this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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That's not always the case. Some games stream in assets as you play so you might get bad pop-in or freezes. Forza Horizon 5 was nearly unplayable on an HDD for me, because the map couldn't load in fast enough while driving quickly. No issues after reinstalling it on an SSD.
I heard Subnautica runs like ass on a HDD. I haven't tested it myself though.
I'm playing Subnautica on a HDD and have no issues whatsoever.
When I played Subnautica on a HDD during Early Access the pop-in was unbearably bad, but optimizations during development fixed the worst of it. The removal of digging and terrain modification alone basically solved pop-in for most areas - the mushroom forest was still pretty bad, but they also patched that later in development.
Initial load-in will likely take a while though. It took a few minutes to get into the game from the main menu the last time I had it installed to a HDD.
Lots of people did (and still do) play Forza on an Xbox one which uses an HDD, and back when I did as well the game ran just fine
Young me got that lesson when trying to play ARMA 2 on a 5400RPM HDD. It would run 60FPS if I didn't move but as soon as I started moving the game started stuttering. When I installed it on a 7200RPM HDD the game no longer had any performance issues.
It all comes down to what specs the game was designed for and I imagine most modern open world games are designed for SSD-s. Putting them on HDDs will absolutely have a negative effect.