Saturday!
In our various VR nights, my boss noticed that my computer took about 3-4 minutes to go from “off” to “ready to go” and this gave him the opportunity to make fun of me for still using a platter drive. “But it’s 7200rpm!”, I told him. He pointed out that I was playing many games at lower settings than my graphics card allowed. I shrugged because my graphics card is approximately 2000 times better than my previous graphics card (not an exaggeration) and I was comparing what I had to what I had before. It didn’t really bug me.
Anyway, we finished up a big project at work and he gave me a SSD. “Good job, you took care of stuff. I had this lying around on a shelf in the basement and you kinda need it.”
All that to say:
If you are thinking about upgrading your computer and you’ve got a platter hard drive? Maybe all you have to do is upgrade your hard drive. This is like having a whole new computer. Stuff that used to stutter now screams. Games that took 30 seconds to load now take less than 5. Loading screens are a thing of the past. This is as big a change as upgrading the graphics card.
So I’m back into delving into games that I played but got frustrated with because the loading screens took too long.
So… what are you playing?
(Picture is HG Wells playing a war game from Illustrated London News (25 January 1913[/efn_note]
I have two games on the go right now:
1) The Remastered Crash Bandicoot trilogy is out for the Switch, so I’m playing through that. The first game is really too hard to be fun, but the second and third strike a good balance.
2) on PC, I’m playing West of Loathing. It’s a western-themed RPG with stick figure art. It’s also utterly hilarious.Report
I looked at SSDs when I got my current PC. I wanted a TB of space and IIRC that size wasn’t available.
Speaking of my current PC, it suddenly decided to “turn off” and won’t turn on again. Power issue…so I’m back on the prior machine, which is….oh 10 years old. So, won’t be playing any current games. I booted up a old copy of Marathon and have been playing the trinity while the PC wizards figure out the problem with my newer box. Hopefully, it will be a nominal charge. I’m itching to play Fallout 4 some more and the new System Shock.Report
Standard practice is to have a smaller SSD for the OS and frequently-used programs, and a spinny drive for extra storage space. You can get a 256GB SSD, which should be at least enough for the OS and a handful of fairly large games, for about $60, and even a terabyte is under $200 now.
If you’re not being paid to wait for your computer to boot, it’s worth it to get an SSD.Report