How important is hard drive speed in games?

[Ohnooze]

So I got a low rating on my pc from Windows...this really means nothing to me but I noticed that it was my hard drive speed that dropped my score. It said that it was slow and holding my pc back.

So I'm curious...in games how important is hard drive speed?

[FULMTL]

Well for some multiplayer games you can ready up faster. Big woop. You still have to wait for everyone else to connect.
It helps a little in initial map/level loading by a few seconds, so in the end it's less "come on, come on, come on, LOAD DAMMIT".

[must_kill_ati]

It's all about load times. The faster the hd, the faster the game/level/map loads. Playing mmos with friends that don't have SSD's means I get to the new map first every time. Not a huge deal, but I'd almost rather stop using pcs if i had to go back to mechanical drives.

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by Ohnooze

So I got a low rating on my pc from Windows...this really means nothing to me but I noticed that it was my hard drive speed that dropped my score. It said that it was slow and holding my pc back.

So I'm curious...in games how important is hard drive speed?

Fwiw the WEI HDD score is capped at 5.9, only SSD's can score higher.

Some useless info:

Using a separate drive for games and ensuring it's properly defragged helps.

I used to play Project Reality (BF2 mod) on a certain server, and at the time my games were installed on a 500GB SATA II drive shortstroked to 20GB (meaning only the fastest part of the disk is used).
Every time a new map loaded I was the first one ready, even beating the host who one day asked me why my games always loaded so fast. He was even running RAID 0 and I still managed to beat him.

Originally Posted by must_kill_ati

It's all about load times. The faster the hd, the faster the game/level/map loads. Playing mmos with friends that don't have SSD's means I get to the new map first every time. Not a huge deal, but I'd almost rather stop using pcs if i had to go back to mechanical drives.

Idk, I could live without SSD if I had to - they're good for boot times and opening applications but I still keep all my games on a HDD.

My load times in Shogun II were very long so I installed it onto my SSD but didn't make much difference tbh....

[The Goose]

its nice not to have to wait around so much with my ssd,i`d never get a 7200rpm boot drive again thats for sure.

If your thinking of changing and you dont want the risk of ssd then try a western digital velociraptor,if you only have sata 2 then i`d go with wd 10,000rpm velociraptor fast and reliable

[sykozis]

I could easily go back to mechanical drives.

They can improve gaming experience in some instances....but I wouldn't consider it a big enough impact to justify an SSD.

[Ohnooze]

Thanks guys

[TechnikL]

Short answer, its really not that important.

You could save a few seconds here and there with a SSD, but thats the only real difference.

[EspHack]

there are games that loads parts of the map/textures while you move, you can gain a few fps using a faster drive or just skip those fps drops resulting in smoother gameplay

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by EspHack

there are games that loads parts of the map/textures while you move, you can gain a few fps using a faster drive or just skip those fps drops resulting in smoother gameplay

Good point...I forgot about texture streaming.

[Lukc]

in a multiplayer game where everyone start at same time i went from average loading time on hdd to mostly first loaded on ssd.. so it's like from loading 15sec and then w8ing 15-20sec to everyone else to loading 5sec and then w8ing 30-40 sec for others.. ina mmo games like wow, l2, gw,.. there shold be difference..

for singleplayer games.. i still keep em on hdd

but i have separated hdds for junk stuff and games..

also, wh raptors/velociraptors are probably more risky than ssd..
remember, there are lot's of people complaing about problems with ssd yeah.. but if there are no problems you dont complain.. so probably there are smthing like 99% of ssd users that are happy and w/o problems..

[clawhamer]

Originally Posted by EspHack

there are games that loads parts of the map/textures while you move, you can gain a few fps using a faster drive or just skip those fps drops resulting in smoother gameplay

This is the reason I have games on an ssd... honestly couldn’t care about the load times but the slight improvement while moving on maps is nice, less noticeable pop-ups, this would be the last thing I’d upgrade to improve game performance tho.

[Darkest]

Originally Posted by clawhamer

This is the reason I have games on an ssd... honestly couldn’t care about the load times but the slight improvement while moving on maps is nice, less noticeable pop-ups, this would be the last thing I’d upgrade to improve game performance tho.

Exactly this. Pop-ups in games are one of the biggest immersion destroyers. When it can be avoided I will go out of my way to do so, an SSD allows me to do that with a number of titles.

[tweakpower]

I doubt it is speed that matters much (at this time, since most HDD's are fast enough), what is more relevant to me is latency. My HDD for example have some very bad latency (16ms avg, sometimes even 18 avg) and that is bad HDD, but still it is quite fast, but start time is notable especially when you start program "first time", latter it is loaded into memory, and it runs instantly. That's why SSD for OS and programs have sense.

Not problem to me tho, hope will got SSD next month, and leave HDD for data.

[killer_939]

Games with tiny maps like bf3 for example won't gain much since they load it all to ram but a lot of MMOs with big worlds have MASSIVE gains going to an SSD. In smaller games loading can be faster with an SSD but it really depends on the game.