The PS5 and Xbox Series X are determined by SSDs. That may sound like a bold claim, but I'm not the first to make that claim. Both Sony and Microsoft have said the same thing, not to mention the legions of fans, developers, and analysts who have started preaching the SSD gospel. With powerful internal SSDs, next-generation game consoles will load games faster than ever before, with greater levels, more detailed graphics, and better frame rates. [But what exactly is an SSD, and can an SSD do these things? These high-tech hard drives have been around since the late 70s, but only began to appear in gaming consoles around 2007 PC gamers have long touted the usefulness of SSDs, but mainstream gaming consoles have never adopted them due to their prohibitive cost

and have never been adopted in mainstream gaming consoles

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Now, SSDs are more affordable and powerful than ever, and the console industry plans to take full advantage of them; continue reading to learn more about how SSDs work and why they can help console games run much faster than ever. Read on to find out how SSDs work and why they can help console games run much faster than ever before.

A solid state drive (SSD) is a type of hard drive with no moving parts. A really, really reasonable description of how a computer works: every operation on a computer, whether typing a word or rendering a game level, requires data to be transferred from one place to another. For this reason, a faster CPU with multiple cores is more efficient. However, CPUs cannot process all the information on a computer at once, so they rely on memory (RAM) to hold relevant data in a cache that can be accessed immediately.

Since the CPU and RAM cannot (and need not) access everything instantly, the remaining data must be stored somewhere when not in use; a place where the CPU and RAM can store the data long term so that it can be recalled when needed. Naturally, some processes are more loaded than others. This is why the CPU and RAM barely blink when Notepad is open, but start up Assassin's Creed Odyssey and it runs at full speed.

Traditional hard disk drives contain a variety of moving parts, such as spinning magnetic plates and tiny needles. To access the data, the plates rotate until the needle reads the correct location, much like a record player. As anyone who has owned a traditional hard disk drive knows, they are noisy, slow, and prone to failure over time. [SSDs, on the other hand, operate entirely by electrical signals, because they don't need disks, needles, or magnets, relying instead on what is called "flash memory." Flash memory is a fast and efficient storage method that has traditionally been used in thumb drives and smartphones, but was not practical or cost-effective for larger machines with more powerful hard drives. Over the past decade or so, however, SSDs have become nearly as expensive as HDDs.

To summarize the very complex process, SSDs function like RAM, if RAM stores data indefinitely. Information is transferred via electrical signals rather than magnetic disks, making transfers faster and more reliable. Unlike traditional RAM, however, SSDs do not constantly retrieve and purge data. Instead, SSDs store data permanently and can exchange information with RAM in the same way that traditional HDDs do.

To summarize: SSDs are faster than traditional hard disk drives because they transfer information electronically without moving parts. This is especially true when the SSD is writing to a brand new, empty data repository, but the speed slows down considerably later in the day when it becomes necessary to overwrite older data.

SSDs load data faster and more reliably, not to mention being quieter. The only question is whether SSDs can really deliver the tremendous performance gains that the PS5 and Xbox Series X are touting. The short answer is a resounding "maybe."

For example: e.g., when Mark Cerny gave a technical breakdown of the PS5, he claimed that Sony's next-generation system can process 5.5 GB/sec, compared to the PS4's hard drive at 100 MB/sec. The PS4's HDD is quite old and the PS5's SSD is state-of-the-art. Even taking into account that the PS4's HDD is quite old and the PS5's SSD is state-of-the-art, this is more than 500 times faster and seems like a difficult claim to back up.

While we cannot directly compare the two, we can find out from Digital Foundry how much faster SSDs can speed up games. When compared to a high-end HDD, even a cheap SSD can potentially reduce game load times by 60%, according to Digital Foundry's measurements. High-end SSDs could potentially be even faster. At present, however, even the most powerful SSDs can only process about 3.5 GB/second, which is still far short of Sony's claim.

From a practical standpoint, this means significantly faster loading times for next-generation titles and seamless transitions between levels. (Theoretically, it is also possible to use more demanding textures and smoother frame rates, but these are hard to tell without actually playing the game.) To demonstrate this point, watch the two videos embedded below.

The first video is by Microsoft and shows how fast the Xbox Series X can load the same game (State of Decay 2) compared to the Xbox One: Rift Apart. In this trailer, Ratchet and Clank jump through a dimensional portal, completely demolish an old level, and load a new level in seconds:

However, there are two important factors to consider: first, the PS5 and Xbox Series X are more powerful than the models currently on the market SSDs. (Second, the PS5 and Xbox Series X can be customized with both hardware and software surrounding the SSD. Consumer-grade SSDs must be generalized to work with any computer. Microsoft and Sony could optimize and streamline SSDs for gaming consoles, potentially making them faster than the raw numbers suggest.

On the other hand, SSDs do not exist in a vacuum; even if the PS5's hard drive is 550 times faster than the PS4's, it does not necessarily mean that games will load 550 times faster. There are many bottlenecks in the process - CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. - and each game uses system resources differently; in the case of PS4 and Xbox One backward compatible games, the situation is also complicated because they were designed for completely different systems.

Generally speaking, the SSDs on the PS5 and Xbox Series X will be significantly faster than the HDDs on the PS4 and Xbox One. However, until we actually play some games, we will not know how much faster they will be, or how much the speed will vary from game to game.

Will the SSDs in the PS5 and Xbox Series X revolutionize gaming forever? Microsoft and Sony could surprise us at any time, but it seems too early to tell; SSDs have made PC gaming much faster and smoother than before, but they have not reduced loading times to mere seconds. Like many other advances in the computer world, SSDs are an incremental improvement, albeit a very significant one compared to traditional hard drives.

Still, seven years after the PS4 and Xbox One, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X will be huge leaps forward over their predecessors, even if their benefits are mild compared to gaming PCs. It's time for console gamers to abandon the magnetic disk and embrace the wonders of flash memory to see what the hard disk can do.