worth getting a SSD?

drew64

drew64

drew64

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looking into getting my next PC sorted, and pondering whether to take the leap and get a SSD, or just stick with the standard HHD?

basing the system around the overclocked i7 bundle, and it'll be used for Gaming and Maya.
i'll be getting a 1tb western digital caviar black, and will get a second one later on.

would you recommend getting a SSD for the OS and some of the programs i'll be using?
if so, what would give me the most bang for buck?

thanks in advance
 
drew64 said:
looking into getting my next PC sorted, and pondering whether to take the leap and get a SSD, or just stick with the standard HHD?

basing the system around the overclocked i7 bundle, and it'll be used for Gaming and Maya.
i'll be getting a 1tb western digital caviar black, and will get a second one later on.

would you recommend getting a SSD for the OS and some of the programs i'll be using?
if so, what would give me the most bang for buck?

thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Go for SSD if you can afford one. You'll see a nice improvement.

Best bang for buck is the Crucial M225 drives (64gb,128gb and 256gb - the 64gb drives are slower than the bigger capacity ones). You'll need to decide what size you need for the OS, Apps and games you want on the SSD.

You should read the article bluziff has linked to. The Crucials are not the best performing drives, but for performance v price can't be touched at the moment - with performance close to the OCZ Vertex and slightly slower than the class leading Intel drives.
 
thanks for all the advice.
is performance degradation still an issue? and how much maintenance do they require, looking on an american site someone who was reviewing them said they needed updating bios's etc. or was he talking balls?
 
The intels that were available did but I can't see a reason why you'd need to once they're up and running.

mostly it's down to read/write speed. but if it's mainly for the os then speed is everything
 
drew64 said:
thanks for all the advice.
is performance degradation still an issue? and how much maintenance do they require, looking on an american site someone who was reviewing them said they needed updating bios's etc. or was he talking balls?
Click to expand...

They are still a work in progress. The performance degradation will be handled in Windows 7 automatically. This needs the drive (firmware), the drivers and the OS to all support TRIM - which is similar to defrag in SSD land :) Even without this they will still out perform a traditional HD.

There's been some mess ups with firmware recently on both Intel and Indilinx (OCZ and Crucial amongst other) drives. The firmware is typically updated in DOS.

But in day-to-day use there shouldn't be much maintenance required.
 
Yes bang per buck at the moment is probably crucial, although I cant find any comparative benchies with them in they do have the indilinx controllers which means they are more than likley somewhere between the intels and the samsungs depending on the speed and volume of dram as well as the flash used.

With regards to size that depends on your personal preferences, I wouldn't buy less than 64/128GB drives depending on how much you install on the drive. I mean the point is to increase application load times not just boot times. So the advice is as ever with hard drives buy the largest drive you can afford.
 
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how much would that leave me after the OS?
i figured it'd be like 16gb for the OS?
then a couple for my game of the time.
and a bit left for maya and work stuff?

cheers for the advice so far guys, appreciate it
 
I've just installed Windows 7 on a box this afternoon together with my standard utilities (Everest, imgburn, AV, Media Center stuff etc), tools, drivers. No major apps. 29gb in total including 8gb page file (just left it on default).

Ideally you want to get all your main apps and perhaps some of your main games on there.
 
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If you go Crucial, go 128gb if your budget allows. Will give you more breathing space for installing stuff - but they are also slightly faster than the 64gb versions.
 
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