would it benefit me more to get a ssd or a graphics card

JamesTheBrit

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Dec 16, 2012
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10,510
I'd personally upgrade the GPU and PSU if you use the computer primarily for gaming. An SSD will not improve gaming performance at all, though it would reduce boot times to a minimum. If you haven't defragged or cleaned your HDD in the year you've had it, then I'd reccomend doing so as I'd bet you could get a very noticable boot time decrease if you do so.
 

gebran bassil

Honorable
Feb 23, 2013
55
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10,630
If you can buy a better graphics card, you should buy a better graphics card. You should give priority to your components in the following order:
1- Power Supply.
2- Graphics card.
3- CPU.
4- RAM.
5- and lastly, if you have everything as powerful as possible, you can spend money on an SSD.

SSD's really aren't worth the money unless you've spent enough money on upgrading all your other components and have extra money to spare. I recently bought a 256GB Samsung 840 SSD, one of the most powerful SSD's in the world, and really haven't noticed a difference anywhere except in boot time. In boot time it loads in less than half what it takes the HDD, but that's about it. And loading times of SSD's in games rarely go as low as half the loading time on HDD's. Even though in the benchmarks (like for example CrystalDiskMark) the SSD certainly scored 5 times faster than the HDD, but during actual loading, it's at best twice as fast.

As for all those dipsticks who write "SSD's fix loading lag and framerate hitching caused by HDD's during gameplay in games where the disk drive is accessed in-game", I can tell you from personal experience, it's a load of horseshit. They never actually tested this "theory". I observed the exact same hitching and loading lag on the SSD as on the HDD. SSD's make no difference whatsoever in-game, they only make a difference in the pre-game loading time, and even in that not by much.