SSD vs Caviar Black as dedicated games drive?

[Volume]

I keep my Steam library on a dedicated 1TB WD Caviar Black drive and it's quickly filling up. I have a choice of either paying around $200 for a 500GB Samsung Evo SSD, or around $115 for a 2TB Caviar Black, or $145 for a 3TB Caviar Black. Which would be a wiser investment?

Are there any performance differences between the 2TB and 3TB versions of the Caviar Black?

Links:

500GB Samsung Evo SSD:
http://smile.amazon.com/Samsung-500...=1417278148&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+evo+500gb

Caviar Black:
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00FJRS5OW/ref=psdc_1254762011_t3_B008JJLW4M

 

[Araxie]

it comes down to what games... some games will certainly benefit from SSD, mostly oldie games like skyrim o diablo III where textures aren't cached in RAM and just read directly from the Disk but also recent games like shadow of mordor with ultra textures if you haven't a 4+GB vRAM GPU and i guess this will start to become a trend for new games certainly.. for the vast majority of games a caviar black would be good enough.. from a 2TB to a 3TB no, no difference in performance and because once the game its loaded the performance will be identical in any game in terms on frame rate even comparing it with a SSD, as i said except a couple of games and you will be avoiding most stuttering than getting extra performance..

what i do its keep the majority of games in my HDD and some few games in my SSD..

 

[Volume]

it comes down to what games... some games will certainly benefit from SSD, mostly oldie games like skyrim o diablo III where textures aren't cached in RAM and just read directly from the Disk but also recent games like shadow of mordor with ultra textures if you haven't a 4+GB vRAM GPU and i guess this will start to become a trend for new games certainly.. for the vast majority of games a caviar black would be good enough.. from a 2TB to a 3TB no, no difference in performance and because once the game its loaded the performance will be identical in any game in terms on frame rate even comparing it with a SSD, as i said except a couple of games and you will be avoiding most stuttering than getting extra performance..

what i do its keep the majority of games in my HDD and some few games in my SSD..

Thanks for the input. I think I might go with the SSD. Mainly because I can't imagine doubling the size of my Steam library anytime soon, and I don't keep the whole library of games installed.

As far as performance with 2TB vs 3TB, I just imagined a higher capacity hard disk might take more effort to read across its platters. I don't know much about the subject, though.

 

[westrock2000]

Thanks for the input. I think I might go with the SSD. Mainly because I can't imagine doubling the size of my Steam library anytime soon, and I don't keep the whole library of games installed.

As far as performance with 2TB vs 3TB, I just imagined a higher capacity hard disk might take more effort to read across its platters. I don't know much about the subject, though.

It depends on how the increase in capacity was accomplished. If the bigger drive is due to more platters then it's about the same performance. If the bigger drive has the same or less number of platters, but more data on each platter (data density) then it will perform better.

This is why hard drives have gotten significantly more bandwidth in the last 20 years despite the physical size and rotation speed of the platter not changing.

 

[Concentric]

The only reason I would go for a hard drive is if I needed more capacity than I could afford to get with an SSD.

 

[Zepher]

I have my steam games on a 256GB SSD and a 2TB Black. I have my games I play a frequently on the SSD and the others on the Black.

Some of the new games are getting huge, my BF4 folder is 55GB, that one game takes up 20% of my SSD.