Is one of your friends telling you to replace your HDD with SSD while another pushes to go for a graphics card? They are fighting over it, and you are just confused about whether you should add SSD or graphics card to improve FPS?
Sounds familiar to you?
Well, I was in this very place of yours 2 years ago. I have researched for quite some days and finally came to a solution.
No worries. Do read till the end as I will explain both conception and misconception regarding this issue.
So, what do you think?
Can SSD Improve FPS?
One thing is sure. Adding an SSD will enhance your PC’s performance. But will it increase the FPS?
Let’s have a ride and find the answer.
Does SSD Affect FPS?
SSD won’t increase your FPS at all! An SSD will improve your PC’s performance in some cases but it won’t fix any of your poor FPS. The biggest benefit of having games and big files installed in your SSD is the crazy loading times. That’s where SSD make difference.
To understand this, you’ve to clear your concepts on SSD, FPS; what are they, how they work, and so on.
SSD depends on flash-based memory, where NOR and NAND are the two most popular flash types. Being smaller than NOR, NAND is also faster to write; hence, most SSDs use NAND flash memory.
SSD uses a processor known as a controller, as this processor determines the speed of reading and writing data.
According to Sean Whaley, the frame rate is when a consecutive series of frames or images can appear on a display panel. It applies to computer graphics in video games and motion capture systems, including film and video cameras.
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We are talking about the frequency measured by FPS (Frames Per Second). So, if your smartphone can record video at 60 fps, that means 60 individual images comes to succession within one second.
If you are a gamer, you know how important it is to play with optimized FPS. More the FPS, more the quality. If you are a serious gamer, you must possess a quality monitor with a quality setup.
As SSD reads and writes files very fast, your PC programs thus run smoothly and quickly. But this storage has nothing to do with FPS. In a shorter sense, your VRAM, i.e., graphics card, determines how smoothly you can play your preferred game on your PC or how your experience will be.
If you add a sufficient amount of SSD as storage, you will find your game runs fast and every program, but you won’t find increasing FPS. For instance, you have GeForce GTX 1660 Ti as your graphics card, which can run games at 120 frames per second, and adding SSD won’t help running your games at 140 frames per second.
So, SSD has the lowest possibility to affect your FPS. However, SSD storage can affect your gaming experience. Consider yourself having a sound, graphic card with sufficient RAM. But you are still facing some shutter in playing, say, Forza Horizon 4 or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and it’s your HDD bottlenecked the gaming experience.
Go through our epic guide on Fix Motherboard Can’t Detect Hard Drive.
What can you do?
Well, you can add SSD to assist or replace HDD. HDD is too slow to read, write, and load small files. If your game is big enough, it has hundreds or thousands of files like this. So HDD will take time to load and then let the GPU render it.
In the meantime, the CPU has sent the command to load, and GPU is ready to render; everything is in order, while the GOAT HDD tries its best to load the files in. It’s like you along with your friends going to a party. Everyone is ready and good to go while one of your friends takes his last bath forever!
These big files can quickly be loaded by adding an SSD, and GPU starts rendering. So, it can boost the process by shortening the time required to load.
Now, you can easily understand that an SSD will shorten the time delay of processing files that are about to go in the GPU section where the FPS works. So, an SSD can’t directly work with the FPS, and rather than it helps GPU work faster.
In a hurry? Check out my new post on What are the fastest PCIE 4.0 SSDs.
Can SSD Improve Performance?
If you decide to upgrade your PC or laptop, one of the most common upgrades you should consider is adding an SSD or replacing HDD.
Why?
Well, there are a lot of reasons. Before going to the improvement section, first, have a look at these:
- An SSD uses roughly half of the power an HDD does.
- For boot-time and file opening, SSD is faster than HDD.
- In terms of longevity, an SSD lasts longer.
So, people tend to use SSD more often for various reasons. There is a significant improvement when we talk about the performance enhancement of a PC, and an SSD can improve the performance of your PC.
How?
Seven months earlier, I replaced my laptop’s HDD with an SSD. I have experienced a lot of benefits since then.
Let’s have a look at them.
SSD can Boost up Speed
Along with people all around the globe, I had the same “My PC is too slow” problem. A slow PC can create frustration and waste your time.
If you have had your PC for a couple of years, this is a common phenomenon. But, adding an SSD can give you relief from this unbearable pain.
As an SSD uses nonvolatile storage media that stores persistent data on solid-state flash memory, reading and writing speeds are faster than an HDD. I checked my laptops’ booting time after setting my SSD up. On average, my computer takes 10-12 seconds to boot up.
Follow our guide to What RAM is Compatible with My Laptop.
SSD Consumes Less Power
If you are a laptop user, replacing an HDD with SSD on your laptop, you’ll notice that your battery life has increased than before. It is because they consume less power than mechanical hard drives.
Seven months earlier, my laptop was giving me 2 hours of backup. After adding an SSD, it is giving me more backup than before. If you have to travel a lot, do work traveling, don’t delay adding an SSD.
Check out our separate post on will motherboard turn on without RAM.
An SSD has a Built-in Power Failure Circuitry
‘Hard drive has crashed’ was one common incident until SSD came in. SSDs have built-in power failure circuitry to back up data when voltage drop occurs. Some SSDs have built-in batteries by which your valuable data can be backed up in a power crisis.
As your SSD can adjust voltage fluctuations, you no longer have to worry about voltage drop. You will find your files unharmed.
SSDs have a Longer Life Expectancy
SSDs don’t crash more often. Depending on how you use it, they have a minimum of two or three times longer life expectancy than HDD.
Note: By running the operating system and a few selected programs in your SSD, you should prolong the life of your SSD. Don’t keep everything in there.
Can SSD Improve Gaming Performances?
An SSD will improve your gaming, video rendering experience. Many gamers report that they got help with loading times and overall experience, and they added that loading time sped up by as close to 50%.
It’s huge, isn’t it?
One of the pathetic incidents we face is when we have to wait sometime sitting on our chairs entering a game. You can’t wait all day to enter a match. For example, Games like Origins and Odyssey take ages to load on HDD. Here, SSD can save you valuable time. It can reduce shutters during asset streaming.
Besides, when you have improved load time for any game, you’ll definitely perform better.
Though gamers around the globe have different perspectives on SSD while gaming, they don’t deny the credibility of using SSD.
Conclusion
If every component remains the same, the FPS will be almost equal for SSD and HDD. Although SSD can reduce the loading time, it can’t enhance the frame rate. But I recommend you use an SSD for gaming, video editing, overall for a fantastic experience.
By the way, next time when your friend fights, don’t plug an earphone in. Instead, you can enjoy the battles.
I hope this article came in handy for you. Let me know in the comment section if you have any questions.
