Usually this question is answered in the spirit of “take an SSD and don’t worry”, but we will not adjust the facts to the conclusions, but first we will compare the download speed of games on different drives, their impact on FPS, and only then we will draw conclusions.

Test participants


To begin with, a little materiel for those who have not fully figured out the whole variety of modern drives.

Hard drives are traditional storage devices that can be found in any old computer. They are still popular due to their low cost and large amounts of memory. For example, on sale you can find disks with a volume of 10, 12 and even 16 terabytes. SSDs have a maximum capacity of up to 4TB. The boot speed of a conventional hard drive is in the range of 80 to 160 MB/s, which is 3 to 5 times slower than standard SATA SSDs. The main disadvantage of hard drives is noise, the higher the spindle speed (usually 5400 or 7200 rpm), the louder the drive works.

Seagate BarraCuda(2 TB, 7200 rpm) will take the rap for representatives of its kind in this test.

Popular hard drives

Regular SSD drives have much more in common with USB drives, as they use semiconductor chips and NAND flash memory for data storage. They are connected via the same SATA interface, through which they are able to transfer data at speeds around 500 MB / s. Such an increase is especially noticeable when loading Windows or heavy software like Ableton or Cubase. Due to the design features, SSDs are more reliable and energy efficient than HDDs, but they have a smaller resource for generation. Also, most inexpensive options have a limited memory buffer, so when copying a bunch of massive files in one sitting, they quickly “sink” in speed by 2-3 times. It is important here to choose a high-quality controller option that will control this entire orchestra. For the test, we took a long-proven Samsung 860 EVO MZ-76E500BW 500 GB .

Popular SSDs

More modern NWMe work through the PCI-E interface, which has much more bandwidth than SATA. Therefore, a high-quality version like the Samsung 970 EVO M.2 boasts a read speed of around 3400 MB / s, which is several times higher than the base SSD. There are even cooler options like Gigabyte AORUS NVMe Gen4, which use the brand new PCI-E 4.0 bus and fly at 5000 MB / s. However, for the test, we decided to use the Samsung 970 EVO.

It would seem that all these figures allow us to predict the results in advance, and that nothing needs to be tested. However, due to how flash memory works in SSDs and the variability of controllers, the results led us to some reflections.

Popular NVMe SSDs

Download speed test in 10 popular games


So, 10 popular games of recent years will take part in the test, from Tomb Raider and RDR2 to Fallout 4 and Battlefield 5. The main thing is that the games are resource-demanding and belong to different genres, from role-playing games and sandboxes to shooters and adventure toys.


As you can see, the results are not fraught with surprises. An ordinary SSD in terms of game loading time is on average 2-3 times. Somewhere, as in Battlefield 5, the gap is smaller, somewhere, as in The Witcher, on the contrary, it is smaller. There are 2 points of interest here.

  • Super-fast NVMe drives don't offer much of a performance boost over regular SATA SSDs. The difference in download time goes by a matter of seconds. Sometimes for a fraction of a second.
  • If you look at the percentage, the HDD seems to be very slow. If we return to the measurement in seconds, it turns out that the average load time is just over 30 seconds. It seems to us that this is not so much, wait till loading is an invariable attribute of video games, and an extra 10 seconds of waiting is not so painful. Although, everyone has their own preferences and we are by no means trying to impose our opinion.

As you can see, the average gap is slightly more than 2 times. But the purity of the experiment was spoiled by the optimization of Battlefield 5, which takes a very long time to load and does not give a damn about the capabilities of the SSD. If it had been some kind of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the gap would have been more obvious. But this would not have much effect on the overall picture, so we can safely say that in terms of game loading speed, a high-quality hard drive is 2.5 times slower than an NVMe SSD and 2 times slower than a regular SSD.


Now prices. If we average the prices offered by stores, then the 500 GB Samsung 970 EVO will cost us $120, the 500 GB Samsung 860 EVO will cost $87, and the 2 TB Seagate BarraCuda will cost $66. Again, nothing unexpected until we figure out the average price per gigabyte of memory. And here the difference in price per gigabyte is enormous: 8 times cheaper than an NVMe SSD and 6 times cheaper than a regular SATA SSD.

Someone may argue that it would be more honest to use models with the same amount of memory for testing, however, the Seagate HDD in the 500 GB variation has a buffer size of only 32 GB. It is also important to add that if we compare really high-quality NVMe SSDs, SATA SSDs and HDDs, then the difference in price per gigabyte between them will be plus or minus the same. That is, a low-cost SSD will be somewhere 2-2.5 times faster than a low-cost hard drive, and a hard drive is many times more profitable.

Conclusion


If we talk about the optimal assembly, where not only the power of the system is important, but also how many dollars are spent on it, there is still no point in NVMe solutions. Yes, on paper, the speed increase compared to a regular SSD looks impressive, but in reality the difference is a matter of seconds. Such solutions should become relevant in the next couple of years, when new generation consoles with next-gen open-world games come out, where texture loading speed will be critical. Apparently, this time is not far off, since such SSDs will become almost the most important elements of the new generation of consoles. If you haven't seen it, check out our preview of Xbox Series X and Sony PlayStation 5, there's a lot of info on the next generation SSDs.

As for the question of choosing between SSD and HDD, everything is also not so obvious. It’s strange to advise you to take an HDD in 2020, but you yourself saw everything. A good hard drive still does a good job of running games, and the difference in download speeds is typically between 10 and 30 seconds. At the same time, you need to make allowances for the type of games: if in conditional shooters and single players like Tomb Raider the difference is not very big, then projects like Kingdom Come are extremely sensitive to the speed of the drive. In such cases, the HDD is much more likely to ruin the gaming experience.

All this leads to the following conclusions. These are solely the author's conclusions based on tests and it is completely normal if you do not agree with them.

  • Contrary to the opinion of enthusiasts, you can safely put a good HDD like the test Seagate BarraCuda into a gaming assembly of an economical level and not worry about running out of space soon. And think about the upgrade when next-gen games come up or cash is released.
  • For optimal assembly, the best scenario is still a bunch of a regular 256 - 512 GB SSD and a 1 - 2 TB HDD. The system and the main games that run most often (Tanks, FIFA, MK11, online shooters, etc.) are on the SSD, the entire game catalog is stored on the “hard” without the need to constantly delete something to make room for a new one toy. The main thing is to choose an adequate model with a high-quality controller.
  • NVMe drives still cannot boast of an optimal ratio of price and volume, so it makes sense to buy one in a gaming PC if you have extra money. Well, SSDs running on the PCI-E 4.0 bus are still an expensive declaration of intent. The meaning of them will appear when next-gen games with an open world come out, where the speed of loading textures will be extremely important.