this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023

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You’re going to need an SSD in order to play Final Fantasy 16 on PC (www.techradar.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago (10 children)

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I'm baffled that some people update their hardware before it stops working.

But then I just keep playing old games that run on my system, so I'm probably not the target demographic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I mean I play pretty much exclusively old and 2D games. If you asked me to give up my SSD or my GPU, the GPU would be the first to go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I've seen too many people spend more money keeping a system alive than they would have spent upgrading to modern hardware and I refuse to be like them.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I can get a 10TB HDD for under 250€, and there are some technical advantages. For example, if you have an ssd lying around unpowered, it will lose data much quicker than magnetic storage

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You run programs or operating systems off that 10 TB HDD?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I have a 6TB one and yes mostly for single player games since loading screens typically aren't that big of a deal. OS always goes on your best drive and you know you can have multiple drives in a singular pc since you are sort of implying you can only have 1 drive.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The PS4 has an HDD, and only partway through its life upgraded from SATA2 to SATA3 even.

Personally, I've got my boot drive, plus a 2TB SATA3 SSD for games that benefit from it's plus a 12TB HDD for the vast majority of games that don't need it (or to temporarily store games- it's faster to move them between drives than re-doenload them). So if I was planning on playing this games hearing this from the devs would let me know I need to free up some SSD space.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

The PS4 has an HDD, and only partway through its life upgraded from SATA2 to SATA3 even.

And has load times measured in minutes on many games.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Some games do load quite fast on the HDD, I keep those there. Most games do go to the SSD first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

HDD as data storage is fine, but neither will you need 10 TB of storage for games nor will it lie around for 10 years or so.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Games keep getting bigger and bigger. This game is expected to be about 100GB, and that's not uncommon for modern AAA games. The CoD games have been over 200GB for a while now. Previous FF games have been similar size. RDR2 was 120GB.

I would expect most people playing FF16 on PC to have a small SSD drive with their OS, key programs, and maybe a couple of games, then a HDD for bulk storage.

I'm not interested in the FF series, but if I was this message from the devs means "clear up some space on your SSD". Which can sometimes be an inconvenience.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

It’s because the upgrade for this console generation was an SSD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

It is an inconvenience. AAA games will alway try to push hardware, and SSDs just happen to be one of the things that can do that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i don't play 'new' games, i don't have the hardware for them. most my gear is older salvaged stuff that didn't cost me anything to get. between constant rent increases and the cost of groceries these days, i simply can't afford to upgrade unless i get lucky and salvage something useful.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

You're not the target market for FF16 then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I’m a bit baffled that some people still use HDDs considering how cheap SSDs have gotten. You can get a 2TB M.2 for around $100. If you’ve got the specs for new games, there’s no excuse.

I don't know why you got some downvotes. Buying an SSD to store the latest games is much more cheaper than buying a GPU. If one already has a powerful GPU, I don't know why they consider an SSD "not affordable"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

SSD's with more than a 500gb-1tb start to get way more expensive than hard drives

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

SSD for newish games, OS, and programs, HDD for videos, photos, music, and old games.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

If you’re just buying a terabyte or two of storage there’s absolutely no reason to buy spinning rust at this point. If you want many terabytes of storage 12tb+ hard drives are going to be a fair bit cheaper than SSDs currently. SSDs have been rapidly dropping in price and increasing in capacity, though, so hopefully it just gets more and more cost effective to have a bunch of storage with SSDs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It's simple: My SSD can only fit so many 100-300 GB games, while I already have hard drives with plenty of free space.

(Also, running Linux means that an SSD doesn't help game performance much anyway, outside of initial loading time.)

You can get a 2TB M.2 for around $100.

More like $150-200 if you want a good one.

If you’ve got the specs for new games, there’s no excuse.

What a very privileged perspective. I don't have much money, but most new games are playable on my existing hardware if I tune the graphics settings. I would rather spend what money have on things like food and heat. (Or if the basics are covered, then maybe a newish game.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Just to share my recent experience: I found that games of that size compress quite well. So if you're using a filesystem like btrfs that supports transparent compression, you can fit much more onto your disks, at the cost of slightly slower reads and writes (M.2 ssd). With my HDD, compression actually increased write speed!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Compression can increase read and write speeds to storage because you’re sending over fewer bits. The tradeoff is that you need CPU resources to do the compression (and decompression).

I haven’t found games to compress that well. On my steam folder 809GB compressed down to 724GB, so I save maybe 10%. That’s certainly not nothing, but it’s not game changing either. That said I don’t install a lot of hundred gig plus games.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If you needed one terabyte, SSDs have been affordable for a while.

If you needed ten, nope. Not until recently.

If you need a hundred, to-day, still no.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (5 children)

In 2023/4 you should not be running a hdd in your gaming machine anyway, SSDs are so affordable now

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh no, does that mean I have to replace my Radio Shack CTR-41 cassette drive?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I actually had a TRS-80 III with a tape drive back in the day. Not a great way to store data.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I probably also need at least a dual core CPU.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Same with GPU...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

ITT: people bragging about the 32 GB they paid $700 for so Oblivion would load faster.

If you dropped five grand on a PC a decade ago, yeah, of course you've used SSDs exclusively. Each gigabyte only cost two bucks! Meanwhile, on hard disks: ten cents.

If you built a PC three years ago, SSDs were finally approaching that ten-cent figure... while HDDs were pushing two cents per gigabyte.

The gap is closing. The low end for SSDs is trivially affordable, now. Key word: now. There's no reason not to have your OS on SSD, now. And the capacity of spinning plates can only be pushed so far within a 3.5" module. There will be a point where there's no reason to buy new disks. But if I want another dozen terabytes for network storage, like hell I'm gonna pony up for neon-spangled M.2 drives. $200 versus $600... how badly do I need those milliseconds?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So what? I accidentally installed Baldur's Gate 3 on a hard disk and it was unplayable, because the assets took ages to load. Transferred everything over to an NVMe drive and it's butter smooth. Just don't put anything that requires interaction on a hard disk and get with the times and plop in an SSD. Best bang for your buck in terms of an upgrade with a massively noticable effect.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Too true. Upgrading to NVMe was the most noticeable speed boost I've experienced all at once in my history of building my own rigs. It's was like black magic. Wouldn't shut up about it to all my friends for a month.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

this is nothing new... fuck game journalism

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Don't fucking dare me! My fucking magnetic tape drive does the job just fine!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Are you telling me I should stop gaming using a raid10 set made from 8x500GB HDDs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I haven’t had an HDD since around 2004, maybe 2002. Sure I cant keep tons of big games installed, but decent internet makes that not really an issue.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What were you storing your stuff on?

The first reasonable sized consumer ssds I remember were the original ocz line. What was it like onyx or agility? And that wasnt until almost 2010 ish.

2002 seems suuuuper early.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Probably floppy disks

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I haven’t had an FDD since around 1950, maybe 1970. Sure I cant keep tons of short songs installed, but decent radio makes that not really an issue.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That’s super early to have adopted SSDs solely, no?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Yeah it is, and Windows didn’t get TRIM support for SSDs until Windows 7 in 2009.

The MacBook Air didn’t even get SSDs until 2008, and I believe it was the first mass-produced consumer computer with an SSD. Linux also got support around that time.

I’m skeptical unless OP’s dad worked somewhere that had enterprise drives to discard… and allowed drives to disappear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The oldest receipt I can locate was from 2009. I think that was my second. The first ssd being from before my son was born. He’s about to graduate high school. I remember when trim came out it was a big deal and I remember vaguely having issues with getting it to work on that first drive.

All that said, you’re probably right that 2002 was way too early of a guesstimate. Say 2006 or even 2010. What have people been doing all these years. Just waiting to boot up? There is a whole generation that should never have had to deal with hdd’s for anything but data hoarding.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

That sounds more reasonable lol.

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