Um, upgrade the 8800GT? SSD's are a waste of money unless you're already sitting on an i5/i7 quad core and at least a HD 5850.
OK, I will spell out the logic. For the average user, the increase in performance of going from your standard "fast" HDD (i.e. 7200RPM 1TB HDD, properly optimized, not even talking Velociraptor), is not worth the money unless you've got a lot of it burning a hole in your pocket and have nothing else to upgrade. In the case of the OP, who lists in his sig a Q6600 and 8800GT, I would first upgrade the 8800GT to a 5850 and then the Q6600 to an i5 750 (or similar CPU) before thinking about dropping at least $250 on a decent SSD.what? what does having an i7 or 5850 have to do with an ssd being a waste?
OK, I will spell out the logic. For the average user, the increase in performance of going from your standard "fast" HDD (i.e. 7200RPM 1TB HDD, properly optimized, not even talking Velociraptor), is not worth the money unless you've got a lot of it burning a hole in your pocket and have nothing else to upgrade. In the case of the OP, who lists in his sig a Q6600 and 8800GT, I would first upgrade the 8800GT to a 5850 and then the Q6600 to an i5 750 (or similar CPU) before thinking about dropping at least $250 on a decent SSD.
And he may not need the video card or CPU upgrade either, hence I mentioned average user. SSD's are mostly hype, and the average user won't see a big difference, as the difference is on the scale of a few ms. My 160GB G2 (which cost a pretty penny and is one of the fastest SSD's out there) is very fast. But so were the 1TB Caviar Blacks I had before it. From a bang-for-your-buck view, buying an SSD for a desktop is not a good idea. For other applications, such as in a laptop (where the HDD's are painfully slow), they're great. On that note, the minute Intel or another company releases a decently fast 1.8" form factor SSD that supports TRIM, I'm buying it for my XT2. I think a good point there is that the decision to upgrade depends primarily on what the user does with the computer. If you are constantly accessing the disk for retrieval (with any number of programs), an SSD might be a good investment.what if he doesnt game? ssds are the biggest performance jump we have had in a while. If he is an average user going from a q6600 to an i5 is a waste. He wont notice the difference.
im surprised you state that coming from an ssd user
They look great, but $500 for a 160 gig, and they have compatability problems with XP (so I have read)good stuff and I agree. Im sure once ssds mature more down the road we will see the true potential they have