Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - HDD vs SSHD Load Time Comparison

The video is sped up 3 times. Tests are done 4 times to show how SSHD caching actually speeds up the load times. HDD: Seagate BarraCuda 2.5" 1TB (ST1000LM035) SSHD: Seagate FireCuda 2.5" 2TB (ST2000LX001) Full PC specs below: MSI H310I-Pro Intel i5-8400 2.8GHz (4.0 GHz boost) Klevv Bolt DDR4 3000MHz 2x8GB Zotac RTX 2070 Mini Team M8FP2 240GB (OS drive) I always doubt SSHD performance in that it only gives a really marginal read performance boost over traditional HDD. Although this is mostly true for 3.5" drives which mostly run on 7,200 RPM speed, the performance boost may be bigger for 2.5" drives especially in games, as they mostly run on 5,400 RPM speed. Seagate claims their FireCuda drives can provide up to 450% performance increase over traditional 5,400 RPM drives and it does seem to be true to the extent that it's making a worthwhile purchase. However, 7,200 RPM drives can offer more consistent and faster load times and SSDs are cheaper nowadays and way even faster. So who's still going to need this SSHD then? Although SSDs are getting cheaper, they're still not a good choice if you need an extra storage space without spending significantly more money as 1TB SSDs still cost a lot. Or if you're having form factor constraint in which you can only fit 2.5" drives but not 3.5" drives. This is mostly true for consoles (eg. PS4 and Xbox One), laptops, or small form-factor PCs. As traditional 2.5" drives are just really slow in general, a 2.5" SSHD can actually help speeding up load times for your most frequently used games and applications.