Go for Intel SRT or have OS on one drive and files on HDD?

Evoss

Evoss

Evoss

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Hey all,

What would be best?

Option A:
Setup Intel SRT on SSD and have OS on HDD with everything else?

Option B:
NO Intel SRT and have OS on SSD and files on HDD?


What would be best and why?
 
I have been looking into intel SRT recently. Essentially it boosts the things you do most on the drive, but leaves everything else at HDD speeds. So it can give you near SSD boot times after a couple of boots, and the same thing with programs. But it won't give you full SSD speeds even in these things, and does little for seldom used programs or your data.

A straight forward SSD boot drive will make everything you can fit on it much faster, but obviously does nothing for any of the files on the HDD.

I'm moving to SSD myself, and my feeling is that it's a price/capacity issue for the most part. If you can afford an SSD large enough to take all your programs then get one as a boot drive and a separate HDD. It is by far the fastest way to go. If you feel that you need more capacity than you can afford in an SSD, then either get a smaller SSD for boot only and keep most programs on the HDD or use it to SRT the HDD. It's really up to your own preference in that situation.
 
I bought a 120GB M4, I'm using 20GB of it for caching my 1TB mechanical drive which is games and media.

I use the 100GB SSD partition for my OS and other common apps like Office, Adobe suites.

This means my OS is always super fast, along with my work programs. While games load normally on first start most of them use common libraries, so map changes or new levels are significantly faster to load. The only people I see in games before I've loaded are SSD users who have put the game on the SSD. I didn't want to mess around with moving my games over.
 
Guys, would using a 60gb Vertex 2e with the following speeds (Read 285MB/s, Write 275MB/s ) in SRT mode offer a significant boost in speed to my WD Caviar Black?
 
In access speeds to approx the most frequently used 60gb of content, yes it would. But if you don't have a second SSD for boot, I suggest you use it for that purpose. Or you could always experiment and see- it's apparently very easy to set up SRT.
 
I have just brought a crucial m4 64gb ssd and i was deciding onjust sticking the O/S on their and a few key games.. i have seen some reviews that show the ssd caching as not being a great improvement?
 
It depends on what you want and what your setup is. If you have a large mechanical drive for all your games/media like I do then using 20GB of my 120 GB SSD to cache and dramatically improve the performance of that is great. I didn't want to have to move games over to the SSD or anything like that.

Initial load times will still be normal, but because games use a lot of shared resources across levels when it transitions it is noticeably quicker. I loaded ARMA 2 up and the initial load of the main island map was normal, but changing to another map or loading another mission was ridiculously fast.
 
I wouldn't do that, simply because if you are using ISRT you have to use RAID which disables TRIM commands. This means your SSD has to use its internal garbage collection and they don't operate as well when you fill them up (reports saying keep your SSD less than 70-80% full). If you've only got 40GB that will disappear quite quickly.
 
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The caching partition will not show up. It effectively rules it out, I don't think disk management can even pick it up. Only when you install the ISRT app will it pick up the cache partition.
 
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