F3 HDD vs 120Gb SSD is it worth it?

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

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Right, having hijacked a few other peoples threads I thought I should start my own, rather than take other peoples thread in other directions.

My gaming pc is using a slow hdd I bought in 2008.

Its a st3320620as (Seagate) 16mb cache 78 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate

It is the bottle neck in my computer. I get stutter when a map loads at the begining of a game in bfbc2 which I know is attributed to my hdd.

Now as I understand it, an SSD does next to nothing when it comes to improving frames per second.

So in this sense, am I better of upgrading to a Samsung F3 rather than say an Crucial M4 or some equivalent?

Is the F3 a big upgrade from my current hdd?

Does it make windows feel snappy enough?

Even windows laggs a little on my hdd!
 
The SSD experience in windows is game changing, but it won't necessarily change your experience in games. Or more specifically, it will speed up your map loading in BFBC2 solving your problem there, it makes a huge difference zoning into MMOs like WOW, but does essentially nothing for your fps.

For a detailed look at the effect on games see: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-gaming-performance,review-32255.html

The difference between the HDDs is negligible compared to between an HDD and an SSD. If you have games which would benefit and the necessary budget, I would recommend a 120gb+ SSD for windows and those games. The rest of your games would be fine on your current drive.

If not, then I would suggest a 60gb SSD for windows, and all your games on the current HDD. If you don't care about windows all that much, just get the F3. I wouldnt get an SSD solely to contain BFBC2 and other fpses, unless I had a spare £130+ and nothing else to spend it on.
 
I get around 120mb/s max seq. read from my F3, and 140mb/s write.

4k random read is 0.96mb/s and write is 8.23mb/s.

It's one of the best mechanical drives you can get without spending a lot of money, in my opinion it's worth getting one as it will be a fair amount faster than your current drive. I came from an old Seagate drive and it made the system a lot faster in general.

Of course an SSD will be better than the F3 by a long shot, it just depends if you can justify the cost for not that much space.

Personally I'm going to wait until at least next year before jumping to an SSD, they're always getting cheaper, faster and lager in capacity. When a 250gb+ SSD can be had for much more sensible money then I will buy one.

But with an F3, you're getting 1TB of space, and a fairly fast drive for £40, you can't go wrong.
 
suitheist said:
The SSD experience in windows is game changing, but it won't necessarily change your experience in games. Or more specifically, it will speed up your map loading in BFBC2 solving your problem there, it makes a huge difference zoning into MMOs like WOW, but does essentially nothing for your fps.
Click to expand...

Ah, but games which constantly draw from the hd are faster, you just don't notice it :D

Must have been about 18months ago intel, during one of their ssd events, got assassins creed on two pcs and after 30ish seconds the ssd was clearly ahead as in the character had reached the end of an ally and turned a corner while the hd pc was still moving up the ally. Then again, you wouldn't notice it if you hadn't seen them side by side.

My 320G F4 is one of the snappiest hd available last year but it still can lag in windows because no hd can effectively deal with thousands of small blocks in the way an ssd can. Period.

If you can afford it, get an ssd. They last ~10 years and the differences is frankly, astonishing at times :p
 
I have 2x f4 320gb in raid 0; they are great HDDs. I was thinking of getting a third, but no one seems to sell them anymore. Very fast HDDs, but still not the same as my SSD. Though it does make for decent sequential transfers between the two.
 
Thanks to the original poster, not going to hijack but for me the message is that windows and surfing the net etc will be a superior experience
 
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