO often with long queues. Every system boots/runs/apps on SSD or NVMe though. It's 2023. Unless it's an ESX server - those have USB HDDs.
 
lopoetve said:
I have a ton of big spinners still because media/mass storage/archive/etc works best on them - big sequential IO often with long queues. Every system boots/runs/apps on SSD or NVMe though. It's 2023. Unless it's an ESX server - those have USB HDDs.
Click to expand...

Only hard drives I own are in my NAS, or disused in my spare parts bin. It's been that way for over a decade now.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Only hard drives I own are in my NAS, or disused in my spare parts bin. It's been that way for over a decade now.
Click to expand...

Only splnning rust I have outside of my NAS is my elderly i7-930 box (i-7-920? honestly don't remember which one of those systems is still alive and which one died 7 or 8 years ago), which is a headless server for a few things that are non-user interactive. It's equal parts that I can't be bothered to migrate them to a newer system and that the console window the one java app lives in is visual clutter I don't want on anything whose screen I look at more than once or twice a year.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top