Comparison SSD vs Hard Drive in Games, How Much Performance is Gained?

Since the arrival of SSDs on the market, it has always been considered that it is the component that improves performance the most in any PC that uses a conventional mechanical hard disk, and it really does provide a difference that is very noticeable in terms of system agility . However, when we talk about games , how much does having an SSD improve performance compared to a normal hard drive ? Let’s see it.

In this comparison we are not going to talk about FPS or raw performance in itself for games, but load times which is where storage plays a crucial role in games, and where an SSD can make a difference with respect to using a traditional mechanical hard drive.

Comparison SSD vs Hard Drive in Games

For testing, we are going to use a 2TB WD Black hard drive (SATA 3) compared to a 480GB Corsair Neutron xTI (SATA 3) and a 1TB Transcend SSD 220S (PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe), three types of different storage that represent almost all the existing ranges on the market: mechanical hard disk, SATA 3 SSD and PCIe SSD.

How much does an SSD improve loading times in games?

Using these three different storage media, we’ve tested seven different games to see how long it takes to load the game. In all cases, we simply access the game and load a saved game, timing how long the system takes to load. This has been the result:

Tiempo de carga SSD vs HDD

A clear improvement can be seen when using an SSD, especially in very heavy games like GTA V which takes almost a minute to load with a mechanical hard drive, and the time is cut in half using an SSD. In the rest of the games there is also a clear improvement, and in some cases like Fallout 3 again the waiting time is reduced by half.

However, although there is a difference in all cases when using a PCIe SSD, it is not as great with respect to using a SATA 3 SSD as there is with a mechanical disk, because although the time is reduced by in all cases, at best we gain 4 seconds and at worst merely a single second of time.

The conclusion we can draw from this is that if it is for games it is worth having an SSD, be it SATA 3 or PCIe. Now, between these two types of SSD will depend on your needs and budget, since although there is a difference, it is not that great. It will be up to you to decide whether or not it is worth investing in a state-of-the-art SSD or opting for a SATA 3, slower but also cheaper.

Do you gain FPS when using an SSD?

The question that many of you will ask yourself is whether FPS is gained when using an SSD versus a mechanical hard drive, and the answer is that it depends; Because of how games work, when you load a screen or map it goes to the system memory (part to the RAM for the CPU, part to the VRAM for the GPU) and therefore the storage does not influence much, as less not with the data that you already have preloaded.

Now, depending on how the game is programmed, if when you move around the map or advance in the game you need data that is not preloaded and that you do have to use the storage device to do it, then it does affect the performance . This is usually at specific moments, and we repeat that it depends on how the game is developed, but in any case they are not “average” FPS but we can notice drops or performance jerks, even if you have a high-end graphics.

In our case the tests have been carried out with an RTX 2080 and a Core i7-8700K, and the few “jerks” that we have noticed have been 2-3 FPS at most, nothing too noticeable really.