[Question] New SSD for our gaming PC - shall we use it for Windoze or the games?

[worik]

Christmas is coming and reckless shopping is nigh. Now, we are probably arranging for a new SSD in the household.

 

Fact is, that the PC in question is itself a bit old and only the GFX card is fairly up to date.

Current setup is C:\ for the OS and D:\ for games. The whole brick has no other use for us except playing our games. That is the sole pupose of it's existence.

The most ressource hungry games are Skyrim and The Witcher 3.

 

But since we will only spend a limited amount of money for such luxury, the question will be if the new SSD would be better used for the OS or for the games?

Where is the benefit greater when we play the above mentioned games?

 

 

[Laura]

I have an SSD for the OS and a seperate HHD for the rest. Faster loading times for the games would be nice. But a lightning fast boot is much better for me.

I suggest that you use the SSD for the OS.

[Uncle64]

If you dont get one small SSD you can have OS and some games on your SSD, and use your other drives that you already have to games/storage.

In my case I have OS on one 480 gig SSD, some games on the SSD and installed mods for Skyrim/FO4.

 

As Laura says, faster booting time is way better, since it will get shorter time for Windows to do its stuff, and you can use your PC way faster.

[worik]

22 minutes ago, Uncle64 said:

As Laura says, faster booting time is way better,

? The boot time has never troubled us.... it's still less than 10s and after the login screen it's less than another 10s.

That thing has only one purpose, so most of the usual windoze-crap was removed to be a nuissance years ago.

 

But I am be more interested in the effects/benefits when it is running and we are playing games .... well and when I will get my hands dirty in the CK

[donttouchmethere]

On what do you spend more time?

what gets restarted a lot?

what needs fast loading times?

 

windows start?

Moddingtools?

Modmanager?

restarting skyrim a lot?

playing heavy modded skyrim?

 

I would say a heavy modded lewd Skyrim needs all the hardware love =D

[Slorm]

I got a large SSD (1Tb) and use it for both, best money I ever spent. If you're not worried about boot time though probably best to use for your games I would have thought

[worik]

1 hour ago, Slorm said:

I got a large SSD (1Tb) and use it for both, best money I ever spent.

...

*silence*

...

*browses through the price lists of nearby stores*

...

*secretly computes the price difference against the budget of the families planned christmas spendings... *

 

[worik]

1 hour ago, donttouchmethere said:

I would say a heavy modded lewd Skyrim needs all the hardware love =D 

A good point...

Does a running Skyrim require much harddisk action from the OS?

It will require to load new cells for the game itself....

 

Does anybody know how much cell loading screens speed up? Or the main loading screen? I didn't find anything, yet.

[Laura]

21 minutes ago, worik said:

A good point...

Does a running Skyrim require much harddisk action from the OS?

It will require to load new cells for the game itself....

 

Does anybody know how much cell loading screens speed up? Or the main loading screen? I didn't find anything, yet.

From what I've heard. The people that use SSD's can't even see the loadingscreen tips.

[worik]

6 minutes ago, Laura 'Lokomootje' said:

The people that use SSD's can't even see the loadingscreen tips.

*falls over in deep shock*

*urgently catches for breath*

...

Note to myself: call in the family council immediately this evening.

[onesumgame]

If using a second SSD for games is not an option, try to fit both the OS and Skyrim onto the SSD if possible. Disabling hibernation will reduce the OS space requirement equivalent to the amount of RAM installed if my sleepy head remembers correctly. If that's not an option, put the game on the HDD because you probably won't notice much difference in loading times anyway, although depending on your hardware you may have to live with audible grinding of the mechanism. Indexing is typically disabled to prolong an SSD's lifespan which unfortunately also prolongs the time required for the OS to locate data on the HDD.  I have no clue if this applies to games as well. 

[D_ManXX2]

It will be better invested for os first. also memory allocation from SSD is better then use of normal harddrive, if you want to upgrade later then games second.

[Uncle64]

Get one SSD that can hold some games and your OS.

Dont get any smaller then 500 gig. That is waste of gold.

 

You can whit ease have some games and your OS on it, my folder for installed mods and Steam installation whit some games that needs speed, is currently 221 gig, and I still have 102 gig left on my 480 gig SSD.

Including W10.

 

You can also get one of those Hybrid SSHD got one of those to, they are wery fast. 2TB for around 80-90 euro.

 

Yea turn off Hibernation and you will free atleast 16 gig if you have that in you ram, put the swap file on one other drive and that will also save space. I have mine on my Firecuda SSHD.

 

When I start up Skyrim or DOI I dont see the loading screens. It just starts.

[landess]

My most recent system came with an SSD for windows, and normal HDD for storage. Everything works just fine, but I wanted an edge for 2 specific games : Sims 3 and Fallout 4.

 

Moving these 2 games to a new SSD has been a boon compared to the normal HDD.

 

Because of file sizes, I do transfer certain save files from SSD/documents to a special folder I created on the 3tb HDD, swapping them as needed. It's amazing how quickly some games can 'save archive' into 100gb or more.....

[Rooker]

I've been using Windows on a HDD and games on an SSD for over a year and you absolutely should keep Windows on the HDD and use the SSD for gaming, especially if you use any texture packs. That slow, spinning hard drive serves up textures and loads new cells at a snail's pace. The SSD will load the game many times faster, load cells many times faster and you know those nasty stutters that happen while textures are loading? Those don't happen on an SSD. The game wants to load a 100MB 8K texture? BAM, there it is, before you can blink.

 

How often do you reboot? I do it once a month or so, if that. How often do you load textures and cells in a video game? I do it many countless hundreds of thousands of times between reboots. Windows doesn't need an SSD unless you're doing video content creation or working with large databases or something like that. If you use it mainly for gaming like I mainly use mine, it's the games that need that speed, not Windows. Windows will run fine from a HDD. This is a no-brainer.