Is Buying a SSD Worth It!?

It's hard to justify the expense, but once you've had one, you will never want to back to those L-O-O-O-N-G boot times. I had my SSD fail on me after nine months, and had to use a 500 GB HDD for the 12 days it took me to get it replaced by the manufacturer. That's when I realized how addicted I had become to fast boot times. Instead of being on my desktop in like 20 seconds, I ended up waiting about two and a half minutes before I could actually do anything. I tell you, I could not wait to get that replacement SSD back!

But . . . If you don't have the money, then you'll have to pass it up. I would trade some frames per second for an SSD, if it was a choice between running new games at 60 fps vs. 45 fps, and medium-to-high settings are fine with me. But then I'm not a hard-core gamer. And I will never voluntarily part with my SSD (256 GB Samsung 830).

so u saying that ssd increase +- 15 fps when gaming?

SSD's and GAMING:

I started testing SSD's for gaming. What I discovered was a little surprising. On average, very few games feel much different. There were a few major exceptions such as:
- Far Cry 3/NV (the stutter-fix mod benefitted a lot too)
- Oblivion
- Skyrim (mostly for LOADS, stutter issues were minimal on Hard Drive anyway)
- Assassin's Creed II
- Witcher Enchanced (#1)

Far more games felt nearly identical between a 3TB Seagate HDD, and a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro during gameplay. Load times were always faster on SSD, but saving 20 seconds might not justify the cost of an SSD for many people unless the game runs better.

*Windows and general opening/closing programs felt snappier.

STEAM and SSD's:
Steam now allows a second Steam folder. This is great because you can install to a Hard Drive, but move games to the SSD (and back again)!! Like this:

1) Backup Steam game
2) Delete Local Content (for that game)
3) Restore Steam game (but point to the 2nd Steam folder on the SSD)

Examples of HDD/SDD:

#1: 2TB HDD only
(partitioned to 200GB and remainder on Partition 2; Steam folder on 2nd partition)

#2: 128GB SSD (Windows/apps) + 2TB HDD
*As an UPGRADE from #1 you could simply CLONE (or backup/restore) Windows to the SSD from the HDD Partition #1 (then recover Partition 1 of the HDD)

#3: 128GB SSD + 2TB HDD + 256GB SSD
**Roughly what I have.
Windows/apps on the smaller SSD. HDD for main Steam folder, backup image of Windows, media etc.. Finally, an SSD dedicated to the 2nd Steam folder. Even a 64GB SSD is very useful because as I said you can MOVE games with Steam (and usually the SAVE GAMES are fine) so you can even move just to TEST and see if an SSD performs better.

(Games in the future should hopefully be optimized to buffer the content properly in your Main Memory and Video RAM and avoid the HDD/SSD. The PS4 with its 8GB of Shared Memory will help speed up this type of optimization. For example, Witcher 3 on the PS4 is being designed to pre-buffer as much as possible. Likely the main game would pre-load and other areas will start pre-loading in the background as you play until most/all of the entire game is loaded. That should drop load times from 40 seconds to less than 1 second.)


CHEERS!!

SUMMARY:
- SSD's have a big impact on Windows/app loading time (varies by PC, amount of RAM etc)
- SSD benefit for GAMES on average isn't significant (though some benefit a lot)
- Steam 2nd folder on SSD for currently played games (that benefit)

- SSD's are mainly about load times and preventing stutter in poorly coded games that access the hard drive regularly during gameplay. They have almost no effect on frame rates.