Does SSD Affect FPS? Improve your Gaming

by Paul | Last Updated: August 9, 2022

Video games are fun, and a lot of people love them, there is no doubt that a billion-dollar revenue-generating industry is all the evidence you need. There are different types of games, asides genre some games require computing systems with a higher capacity. For a game to run smoothly, there are features required, let us look at one.

Does SSD affect FPS?

The short answer is no. The SSD’s role is majorly to provide space for the glitch-free gaming experience given all other aspects are intact and compatible e.g. RAM, CPU and GPU. It also speeds up the launch and boot time of a game. It is a better option for gaming when compared to HDD because of the difference in their read/write mechanism.

What is FPS?

Frame per second refers to the measurement of the frame rate in any given game. A frame rate is an important factor with regards to how smoothly you can run a game. Measured in double digit numbers, a higher number represents a smoother on screen motion while a lower rate (30 and below) will result in a slow and sometimes painful gaming experience.

By measuring your frame rate, you are aware of your computing system’s capacity. Also, you cannot correct what you do not measure, so, this gives you an opportunity to make necessary changes and the ensure you get the right hardware when you want to upgrade your system.

If you still doubt the importance of knowing your FPS and improving it, let us paint a scenario. While playing a game with great details i.e., graphics for buildings, cars and other things embedded to make the game as real as possible, a poor FPS will always cause a glitch, sometimes a place that looked blank is suddenly filled with details. This always affects your game play, especially during a fight scene, it can be so bad that your character might be injured or dead and you won’t realise until seconds later.

How to Check Your Frame Rate

You can use a game and video recording application called FRAPS. It is easy to use, after you have installed the software, click the FPS tab. There you will see setting; there you can configure it to fit your preferences. When you are done, you can leave it running in the background so it can collate the data you need.

A popular one is using Steam’s in-game overlay. Steam is an online game platform where you can stream games and it also serves as a library to any game you purchase via the platform and all these games can be accessed from any PC when you login like the Apple Music or Spotify of games. So, in the settings, you click the In-Game option, there and adjust to suit your preferences.

The first two options are good but might not be needed for several games as they have a built-in frame rate counter. There is no standard way of finding this setting as it differs, but you can comb through the settings; start up, keyboard shortcut, display, graphics, video and so on. A simpler way is to check YouTube or Google for how to access that setting for the given game.

This might be considered the most popular, NVIDIA GeForce experience. If your PC uses NVIDIA graphics that supports ShadowPlay. Turn on your share option, then click the overlay option and turn on your FPS counter, you can also choose what portion on your screen you want the counter to display the process.

Understanding how the Frame Rate is Improved.

The frame rate which is measured in frames-per-second (FPS) is enhanced or limited by the capacity of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) or Central Processing Unit (CPU) and sometimes both. So, this means that upgrading those components is a better approach to increase the FPS of a game.

What rates are considered good or bad? A common FPS rate is 60, and 50 to 60 FPS is good for gaming. Remember good is the enemy of great, so, while 60FPS is good, higher frame rates are great for gaming. For instance, 144FPS and above is mostly the new norm for first person shooter games, this makes them faster and more enjoyable

Asides gaming the FPS is useful for video recording/playback, it gives a smoother movement while engaging in these activities. Always remember that the combination of a high end GPU and high end CPU equals higher FPS.

What is the link between SSD and FPS?

We have already explained what FPS is, let us look at a summary of what SSD offers. SSD is the abbreviation for solid state drive. It runs on a flash memory mechanism; this means it does not have to use moving parts for read/write operations. It is always lighter than the HDD, its design makes it great for data storage as it is not prone to data loss if it accidentally drops. This data security also extends to protection against shocks and magnetic fields, features that are lacking in the HDD.

Asides the build when it is mounted on a computing system, it provides an overall improved performance which can be noticed in system boot time, application launch and the overall navigation of the system. From this, it is obvious that the SSD is beneficial for games, but it does not translate to a higher frame rate, it will just help to launch the game faster.

Frame rate (FPS) offers in-game benefits like loading screens while SSD offers a launch and boot benefit, they are both essential for a great gaming experience, but one does not affect the other.

Simple and efficient ways to improve your FPS

Get a good GPU: a good GPU is not just brand name, but you must know the capacity, not just the GB allocated to it but the actual capacity. This means you must have a dedicated graphics card.

CPU is important too: just like the GPU, the capacity of the central processing unit is very important.

If you can get 16GB or 20GB RAM size each for the GPU and CPU, that would be awesome but if that is too expensive, do not go below 8GB and this  comes with limitation especially with latest Triple A games.