Does a SSD make a difference in PC gaming?
Games load faster, that's it.
>>339384785
RAM is probably the most important. If you have enough, your PC can cache programs' and games' files into RAM, which entirely skips the process of accessing the HDD or SDD.
RAM won't save you from OS startup or starting up a game for the first time, though. Still gonna need to load code/assets from the HDD or SSD. But once that shit is in RAM, nigga your shit be fast. For example, my OS starts up slow as fuuuuuck because I have a mechanical HDD. Same with my games. Slooow. But once it's cached, my experience with doing all my tasks (and games) becomes lightning fast.
So, yes, an SSD will improve system performance. Bootups will be WAY faster, and so will accessing data not-yet cached, and so will launching a game not cached into RAM yet. Don't expect your frame-rate to go up though.
>>339385374
>>339385909
Ok thanks, I don't mind waiting but if it doesn't improve fps, I ain't gonna get one. My specs:
i5-4690K @ 4.4GHz
1TB Seagate Barracuda
EVGA GTX 970
16GB 2400MHz RAM
I suppose I'll just wait till they become really cheap.
>>339385909
>RAM is probably the most important
spoken like a true troglodyte
>>339386318
It is really helpful if you want to record footage.
It's nice to load into games pretty much instantly but it's not necessary
>>339386363
Compared to what, friend? I made an assertion, and you are hurling insults with no counter-argument.
By default, I win, even if there's a possibility I'm horrendously wrong.
>>339384785
it doesnt fix the stuttering some bad ports have/had, regardless of devs claiming it fixes their shitty texture streaming
>>339385909
>RAM is probably the most important.
HAHAHAHA
You honestly do not need more than 8GB of ram for gaming. 16GB is you wanna run multiple tabs of Chrome.
Them most important part to a "gaymen" PC is CPU and video card.
RAM is worth shit
Also, your post, I've never seen someone talk so much and so proudly about something they have no fucking clue on
Depends on the game - decently coded games are not writing and reading to the drive a lot and therefore don't benefit much except during loading screens. However, I've noticed plenty of mediocre console ports (in times of multi-platform releases that's pretty much all the AAA titles) will not use available RAM and vRAM as they are assuming there's a console typical constraint and instead load/stream textures and other assets from the drive all the time - for those games you'd see a performance increase with the SSD.
There's also the multi-tasking consideration. Unlike on a console you probably have a ton of programs running next to the game that will read/write from or to the drive a lot and that can slow games down quite a bit. In such a case having the OS and most programs on a separate drive is advisable - though that wouldn't necessarily have to be a SSD for most casual applications but can't hurt either.
>>339387753
>RAM is worth shit
Faster RAM means greater FPS though.
>>339385909
>cache
SSDs are mostly an optional quality of life extra in regards to the operating system. Nice to have overall especially if you use your hardware all day, but will likely not do shit to most video games outside of load times.
>>339384785
I took the plunge OP, literally 10 minutes ago and bought this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00M8ABHVQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1464629895&sr=8-1&pi=SX200_QL40&keywords=960gb+ssd&dpPl=1&dpID=41Uk-fOpvNL&ref=plSrch
Did I do okay? Seems like a great price for 960GB. My 1TB HDD is dying.
>>339387847
>greater FPS
Uh, what? No, FPS is determined by purely by the video card and the Video Memory of the video card. You're confusing RAM with Video Memory. An 8GB GPU is not the same as 16GB of RAM.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2998497/storage/tlc-nand-ssds-the-crippling-problem-storage-makers-dont-advertise.html
So according to this, avoid TLC, right?
Probably just me but GPU cooling seems to be the most important thing.
>>339388021
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k
>>339385909
There's bullshitting, then there's unknowingly acting like you know what your talking about when you really don't.
You are the latter.
Some gams have less pop-in textures if they are on an SSD. Arma 3 is an example.
>>339387753
>>339387863
>>339388269
He's trying to put it into layman's terms for you kids. You guys do know that your RAM is one of the fastest components of your system, right? We used to use that shit for constant scanning of alien interactions.
On top of that he's probably not meaning to say hurr durr you need more than 8GB. It should rather be the better quality your 8GB of RAM the better experience you'll have.
>>339387753
I never said anything about *how much* RAM, friend. And I was talking about computing in general, not just games.
The thing I was getting at is that there are, believe it or not, some people who use computers with like 3GB of RAM. That is not really enough for modern OS's and applications, and their machines will thrash the fuck out of their disk and everything we go slow as fuck, even just doing basic shit.
So my recommendation to people who ask what they should upgrade for better performance is to get more RAM first, if they don't have enough of it (8GB, as you implied, seems to be the sweet spot these days). No point in bothering with upgrading anything else before that, considering how much a lack of RAM will drive your daily computing experience crazy.
After you have at least a decent amount of RAM to not cause your OS to rape the disk by swapping in and out constantly, then yes, your CPU and especially vidya card are most important for gaming. CPU probably less-so IMO, because any decent model is fast enough, and you only need higher-performance onces if you need to do insane amounts of data-crunching or rendering.
>>339384785
yes and no. you wont see an increase in fps but you might notice smoother frame rate depending on the game. mostly open world type games where a lot of data is streamed from the hard drive.
you don't have to get a 500gb+ ssd. a 120 or 250 is plenty for installing your OS and 1 or 2 games with the rest of stuff going onto your secondary mechanical hdd. why bottleneck your PC with a slow mechanical HDD?
>>339388071
Crucical has a BX and a MX series. The BX is the shit-tier for poor people and comes with bandwith issues and a few other problems - as such it should be avoided. The MX series is fine though. Other manufacturers obviously use different model designations but similar patterns apply.
Buying a SSD (or for that matter any harware) blindly is never a good idea and one should read a few reviews or benchmarks first.
>>339388901
I use an SSD for the OS and for games I care about launching fast every time. The rest, such as video games and hentai go on my mechanical HDD, since they are cheap and high-capacity.
>>339384785
SSD is the only way to go. Things read and write way quicker. They can be a bit pricey, but it's definitely worth it.
So, are SSDs going to end up cheaper than HDDs? There sure look like they're cheaper to build
>>339388537
Thanks Anon, I don't understand the snark here sometimes.
I will just say this though: Try playing TF2 with 1 GB of RAM, and then try playing TF2 with at least 8 GB of RAM (or a comparably sane amount for today's needs). You'll notice a huge difference in startup and map-loading speed, and it will be bad enough to drive you crazy.
Feel free to skip this pargraph, but just for the record, I have 24 GB of RAM installed on my machine. Of course, it doesn't make any difference for gaming because that's well past the sane amount of RAM you need these days. But I'm a developer and have to run large programs, jobs, and a bunch of virtual machines, which eat-up shitloads of RAM. So that amount of RAM really does help, and being able to launch some bloated piece of shit tool and being able to depend on it always loading-up instantly is huge in terms of productivity for me. So, I am a faggot that actually needs that amount of RAM, and is probably why I'm probably a bit more of a RAMfag than the average bear.
The moral of the story is if you have around 8GB of RAM, life is okay.
>>339390403
>8GB of RAM
16GB for 4K gaming is preferable. Don't ask me why but I use over 8GB when running GTA V 4K.
>>339390762
Wow, holy shit. That's crazy.
And when you turn down the resolution, GTA V uses up way less RAM?
>>339391183
I haven't tested it but on my old PC it uses about 6GB 1080p. On the 4K PC it uses about 7-12GB with just the OS and game (with some minor apps in the background like uTorrent, Steam, etc.)
>>339389575
Likely yes. The prices are plummeting all the time and they're utterly simple to assemble, while the HDD price decline is rather sluggish and the mechanics involved are utterly stupendous.
>>339391760
>I haven't tested it but on my old PC it uses about 6GB 1080p.
what the fuck kind of game is that
how
>>339392752
I've gotten low memory warnings a few time on my older PC. It has 8GB of RAM.
Depends on the game. It drastically reduces load times on Battlefield 4 and Fallout 4. But it makes no difference for Dota 2.
>>339393103
I have never seen that in my entire life
>>339386809
