SSD, worth it?

[octopus41092]

I was thinking of getting a small SSD drive for my OS, and maybe the games I play the most. I was thinking of getting a 64GB.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231220

Then using my current 750GB as a storage and for my games. How much performance gain will I see? Would I be better off just getting a 150GB 10k drive?

Anyone have experience with both 10k drives and SSD?

 

[taltamir]

only worthwhile SSDs are:
OCZ vertex (budget)
Intel X25 (M or E).

Anything else falls short of a velociraptor. but those two are quite worthwhile... although I am a bit weary about the vertex, with its many firmware reivisions... it just doesn't seem all that "finished" yet.

 

[deanx0r]

I think the current crop of SATA SSD are severely limited by their interface. I was reading about the Fusion-Io/Io-Extreme which are SSD with PCIe interface, and their IOP performance are way beyond what the best SATA SSD can offer.

Text

Large 64-K packets

* 730 MB/s random read
* 630 MB/s random write

4-K packets, random

* IOPS in excess of 102,000 reads per second
* IOPS in excess of 101,000 writes per second

1-kB packet, random

* IOPS in excess of 140,000 reads per second
* IOPS in excess of 115,000 writes per second

Medusa Labs Test Tool Suite proprietary testing software:

4-K or smaller packets, sequential

* 141,000 IOPS for read
* 110,000 IOPS for write

50/50 mix reads and writes on 4-K or smaller packets, sequential

* More than 101,000 IOPS

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: octopus41092
SSD, worth it?

In a laptop environment it may be "worth it" to move to an SSD drive.
In the desktop environment it's not "worth it" at this point in SSD evolution.
Ask again in a year and the picture may be different.

 

[imported_jed]

Originally posted by: Blain
In a laptop environment it may be "worth it" to move to an SSD drive.

May be worth it in a laptop?? A good SSD will transform your laptop in a way that almost no other upgrade currently can. It's like going from 128MB to 2GB of RAM - the difference is that substantial. Yeah, a good SSD like the Intel is expensive, but I bet you've spent that much or more on processor upgrades that didn't make anywhere near this much difference.

To the OP, I'd avoid that drive in your link. And yes, in a desktop, where 10k drives are easily available, the performance difference will be smaller, but the Intel drives (and the Vertex, although I'm skittish of OCZ and their required 'tweaks') will still mop the floor with them.

If the budget rules out the Intel, you could look for a small SLC drive like this Samsung. Performance will be much better than a Velociraptor in some cases, and somewhat worse in others. I think that for average day to day tasks as a boot drive, you'd still come out ahead, and have a low power, cool, silent drive rather than a 10k platter spinning away.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: jed

Originally posted by: Blain
In a laptop environment it may be "worth it" to move to an SSD drive.

May be worth it in a laptop??

Yes... "may" be worth it.
It all depends on the individual's preference, needs and finances.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Where's the Summit that was in the Anandtech review???

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: taltamir
only worthwhile SSDs are:
OCZ vertex (budget)
Intel X25 (M or E).

Anything else falls short of a velociraptor. but those two are quite worthwhile... although I am a bit weary about the vertex, with its many firmware reivisions... it just doesn't seem all that "finished" yet.

Then there is the issue of the OCZ Vertex SSD needing to be aligned (whatever that means).

 

[boomhower]

Originally posted by: Just learning

Originally posted by: taltamir
only worthwhile SSDs are:
OCZ vertex (budget)
Intel X25 (M or E).

Anything else falls short of a velociraptor. but those two are quite worthwhile... although I am a bit weary about the vertex, with its many firmware reivisions... it just doesn't seem all that "finished" yet.

Then there is the issue of the OCZ Vertex SSD needing to be aligned (whatever that means).

All SSD's need to be "aligned" if using them in XP. Its really not a big deal except in low end drives. The whole point was to help stop stuttering, which is not an issue with the Vertex drives. Vista and W7 "align" them close enough.

I am with taltamir's assessment. I have a notebook and tried a Core 2. The stuttering drove me crazy. The G.Skill you linked to is also prone to stuttering. It is not supposed to be as bad as the Core 2 but it is still the POS J.Micron controller. I would advise against it.

 

[Thor86]

Anyone have first hand experience with the Corsair SSDs? I believey they use Samsung controller and ics, so no crappy J-Micron stuttering. Also they come with 32mb cache and 120GB size. So tempted to get two of these things and RAID-0 them.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: boomhower

Originally posted by: Just learning

Originally posted by: taltamir
only worthwhile SSDs are:
OCZ vertex (budget)
Intel X25 (M or E).

Anything else falls short of a velociraptor. but those two are quite worthwhile... although I am a bit weary about the vertex, with its many firmware reivisions... it just doesn't seem all that "finished" yet.

Then there is the issue of the OCZ Vertex SSD needing to be aligned (whatever that means).

All SSD's need to be "aligned" if using them in XP. Its really not a big deal except in low end drives. The whole point was to help stop stuttering, which is not an issue with the Vertex drives. Vista and W7 "align" them close enough.

I am with taltamir's assessment. I have a notebook and tried a Core 2. The stuttering drove me crazy. The G.Skill you linked to is also prone to stuttering. It is not supposed to be as bad as the Core 2 but it is still the POS J.Micron controller. I would advise against it.

technically they don't NEED alignment, alignment just improves performance on ALL SSD drives... and I read that in some rare cases you might benefit from manually aligning a spindle drive filesystem as well

Technically its impossible to NOT align a filesystem to SOMETHING, the question aligning it to WHAT. aligning it incorrectly (which is what all current OS' do for SSDs) costs performance. And windows 7 will supposedly correctly align SSDs in the future.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: Thor86
Anyone have first hand experience with the Corsair SSDs? I believey they use Samsung controller and ics, so no crappy J-Micron stuttering. Also they come with 32mb cache and 120GB size. So tempted to get two of these things and RAID-0 them.

I was looking at those earlier today. Tiger Direct has a 128 GB for $329 less 5% cash back. Looks pretty good

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: boomhower

Originally posted by: Just learning

Originally posted by: taltamir
only worthwhile SSDs are:
OCZ vertex (budget)
Intel X25 (M or E).

Anything else falls short of a velociraptor. but those two are quite worthwhile... although I am a bit weary about the vertex, with its many firmware reivisions... it just doesn't seem all that "finished" yet.

Then there is the issue of the OCZ Vertex SSD needing to be aligned (whatever that means).

All SSD's need to be "aligned" if using them in XP. Its really not a big deal except in low end drives. The whole point was to help stop stuttering, which is not an issue with the Vertex drives. Vista and W7 "align" them close enough.

I am with taltamir's assessment. I have a notebook and tried a Core 2. The stuttering drove me crazy. The G.Skill you linked to is also prone to stuttering. It is not supposed to be as bad as the Core 2 but it is still the POS J.Micron controller. I would advise against it.

I thought OCZ Vertex needed to be "aligned" with Vista also?

 

[taltamir]

you thought right. Vista aligns an SSD partition as if it is a spindle partition, resulting in a performance loss. Win7 will align it correctly, eventually (it doesn't yet).
You can manually align it before installing windows by creating the partition with a third party tool.

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: taltamir
you thought right. Vista aligns an SSD partition as if it is a spindle partition, resulting in a performance loss. Win7 will align it correctly, eventually (it doesn't yet).
You can manually align it before installing windows by creating the partition with a third party tool.

Do you have to do this "aligning" with the Intel X-25 SSD also?

 

[Pembar]

I bought a 60GB vertex last week, being paranoid because of the new technology, I read quite a bit on what to do on the OCZ Technology forums. Flashed the drive (new 1275 firmware came out two days before I received my drive), realigned it and popped it in. I had to reinstall windows xp twice, not too sure what went wrong the first time round, installed all necessary drivers, did more tweaking and viola.

Based on my usage the past weekend (Usage of my computer is limited to watching movies, WoW, and surfing), I have to say that it is indeed the best upgrade I've made. I encountered "some" stuttering, but that's under certain configurations on my computer, for example, if I have my eSATA drive plugged in, for some reason it stutters often. But when I take it out, it works perfectly fine. Bootup time is almost non-existant, and WoW loads up within 5 secs. I don't regret the purchase, yet. =)

Quick System Specs:
Intel E6600
Asus P5K-E WIFI Motherboard
2x2GB GSkill 800
Sapphire 4850HD 512GB

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Just learning

Originally posted by: taltamir
you thought right. Vista aligns an SSD partition as if it is a spindle partition, resulting in a performance loss. Win7 will align it correctly, eventually (it doesn't yet).
You can manually align it before installing windows by creating the partition with a third party tool.

Do you have to do this "aligning" with the Intel X-25 SSD also?

Have to? no, you don't have to align ANY drive manually.. it does benefit ANY AND ALL SSD drives.

technically ALL drives are "aligned", windows (and linux too actually) just aligns SSDs OF ALL KINDS (yes, even the intel drive) as if they were a regular spindle drive (aka, incorrectly) resulting in a performance loss.

So when someone says you need to align your SSD they mean manually align it correctly for an SSD. if you manually align your intel X25 correctly it will perform even better than the reviews (since the review sites don't manually align their drives)

The release version of windows 7 promises to correctly align SSD partitions it creates for an SSD eliminating that performance loss.

 

[aka1nas]

Are you sure about Vista, Talt? I was under the impression that it was only XP that did not align SSDs correctly and both Vista and Windows 7 were already fine.

 

[taltamir]

This is only what I have read. from what I have read windows 7 will EVENTUALLY align ssds correctly, but does not yet... and windows vista does not align them correctly (and will not?).

 

[aka1nas]

Weird. I know that at least Vista and Windows 7 do a better job of alignment than XP. Maybe there is an even more optimized alignment setting that should be used for SSDs.

 

[zlejedi]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Are you sure about Vista, Talt? I was under the impression that it was only XP that did not align SSDs correctly and both Vista and Windows 7 were already fine.

From what i know Vista aligns semi properly to 1024 which is fine for all controlers (whether they need 64,128,256 or 512 aligment) but doing it on your own might be slightly better.

I didn't mess with Vista default aligment and my Warp v2 is close to being maxed which is good result considering crappy SB600 i use.

It's only XP that makes extremly bad aligment of 63 which will kill SSD performance.

 

[alcoholbob]

From anand's review jmicron-based SSDs (which is like what, 99% of all SSDs?) have terrible latency and can be slower than 4200RPM spindle drives when it comes to multitasking.

But for power saving, I suppose you can do SSD, as long as you realize the performance limitations.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Astrallite
From anand's review jmicron-based SSDs (which is like what, 99% of all SSDs?) have terrible latency and can be slower than 4200RPM spindle drives when it comes to multitasking.

But for power saving, I suppose you can do SSD, as long as you realize the performance limitations.

some ssds have higher power consumption that some hdds

 

[dparson]

OP, it seems that all reviewers agree a good SSD makes a significant improvement in a system's performance. After reading all the great articles here and going through OCZ's forums, I've decided to try a 120GB OCZ Vertex in my Thinkpad T61p laptop. I'm going to do some of the tweaks mentioned in the OCZ support forums including the partition aligning and OS tweaks to minimize random writes, but only just for fun. The good SSD's are so fast (according to all the reviewers) that without tweaking they're still far quicker than standard hard drives. I'll know for sure around 4/16.

Operating system tweaks for good SSD are outlined here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum....showthread.php?t=53756

The OCZ community also has tweaks for the bad SSD's to apparently correct the stuttering issues Anand detailed in his reviews:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum....showthread.php?t=50050

 

[pjkenned]

Originally posted by: deanx0r
I think the current crop of SATA SSD are severely limited by their interface. I was reading about the Fusion-Io/Io-Extreme which are SSD with PCIe interface, and their IOP performance are way beyond what the best SATA SSD can offer.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I believe Fusion IO is using an internal raid 5 configuration. So it would be more equivalent to if you stuck a few desktop SSD drives in raid 5 on a hardware raid controller.