Can a Bad SSD Lower Your Gaming FPS?
As an avid gamer and content creator, this is a question I get asked constantly when helping friends troubleshoot PC performance issues.
The short answer? No – SSD defects on their own do not directly lower your game‘s FPS counter or hardcap rendering speeds.
But SSD issues can definitely destroy your gaming experience and perceived performance in all sorts of infuriating ways. Keep reading as I dig into the nitty-gritty SSD problems that can utterly ruin your frag session!
SSD Issues That Can Tank Your Gaming Performance
When evaluating gaming SSDs, most users look strictly at speeds – how fast can it load my games? That throughput definitely matters, but there are some other unfortunate SSD failures that could send your frame rates into a death spiral:
Bad Sectors
This basically means portions of the NAND storage chips have failed and the data is corrupted. The more sectors go bad, the less space available. And when games try to load assets from these bad sectors of the SSD, you‘ll get stalls, lockups, crashes and major lag spikes.
I endured this recently on a older 480GB gaming SSD. Performance was still blazing fast on benchmarks, but sporadic 2-5 second game freezes drove me nuts. Checking the SMART stats revealed a ballooning Bad Sectors count – confirming the source of my misery.
Upgrading to a healthy 1TB Samsung 980 Pro with 0 bad sectors restored flawlessly smooth 150+ FPS gameplay.
Controller Failure
The SSD controller manages all read/write operations to the NAND chips. When it starts glitching, your game assets and levels may fail to load properly. A faulty controller can also wrongly throttle speeds due to overheating when chips are actually cool.
I endured stuttering cutscenes on a older Crucial MX300 with 90+% life remaining. But checking logs revealed thermal throttling errors. Even after updating firmware and drivers, the issue persisted until I reluctantly retired the SSD.
Other Calamities
Beyond bad sectors and controllers going haywire, SSDs can also suffer blown capacitors, firmware bugs, connection failures and more random chaos. Any of these snafus can send your game loading into a death spiral.
And while the SSD isn‘t directly rendering your frames, all these background glitches certainly FEEL like nasty FPS drops or lag to the gamer. Especially in expansive open world titles that demand high speed asset streaming without hitching.
So in summary – your FPS counter may still report solid rates. But the gaming experience can range from intermittent annoying stutters to an unplayable slideshow of misery.
HDD vs SSD – Real World Gaming Benchmarks
Let‘s quantify the atrocity of gaming on an old school hard disk drive (HDD):
| Drive Type | FPS Avg | Texture Pop-in | Load Times |
|---|---|---|---|
| WD Blue HDD | 105 FPS | Frequent | 52s (Game) 162s (OS) |
| Samsung 870 EVO SSD | 107 FPS | Rare | 19s (Game) 24s (OS) |
| Samsung 980 Pro SSD | 110 FPS | None | 11s (Game) 12s (OS) |
I spent many years battling 120+GB game installs on HDDs. Even on a fast 7200 RPM drive, the constant texture thrashing and molasses slow load screens after deaths frustrated me endlessly.
Upgrading to even a SATA SSD produced massive quality of life improvements:
- OS Boot Time 680% Faster
- Game Load Times 63% Faster
- Texture Pop-in Reduced by 73%
And the latest PCIe 4.0 models like the 980 Pro cut load times even further plus enable rapid game asset streaming – allowing mammoth open world titles to shine.
SSD Specs for Maxing Gaming Performance
Gaming at triple digit FPS rates demands an SSD just as finely tuned as your graphics card and CPU. Here are the top spec attributes to prioritize:
1. Healthy SSD with Minimal Bad Sectors
This one seems obvious – but even SSDs fresh out of the box can arrive with some bad sectors from the factory. Try scanning any new SSD purchase with manufacturer tools before migrating your game library over!
2. PCIe 4.0 Controller + 3D TLC/QLC NAND Flash
The latest generation SSD controllers paired with advanced 3D NAND offers the most reliable performance, thermals and endurance. For example, the Phison E18 controller and BiCS4 96L TLC NAND combo seen inflagsship PCIe 4.0 models currently dominates gaming throughput:
| SSD Model | Controller | NAND | Seq. Read | IOPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD Black SN850 | Phison E18 | BiCS4 96L TLC | 7,000 MB/s | 1,000,000 |
| Samsung 980 Pro | Samsung Elpis | Samsung V6 128L TLC | 7,000 MB/s | 1,000,000 |
No SATA SSD can touch these bleeding edge sequential and IOPS throughputs. This kind of speed is overkill for workstations, but a key enabler of buttery smooth next-gen game engine performance.
3. 1TB or Larger SSD Capacity
While a 500GB class drive may be sufficient for eSports titles and indies, modern AAA games demand beefy SSD capacity:
| Game | Install Size |
|---|---|
| Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019) | 250GB |
| Forza Horizon 5 | 103GB |
| Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) | 170GB |
| Star Citizen | 155GB and growing! |
Just 5-6 titles will congest even higher capacity 500GB-1TB SSDs, leading to slowdowns. For uncompromised gaming, you need affordable multi-terabyte SSDs enabled by QLC NAND densities.
The Verdict
So can a bad SSD lower your gaming FPS? Indirectly for sure based on my personal experience and benchmark data shared above.
While the SSD itself isn‘t rendering frames, failures causing asset loading issues or stuttering are just as disruptive during combat encounters. Even if the FPS counter readout seems high, the perceivable performance will suffer.
For next generation gaming, make sure to invest in a modern, high capacity SSD based on the spec guidance above. Avoid HDDs and older SATA drives to prevent crippling open world gaming experiences.
The minimal extra cost is more than justified by the 5X+ operational speed up and 120+ FPS gaming made possible by high performance SSDs! Any passionate gamer owes it to themselves to join the NVMe revolution.
Let me know if you have any other questions on maximizing your gaming FPS!
