JUST TELL ME IT RUNS FINE ON HDD

[mrembrangle]

I know , I should probably get an SSD by now, just tell me it runs properly on HDD.

[s | b 🐝]

It most likely can, just expect slower load times.

[Dave]

Unless you have 32-64GB of ram to cache the data from the HDD, it will lag and stutter like crazy. AAA Gaming from HDDs really isn't supported anymore.

You can still get away with AAA gaming on slower 540 MB/s SDDs as they don't have seek times like HDDs, but even those slower SDDs require a serious windows read/write cache to game from also.

At minimal, you should be AAA gaming from a Gen 2 or higher m2.nvme drive.

Give it another 5 years and some games will flat out refuse to run on HDDs and non nvme SSDs

I held onto my 24TB Raid 0 array for many years and finally gave it up for gaming. Why? 1) I have a 5Gbps fiber internet. So no need to store movies and TV shows and music, and 2) even a basic 540MB/s SSD performs better than that raid array. It just sits there now barely being used.

I now game off a 2TB Gen 3 Samsung EVO 960.

That said, PCs don't need nearly the speed of the SSDs on the newer xbox and ps5s. Those systems MUST have fast read speeds because they lack the memory to cache the drive and must constantly stream in textures from the SSD.

PCs usually can have anywhere from a 8GB to 48GB data cache and they have VRAM which consoles don't have. So they can get away with using much slower drives.

[full bladder]

Originally posted by mrembrangle:

I know , I should probably get an SSD by now, just tell me it runs properly on HDD.

I wish.

[Dave]

Originally posted by mrembrangle:

I know , I should probably get an SSD by now, just tell me it runs properly on HDD.

No. I copied it to my old HDD raid array to test it. I just tried it on my 24TB Raid 0 array and it performed like arse - even with a massive read cache in windows. I'll put it back on my m2.nvme drive. See my comment above.

[mrembrangle]

Originally posted by Dave:

Originally posted by mrembrangle:

I know , I should probably get an SSD by now, just tell me it runs properly on HDD.

No. I copied it to my old HDD raid array to test it. I just tried it on my 24TB Raid 0 array and it performed like arse - even with a massive read cache in windows. I'll put it back on my m2.nvme drive. See my comment above.

thanks Dave for testing it out , and giving me detailed information about it, you are a life saver.

[kassan.nk]

Forget about hdd. They will remain as part of our dedicated file storage NAS.

[Crimsongz]

No

[TNX.]

"Just tell me it runs properly on HDD"...Shooting yourself in the foot doesn't help the healing process. Get an NVME, don't bother with even attempting to play on a hard drive

[Nïċḵ]

Yeah... no. I just installed it on a HDD because of space. As soon as the first cutscene starts, there's massive texture loading issues. And as soon as the cutscene ends and you can control Spider-Man, the game sort of froze the character, even though I could see NPC vehicles moving around the streets and the music was still playing.

I'm not even blaming the game. I only really tried to see if it was like every other game that says "SSD recommended" but HDD is still *relatively playable*... but, oh well. Time to get some big SSDs and put them HDDs to rest.

[Dave]

One thing you can do is if a PC has many SATA ports (mine is a tower with 8 SATA ports and drive bay) and an onboad raid controller is raid SATA SSDs as most raid controllers have 6Gbps per SATA channel and are not constrained with a TOTAL of 6Gbps like a standard SATA controller uses.

I have a few old SATA SSDs in my rig with 540MB/s read and write speeds. I put 3 into a Raid 0, and it gets just over 1500 MB/s read and write speed. Granted, that array still lacks the higher IOPS that even a single Gen 2 m2.nvme has. However, that's more than enough to game on. My raid 0 array does 90Kx3 IOPS = 270K. A gen 2 m2.vnme can do about 500k. Still 270K isn't bad and more than enough for most any PC game. No PC game (yet) ever needs insane iops of 1M+ yet.

Also most PC games do NOT need 3000-5000 MB/s read speeds on the PC due to a PC having dedicated VRAM and higher system ram vs consoles to cache textures and texture files. The only reason consoles need such high speeds is because they must CONSTANTLY steam in textures due to the lack of VRAM and system ram and have next to no caching abilities. Most gaming PCs have at least 8GB VRAM and 16-32GB system ram. With a 32GB system, often about 16 GB is always available to cache all reads from a SSD.

I do have a 2TB Gen 3 3.5MB/s m2.nvme in my rig though. If I put games on it, it BARELY notice a different between that and using the Raid 0 SSD array though. AAA games go on my nvme drive and non AAA onto my SSD raid array.

[Stormspark]

It does not. SSD is required. You're going to have severe texture loading issues even on the fastest hard drive, it will still have issues even on the lowest settings. The only hard drive I still own is the 4tb one in my Linux server which is used to store media for accessing over the network.