Hey guys, Jarrod here and today I’m going to benchmark a few different games running
on an SSD, hard drive, and NAS over both ethernet and WiFi to try and determine how different
storage types affect gaming performance.
Personally I run most of my games off of my NAS, it’s got a lot of space and I can easily
use the same files across many different computers without having to copy anything.
This got me interested in finding out if this affects performance at all, so I’ve done
a series of tests to see.
I’ve tested 7 different games on an SSD, hard drive, and NAS using both ethernet and
WiFi.
Here are the different speeds of each disk according to Crystal Disk Mark.
The SSD is a Crucial SATA3 drive, while the hard drive is a 1TB 5,400 RPM disk.
The NAS is running 4 4TB 7,200RPM disks in RAID 6, and it’ll be limited by its gigabit
connection.
We can see here that ethernet connectivity is much better than my wifi.
I’ve also tested disk latency, as this may be a better indicator compared to raw transfer
speed if the game is fetching small files regularly rather than doing a bulk transfer.
Basically this is the amount of time between a request for data and the return of that
data.
As expected we can see the SSD is quickest, followed by hard drive, NAS with ethernet,
then NAS with WiFi which is quite a lot behind, just like the speed test results.
My WiFi tests were done with a laptop in the same room about 5m away from the access point,
your results will vary based on hardware and distance.
So we can see there’s quite a different range of read and write speeds here, now let’s
find out if these differences translate to any difference in frame rates with our games.
While I’m expecting the disk speeds to affect how long it takes for the games to initially
load, I have my doubts about it making a noticeable difference once playing the games, as most
of the data needed will have already been loaded, so let’s find out!
As originally expected there really isn’t too much difference, and to be honest most
differences are so subtle they’re within the margin of error.
Some games seem to indicate that faster storage does translate to better frames per second,
while others are all over the place and it doesn’t seem to help at all.
All games were tested with their maximum settings, as I wanted as many pieces of information
to load as possible.
I’ve also tested how long it took to actually load the games up with the different types
of storage, as I figured this would make the most practical difference based on the type
of storage, so let’s check those results.
So basically if you don’t want to wait around to get into your games, an SSD or even local
hard drive is faster than using a NAS in most cases as expected.
Of course SSD space is more expensive when compared to mechanical hard drives, so it’s
up to you to determine if this is worth paying for, especially as games continue to get larger.
In terms of the gaming experience once you’ve loaded the game up, there really isn’t that
much noticeable difference in terms of FPS between the different storage types from my
testing.
This could of course vary based on the particular game, for instance if you have a game that
needs to continually load a lot of information from disk while playing, you might notice
some slight hiccups.
I had a few of these while testing with the NAS over WiFi, from time to time there were
a few stutters where things would pause, most noticeably in Watchdogs 2 while driving around
the map as I assume there were delays when new parts of the map would load.
Using the NAS over WiFi was the only time I experienced any noticeable issues while
playing the games on the different types of storage.
Basically if you can afford SSD space for your games, go for it, otherwise a slower
mechanical hard drive is probably fine if you don’t mind waiting for your games to
load.
So what sort of disk do you store your games on?
From my tests here, it doesn’t seem to matter too much in terms of FPS, but more noticeably
affects overall loading time.
Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like on the video if you found
the information useful.
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one.