Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Rich46yo on November 30, 2013, 08:05:41 AM
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I dont know whether to buy one, what kind to buy, is it worth it,what size, whatever?
What are the Pros and Cons for upgrading a desktop now?
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I dont know whether to buy one, what kind to buy, is it worth it,what size, whatever?
What are the Pros and Cons for upgrading a desktop now?
If you want your application start times, OS bootup times etc. to be significantly faster then you should get one for an OS / application drive. I suggest reading reviews on any model you plan to buy. I would probably buy a Samsung 840 EVO series 500Gb model right now, they're in bargain price right now: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E3W1726?tag=hardfocom-20
Read the buyer reviews, that gives you an idea on what kind of change you can expect!
If you're building a new desktop and don't have any old hdd:s for general storage I would advice to get a cheap 2-4Tb regular hdd on the side for videos, pictures etc.
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If, on the other hand, you'd like to go for a leak or pour yourself another nice cup of coffee while your computer or a single program is loading, a regular hard drive can well be fast enough. After all, if you can save, say, five minutes a day because of shorter startup times during the time you're awake, how would you use that time? You probably aren't allowed to leave your job 2 1/2 minutes earlier, nor would going to bed that much earlier make you feel more rested the next morning.
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If, on the other hand, you'd like to go for a leak or pour yourself another nice cup of coffee while your computer or a single program is loading, a regular hard drive can well be fast enough. After all, if you can save, say, five minutes a day because of shorter startup times during the time you're awake, how would you use that time? You probably aren't allowed to leave your job 2 1/2 minutes earlier, nor would going to bed that much earlier make you feel more rested the next morning.
Depends if you like waiting. For me, any amount of waiting is a wait too much.
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Here's couple articles about SSDs published this year. Good to read customer reviews too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404258,00.asp)
Did a lot of research before purchasing mine from Newegg on sale in 2010.
It's an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD with firmware updated this year. I really like it.
My personal preference is to install the operating system and drivers plus games I'm actively playing on the SSD.
Other applications are installed on a 750GB 7200rpm HDD. Media and backups go on a 1.5TB HDD.
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That the thing. I have read many reports from gamers that their start times didnt change much, if at all, after going to SSDs. Others say they have.
I understand the technology and the physics behind the SSDs, well both types actually, but are there other bottlenecks in the data Bus that can make the SSDs unattractive for the price point right now? And they arent cheap.
I do feel one will be my next upgrade but right now Im trying to separate fact from non fact. Thanks for the replies.
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That the thing. I have read many reports from gamers that their start times didnt change much, if at all, after going to SSDs. Others say they have.
I understand the technology and the physics behind the SSDs, well both types actually, but are there other bottlenecks in the data Bus that can make the SSDs unattractive for the price point right now? And they arent cheap.
I do feel one will be my next upgrade but right now Im trying to separate fact from non fact. Thanks for the replies.
Fastest SSD you can get at the moment connects directly to the PCI-E. There's a new cheap model available too: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/visiontek-data-fusion-pcie-ssd-review-480gb/
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rich it basically comes down to is it worth to you to spend 200 bucks to get an ssd just so windows can open in 5 seconds instead of 30. or have ah open in one second instead of 5. you have a pretty fast computer so it basically comes down to that. you wont see any better colors or graphics.
semp
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can SSDs info be extracted if normal access methods fail.
ie, on a HDD if the drive fails, the disks still hld info and it can be rescued.
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can SSDs info be extracted if normal access methods fail.
ie, on a HDD if the drive fails, the disks still hld info and it can be rescued.
LOL if you want to pay a forensics company a few thousands yes. You take backups from all your sensitive data just like with any other solution.
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I used to disagree with Semp when this topic came up a year ago when I was building my new comps. After a year of using an SSD in both gaming boxes we have, I tend to agree with his statement now. It really comes down to if you care about waiting 15 seconds, or 30 for Windows to boot. I've not seen a system that boots in 5 seconds yet, as just getting to and through the MD bios crap takes at least that long, before the SSD even gets to start booting Windows, so don't expect it to be even that quick. Most systems are still in double digits for boot times from what I've seen - maybe some MB's you can mess with the bios boot up stuff to turn it off, I'm not sure about that, as I've got an ROG and a Sabertooth board, 2 of the best and most expensive, and I've never been able to make them much faster in boot.
So, I went the Samsung route, the 830 128 gig as the 840s weren't out yet, and they have been very reliable, but Windows eats half that drive space, and you want to leave a little empty space for performance from what I've read, so you don't have much room for stuff other than your major games you play. Steam nowadays seams to be most of my gaming directory, and it's far too large for even a 500 gb SSD with 17 games I've got right now with Steam, so in reality, unless you drop massive $ on a very large SSD, many of your games are going to be on an old spinner drive anyway. I've not found a reliable way to split the Steam directory so that you can place just your favorite games on the SSD drive, and the rest on a spinner, it just doesn't work.
So, having the boot up time be about 50% faster is really what it comes down to, at least for me, or anyone using a lot of non Steam games. I had AH on my SSD until I read that due to all the small writes that can be a bad idea, so now it's pretty much only a boot drive, plus I have a couple of the DCS sims as they don't need to be in the Steam directory on the SSD drive. They do boot and access a fair bit faster, I wouldn't be upset if my entire drive system was as fast as the SSD drive, that's for sure, it's just the cost to performance ratio isn't really there yet for me. DCS A10 doesn't load that much more slowly on a Caviar Black 2gb drive than it does on my SSD - it is noticeable, but we're talking instants, not double digits in seconds or anything.
So, my opinion is yes, an SSD is worth it as a boot drive, but don't expect too much out of it, and again, if you're a Steam user and you have I'd say more than a dozen games, especially some of the new ones that are over 25gb like COD and Rome 2, don't expect to be putting your Steam directory on that SSD, unless you get a very, very large one, or a 2nd SSD that is again, large, for storage and games. You can get a 2gb drive for 100$ if you look around, a very good one, where as even a couple 500gb Samsung's will cost you close to 5x that, or 6x even.
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I was considering at least a 500 gig SSD. Windows opening fast doesnt concern me much, my games opening are another thing. Most of all BF4 which opens like a dog.
But after weighing it all I think I'll wait. 500 gigger's are pricey and like anything in 6 mos time they will have gone down in price quite a bit. I just put $$ into my system with a 780GTX so Im going to hang back a bit. Thanks again.
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I am lucky that I can afford the ssd if I wanted it. only reason I dont get it is because I dont see a return on my investment. I just traded 3 23in 1080p monitors for a single 2560x1440. that I can see the difference. will be ordering a 770gtx this week to replace dual evga 465's, that I can see the difference.
I think ripley has mentioned that his son plays a game where if you dont use an ssd you will die before your game loads. that makes a big difference for him, and gets a good return on his investment.
if it makes a difference for you then it's a good return on your investment. for me, I'll wait till next year when they go down in price. you can always argue that I could have bought the monitor and vc next year when they're much cheaper. but I can see the difference now where as the ssd it will just save me a few seconds but it wont make a difference in the game I play. right now, I spawn faster on runway that most of my squadies. and in wot I spawn and have to wait about 25 seconds for game to start. If I was to buy an ssd, I would just wait longer for everybody to spawn. not a good return on my investment.
semp
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I'm not computer savy enough to tell you why it works better for me,,,, But It does,, a lot!
I did A lot of reading up on why before I bought one,but I can't remember what the main reason was,
I only play AH so I have no other references to share,,
My preformance rating did go up from a 5.9 to 6.9 for win 7. Data transfer rate being the slowest before
Now that I've rebuilt the whole system, I'm at 7.6 or so,,, it boots up in about 10 seconds, runs the game at 57 to 60 fps, with pretty much every thing on.
I run the 128 ssd and a 1T regular drive,, windows 7 and the game are on it,
I run the windows media player, the game and ventrilo ,,all at the same time while playing with no problems,, I can go in and out of the game to windows and back at any time and have my game screen back at full within about 5 seconds,,, before,, it could take 10 to 15 before I got off black screen and back to a decent frame rate if I didn't disco!
Like I said,, it works great for me,
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I think ripley has mentioned that his son plays a game where if you dont use an ssd you will die before your game loads. that makes a big difference for him, and gets a good return on his investment.
Most probably BF4. My God that game takes forever to initially load.
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I dont know whether to buy one, what kind to buy, is it worth it,what size, whatever?
What are the Pros and Cons for upgrading a desktop now?
Let me add to your confusion...there are also hybrid SSD drives.
ack-ack
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Samsung are some of the best SSD's out there right now. I bought my SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series, 512gb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147194) and never looked back. However without a good motherboard, memory, and processor the speed is limited. Much like installing faster ram but it is limited to the speed of the slowest.
Also brands from Ram builders usually work good. So Kingston, Mushkin, Toshiba ( just aquired OCZ memory), Crucial and Intel are all good solid brands. But Samsung are some of the most reliable and fastest.
ElDiablo
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Interesting topic........................ .
This is why, when I built my box in May '12 I initially steered away from SSD's as I had read of & heard of all the horror stories concerning them. But as time went on & I read of the continuing improvements in the tech concerning these drives I was caught out in the land of indecision.....as others are/have been as well.
So in Oct '12 I made the decision to find out for myself & after a LOT of reading up on the various SSD's performance specs & reviews I bought 2 OCZ Vertex4 SATA III 256Gb MLC SSD's w/ the Indilinx firmware controllers installed @ $249.95 ea.
I set them both up by using a free copy of EaseUS Todo disk backup software & cloned my platter boot drive on 1 SSD then cloned my platter ghost drive on the 2nd SSD then set them up in the exact same page file configuration as I had my platter drives (took page file off of boot drive & installed/set up on the ghost drive) running natively off the Intel X79 chipset of my Asus Rampage IV Gene ROG mobo under Win7 HP 64 SP1 OS w/ no platter HDD's installed to use as back ups.
I did this to see for myself if all the bad things that I have heard said or read would happen to at least 1 of these SSD's within a reasonable period of time. I got a free copy of AS SSD Benchmark software to initially test both SSD's off fresh cloning for a reference & would test them periodically to see if they were degrading in performance.
As of today (12-7-13....approx 14 months of usage to date) I haven't had or noticed 1 issue w/ these SSD's in operation & according to AS SSD Benchmark neither drive has shown any signs of performance loss due to degradation, especially the ghost drive w/ the page file on it (getting hit w/ the writes) as I have seen less than 1% fluctuation from the initial results at any time so I don't count that as degradation. So for MY box & how it is being used (Internet, AHII\Warbirds 2013 & music--mostly thru Pandora) these SSD's are performing very well. I don't keep any data on the SSD's that is important to me so if they do blow up, big deal.
I have them mounted in hot-swappable 2.5" drive bay enclosures that are mounted in my 3.5" HDD slots in my case just behind my case's front 120mm fan. 1 enclosure is plugged in to the Intel X79's SATA III headders, the 2nd is plugged into the 3rd party HDD controller's SATA III headders (is empty at this time).
1 thing is certain......since I've owned these 2 hot-swappable 2.5" HDD bay enclosures I will NEVER go back to a 3.5" HDD period. The ease of use, no more having to remove the back case panel & wiring to install/remove HDD's is priceless.................... ................ :D
As Gman & others have said, don't put too much into expectations concerning SSD's performance from a general consumer's perspective. SSD's do outperform HDD's in most categories from a performance standpoint but the overall EXPERIENCE derived from their usage is dependent on several factors not directly related to them (computer configuration, software type & usage, OS type & usage, etc) & so there's too many varibles to really say that by using SSD's you will notice (read FEEL here) the performance differences between a SSD vs a HDD. Where my box is actually reading/writing data to/from the SSD's vs the HDD's the difference is VERY noticeable.....otherwise no difference.
:salute
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As Gman & others have said, don't put too much into expectations concerning SSD's performance from a general consumer's perspective. SSD's do outperform HDD's in most categories from a performance standpoint but the overall EXPERIENCE derived from their usage is dependent on several factors not directly related to them (computer configuration, software type & usage, OS type & usage, etc) & so there's too many varibles to really say that by using SSD's you will notice (read FEEL here) the performance differences between a SSD vs a HDD. Where my box is actually reading/writing data to/from the SSD's vs the HDD's the difference is VERY noticeable.....otherwise no difference.
:salute
This is something that always chuckles me, people really lack basic understanding on the roles of computer components and how they can or should affect the computers performance. If someone really thinks a HDD replacement will do anything but speed up load times, he probably doesn't need the replacement in the first place.
The overall usage feel will change enormously after switching to SSD, where your brand new computer seemed sluggish to start or load applications before, after installing SSD loading things has just jumped to the same performance level you expect from the rest of your computer. The experience will not be the same using an old computer, while SSD will naturally still make it somewhat faster the slower SATA 3G bus will choke the drive badly.
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I'm a SSD fan, I hate to wait.
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OK so what SSD would you fellas recommend for my gaming desktop? Its a Digital Storm Assassin, Intel i-7 950 @ 3.07 GHz, 16 gig RAM, NVidea GTX780, X58 SLI-3 MB, with a 1 Terra Western Disc. I'd want at a 500 gig SSD.
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I happen to have just read a review comparing SSD to HDD performance in games: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/12/10/hdd_vs_ssd_real_world_gaming_performance .
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OK so what SSD would you fellas recommend for my gaming desktop? Its a Digital Storm Assassin, Intel i-7 950 @ 3.07 GHz, 16 gig RAM, NVidea GTX780, X58 SLI-3 MB, with a 1 Terra Western Disc. I'd want at a 500 gig SSD.
Best price performance point is probably the Samsung EVO drives at the moment.
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I happen to have just read a review comparing SSD to HDD performance in games: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/12/10/hdd_vs_ssd_real_world_gaming_performance .
Pretty much what Ive heard. Im only getting one cause I need an extra drive and dont much see the point in getting another HDD.
I'll check out the Samsung. Thanks.