Solid State Drive (media applications / gaming)

[nanikore]

I got one of those extreme edition chips on a crossfired setup w/ 1066 DDR2 memory, and it's really obvious (at least in the Vista rating) that the one thing that's bottlenecking the whole setup is the hard disk.

So I'm kind of in the market for a SSD, but I'm just wondering maybe the price would drop a bit since they're a bit steep right now. I'm on the fence on this.

The deal I'm looking right now is on a 64Gb Gskill on Newegg for $134 Freeshipping (need code EMCLPPM56 ) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231220&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL033109&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL033109-_-SolidStateDisk-_-LE4A-_-20231220

The review on this drive is pretty good, it has better write speed than Intel's X-25 http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1418&pageID=5864

I'm not sure about pulling the trigger. For one thing I'm "kind of" out of money after uh... spending a lot on the rig already.

Should I wait? Are there better deals out there right now? I'm curious. I know that everything would drop eventually, just don't know how long I have to wait.

[kyzen]

SSD prices will steadily be coming down for the next several years - your call on when to pull the trigger :)

Personally I'm waiting for a pair of decent quality 60GB+ drives @ < $90 each to RAID for speed and toss my OS and one or two games on.

[aquaman tq]

how does gskill compare to patriot?

theres a patriot extreme 64gb for 145 http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=12205&t=1278179

[radford]

I got one of those extreme edition chips on a crossfired setup w/ 1066 DDR2 memory, and it's really obvious (at least in the Vista rating) that the one thing that's bottlenecking the whole setup is the hard disk.

So I'm kind of in the market for a SSD, but I'm just wondering maybe the price would drop a bit since they're a bit steep right now. I'm on the fence on this.

The deal I'm looking right now is on a 64Gb Gskill on Newegg for $134 Freeshipping (need code EMCLPPM56 ) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231220&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL033109&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL033109-_-SolidStateDisk-_-LE4A-_-20231220

The review on this drive is pretty good, it has better write speed than Intel's X-25 http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1418&pageID=5864

I'm not sure about pulling the trigger. For one thing I'm "kind of" out of money after uh... spending a lot on the rig already.

Should I wait? Are there better deals out there right now? I'm curious. I know that everything would drop eventually, just don't know how long I have to wait.

Yeah those load times are really annoying for games. I would get something if it was decent and cheap. I was thinking about a SSD when some cheapo deals were posted a while ago but posters said they were really flawed, really slow with some chores. Im talking about the ones that were really cheap.

[gremlin190]

The OCZ vertex's are some really good drives. They are constantly improving them with firmware updates and their forums are really helpful. Anandtech had really good things to say about them and has a review. Also, OCZ is coming out with TRIM support for Vista which will help the drives in the long run

SSD drives are still in there infancy. However, unless you mind tweaking your system a little they really aren't an issue. I ended up getting two 30gb drives and raid them for 60gb of storage.


Anandtech Review
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535&p=2

OCZ Forum
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186

Newegg for 129.99 for 30 gigs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393

[radford]

The OCZ vertex's are some really good drives. They are constantly improving them with firmware updates and their forums are really helpful. Anandtech had really good things to say about them and has a review. Also, OCZ is coming out with TRIM support for Vista which will help the drives in the long run

SSD drives are still in there infancy. However, unless you mind tweaking your system a little they really aren't an issue. I ended up getting two 30gb drives and raid them for 60gb of storage.


Anandtech Review
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535&p=2

OCZ Forum
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186

Newegg for 129.99 for 30 gigs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393


Theres a maximum number of writes for the chips? One guy says that in a review at Newegg. He says some new chips are coming out next year which last 10x longer I think.

Its still really expensive per gig so I expect it to be subjectively super duper fast. Does it feel super duper fast? You know with VIsta snapping on screen almost instantaneously and game loading noticeably much faster than before?

[gremlin190]

Theres a maximum number of writes for the chips? One guy says that in a review at Newegg. He says some new chips are coming out next year which last 10x longer I think.

Its still really expensive per gig so I expect it to be subjectively super duper fast. Does it feel super duper fast? You know with VIsta snapping on screen almost instantaneously and game loading noticeably much faster than before?

Yes, It does feel super duper fast.

You know the vista ball screen on boot up
After it shows that, i see my desktop and can immediately open IE7
Sometimes even faster then the nic can get a ip address.

The startup programs all load instantly and the sidebar appears instantly.

I skipped the current generations of the raptor, but I can tell you I had 2 raptors raid0 before and they were pretty fast, but not even close to what these drives can do.

[radford]

Yes, It does feel super duper fast.

You know the vista ball screen on boot up
After it shows that, i see my desktop and can immediately open IE7
Sometimes even faster then the nic can get a ip address.

The startup programs all load instantly and the sidebar appears instantly.

I skipped the current generations of the raptor, but I can tell you I had 2 raptors raid0 before and they were pretty fast, but not even close to what these drives can do.

It sounds great except for the price per gig. I have two other questions.

One has to do with defragging. One poster at Newegg says you cant use a regular defragger or it will ruin you SSD. What does he mean by that? Will permanently ruin your SSD??

The other thing is theres a lot of complaints about many other SSDs in terms of using various programs at once or writing lots of data to the disk while simultaneously doing something else. Are there still problems in that area? It sounds like the OCZ has far less problems than many of the earlier drives but I want to know if its still limited in various chores unlike a conventional HD.

[Lyuokdea]

The point is that defragging an SSD is pointless. Disks are defragmented so that the right head doesn't have to spin around to random parts of the disk to pick up the different pieces of data. An SSD has no moving parts, and thus, there is no impact to the disk being fragmented.

Thus at best, defragging an SSD is completely useless. However, there are three other problems.

1.) A defragmented SSD will have all the data on high usage files sitting at the same part of the disk. Defrag software is made this way so that it puts the high usage data on the outer edge of the disk, where more can be accessed per revolution. However, for an SSD, this leads to heating of a specific part of the disk, which could cause damage, if the same area of the disk gets much hotter than the rest. For most SSDs this is probably a minor concern though, because it shouldn't get that hot.

2.) Having all the data on the same part of the disk limits speed, because the SSD gets it's speed from the many independent sections of the disk that can be accessed simultaneously.

3.) defragging often will lead to multiple writes on the disk, which is bad for a lot of reasons. It both slows down writes to the disk tremendously (this is due to a trick in how data is erased from an SSD). It also can damage the disk over time.

Currently, the best use of an ssd is to put the operating system independently on that drive, and keep a fast hdd for things that you are frequently writing (all your user files, temporary internet files, etc.) This keeps the main operating system ridiculously fast (because operating systems require millions of small reads), and prevents the SSD from slowing down over time.

~Lyuokdea

[radford]

The point is that defragging an SSD is pointless. Disks are defragmented so that the right head doesn't have to spin around to random parts of the disk to pick up the different pieces of data. An SSD has no moving parts, and thus, there is no impact to the disk being fragmented.

Thus at best, defragging an SSD is completely useless. However, there are three other problems.

1.) A defragmented SSD will have all the data on high usage files sitting at the same part of the disk. Defrag software is made this way so that it puts the high usage data on the outer edge of the disk, where more can be accessed per revolution. However, for an SSD, this leads to heating of a specific part of the disk, which could cause damage, if the same area of the disk gets much hotter than the rest. For most SSDs this is probably a minor concern though, because it shouldn't get that hot.

2.) Having all the data on the same part of the disk limits speed, because the SSD gets it's speed from the many independent sections of the disk that can be accessed simultaneously.

3.) defragging often will lead to multiple writes on the disk, which is bad for a lot of reasons. It both slows down writes to the disk tremendously (this is due to a trick in how data is erased from an SSD). It also can damage the disk over time.

Currently, the best use of an ssd is to put the operating system independently on that drive, and keep a fast hdd for things that you are frequently writing (all your user files, temporary internet files, etc.) This keeps the main operating system ridiculously fast (because operating systems require millions of small reads), and prevents the SSD from slowing down over time.

~Lyuokdea

But nothing will happen to it right? Some of the posts made it seem like it would permanently damage the SSD. I was just worried I might mix it up with another disk and defrag it. Obviously it seems like if that were the case , there would be some big warning with it.

This is one thing that would be really interesting to get for a PC. It would be nice to have two of them but the gig per dollar ratio isnt that great yet. Still , its getting low enough and it sounds like the major problems that plagued the SSDs selling for a reasonable price a while ago are now gone.

I checked out a video of some guy who demonstrated how fast it was at opening his programs up , it was much faster but I thought for some reason everything would just blast on the screen in 1 second.

[jtibble]

I checked out a video of some guy who demonstrated how fast it was at opening his programs up , it was much faster but I thought for some reason everything would just blast on the screen in 1 second.

You have to remember that the speed of even an SSD is incredibly slow compared to the processor. A 1ms read time will let the processor do 3 million instructions before the data arrives if it is running at 3Ghz... which is an eternity to the processor. Granted, it will help a lot for many applications, but any time you miss on your cache and DRAM, the information takes ages to come off the disk/drive.

[landoncube]

I wonder what the max ssd memory an eee pc 900 can swallow.

Maybe 128G?