For Starfield, Bethesda requires a fast SSD. A YouTuber did the cross-test and installed the game on a slow hard drive. We tell you what he found out.
Starfield takes up a lot of space on your system. To be more precise, according to the manufacturer Bethesda, it is 125 GB that the role-playing game uses on the data storage device selected for installation. If that wasn’t enough, the game developer asks you to install Starfield on an SSD.
Players without the appropriate drive now feared not being able to enjoy the game. They were forced to retrofit a suitable drive or buy a new gaming PC straight away.
A YouTuber called “RandomGaminginHD” has taken on the problem. In a video, he shows how Starfield plays if you install it on a normal hard drive.
You can see a few gameplay highlights from Starfield here in the video:
7 Starfield Gameplay Highlights You Should Know
More videos
YouTuber reveals why Starfield needs a fast SSD drive
Many AAA game developers suggest an SSD (solid state drive, flash memory) as the installation location for their newer titles. However, Bethesda is one of the first studios to require an SSD drive as part of the minimum storage requirements. The YouTuber “RandomGaminginHD” questions this and makes a self-experiment in a video.
How did the YouTuber go about it? For his test, he took a 10-year-old HDD (hard disk drive, mechanical hard disk drive) from Western Digital out of a drawer. He checked the 1 TB data carrier for errors using a diagnostic tool. According to him, the mass memory is in good condition despite 50,000 operating hours.
He then connected the drive to his computer. His system includes the following components:
Did the game have to be reinstalled for the test? Game files can be moved back and forth between different drives in Steam. “RandomGaminginHD” took advantage of this option and transferred the approximately 125 GB Starfield installation from the SSD to the HDD. This process took about 25 minutes.
RandomGaminginHD on YouTube
Different test scenarios in comparison
What gameplay elements were used for the test? In order to get meaningful comparison values, he decided to take a closer look at various aspects of the game. These are his results for in-game load times.
Loading a saved game from the main menu:
Loading time when entering / leaving a building:
Starfield is full of loading screens. Be it when entering and exiting a building or fast travel with your own spaceship. Since more details have to be loaded when changing scenes from buildings to the open game world, both data carriers take a little longer here.
How big is the impact of the hard drive on gameplay? When playing, the YouTuber regularly noticed stuttering in the millisecond range. At times, Starfield seemed to be completely frozen, which fortunately wasn’t the case. After a few seconds the game continued.
Depending on the action currently taking place on the screen, the space RPG is more or less playable from the old hard drive. In heated battles, the jerky gameplay, including unwanted pauses, isn’t exactly an advantage. This is less of a problem for less exciting tasks such as exploring planets.
When taking off from a planet with your own spaceship and the landing animation on another celestial body, weather effects are sometimes displayed very late on the monitor. For example, clouds pop out of nowhere.
What are the implications of moving to a different area? If the hard disk has loaded all data and environment details after a loading screen, the performance is better, especially in areas with a lower population density.
NPCs as performance brakes
What’s wrong with the NPCs? Curiously, encounters with NPCs in Starfield cause issues that disrupt immersive gameplay. If “RandomGaminginHD” runs towards quest givers and interlocutors in the gaming world, its screen freezes for a few seconds. When interacting with the different characters, he notices again and again that the people do not lip-synch and would do well as ventriloquists.
However, the YouTuber is not sure whether this is due to the use of the hard drive or a general problem with Starfield. Players with German voice output also report audio delays. It can be assumed that Bethesda’s role-playing game generally has a technical construction site.
In summary, “RandomGaminginHD” would not call the game completely unplayable on an HDD hard drive. However, it could be very frustrating to play on a low-end PC with less performance and then be slowed down by a slow HDD. This would make the gameplay experience a very negative experience.
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