Will a SSD drive increase game performance without it being the main drive?

[Caitlin № GO Yεa!™]

Couldn't really find the answer on google. Any here knows?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Hdd can't multitask well at all.

Ssds do this very well, this is why IOPS matter more then just MBps

[Astraea Kisaragi]

It helps greatly with certain titles, in loading times. In Fallout 4 you can have like 3-4x faster map transitions. Generally it helps a lot with any open world games where you can see often the "loading" screen.

[UTFapolloMarine]

a gaming hdd is just as good as an ssd and just overated in my opinion, an ssd is only going to help load times in your system not a thing more, updating my gta5 to an ssd from a baracuda will have no benefit despite a 2 second load time which aint worth it for me.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

See folks keep referring to loading times. I'm more-so talking about how much more quickly things load inside an open world off in the distance, which can help all around.

[Vulkan]

Publicado originalmente por Bad 💀 Motha:

See folks keep referring to loading times. I'm more-so talking about how much more quickly things load inside an open world off in the distance, which can help all around.

^^this. while not giving raw fps increases it does in fact help hugely when loading assets in faster/smoother in open world games such as gta5 compared to a hdd that can cause slight stutter sometimes.

[vadim]

Publicado originalmente por Talby:

any tasks that need to run at the same time as your game could cause some I/O waits (which could result in an FPS drop in-game), since all I/O from your OS is going to be on HDD, except any I/O from your game itself.

Iowait in another task has nothing with game FPS. That is what multitasking intended for...

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Publicado originalmente por vadim:

Publicado originalmente por Talby:

any tasks that need to run at the same time as your game could cause some I/O waits (which could result in an FPS drop in-game), since all I/O from your OS is going to be on HDD, except any I/O from your game itself.

Iowait in another task has nothing with game FPS. That is what multitasking intended for...

Sure if you have a 9700K or good Ryzen cpu, but who would have this and still have os installed to hdd

[vadim]

Publicado originalmente por Bad 💀 Motha:

Sure if you have a 9700K or good Ryzen cpu, but who would have this and still have os installed to hdd

That isn't depends on CPU either. More than that, the more background task waiting for i/o operation completion, the more CPU resources freeing for the game.
I/o waiting doesn't trigger any global lock which can prevent other task from using GPU.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Os and apps on a hdd while games on an ssd is still donkey side backwards and doesn't help you one bit. OS on HDD means it will always be slow, I don't care how much money you put into the rest of the hardware, the os installed to a hdd slows down entire pc and how fluid it is, period.

OS on ssd there is zero waiting for tasking, as fast as I click apps, they launch. And I can keep doing it as fast as I can click. No hdd can work like that.

[UTFapolloMarine]

Publicado originalmente por Bad 💀 Motha:

Os and apps on a hdd while games on an ssd is still donkey side backwards and doesn't help you one bit. OS on HDD means it will always be slow, I don't care how much money you put into the rest of the hardware, the os installed to a hdd slows down entire pc and how fluid it is, period.

OS on ssd there is zero waiting for tasking, as fast as I click apps, they launch. And I can keep doing it as fast as I can click. No hdd can work like that.

not true some hdd with 7200rpm can get it done just a tad slower than ssd

[Bad 💀 Motha]

They still struggle to multi task quick enough due to low IOPS.

I've pretty much always used 7200rpm drives when one was used. Switched to having os on ssds since 2012 or so, hdds can't come close.

[Talby]

Publicado originalmente por vadim:

Publicado originalmente por Talby:

any tasks that need to run at the same time as your game could cause some I/O waits (which could result in an FPS drop in-game), since all I/O from your OS is going to be on HDD, except any I/O from your game itself.

Iowait in another task has nothing with game FPS. That is what multitasking intended for...

Well multitasking is exactly what I was talking about, you are correct a single i/o wait would not be a problem - it's when every non-game i/o request is not on SSD it will pile up pretty quick.

Do you really see every operation going on your PC as a single clock tic? :D

[Napoleonic S]

Just buy a couple of m.2 nvme pcie 4.0 4x SSDs and be done with the question, put them on raid if you want to.

Want even faster games? Buy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of RAM too like 128GB at minimum and run the game from RAM Disk.

[tacoshy]

Publicado originalmente por Napoleonic S:

Just buy a couple of m.2 nvme pcie 4.0 4x SSDs and be done with the question, put them on raid if you want to.

Want even faster games? Buy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of RAM too like 128GB at minimum and run the game from RAM Disk.

I know it was meant sarcastic but it still does not increase performance despite load time.
Unless he has Intel-X or AMD TR he can't do that anyway.

[UserNotFound]

I actually have a number of my fave games (like Metro series, UT3, Strange Brigade, Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered,etc) installed in a 2TB and a 4TB SSD. All I can say is load times have improved tremendously, and perhaps loads within games in open world environment has improved as well.....

Edit - Oh yes, my OS is installed in my 256GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD.