Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2022 January 5

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January 5

SSD improves game performance?

Hello! So I got an SSD put in my PC for Christmas, replacing the HDD that had come with the computer. WHen I played games with it, I was surprised by how much the performance had improved in the games. However I'm a bit confused as to why changing the HDD into an SSD has improved performance in games specifically (it has improved performance elsewhere but I"m more confused by the improved game performance). The SSD was the only thing I had upgraded and I had always thought I was limited by either my low RAM (being 8 GB) or my lack of a dedicated GPU (I use an Intel HD Graphics 500 iGPU), so why did the SSD improve game performance if games don't really do much with the computer's storage outside of updates to the game or downloading info. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:50, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

For reference as to how much the performance improved, in SnowRunner, I previously had the graphics at low in order to get a framerate I could play the game at without it being so slow. Now with my SSD, I can basically max out all the graphics settings (Except for the shadow quality and FXAA or was it the antialiasing settings?) and play the game just fine, albeit it a low but still playable framerate (i would guess it's around 15 FPS because EGS doesn't allow me to enable an FPS counter for games unlike steam). ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:10, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Also, I do have a guess as to why game performance has improved but I don't know if it's correct, hence why I"m asking here. My guess is since SSDs have much faster read and write speeds, the game is able to get the information it needs much quicker than if it were an HDD, thereby increasing performance since the game isn't taking as long to grab the information it needs. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:15, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

If the game or OS is using memory paging, it will be much quicker on an SSD? --Verbarson ^talk_edits 23:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf: I found this link which may answer your question: https://yantraas.com/does-ssd-improve-gaming-performance/ It describes several factors for improved gaming when switching to an SSD. RudolfRed (talk) 02:11, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@RudolfRed: I'm unable to view the link at the moment due to me being on a school laptop. Could you summarize the relevant details of what the source is saying for me? (of course, not exactly what they said cause that would be a copyvio) ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:08, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Switching from HDD to SSD improves seek time for drive operations. A good HDD is at least 10 times slower than a bad SSD. I have a few HDDs and SSDs here of different qualities. I ran tests on them. The HDDs have average seet times between 7ms and 15ms. Running multipel tests, 8ms to 9ms is most common. For the SSDs, I get 0ms using standard tests. I have to perform more complex tests to measure seek times less than 0.1ms. So, you are switching from a seek time of nearly 10ms to a seek time less than 0.1ms. It makes perfect sense. On an HDD, you have to wait for the data to spin to a position directly under the read/write head to be readable or writable. In an SSD, you have to wait a tiny fraction of a second for a memory address to be set, then it immediatedly reads/writes the data. But, why does this make games faster? If you had a big red light on your computer to tell you every time the drive is used, you'd see it is used very often, even when you don't think it will be used. The program itself swaps code in and out of memory. That swapping is between mamory and the drive. Data is back and forth between memory and the drive also. The more complex the game, the more swapping takes place. If you have an HDD, swapping takes much longer to complete. If you have an SSD, swapping takes far less time. The computer architecture can mitigate this problem. A simplistic computer system has one big bus that every device talks on. So, swapping back and forth between memory and the drive clogs up the bus until it gets done. Nothing else can talk easily. Your mouse can't talk to the computer. The CPU can't talk to the graphics card. The temperature sensor can't talk to the variable speed case fan. Of course, computers are more complex now. There are dedicated communication lines between devices inside the computer. If there is a slow-down on the communication line between memory and the drive, only devices using the same communicaiton line will be slowed. Finally, there is CPU design. How well does the CPU handle delays? The CPU is processing the program one line of code at a time. What happens if the next line of code is slow in arriving? Does the CPU handle other things easily or does it sit and wait? Swapping between tasks takes time. Some CPUs are better at it than others. If you have a CPU that can swap tasks very quickly (or perform more than one task at the exact same time), you won't notice as much of an effect when a program is waiting for code to load. Well, I intended for this to be a couple sentences. I failed and I haven't even covered all the topics yet becasue I've only mentioned the hardware. I haven't got to the operating system yet. Hopefully this answer is good enough to say "It's complicated." 97.82.165.112 (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your response IP! That helped me understand it a lot! ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)