I already have an SSD for 3 years, but the load times are still not it, should I upgrade my CPU?

[76561198167566727]

Is it worth spending money on a CPU that will be x4 stronger than my current just for load-times and overall desktop performance? I have i5-8400 and I wanna get the i9-14900k, mostly because of how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sluggish my pc has become recently. This is the current look of my drives. [i.imgur.com]


C: and S: are SSDs, D: is HDD which is irrelevant, probably C: is what matters here since system is installed there and S: is filled with games.
When moving files it's even slower and impossible to remotely do anything without hitting the nerve from how slow it is.

tl;dr does cpu upgrade drastically improve SSD performance or does it not matter?

[Pocahawtness]

I don't think it is so much to do with the CPU, rather is more likely to do with the motherboard and the type of SSD. Speeds have improved greatly with each generation.

It may also be that your systems is just clogged up with bloatware.

[emoticorpse]

Might be because of the slowdown of ssds when not enough free space exists? I'm guessing op is familiar with this.

[Illusion of Progress]

Load times are storage, CPU and RAM (bandwidth and timings, not so much capacity), and not necessarily in that order.

I remember Sims 3 releasing and on launch in 2009, games would load in ~7 seconds even on an HDD. After updates, expansion content, and the save world growing in size (this makes it take longer to load), it was still under a minute, but it was approaching that and was now many, many times longer.

I got an SSD in 2012. Load times still couldn't get down to 7 seconds. In fact it wasn't even cut in half if I remember right.

I also experimented with RAM disks in this time, but I can't remember if Sims 3 was one of the ones I tried on it. I found load times didn't approve near as much as I might have expected in some cases. Load times are much more CPU/system side and not only storage side than people think.

Here's the thing about that. Upgrading the CPU isn't going to make it vastly better. Maybe something that takes some minutes has a minute or two cut off going from a Coffee Lake to a Raptor Lake, and that might not be nothing. But it's probably not going to be the speedup you want. I'm not trying to convince you not to upgrade, but just to keep you from disappointing yourself about the same thing once again. Keep expectations in check with this one. Load times are often just a fact. Some games more than others.

If your current PC is "sluggish" otherwise,that could be a number of things. Slow CPU, lack of RAM, or low graphics card, depending on if this sluggish in specific to games, certain applications, or general use overall.

[Bing Chilling]

if your OS has become sluggish, you should do a reinstall.
your CPU is fast enough for windows to run great on it, and use your SSD's to their full potential SSD's being near full slowing things down just isn't true no matter who
tells me this or not. i run all my drives near full (all over 95%)
and speed is near identical to (within margin of error) when using them and benchmarking them with crystal disk mark, ether full or empty.

SSD's have a file index, them being near full doesn't mean anything.

but TLDR: yes a cpu "can" improve SSD performance but you have a cpu easily powerful
enough for this to not mean anything, what will change things is ether manually going through the OS and your programs and stopping them from running things that are pointless or do not need to be ran all the time or the easier solution, a reinstall of windows.
then use this to make windows extremely light.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU5F01oOzQQ&list=WL&index=355

[kiwikev]

To me 42.9 GB free is getting to small an amount of free space to work with especially with the size some games are now, and can slow down the patching/update process.

For myself, i keep at least 200 GB free on my main OS drive, and if i recall having too little free space on a ssd will wear it out faster as well.

[Bing Chilling]

Автор сообщения: kiwikev

To me 42.9 GB free is getting to small an amount of free space to work with especially with the size some games are now, and can slow down the patching/update process.

For myself, i keep at least 200 GB free on my main OS drive, and if i recall having too little free space on a ssd will wear it out faster as well.

the second part of that is true, the more full it is the faster it will wear out
because it needs to store data witch is just electricity in the cells.
a nearly empty ssd will last 8-10 years or so and a nearly full one will last like 7-9 or so
it's not really that noticeable.

not having atleast twice the amount of free space will make updates split between drives
before finally consolidating back onto the drive it was suppose to
you need atleast 2x the space needed for any update,game,program etc
for it to just use the single drive. when the drive needs to split something between drives
technically yes it will be slower then if it was just doing it on a single drive
as it needs to transfer files back onto the drive it's installing to.

that is the actual reason to keep enough free space, but it doesn't slow down the drive at all.
it just will take longer to update or install things as it needs to decompress them on other drives with the space then transfer them back.


also a quick edit: it sounds like you are using really bad DRAM-less ssd's.
and is most likely the reason for their terrible sustained performance.

[Andrius227]

Would be cheaper to just upgrade the cpu, not the entire pc. If your games are running fine now maybe you dont need a whole new pc.

I think your motherboard should support 9th gen cpus (not 100% sure). Could probably find a cheap and decent upgrade on ebay.

Your 8400 doesn’t even have hyperthreading so getting a cpu that does have it should make a difference. Something like an i7-9700.

[Illusion of Progress]

Автор сообщения: Andrius227

Your 8400 doesn’t even have hyperthreading so getting a cpu that does have it should make a difference. Something like an i7-9700.

The Core i7 9700 doesn't have Hyper-threading, though it'd be faster than the Core i5 8400 at any rate.

If a Core i7 8700 is cheaper, it's perhaps another option. It has two less cores but it does have Hyper-threading.

Not sure which one I'd take as I wouldn't want to have to make that decision. Intel was still spinning its tires with the 8th/9th generation trying to get the product lineup to better compete against AMD's higher core counts and it wasn't until the 10th generation they did that. So those on the 8th/9th generation with lower end CPUs looking for an upgrade are stuck making a tough choice between the Core i7 8700 and Core i7 9700 since the Core i9 9900 itself is probably too valuable to be worth it.

[Andrius227]

Автор сообщения: Illusion of Progress

Автор сообщения: Andrius227

Your 8400 doesn’t even have hyperthreading so getting a cpu that does have it should make a difference. Something like an i7-9700.

The Core i7 9700 doesn't have Hyper-threading, though it'd be faster than the Core i5 8400 at any rate.

If a Core i7 8700 is cheaper, it's perhaps another option. It has two less cores but it does have Hyper-threading.

Not sure which one I'd take as I wouldn't want to have to make that decision. Intel was still spinning its tires with the 8th/9th generation trying to get the product lineup to better compete against AMD's higher core counts and it wasn't until the 10th generation they did that. So those on the 8th/9th generation with lower end CPUs looking for an upgrade are stuck making a tough choice between the Core i7 8700 and Core i7 9700 since the Core i9 9900 itself is probably too valuable to be worth it.

Oh yeah, you are right. I assumed all i7’s had hyperthreading but apparently not 9th gen.

But still he has upgrade options. I think replacing the entire pc is a bit wasteful if it can be upgraded. Its worth looking around on ebay. If he can find something cheap with hyperthreading or with more cores, it might give his pc a couple more years of life.

[Illusion of Progress]

Автор сообщения: Andrius227

Oh yeah, you are right. I assumed all i7’s had hyperthreading but apparently not 9th gen.

They normally did, yeah. That was the one generation where it didn't. It was just 8 cores.

The Core i5 9600 was below it with 6 cores/12 threads (up from from 6 cores/6threads on the 8th generation Core i5) and the new Core i9 tier was the 9900K which was the same thing as the 9700 but had Hyper-threading.

[76561198167566727]

Автор сообщения: Bing Chilling

if your OS has become sluggish, you should do a reinstall.
then use this to make windows extremely light.

Well thing is; I did all kind of optimization I could. I'm now at the point where everything currently running on my PC or existing on PC is needed to me. Can't optimize any more than that, now anything I come across during cleanup I need it, so I guess my solution (and preference tbh) is to not downgrade software but to upgrade the hardware, seems like just by general usage my standards for speed grow over time since I tend to install more and more things by time, start to use more powerful and more updated things. What would seem like bloatware to me 3 years ago is now an important background process that helps me with things, so I prefer bumping up the resources to appeal the experience rather than cut down the experience to appeal to the resources (upgrade hardware > downgrade software).
I just want to know if upgrading CPU would fix this or do I need to upgrade something else or do I have to upgrade all of them together. A reinstall seems like a rash solution for what might not even completely disappear after doing it, because I've extensively cleaned up and optimized my PC in every possible way at this point. It's extremely lightweight now, no malware, no bloat, and anything that I have now is needed to me.

[76561198167566727]

Автор сообщения: kiwikev

To me 42.9 GB free is getting to small an amount of free space to work with especially with the size some games are now, and can slow down the patching/update process.

For myself, i keep at least 200 GB free on my main OS drive, and if i recall having too little free space on a ssd will wear it out faster as well.

Well it's definitely not possible to keep 200GB free on a 222GB ssd for sure. But I have heard before that ssd needs to be at least 25% free to function properly fast. Idk how much of it is true though. It gets thrown around a lot but also some people come out and say it has no difference. I myself remember a time when my SSDs were choking in red but the performance wasn't that bad, so I guess it's not that related. And now it's blue but still has minor hiccups which never happened like until 2 months ago.

[76561198167566727]

My specs. [i.imgur.com]

[76561198167566727]

Автор сообщения: Andrius227

Автор сообщения: Illusion of Progress

The Core i7 9700 doesn't have Hyper-threading, though it'd be faster than the Core i5 8400 at any rate.

If a Core i7 8700 is cheaper, it's perhaps another option. It has two less cores but it does have Hyper-threading.

Not sure which one I'd take as I wouldn't want to have to make that decision. Intel was still spinning its tires with the 8th/9th generation trying to get the product lineup to better compete against AMD's higher core counts and it wasn't until the 10th generation they did that. So those on the 8th/9th generation with lower end CPUs looking for an upgrade are stuck making a tough choice between the Core i7 8700 and Core i7 9700 since the Core i9 9900 itself is probably too valuable to be worth it.

Oh yeah, you are right. I assumed all i7’s had hyperthreading but apparently not 9th gen.

But still he has upgrade options. I think replacing the entire pc is a bit wasteful if it can be upgraded. Its worth looking around on ebay. If he can find something cheap with hyperthreading or with more cores, it might give his pc a couple more years of life.

I am just wondering if only a CPU upgrade should be enough to make my SSD run things much faster, cuz I haven't heard of the concept of "upgrading an SSD" before, only "upgrading to SSD", which I have done like 5 years ago.

Regarding CPU, if I am to buy one, I'm only looking to buy i9-14900k (or any strongest intel one at the time of me being ready to purchase).

[76561198167566727]

Not too long ago my PC again suffered one of those sluggish hiccups where it's nerve-breakingly slow, I managed to instantly go to Task Manager and capture this[i.imgur.com]. What I don't understand is why a strain on S: is affecting my overall desktop experience if the system is installed on C:
The strain seems like had been generated by having a running download in the background (multiple downloads actually). Still, my SSD never used to literally act like it's teeth are getting pulled like this when I used to download things before.