Samsung 860 EVO 2TB SSD - A Great Drive For A Growing Steam Linux Game Collection

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

Seems like Michael is a joker today: "Samsung 860 EVO 2TB SSD - A Great Drive For A Growing Steam Linux Game Collection" - LOL? 367 €?

A SSD is not even faster for games. So why should I go for that?

[Spazturtle]

Seems like Michael is a joker today: "Samsung 860 EVO 2TB SSD - A Great Drive For A Growing Steam Linux Game Collection" - LOL? 367 €?

A SSD is not even faster for games. So why should I go for that?

Because in more and more games the HDD the game is stored on is the bottleneck for the game's performance. If the game needs to load stuff from the HDD before it can render the next frame it will cause stuttering whilst it loads objects.

[Michael_S]

Because in more and more games the HDD the game is stored on is the bottleneck for the game's performance. If the game needs to load stuff from the HDD before it can render the next frame it will cause stuttering whilst it loads objects.

I'm under the impression most games batch load the data they need at the beginning of each level or map, and then from that point forward there is no disk access. I don't think SSD vs. HDD affects FPS, I think it affects level load times. I have small SSDs and larger capacity HDDs for storage and the games on the SSDs load faster but otherwise don't play better. That said, I'm not much of a gamer so I could be incorrect.

Anyone have hard data to back me up or prove me wrong?

[LeJimster]

I'm looking forward to getting a 4TB ssd, but current prices are still to high for my liking. I bought a 1TB 960 EVO for my Steam drive last year and filled it quite easily. I'm so glad to have an all SSD pc these days. So much more responsive, easier to update and silent.

[BillBroadley]

I'm under the impression most games batch load the data they need at the beginning of each level or map, and then from that point forward there is no disk access. I don't think SSD vs. HDD affects FPS, I think it affects level load times. I have small SSDs and larger capacity HDDs for storage and the games on the SSDs load faster but otherwise don't play better. That said, I'm not much of a gamer so I could be incorrect.

Anyone have hard data to back me up or prove me wrong?

I'd agree that most don't actively do heavy disk I/O during the game. But faster launching of the game and faster level loading sounds like a pretty big win to me. Nothing kills an immersive game like long load times between levels.

[Michael_S]

I'd agree that most don't actively do heavy disk I/O during the game. But faster launching of the game and faster level loading sounds like a pretty big win to me. Nothing kills an immersive game like long load times between levels.

Oh right, I think an SSD is still a great investment to speed up gaming. I hate waiting between level loads. I just hoped someone with more insight could chime in on whether it affects FPS.

[BillBroadley]

Oh right, I think an SSD is still a great investment to speed up gaming. I hate waiting between level loads. I just hoped someone with more insight could chime in on whether it affects FPS.

Generally not. Keep in mind that there's still quite a few old school disks (the spinning rust variety) that are literally 500 times or more slower at random I/O. So if your market includes consumes with spinning disks you are going to have to design around very poor I/O system. So the vast majority of games do nearly all their I/O at either game launch or between levels (sometimes during cutscenes). Otherwise the frame rate would HUGELY vary between SSD users and spinning rust.

However you may use your computer for other things at the same time, like say plex, or other background tasks. I could see a SSD helping quite a bit if you are multitasking while gaming. Sometimes I game on one monitor (full screen) and still use applications in a second window.

[Spazturtle]

I'm under the impression most games batch load the data they need at the beginning of each level or map, and then from that point forward there is no disk access. I don't think SSD vs. HDD affects FPS, I think it affects level load times. I have small SSDs and larger capacity HDDs for storage and the games on the SSDs load faster but otherwise don't play better. That said, I'm not much of a gamer so I could be incorrect.

Anyone have hard data to back me up or prove me wrong?

It depends on the game, ESO used to have better FPS when installed on an SSD because it used to do lots of lazy loading from the disk, it has since been updated to load more stuff into RAM during loading screens but this has made the loading screens take a long time.

Personally I am going to use a tiered caching solution, on my windows gaming PC I am setting up a tiered windows storage space with an SSD for the fast pool and 2 HDDs in RAID 0 for the slow pool.

[Michael_S]

Thanks BillBroadley and Spazturtle - what you wrote makes sense.

I'm not much of a gamer these days, but if I was I think the 500GB-1TB SSDs hit a sweet spot for price. I might just get a few of those. But again, I don't install and uninstall games much. One of my teenage sons is an avid gamer and the PC he assembled has a spinning rust 500GB drive. He has "get an SSD" on his todo list, but not near the top, and he just installs and uninstalls games like crazy. I would go insane.

(Edit: Then again, that's why I don't game any more. When I was 20 a thirty second loading screen was an annoyance. Today if I have to wait ten seconds I shut the game off. Likewise, I used to enjoy grinding away in Diablo 2 to unlock a new special ability. Now, anything I want to do in-game that I can't accomplish in fifteen minutes is not worth doing. I'm getting impatient with old age.)

[EGau]

It should be noted that the 860 Evo Series has serious problems with some AMD SATA II controller. I have a 1 TB SSD and with the SB710 chipset I get CRC communication errors and the connection sets to its lowest 1.5Gb/s. There is a kernel bug report:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201693

A firmware update from Samsung would be appreciated!