Does installing games to an SSD increase their performance/load time/etc.?


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I have most of my steam games installed on an SSD and I am just curious if there is any real noticeable speed increase with the game vs being installed on a magnet disk. I honestly can't tell if there's any boost to the game loading/playing/etc. I do have games that are installed on a standard HDD and I can't rally determine any difference 

I would say that the load times will be faster as the read speed is much higher, but that the gameplay (in terms of FPS) is more down to your CPU/GPU/RAM combo.

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The load times are a great deal faster. Or that seemed that way a couple of years ago. I am running two SSDs in RAID0, and I feel like some games just take a while, but I'd imagined it would take a lot longer on a regular HDD. Need for Speed Rivals and comes to mind for long wait periods. 

Thanks for all the input, I knew that FPS and overall performance like that would have nothing to do with the drive, I was more curious about load time, etc.

it increases the time from you trying to open the application to it actually opening...it does nothing to help load times between screens as you are waiting on the network.  Once the app is loaded into memory, you in the fastest state that it can be and no longer dormant on the harddrive.

10 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Thanks for all the input, I knew that FPS and overall performance like that would have nothing to do with the drive, I was more curious about load time, etc.

The HDD technology had been obsolete for the longest time. It used to be the only component inside a PC with mechanical moving parts. Just think about it. (I'm not saying it's still not got its uses as I've got a pair of WD Reds in RAID1 for storage myself).

 

For a performance upgrade, you want an SSD; or a PCIe-SSD for maximum gain in performance.

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