Short answer
SSDs are much faster and provide a noticeable boost in gaming performance, especially in terms of load times. On the other hand, hard drives are much more cost-effective as high-capacity drives.
SPEED
As already mentioned, SSDs are far superior to HDDs in terms of speed, there is no doubt about it. The data transfer speed of an SSD can exceed the speed of a hard disk by several times, in real systems about 2-3 times
TECHNOLOGIES
Next-gen consoles - PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S - come with an SSD by default. And SSDs are used on these platforms not only for fast loading saves, but also for other tasks - for example, instantly loading and unloading entire locations without forcing the game to store them in RAM. This fundamentally changes the approach to video game development, although it has a limited scope for now.
The PC segment is also actively inventing new technologies for the use of SSDs. For example, Microsoft's DirectStorage, which (if very short) allows you to load the necessary data from the SSD directly into the memory of the graphics card, bypassing the RAM and the processor, which speeds up their processing. NVIDIA has similar technology.
All in all, in the coming years, more and more AAA games will be developed with SSD in mind. Even now, the recommended system requirements for some titles point to an SSD, and the day is likely approaching when some games simply won't run on a HDD. You could say that hard drives in the context of games become a remnant.
DURABILITY
In terms of overall life cycle, HDDs are longer than SSDs. But despite the fact that the difference in durability objectively exists, in practice it is almost imperceptible.
Even with heavy use, the SSD can last more than 5 years. Of course, hard drives can easily last more than 10 years, although their performance decreases over time. But in any case, you'll probably change the drive much sooner than it has performance issues.
RELIABILITY
SSDs are undeniably more reliable than HDDs due to the lack of moving parts. Hard drives are more prone to failure and physical damage precisely because of the mechanisms that ensure their operation.
VOLUME
When it comes to maximum capacity, both SSDs and HDDs are currently available in the market with capacities up to 8TB and even more. But much more important is the volume-price ratio.
Namely, hard drives come out about four times cheaper than SSDs in terms of price per unit of volume. For example, at a price of 3-4 thousand rubles, the hard drive will have a capacity of 1 TB, and the SSD will be 250 GB. On the other side of the range, the situation is similar - an 8 TB hard drive costs tens of thousands of rubles, and a 4 TB SSD and more can cost over a hundred thousand.
NOISE
As we said before, SSDs have no moving parts. Thanks to this, they work absolutely silently. On the other hand, hard drives always make noise, but the noise level can vary.
In general, the volume of a hard drive depends on the following factors:
Rotation speed - currently, for budget hard drives, the value of this parameter is from 5400 rpm, and for faster ones it can exceed 10,000 rpm. Of course, the faster the hard drive spins, the higher its noise level.
Age/Damage - Moving parts are critical to hard drive performance, so hard drive noise levels may increase due to wear or physical damage to the mechanisms.
FINAL VERDICT
After all that has been said, there is no doubt who came out victorious in the SSD versus HDD battle.
SSD for gaming is much better than HDD. Hard drives simply can't compete with the speed of SSDs, so for anyone who is primarily concerned with performance, the choice is clear. You shouldn't expect a significant increase in the fps counter, but at least level load times will be significantly reduced, and objects in open world games will be drawn at a much greater distance.
However, SSDs are not without their disadvantages. They really aren't that great as a long-term storage solution, due to both their essentially shorter life cycles and the astronomical prices of high-capacity SSDs.
Our opinion? Use both types!
This approach is used by many players. You can install the system and games on a 500 GB SSD, and use a less expensive hard drive with a minimum capacity of 1 TB for data storage. This is the most cost-effective solution.
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