Gaming is more popular than ever, with the video game industry projected to reach $196 billion in revenue by 2022. As games continue to evolve with richer graphics, physics, artificial intelligence and gigantic open worlds, their storage demands skyrocket as well. Having an optimized hard drive setup has become critical for the best gaming experience possible.
In this guide, we‘ll cover everything you need to know to pick the right high performance storage for your gaming rig or laptop.
Why Fast Hard Drives Matter for Gaming
Gaming workloads place heavy demands on storage with their massive asset files and constant streaming of rich textures, 3D models, animations and soundscapes during gameplay. Games are minimizing load screens and pushing the envelope of open world realism – this requires loading levels and assets on the fly as fast as possible.
Some examples of storage bottlenecks hurting gaming performance:
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Long load times – Slow asset loading prolongs initial game and level load times. This disrupts gameplay immersion. Upgrading from a hard disk drive (HDD) to solid state drive (SSD) can reduce load times by over 50%.
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Texture pop-in – When traversing open worlds, new terrain data needs to be fetched from storage continuously. If the hard drive can‘t keep up, you experience immersion-breaking texture and object pop-in.
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Stuttering and lag – Streaming high fidelity animations and physics simulations requires consistent and low latency data delivery. Any spikes or throttling in storage speeds leads to stutters that can severely impact first person shooter and racing game performance.
Faster storage provides a smoother, more immersive gaming experience. Shorter load times get you into levels quicker. Rapid streaming prevents pop-in and keeps frame rates high. Optimized storage is essential whether playing the latest AAA blockbuster or competitively ranking on online multiplayer ladders.
Hard Drive Technology Types Compared
There are three main hard drive technologies to choose from – traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs) and hybrid SSHDs combining both. Let‘s compare their gaming performance.
Hard Disk Drives (HDD)
HDDs use spinning magnetic platters to store and read/write data. Though large and affordable, they have downsides:
- Maximum data rates of 150 MB/s (sequential access)
- 90-100 IOPS (random 4k access speeds)
- Higher latency due to physical seek times – average of 10 milliseconds
While fine for office work, HDD bottlenecks hurt gaming badly. Their low random I/O performance causes visible stuttering in open world games as new assets are loaded. Still, their unmatched affordability per TB makes HDDs a popular starter storage option.
Solid State Drives (SSD)
SSDs use integrated circuits with no moving parts. This enables:
- 550+ MB/s sequential read/write speeds (over 3X faster than HDDs)
- Up to 100,000 IOPS 4k random read/write (over 1000X an HDD!)
- Microsecond latency for virtually instantaneous access
With no seek latency or spin up delays, SSDs can feed data to games unrelentingly. World streaming and asset loading happens far ahead of gameplay, eliminating immersion-breaking texture/object pop-in. SSDs are the gold standard for gaming drives today. Their one downside remains the high cost per GB but rapid tech improvements are closing this gap yearly.
Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD)
The best of both worlds, SSHDs combine HDD capacity with SSD speeds via sophisticated caching algorithms. An onboard NAND flash module handles all read/write requests, serving data directly for repeat requests. Uncached data gets passed to the HDD.
Well implemented hybrid caching unlocks SSD-like real world usage at a total drive cost closer to HDDs. SSHDs commonly deliver:
- Sequential speeds nearly matching true SSDs
- 2-3x faster game load times than HDDs
- Great cost per GB while still eliminating visible stutter/pop-in during gameplay
SSHD technology continues maturing rapidly. With large and fast cache sizes now the norm, hybrid drives give fantastic bang for buck for large gaming storage needs.
Real World Gaming Benchmarks
Let‘s examine some real examples of how switching to faster storage improves gaming using TR‘s Battlefield 1 Storage Drive Scaling review. Testing occurred on an Intel Core i7-8700K system paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 at 2560 x 1400 "Ultra" settings.
Image Source: TechSpot.com
Compared to a 2016 era mainstream SATA SSD, the newer PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive posted load times over 2X faster. Upgrading from hard drives to the entry-level SATA SSD improved level load times by 50-60 seconds, a 50% reduction.
In gameplay, the HDD struggled to stream textures fast enough. The below screenshot comparison shows significant pop-in on the Trench level with HDD storage. The NVMe SSD (right image) loads full quality textures ahead of gameplay for full immersion.
Image Source: TechSpot.com
Similar performance trends were seen in video montage workloads with Adobe Premiere CC. Exporting an 8.5 minute 4K video took 43% less time with PCIe NVMe versus SATA SSD storage.
Image Source: TechSpot.com
Factors for Picking the Best Gaming Hard Drive
With a better understanding of modern storage technology nuances, here are the key factors to consider when buying your next gaming drive upgrade.
1. Capacity – With AAA games now exceeding 100GB + updates, a 500GB drive gets filled up fast. Minimum 1TB is recommended, with 2TB+ ideal for any serious gamer.
2. Drive Type – If on a strict budget, a quality SATA SSD offers massive real-world speedup versus any HDD. Faster NVMe PCIe and USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives unlock more performance headroom.
3. Target Frame Rate + Resolution – Running older eSports titles at 1080p60 FPS has lower requirements than 4K144Hz gaming. Match your storage to your target gaming experience.
4. Workloads – Are you only gaming or also content creating on the side? Video editing and streaming loves fast storage too.
Now let‘s jump into this year‘s top contenders for best gaming storage drives money can buy. We‘ll have great picks for all budgets and needs…
