Good SSD for high res games (NOT C:)

[nogoodreason]

I currently have an Intel X25-M 160GB SSD as my C: drive, and a Western Digital 2TB 64mb cache HDD for storage.

While these are both great drives, I can see high res gaming being a potential problem. While I have no qualms about keeping older/less intense games on the HDD, I want to keep the newer/bigger games on the SSD.

As I can see me running out of space on the Intel in no time, I'm toying with the idea of buying a second SSD specifically for holding games (and perhaps also my CS4 work).


Focusing particularly on read speed, could people please advise the best SSDs available for such a purpose? I'm thinking OCZ and Crucial would be better than another Intel, but am certainly open to all suggestions. The drive must be at least 100GB.


Oh, and before anyone suggests this: Yes, I know I could get an HDD for a fraction of the price. There is physically not enough room in my rig to fit another HDD, so SSD is my only option.

 

[zsolmanz]

I don't know much about SSDs, but Tom's Hardware did a fairly comprehensive review:

Here it is

I don't know if you've had a look at it before, but on Read Throughput (I assume this is what you're after), the order was:
Intel X25-M 34nm 160Gb
OCZ Vertex Turbo 120Gb
Asax Leopard Hunt II T2 256Gb

And 7 others which were >100Gb but I can't be bothered to copy down:
This page specifically, for Read Throughput

Hope this helps a little - I can't offer much else.

 

[Nate Silvers]

You already have the fastest SSD for reads.

 

[Dinkas]

Get another 160GB Intel and say "Hi" to RAID0?

 

[nogoodreason]

You already have the fastest SSD for reads.

While the Intel is great for basic tasks and has a good read/write ratio, I was under the impression that other drives (Samsung and OCZ, for instance) beat it in more select areas (such as read)?

 

[nogoodreason]

Get another 160GB Intel and say "Hi" to RAID0?

Funnily enough, tests have shown that running two decent SSDs in RAID0 can actually *increase* bootup times.

 

[Dinkas]

Some images from the G2 benchmarking thread:

2 x 160GB Intel X25-M G2 RAID 0 - Erolz (bench on right is raptors in RAID 0)

1 x 160GB Intel X25-M G2 - Fire Wizard

Credit: Erolz and Fire Wizard.


I doubt Erolz cares too much about the extra ~2 seconds it takes to get to the Welcome Screen because of the boot delay caused by the RAID controller

 

[Audigex]

Thats the thing about boot times - most people only care once a day at most

I'd say to wait until you run out of space on the intel, myself, under the "You ain't gonna need it" principle. Okay, you might need it eventually - but by the time you do, you can save a few quid or get a better SSD. In the last couple of months alone we've gone from "barely better than a HDD" to "wow, that's quick". In the time it takes you to fill that drive, presuming that you keep all non-essential crap on the 2tb WD, a new model may well come out which would've been worth waiting for.

I know people often recommend against waiting because there's always something better coming out - but I think that applies more to leaving off something you want, rather than when you really don't need it. You have the fastest read times around now (or as near as damnit), so you may aswell either get a better one, or the same one cheaper, later.

 

[nogoodreason]

Thats the thing about boot times - most people only care once a day at most

I'd say to wait until you run out of space on the intel, myself, under the "You ain't gonna need it" principle. Okay, you might need it eventually - but by the time you do, you can save a few quid or get a better SSD. In the last couple of months alone we've gone from "barely better than a HDD" to "wow, that's quick". In the time it takes you to fill that drive, presuming that you keep all non-essential crap on the 2tb WD, a new model may well come out which would've been worth waiting for.

I know people often recommend against waiting because there's always something better coming out - but I think that applies more to leaving off something you want, rather than when you really don't need it. You have the fastest read times around now (or as near as damnit), so you may aswell either get a better one, or the same one cheaper, later.

Having just glanced at my bank balance I think you're right.

Would I notice a delay by installing games like Crysis/Far Cry 2 on my HDD rather than on C: ? Just wondering what the real performance benefit is.


Regarding RAID 0: Thanks for those screenshots, although I'm no expert in this field so would love some clarification. Boot time aside, would I be likely to really notice the difference in daily use and/or with gaming? The way I figure is that one Intel X-25 is enough to handle anything I throw at it, whereas running two in RAID 0 opens up a gateway to potential problems. Primarily: TRIM support.


Does anyone on this forum run two SSDs in RAID 0? Be interesting to know your experiences.

 

[clv101]

Thats the thing about boot times - most people only care once a day at most

Or once a month! Both my Windows desktop and Macbook only get booted every few weeks. Now that sleeping and hibernating work so well I don't understand why people waste time rebooting their systems. Only reboot for OS updates.

 

[adamscybot]

Or once a month! Both my Windows desktop and Macbook only get booted every few weeks. Now that sleeping and hibernating work so well I don't understand why people waste time rebooting their systems. Only reboot for OS updates.

Its good to have a clean boot. Clean RAM, clean processes etc.

Its a habit I guess.

 

[ChileanLlama]

Does anyone on this forum run two SSDs in RAID 0? Be interesting to know your experiences.

I run 2x256gb M225's in RAID0. The benchmarks figures are nice, but real world, it's hard to notice much of an improvement over a single SSD unless you are doing disk intensive work - i.e. not Windows, not gaming.

I'd go along with the earlier suggestion, wait til it's full and decide then when maybe faster or cheaper drives are available. I'd consider RAID0 then - by which time it's possible it will have TRIM support.

You know if you're limited to another 2.5" drive, you could always consider a notebook SATA drive as a stopgap?

 

[Zarf]

I don't even shut my PC down any more, Sleep mode in Win7 kicks ass - all fans turn off in my comp so it's silent and it resumes in around a second.