Ultimately, it has to be read from the drive first. SSD wins.
What pop ups are you talking about?[/quotemsg]
For example on Skyrim, with a 4K texture mod, sometimes if you move your view quickly you can see the textures actually loading up. Granted only for a fraction of a second in most cases, but it's still visible. Wasn't sure whether these were loaded direct from the HD while in-game or from the VRAM or RAM.