Does having larger hard drives (C:) make the games faster?

[OursIsTheFury]

I'm not really an expert on the subject, so I have to ask you guys for help. I've always thought that a good video card, and plenty of memory would be needed to make a game run, but do you also need a large C: or main drive to make the game faster? I have always wondered about it, and I figure this forum may have the answer to what I am looking for. What do you guys think?

 

[Corzhens]

I am no gamer but I have a little knowledge of the internal operation of a computer. From what I know,the video card has its own memory so it will not share in the computer's memory usage. However, the computer's memory is always full in use especially when there are programs running in the background. What the computer does is to go on virtual - using the hard disk to complement the memory. Maybe that is good reason for running faster - when you have a large hard disk, it can contribute to the speed of the operation.

 

[Vash]

A larger hard drive will not make the game go faster or smoother... unless your hard drive was already close to full (over 85% full). When a hard drive is close to full, its performance will take a hit. In other words, the fuller a hard drive, the slower it will become.

What you need is a faster hard drive. For example, a SSD (Solid State Drive) is much faster than a traditional spinning hard drive. Make sure you do not fill it up to more than 85%. So yes, in a way you need to get a hard drive bigger than you need in order to use its maximal performance.

To a game, the graphics card is the most important though. Followed by CPU and RAM.
Hard drive will only affect its loading speed during for example change a map.

 

[sparkster]

No. The capacity of your hard drive will make no difference whatsoever as to the loading or running speed of an application, including games. Unless, as specified above, there isn't enough free space on the hard drive for the software to operate properly. What does make a difference is the type of hard drive. Also, your processing power, RAM and graphics card capabilities also affect how smoothly a game will run. However, defragmenting the hard and removing any temporary files may help not just a game run more smoothly but in general your computer overall. It's kind of like putting all the files in the relevant place on the hard drive so that the computer doesn't have to go searching different areas of the hard drive to find them and therefore can access them easier and more conveniently.

 

[turnb43]

Although the two above posters are correct if you have a full of close to full HDD (90-95% full capacity) generally overall the computer's performance will be adversely affected and of course this will also in tern affect the FPS rate and overall how your rig runs video games too.

 

[nytegeek]

A larger drive gives you more storage. It does not give you more speed. I f your old drive was near 90% full you might get a performance increase, but deleting some files would have done the same.If you were to switch to a solid state drive you would notice a performance increase but the new drive would likely be smaller than the old one.

 

[rz3300]

I remember that I always used to associate having a larger C drive with more memory all together and faster speeds, but of course I have learned a few things here and there in my time using computer to know that it is not the case. They are often correlated, and most of the time when you have a large C drive you also have a lot of RAM, which is really what matters, but then again that can change too depending on the product and the company.

 

[nytegeek]

I remember that I always used to associate having a larger C drive with more memory all together and faster speeds, but of course I have learned a few things here and there in my time using computer to know that it is not the case. They are often correlated, and most of the time when you have a large C drive you also have a lot of RAM, which is really what matters, but then again that can change too depending on the product and the company.

A larger drive equals more storage,not more speed, About twenty years ago RAM was very very expensive.One work around for not having enough RAM back when it costs so much was for Windows and various programs was to write all the stuff that wouldn't fit into RAM into a paging file on the hard drive. This was much slower than having enough RAM but it made it possible for all the software to run and hard drive space was much cheaper than buying enough RAM. Having a large hard drive will keep stuff from crashing in many cases, but it doesn't speed anything up.

 

[SirJoe]

A big hard drive won't bring you extra performance but instead will do the opposite. When people have very big drives they tend to save everything on their computer instead of transferring it out onto a external hard drive. The fuller your hard drive is the slower your computer becomes.

 

[nytegeek]

Your computer does not slow down as you fill your drive. You won't notice any slow down unless the drive is very full. It isn't a process where it slows down incrementally as you fill it.