SSD vs HDD for Gaming: Load Times, FPS, and What to Buy

SSD vs HDD for gaming: the short answer

For many big recent games, an SSD is close to required. Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 list an SSD in their Steam minimum requirements, and CD Projekt Red warned that running Cyberpunk 2077 from a hard drive "may cause new content to not stream properly." Consoles set the pace: the PS5's SSD reads 5.5 GB/s raw, and Microsoft says the Xbox Series X|S reads 2.4 GB/s raw, more than 40 times the Xbox One.

An SSD gives you faster loads, less texture pop-in, and smoother worst-case frames in some streaming-heavy games. It usually doesn't raise your average frame rate. A hard drive still has a job: cheap storage for games you aren't playing right now.

Load times: the biggest difference

In TechSpot's 2020 testing of older games, the slowest SATA SSD loaded 73% faster than a hard drive, and six of nine games loaded within about 2 seconds of each other on SATA and PCIe 4.0 SSDs — once an SSD was installed, load times depended more on the CPU.

Newer games widen the gap. In TechSpot's 2025 testing, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart loaded in 1.3 seconds on a PCIe SSD and about five times slower on SATA; Kingdom Come: Deliverance II took over four minutes from a hard drive; and in Cyberpunk 2077, hard drives were up to 3.8 times slower. Hard drives also caused several seconds of visible texture pop-in. TechSpot's conclusion: buy a PCIe NVMe SSD.

Does an SSD increase FPS?

Mostly no. Average frame rates come from your GPU and CPU, and in Tom's Hardware's 2026 test of 11 games, a SATA SSD matched an NVMe drive on frame rates in 9 of them.

The exception is the worst moments. In games that stream assets constantly, a slower drive can cause stutter: in the same testing, PCIe storage lifted 1% lows by 22% to 51% in Forspoken and by about 38% in Ratchet & Clank at 4K during portal sequences. A fast NVMe drive can smooth hitching even when the average frame rate doesn't move.

Games that require an SSD

Several major games list an SSD as a requirement in their Steam minimum specs, so a hard drive as your only drive won't cut it:

• Starfield — SSD required at minimum specs.
• Baldur's Gate 3 — SSD required at minimum specs.
• Cyberpunk 2077 — SSD required at minimum specs.
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart — SSD recommended at minimum, required at recommended specs.

DirectStorage and newer games

DirectStorage is a Windows API that speeds up game asset loading. It works on Windows 10 and 11, with 11 recommended, and Microsoft says it can make games load up to 40% faster — but that you need an NVMe SSD for the big gains. Version 1.1 added GPU decompression, and version 1.2 added a mode for hard drives.

Forspoken was the first showcase. In its DirectStorage demo, reported by PC Gamer in March 2022, one scene loaded in 2.2 seconds on NVMe, 4.6 seconds on a SATA SSD, and 24.6 seconds on a hard drive; the developer said hard drives were "not delivering the anticipated result."

Is SATA enough, or do you need NVMe?

For many games, a SATA SSD is fine. SATA runs at about 600 MB/s maximum, with real drives rated around 560 MB/s — several times any hard drive — and in TechSpot's 2020 testing most games loaded within about 2 seconds of PCIe 4.0 drives.

But newer games are pulling away: Ratchet & Clank loaded about five times faster on PCIe than SATA in TechSpot's 2025 test, and DirectStorage's biggest gains need NVMe. NVMe drives are rated up to about 3,500 MB/s on PCIe 3.0, 7,450 MB/s on PCIe 4.0, and 14,800 MB/s on PCIe 5.0. If you're buying new for a PC with an NVMe slot, choose NVMe — the NVMe vs SATA SSD explainer covers the details.

Where a hard drive still fits

Hard drives cost far less per TB than SSDs, which makes them a sensible home for a big library of games you aren't playing right now. Steam supports multiple library folders, so you can keep games on a hard drive and move the ones you're playing to the SSD.

They also suit backups and general file storage, where capacity matters more than speed. The setup that works: an NVMe SSD for Windows and current games, and a large hard drive for everything else.

What to buy

• Main drive: a PCIe NVMe SSD sized for your library — 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB.
• PS5 players: an M.2 drive that meets Sony's spec (see the PS5 SSD page).
• Game library storage: a large internal hard drive, moving games to the SSD when you play them.
• Taking games between PCs: an external SSD, which loads close to internal drives in PC testing.