Is the Samsung EVO good for gaming? Let’s cut right to the chase: absolutely, yes. In fact, for most gamers, it’s one of the best choices you can make for your PC. But that’s the short answer, and if you’re like me, you need more than that. You want to know why it’s so good and if it’s the right choice for your specific needs.
I remember the exact moment I knew I had to ditch my old spinning hard drive. I was trying to play The Witcher 3 on a PC that was, at the time, pretty decent. The game would run fine once it loaded, but getting there was agonizing. I’d hit “Continue,” go make a sandwich, eat it, and come back to my desk just in time to see the last few loading screen tips. Fast travel felt like a punishment, not a convenience. That frustration is what pushed me into the world of SSDs, and my first real taste of that speed was a Samsung EVO. It completely changed my relationship with PC gaming.
This isn’t just about a brand name. It’s about what the technology does for your day-to-day experience. Consequently, we’re going to dive deep into what makes the Samsung EVO series a powerhouse for gaming, looking at everything from raw speed and load times to the subtle ways it improves your entire system.
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What Actually Makes an SSD “Good” for Gaming?
Before we talk specifically about the EVO, it’s important to understand what we’re even looking for. For years, gamers were told that an SSD wouldn’t increase their frames per second (FPS), so it wasn’t a “true” gaming upgrade like a new graphics card. While it’s true that an SSD doesn’t directly boost your frame rate, that argument misses the entire point of the experience.
A good gaming SSD is all about eliminating bottlenecks and making the entire process of playing games smoother and more immediate. It’s about reducing friction. Think of it like this: your graphics card and CPU are the powerful engine of a race car, but the SSD is the high-performance tires and transmission that actually get that power to the road without slipping or delays.
Is it Just About Faster Load Times?
Faster load times are the most obvious benefit, and they are glorious. However, the impact of a fast SSD goes much deeper. Modern games are massive, with huge, detailed worlds. Your PC can’t hold all of that information in its active memory (RAM) at once.
Therefore, it’s constantly pulling game assets—textures, character models, sound files, map data—from your storage drive. This is called “asset streaming.” When you’re galloping across the plains in Red Dead Redemption 2, the game is rapidly loading the scenery ahead of you and unloading what’s behind you. A slow drive can’t keep up, which leads to annoying problems:
- Texture Pop-In: Have you ever seen a blurry, low-detail rock or wall suddenly snap into high resolution right in front of you? That’s your storage drive failing to load the high-quality texture in time.
- Stuttering and Hitching: In the worst cases, the game might momentarily freeze or stutter while it waits for the drive to deliver necessary data. This can be incredibly jarring and even get you killed in a fast-paced game.
A fast NVMe SSD like a Samsung EVO can feed your system data so quickly that these issues virtually disappear, leading to a much more seamless and immersive world.
How Does NVMe Technology Change the Game?
Not all SSDs are created equal. You’ve probably seen the terms “SATA” and “NVMe.” These are essentially the languages that SSDs use to talk to the rest of your computer.
SATA (Serial ATA) is an older standard, originally designed for mechanical hard drives. It’s like a single-lane country road. It’s way faster than walking (like a hard drive), but it has a clear speed limit.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express), on the other hand, was built from the ground up specifically for modern, ultra-fast flash storage. It connects directly to your motherboard’s PCIe lanes—the same super-fast connection your graphics card uses. Think of it as a 16-lane superhighway. The difference in potential speed is staggering. While a SATA SSD tops out around 550 MB/s, a modern PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, like a recent Samsung EVO, can hit speeds of over 7,000 MB/s. That’s more than ten times faster.
For gaming, this means that every request for data is fulfilled almost instantly.
My Personal Journey with the Samsung EVO Series
Talk is cheap, so let me share my own hands-on experience. As I mentioned, my gaming life was once defined by loading bars. It wasn’t just The Witcher 3; it was everything. Installing games took hours. Booting up Windows was a chore. I just accepted it as a normal part of PC life.
Why Did I Finally Ditch My Old Hard Drive?
The final straw was Fallout 4. I loved that game, but the load times when entering or leaving buildings in the dense city of Boston were brutal. Sometimes upwards of a minute or more. I was spending a significant chunk of my playtime just staring at a screen. I did some research, and everyone was raving about SSDs. The Samsung 850 EVO (a SATA model at the time) was the king, so I pulled the trigger.
The difference was not subtle. It was a night-and-day transformation. My PC booted to the desktop in under 15 seconds. Fallout 4‘s load screens were cut down to just a few seconds. It felt like I had gotten an entirely new computer. It was, without a doubt, the single most impactful upgrade I had ever made.
Upgrading to the EVO 970 Plus: What Differences Did I Actually Notice?
A few years later, I built a new PC and decided to go with an NVMe drive. I chose the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. I was skeptical that I’d feel a difference as dramatic as the first jump from a hard drive, but I was wrong again.
While the initial “wow” factor wasn’t as shocking, the whole system just felt snappier. Game installations that used to take 20 minutes on my SATA SSD were now done in five. More importantly, I started noticing the benefits in newer games that were designed with fast storage in mind. The stuttering I’d sometimes see in open-world games was completely gone. The system felt incredibly responsive, and I knew I could never go back.
Let’s Talk Real Numbers: How Do Samsung EVO Load Times Stack Up?
To give you a practical idea, I ran some informal tests on my current system, which is running a Samsung 980 Pro (the performance tier just above the EVO, but very comparable). This isn’t a sterile lab environment; this is a real-world gaming rig with background apps running, just like yours would be.
Booting Up Huge Open-World Games: What’s the Wait Time for Baldur’s Gate 3?
Loading massive, complex games is where these drives truly shine. Hitting “Continue” from the main menu and getting into the game world is a key test.
- Baldur’s Gate 3: From main menu to in-game took about 8-10 seconds.
- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty: Loading a dense city save file was consistently under 15 seconds.
- Starfield: Jumping into New Atlantis, one of the most demanding locations, took around 12-14 seconds.
On a traditional hard drive, these same loads could easily take over a minute, sometimes two. This is time you get back to actually play the game.
What About Fast Travel Inside a Game?
This, for me, is even more important than the initial load. Frequent, short loading screens can break your immersion and rhythm.
- In Spider-Man: Remastered, fast-traveling across the entire map is practically instantaneous. You see the loading screen for maybe two seconds.
- In Elden Ring, warping between distant Sites of Grace is typically a 3-5 second affair.
- In Cyberpunk 2077, using a fast travel point to jump across Night City is usually done in less than 5 seconds.
This speed keeps you “in the zone,” making the game world feel more cohesive and less like a series of disconnected levels separated by waiting. The flow of gameplay is preserved, which is a huge, often underrated, benefit.
Is a More Expensive SSD Always Better for Gaming?
This is a really important question. It’s easy to get caught up in marketing and benchmark numbers and think you need the absolute fastest, most expensive drive on the planet. For gaming, that’s rarely the case.
The EVO vs. the PRO Series: Are You Paying for Speed You Won’t Use?
Samsung typically offers its mainstream “EVO” line and its high-end “PRO” line. The PRO drives usually have higher peak read/write speeds and better endurance ratings. For a professional video editor who is constantly moving massive files, the PRO series makes a lot of sense.
However, for gaming, you hit a point of diminishing returns. Games are mostly about reading data, not writing it, and the read speeds of the modern EVO series are already so fast that even a top-tier PRO drive often provides a barely noticeable improvement in load times—we’re talking maybe a second of difference, if that. For the price difference, the Samsung EVO series almost always represents the smarter buy for a pure gaming build. You get 95% of the practical performance for a much better price.
What about DRAM Caches? Does the EVO Have What it Takes?
Here’s a slightly more technical point that’s worth understanding. Some cheaper, entry-level SSDs are “DRAM-less.” They cut costs by removing a small amount of super-fast DRAM cache from the drive. This cache acts like a map for the SSD, helping it find data quickly.
Without a DRAM cache, a drive can slow down significantly during long, sustained operations. The good news is that Samsung EVO drives have historically always included a DRAM cache. This is a key reason why they perform so consistently well and are often recommended over budget alternatives. It ensures the drive remains fast and responsive, even when you’re installing a huge 150GB game.
Beyond Load Times: How Else Does a Samsung EVO Improve Your Gaming Experience?
The benefits of a great SSD ripple out and improve many other aspects of using your PC. It’s a true quality-of-life upgrade across the board.
Does it Make Games Run Smoother with Better FPS?
Let’s be perfectly clear: installing a Samsung EVO will not take your game from 60 FPS to 90 FPS. Your frame rate is determined by your graphics card and CPU. However, as we discussed with asset streaming, it can make your frame rate more stable.
By eliminating storage-related stuttering and hitches, the SSD helps deliver a smoother perceived experience. Your “1% low” framerates—the lowest dips you experience during gameplay—will be higher and more consistent. In other words, you get fewer distracting frame drops, which makes the game feel much better to play, even if the average FPS number stays the same.
How Does it Affect Game Installation and Updates?
This is a massive one. With modern games frequently exceeding 100GB, installation times can be a real drag. An NVMe drive like a Samsung EVO can write data incredibly fast, dramatically cutting down the time from clicking “Install” to actually playing. The same goes for game updates. When a new patch for Call of Duty drops, you’ll be done patching and back in the game far faster than your friends who are still on older, slower drives.
As an educational resource, Purdue University has published interesting articles on the future of storage technology, highlighting how the industry is constantly pushing for faster and more efficient data access, which directly benefits gamers in the long run. You can explore some of that forward-looking research.
What Are the Downsides? Is There Any Reason NOT to Get a Samsung EVO for Gaming?
No product is perfect for everyone, and it’s worth being objective. While the EVO series is fantastic, there are a couple of things to consider.
First, while they offer great value, they aren’t always the absolute cheapest option. Brands like Crucial, WD, and others often have competing drives that might be slightly less expensive. For a gamer on a very tight budget, one of those might make more sense, even if it means sacrificing a small amount of performance or features like a DRAM cache.
Second, the naming scheme can sometimes be a little confusing. Between the 970 EVO Plus, 980 Pro, 990 EVO, and 990 Pro, you need to make sure you’re buying the drive you think you’re buying. Generally, a higher number is newer and faster, but it always pays to double-check the specs of the exact model you’re considering.
Ultimately, though, these are minor points. The reputation Samsung has built with its EVO line is earned. It’s a history of reliable, high-performing drives that deliver exactly what gamers need without charging for features they don’t.
So, let’s circle back to that original question. Is the Samsung EVO good for gaming? Without a shred of doubt, yes. It’s a phenomenal choice that will fundamentally improve your entire gaming experience by slashing load times, eliminating stutters, and making your whole system feel more responsive. It’s one of the few upgrades where you will feel the benefit every single time you turn on your computer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Samsung EVO good for gaming, and what are its key features?
Yes, Samsung EVO is excellent for gaming. Key features include fast NVMe speeds up to 5,000 MB/s, intelligent TurboWrite technology, smart heat control, and future-proof compatibility with PCIe 4.0 and 5.0.
Will using a faster SSD increase my in-game FPS?
No, a faster SSD typically does not increase maximum FPS, which is mainly determined by your GPU and CPU. However, it can make gameplay smoother by reducing stuttering and texture pop-in.
How does an SSD drastically reduce game load times?
An SSD reduces load times by using flash memory without moving parts, allowing it to instantly access data, unlike HDDs which have mechanical parts that cause delays in retrieving files.
Why are random read speeds more important than sequential speeds for gaming?
Random read speeds are crucial because games need to rapidly access numerous small files, such as textures and sounds, and high random read speeds ensure these files load quickly, reducing delays and improving performance.
What makes an SSD good for gaming?
A good gaming SSD should have high random read speeds to quickly access many small files, along with fast sequential speeds to handle large files, resulting in faster load times and smoother gameplay.
