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Where 40-60GB install sizes used to be typical, large modern games often weigh in at over 10GB currently and often climb to more following the release of patches, seasons, and updates. Games in the next generation will likely breach 150GB, and some already have.
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With the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S making a point of including fast SSD storage, the shift is likely to result in another significant spike in AAA titles' size.
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(Image credit: Steam) HDD vs SSD: The growing size of games and other dataĪs anyone with a digital game library can attest, modern games storage requirements know no bounds, with new games including updates and add-ons easily pushing up to and in some cases beyond the 200GB mark-looking at you, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. SSDs are just so much faster for booting Windows and launching your favorite applications. That's over four times the price for the same amount of storage capacity, but running Windows on an HDD makes your whole PC feel sluggish. Even the best SSDs still cost 9 cents per GB or more, while HDDs start below 2 cents per GB. SSD, the main difference comes down to price vs. Some of us may feel that the HDD is dead, but that's more of a personal take than a universal truth. It's not an all-or-nothing decision, thankfully. Hard drives (HDDs) are the old guard, having been around since the first 5MB model in the 1950s, with sizes now reaching 20TB. Solid-state drives (SSDs) have been getting pumped up over the past decade, reaching the stage where it's hard to imagine using a new PC that doesn't at least include some form of SSD storage.
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But that doesn't mean there isn't still a place for a good ol' fashioned spinning platter in your PC, especially with prices plummeting on 12TB hard drives and the like. The consensus is that solid-state trumps-pricing's down, speeds are up, and next-gen consoles are even sporting capacious SSDs. The best NVMe SSD: this slivers of SSD goodnessīest external hard drives: expand your horizonsīest external SSDs: plug in upgrades for gaming laptops and consoles Best SSD for gaming: the best solid state drives aroundīest PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming: the next gen has landed
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