How does installing a SSD affect the games performance?

[Azper]

Your load times will improve, sure, but for any instance you'll still wait around for everyone else without an SSD to load in as usual. So if you get one, make sure you're getting it for the right reasons.

[Zumi]

It will not help you dodge red circles in game. Because at that point everything is loaded into the ram weather you dodge or not is more dependent on your connection. You will have to wait for dungeons and trials for everyone else to load. But if you want to change zones when teleporting faster it would help with that.

[Zfz]

I played the Beta on a 7200rpm HDD and now play with the whole system on SSD. The load times for crossing zones definitely improved, but I don't feel any difference in actual gameplay. And in case you didn't know, during beta the game had a slower tick so many many people were having trouble dodging AoE because they'd be outside of the red zone for half to a full second and still get hit. I never had that problem.

I would recommend an SSD for any of these reasons:

• You have a liquid-cooled or otherwise super quiet system and the sound of your HDD motor spinning and the head moving around is driving you nuts.
• Your system (doesn't include peripherals like display, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc.) is costing you more than USD$1000. Then why not. Might as well go the extra mile.
• You spend a lot of time on your computer, not necessarily just playing FFXIV:ARR. You will feel the SSD improvement the most in non-gaming related usage scenarios.
• You are at least putting the whole operating system on the SSD, and you will buy a big enough SSD that will hold all of your most frequently used stuff. My 120GB ended up not enough for my broad interests and now I run a 500GB SSD.
• You have already decided to buy a new disk, just trying to decide between HDD and SSD, and you don't mind the price difference.

[Gilraen]

Honestly, you'd get just as much of a performance boost from a hybrid as you would an SSD, and at a better $=G ratio to boot. Upgrading your OS should always be one of the last things you upgrade, especially if it's Windows. Especially if it's TO Windows...

[Lumidus]

For how much loading you do with scenes and zones. Its worth it. I put ffxiv and windows on the SSD and everything else on the HDD