Solid State Hard Drive: Paging Skuzzy/Hitech!

[Tac]

With the new batch of SSD hard disks coming out with 64 to 128gb sizes they are now in the 'decent' range to purchase one for the performance kick (well, I hope!)

My system is an AMD dual core 4400 64bit with 2gb ram (soon to be 4), using Windows xp 64 bit.

I'm thinking of grabbing a 64 or a 128gb SSD to be my 'C' drive... hold the OS, the primary programs I run (mainly online games like eve, AH, lotro) and my work programs (office suite, video editing software)...

and if the SSD disk allows, run it in dual boot with UBUNTU linux.

Ill be keeping my old 500gb hard disk to store the mass of crap I have (umm.. it can be set as a slave-hard disk 'd' drive with the SSD right?)

My question is: How would an SSD drive perform? Would it be worth it? Which specs would you recomend I look for in the SSD's (I read the DDR based ones suffer from lots less problems).

[Skuzzy]

I would not use one for critical data or for a partition that is going to get written to a lot.  Over time they will fail, using the current technology available.

You will hear a lot of people defend the technology and talk about how they have used software to work around the failure modes.  I am far too conservative to be happy with these work arounds to trust my data on them.

But, for a Windows partition with no critical data, why not?  Just make sure the page file is not located on the same partition and it will probably last a very long time.

[Tac]

hmm thanks. Really I only use my pc for a couple online games, net browsing, watching movies and video editing (rarely).

I only have a partition 'cause I liked to try out UBUNTU .

No critical data. I keep all my shtuff in my ol' 500 gig hard disk.

Im not a wiz at this stuff, would there be any specs I should look for in the SSD skuzzy? To be frank I got no freaking clue which to go for. I have an ASUS a8ne so I think I have mini-pciE slots...

I see USB internal SSDs... SATA II, IDE..

Of the ones you see in newegg, which specs would be best for what I need it for?

"Just make sure the page file is not located on the same partition and it will probably last a very long time"

eh.. wut?

[LLogann]

SSD have any bearing on our game?

Perhaps a subtle decrease in load time, but anything else?

 

[Greebo]

I was wondering if an SSD would reduce or remove the little pauses you get when the game has to load a skin from the HDD. I've reduced the number of skins I load so the game doesn't have to access the HDD, but it would be nice to be able to load more.

[eagl]

Transfer rates aren't any faster than current new conventional hard drives, but seek times are nearly instantaneous.  That means that with proper buffering (ie. if the drive is designed right) any program that accesses many small files ought to feel snappier.

I dunno how AH works with loading/unloading files but it seems to make sense that the little game pauses during HD accesses ought to be reduced with an SSD.

[Delirium]

What if someone installed AH on a SSHD? AH doesn't normally write any data unless you're filming, correct?

[BaldEagl]

Your web browser is going to write to it's cache constantly so you might want to locate the browser cache on another drive.

[Chalenge]

Your money would be much better spent on a fast hard drive or save it for i7 technology. If you use Vista the G.Skill SSD is the only one that works (from experience) and the only benefit is during boot up. If you use hard drives the same way as recommended for SSDs (except put a page file on every drive) then the performance difference isnt even noticeable.

[Tac]

man talk about a jealous pc. the moment I posted this earlier today my power supply blew off.

goodbye 450W hello 650W 


Im looking into the SSD to improve performance in some games (WW2OL for example.. holy crap JABO in that game is suicide unless you have ramdrive or some insanely hyped up raid setup).

Don't know AH if it will improve or not, it works pretty well now but any boost helps

Eve online would help loads with fleet fights...

basically any game that calls a buttload of objects from the hard disk to load into memory in 'real time'.

[TilDeath]

Read manufactures forums on a lot of SSD drives.  They have a huge problem multitasking, data corrunption and obtaining the supposed specs.  Affordable drives in the 64 to 250gb range have a huge failure rate.  I would look into V-Raptor 300gb drives (note not the 150gb it too has a high failure rate) YOu could get two 300gb for a raid for the price of one good 128 or larger and still have monies to spend.

In addition, SSD drives are real funny about the MB CPU Mem combination you have, if you dont have the right setup your in for a heart ache.  Want to run those games at top speed eVGA X58 board, any i7 processor and 260 GTX Tri-SLI (3 of them) 6gb ram.  Problem solved for about 1200 and its the latest technology.  But if you really want to stick with AMD wait until mid Jan when AMD releases in newest chip and chipset.

[Chalenge]

TilDeath what about the ASUS P6T Deluxe/OC Palm LGA 1366 Intel X58? Supports Crossfire and SLI both. Not sure if its max is 12 GB RAM (would be nice if it could hit 24) or if its stable but I will be looking at this one.

[TilDeath]

TilDeath what about the ASUS P6T Deluxe/OC Palm LGA 1366 Intel X58? Supports Crossfire and SLI both. Not sure if its max is 12 GB RAM (would be nice if it could hit 24) or if its stable but I will be looking at this one.

I can't say,  I have the eVGA X58 with TRI SLI 260s and i7 965 Extreme with 12gb Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1866C9DF 1866 FSB (stock).  Ordered 5 of the X58s with 3 260s each.  eVGA had a special which they passed onto the distributors whom passed it onto us.  a little less then 900 for the board and 3 cards.  It's not the lower end 260's either, Overclocked and ready to take a little more with some configuration tunings.  Doing over 30k on 3DMark06 stock settings.  I am impressed.

If you follow the OCing world, Kingpin scored one of these boards at over 50k 3DMark06 but it is not an everyday use box. using LN for cooling CPU and GPUs.  Considering most supposed high end rigs bought from the stores and so called "boutique shops" score maybe 12k at best, and the ones you get from Best Buy, Circuit City, Newegg etc etc score maybe in the 9's (2500.00 rigs) or 5 or 7's (699.00 up), heck I build systems consistanly beating out Alienware by thousands for half the money.  IMHO you score in the 12's or better you can run any game out there including Crisis at playable framerates, the better the score the better the FR across the board.

I have a 790i FTW Board I am getting in the mid 24's 3DM06 (280GTX's SLI 4gb OCZ Q9450 V-Raptor H2O system) but still not happy with the Vantage scores to post yet for in the top ten gaming machines out there using eVGA MB and GPU's.

[TilDeath]

I found this link showing comparisons of the SSDs and also showing a V-Raptor in the comparison http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=256&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=3