SSHD vs HDD

pitmanj2

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Jul 10, 2017
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Hey Guys,

So currently I am looking into building my first gaming PC(the current one I own is a 4 year old pre-built Desktop, and all it has on it is a regular HDD). I really don't want a SSD/HDD combo for 2 reasons:
a) The price
b) I don't want to worry about what to install/not install on each respective drive

So I am currently in between two products for my upcoming endeavor, either a WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FJRS628/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2ALF7DBR6ZL57&colid=3H9UNK11G1IAA
Or a Seagate 2TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IEKG2HM/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2R928U8R02FU1&colid=3H9UNK11G1IAA

On my current computer I game pretty heavily, use programs such as Fraps(video recording), Sony Vegas Pro 14(video editing), and Photoshop. And I browse the internet and download stuff quite frequently aswell.

My current HDD(I've been using for 4 years) is just a run-of-the-mill regular hard drive, and to my knowledge it runs pretty slow(I've never actually witnessed a SSD in action/so I don't know what "fast" is) so speeds for game loading aren't super important to me, however, after reading about SSHDs I think it would be nice to have improved OS speeds.

The computer(Desktop) I am hoping to build will be able to run games with great FPS at max to near max settings.

So I have two questions:

Although I don't think it would, will my choice effect the performance of gameplay?

In your guys' opinions, which would be the best product for me to purchase? Thanks!

(And if you need clarification on anything let me know)
 
Solution
The main benefit of SSD is in startup times and, in cases of open-world gaming, loading new areas of maps faster as you move into them. Where you don't want to be worrying about what data goes where on the drive, the FireCuda is a perfect fit because the drive intuitively looks at your most frequently accessed files and places them on the SSD portion, so you get that faster load-time benefit with no hassle and then puts everything else on the spinning HDD portion.

If you'd like to see how our FireCuda SSHDs and other types of drives stack up, here are a couple of charts with some good information:

The first one compares startup times across several popular games across a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, FireCuda, and an M.2 SSD...
The main benefit of SSD is in startup times and, in cases of open-world gaming, loading new areas of maps faster as you move into them. Where you don't want to be worrying about what data goes where on the drive, the FireCuda is a perfect fit because the drive intuitively looks at your most frequently accessed files and places them on the SSD portion, so you get that faster load-time benefit with no hassle and then puts everything else on the spinning HDD portion.

If you'd like to see how our FireCuda SSHDs and other types of drives stack up, here are a couple of charts with some good information:

The first one compares startup times across several popular games across a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, FireCuda, and an M.2 SSD (128GB). The white is for SSD, the orange for FireCuda, and the gray for the 7200 spinning HDD.

Startup Times

The next one compares the first 3 days of gaming storage utilization across several popular titles, and SYSmark ratings from various drive types and combinations. First of the grays is 7200 RPM 1TB spinning HDD, second (lightest gray) is FireCuda, third (darkest gray) is an SSD + 7200 RPM HDD combo, purple is SSD + FireCuda combo, and lastly blue is SSD.

First 3 Days Gaming Storage Utilization

Regardless of which drive you end up deciding works best for your needs, we do want to say thank you for considering Seagate!
 
Solution