Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

[leedreamer189]

I'm thinking of adding a SSD to my system to speed up the time to run the games and to have info transferred quicker. Any suggestions, I'm thinking a 128GB or 256GB.

[profJim]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

Your best bet is to buy a top tier 256GB ssd.
Some mainstream ssd's have a performance penalty when the ssd is more than 50% full.
If you have a lot of games that require many, many gigabytes of disk space you might need a 512GB ssd.

Loading times for games will be faster, but you might not notice higher performance while gaming.

You will want to install your operating system and games on the ssd.

Do a web search using: better game performance with an ssd to see what some of the best web site experts have to say.

Even with my older systems, installing an ssd was the best upgrade yet.

It's best to include a detailed hardware list in the System Specs portion
of your forum profile at the bottom of the profile page or in your forum signature.
Be sure to include brand names and model numbers.
When you are done editing or creating your hardware list, save the settings.

[lukart]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

Thats right, you should not expect much gaming performance improvement but the load times will be 2x or more faster than your old HDD.
Depending on what kind of budget you have, OCZ Vertex models are pretty good.

[leedreamer189]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

Your best bet is to buy a top tier 256GB ssd.
Some mainstream ssd's have a performance penalty when the ssd is more than 50% full.
If you have a lot of games that require many, many gigabytes of disk space you might need a 512GB ssd.

Loading times for games will be faster, but you might not notice higher performance while gaming.

You will want to install your operating system and games on the ssd.

Do a web search using: better game performance with an ssd to see what some of the best web site experts have to say.

Even with my older systems, installing an ssd was the best upgrade yet.

It's best to include a detailed hardware list in the System Specs portion
of your forum profile at the bottom of the profile page or in your forum signature.
Be sure to include brand names and model numbers.
When you are done editing or creating your hardware list, save the settings.

If I install OS and games on the SSD, 256GB will be enough? And which brand do you recommend?

[leedreamer189]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

Thats right, you should not expect much gaming performance improvement but the load times will be 2x or more faster than your old HDD.
Depending on what kind of budget you have, OCZ Vertex models are pretty good.

Vertex or ARC100 are both good?

[lukart]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

If you're more concerned about price then I would def go for the ARC but if you want extra performance Vertex is pretty good.
You should have the OS / software / games installed on the SSD, so all the load times will be extremely fast. The other heavier non related files, such as videos, music etc.. just put them all on a big HDD :D

[profJim]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

When you install the operating system on your new ssd, make sure that you first disconnect the power cable to your existing hard drive.

This will prevent possible problems with a "misplaced" or relocated Master Boot Record (MBR).

It's usually best to keep at least 25% of the ssd's space free.

[ocer9999]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

Getting a SSD is going to be the best quick upgrade you can do for your system. Nowadays, 256GB are cheap and can go for as low as 100bucks for a decent one. If you're looking at OCZ, ARC100 is your best bet. But if you're able to shell out a bit more, then Samsung 850 is good.

[parsec]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

SanDisk, Samsung, Intel, Crucial, Plextor, and new OCZ SSDs are all good SSDs.

Since games are all different in how they work, some will work better with SSDs than others will. They all should generally load faster, but beyond that it depends on the game.

[thetridentseal]

Re: Adding SSD will improve gaming performance?

As profJim has said you may not notice a big performance change while gaming, but any loading times will be a lot faster. For instance, Loading screens in Skyrim take about 30-50% longer to load when using an HDD, but it doesn't change the fps by much. I currently use a Samsung 830 EVO, but I am thinking about upgrading to the 850 EVO or maybe even one of these Recommended SSDs.