Need for speed! SSHDs play a key role in enhancing desktop and laptop gaming experience

Vinoth Ramalingam - Senior Field Applications Engineer, Seagate Technology

The gaming industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and a similar trend can be seen in India in terms of its demand as well. Gaming is one of the most popular means of entertainment, and advancements in game play and genres have attracted even more consumers to this pastime.

There have been a lot of discussions about the key elements required for an efficient gaming experience. While factors such as processor chips and graphics cards are the decisive ones, storage is also one of the critical factors considered in this context, especially SSHD drives for desktops and laptops.

SSHD is a combination of a traditional HDD with an SSD, taking the best features of both worlds. The SSHD technology uses the right amount of ultra-fast NAND flash, thus increasing the performance of the system. These drives have significantly larger capacities and work more efficiently to load games more quickly. A 2TB desktop model alone can hold up to 1000 games along with 33,000 hours of music or 640,000 photos. Even with these high speed and capacity, SSHDs are far more affordable than SSDs, making them more desirable for the gamers.

Gaming performance is highly affected by the feature and capacity of the hard drives used. In order to play a game without comprising speed and quality, retrieval of data from the hard drive should be faster; this then adds stress to the RAM present on the graphic cards, from where graphical data has to be extracted and pulled into the video RAM. The hard drive essentially reduces the waiting period between levels, and SSHDs play a crucial role in providing a seamless gaming experience.

Compared to the traditional 7200 RPM desktop HDDs and 5400-RPM HDD, Seagate SSHD for desktop and laptop speeds up the system four times faster, and are more affordable than an SSD. Seagate SSHD uses a technology called Adaptive Memory to effectively identify the most frequently used data and store it in the NAND flash. This results in blazing fast boot times and a super responsive experience, making Seagate SSHD a gamers ’delight.

SSHDs offer the best speed, capacity as well as value for money. Gamers will not need to sacrifice speed for storage or storage for cost, and the solution is easy to deploy; no additional software or configuration is required. Therefore, with the collective advantages of an HDD and an SDD, SSHDs have revolutionized the gaming industry, making it faster and hence more interesting.