Is SSD the answer for a quick performance boost?

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Hey all!

Before I take the plunge and buy a new PC gaming set up I would like to try to eek out as much performance as I can from my current PC.

At present, I'm at the limit in terms of what I can change/add due to motherboard limitations (shuttle system).

I've decided that the "bottleneck" in my system is my hard drive, which is a slow and antiquated affair. If I were to buy [insert brand here] of SSD hard drive, would I see much in terms of performance? Bearing in mind my motherboard only supports SATA II and not the later SATA III.

From what I understand of SSD, even though the interface speed will be the same (3 GB/sec), the access/seek times of SSD will be infinitely faster than my current POS.

Bonus point is: I can always take the SSD with me when I do eventually start building my new rig.

In short:
SSD massive improvement or not.
Do I need to defrag the SSD like you would a more traditional HDD?
 
If I were to buy [insert brand here] of SSD hard drive, would I see much in terms of performance?

Not half. Probably the best upgrade option out there.

Don't worry about SATAII either, even the latest SSDs don't come close to saturating the bus.

Bonus: no need to defrag - ever.
 
More memory is, unfortunately, out of the question.

Current specs are (from memory):
AMD Athlon II X4 640
4 GB RAM
Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Win 7 Home Prem 64BIT

Yeah, it`s old. It still (just) suits my needs for the immediate future.

I am fairly (like 90%) sure that my HDD is the bottleneck in my system. I did originally build my system with a 500GB HDD which worked well. That died (HDDs don't work when launched across the room via foot - don't ask!), so I went on to the bay of much "e" to source a temporary replacement which (for those who are interested) is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300S0 300GB. I think that's a SATA 1 HDD (1.5 GB/sec).

Whenever I am seeing performance issues, this is often aligned with much thrassage of hard drives. Hence my guess that the HDD is the main culprit here. I've even heard it click/clonk a few times, like the heads are trying to commit seppuku or something. Perhaps it's on its way out?

Sure, in an ideal world I'd like to have at least 8 GB ram, but I am limited to 4 by the motherboard (Sluttle system).
 
As people have said an ssd is a great performance boost.

Ive had ssds on older motherboards that only supported sata2 and while yes on a benchmark there is lower performance it still felt a lot faster.

Grab an ssd now and then carry it over to a new build as and when you decide to upgrade the rest of your system.

Personally I would opt for around 250gig storage, especially if you intend to take it into an other system. But if money it tight then go for around the 120gig region.
 
An SSD is by far the best upgrade to an aging PC or laptop. Benchmarks tend to focus on raw throughput, but the reality of day-to-day usage is random access (i.e. reading lots of small bits spread all over the drive), and this is where SSDs shine the most, when comparing them to spinning disks. A 7200 RPM disk can do between 75-100 IOPS (random input-output operations per second), vs a cheap SSD which starts at 20,000 IOPS (200x times faster than the 7200 RPM spinning disk); in reality, most SSDs discussed on Overclockers (Samsung, Crucial, Intel) all handle 60-80,000 IOPS without breaking a sweat.

Let's say that to boot Windows, the PC has to read 25,000 things from storage (basically file fragments), and write 5,000 things (a total of 30,000 input/output operations) -- a spinning disk will take roughly 5 minutes to do that, vs an SSD which could do it in under a second. Obviously your old PC has other bottlenecks, so it's not going to boot from an SSD in one second, but by adding an SSD you've eliminated the slowest of all bottlenecks: the spinning disk.

So yes, an SSD will make a MASSIVE difference to your old PC.
 
If you're low on RAM then you'll likely see some quite significant performance increases with an SSD because of the increased reliance on having to access the disk rather than having data ready in RAM.

That said, 4GB isn't really a bottleneck for average day-to-day performance until you start opening applications, games etc, but you'll still notice a nice difference.
 
Thanks for the input guys. It is as I thought - an SSD would be the biggest and best increase for my system.

As it stands now, it's OK playing games in 1080p with med to med-high settings in many games, and low-med in many others.

BF4 runs smooth (no idea on FPS, but it's smooth) on Low/Low-med settings (and yet still looks pretty damn sexy due to DICE's epic Frostbite engine). The only problem is, especially in BF4, my load times. Getting into maps is between 30-60 seconds on the initial load, and 15-30 seconds between maps when in the server. During this time, the HDD is thrashing like ****, which leads me to believe my old Diamondmax hard drive is simply not up to the task and is the bottleneck in my system.

I will most likely get an SSD. Probably 120 GB as funds are a little on the slim side at the moment. Ideally I'd like 250 GB. Either way I could always slave in my current Diamondmax and use it as pure storage. The way I see it is I am barely filling 300 GB at the moment, keeping OS and a few games would fit nicely on a 120GB, freeing up the 300 GB dinosaur for general data storage where access times isn't top priority.
 
I have a Crucial M4 128gb OS drive which was a vast increase in speed over my already pretty quick mechanical WD velociraptor 1500hlfs (10k rpm) On it I have OS everyday programs with a couple of games. Everything else - games, media etc. are split across 1TB drives;
C - OS, progs, current played games . Crucial M4 128GB
D - Music, Camera pics, Games (all steam) . WD Black 1TB
E - movies, tv shows . Samsung HD1003UJ 1TB
F - Disk images, software . WG green 1TB
G - OS backup . 150gb WD Veloci

I'm in the process of probably buying a cheap £50 120gb Samsung SSD, moving my OS to this and having the M4 as a backup drive. Then selling the Veloci for a few quid
 
When my overclocked e6600 rig was getting old, I put a brand new (2010) Vertex SSD in it and it felt like a new PC again.
I now have a Vertex 4, but I run it on Sata 2 due to motherboard limitations. (I do have Sata 3 but it is the 1st gen i5 bodged add-on that on average is slower than the Sata 2 controller).
An SSD is an absolute must. It always annoys me when a £1000 laptop with high end CPU comes with a 4200rpm hard drive as it makes it dog slow.

Imo you should buy a good SSD. No need to spend a fortune, just a good mid-range 120GB one is good. I use mechanical hard drives for my films, tv series etc. In my experience from my original Vertex, 60GB is not enough and quite annoying, as Windows 7 is about 20GB alone. Even though your rig is old, an SSD will make general day-to-day use a transformed experience.

SSD life is actually reduced by a defrag, but it is not needed anyway.
 
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Not half. Probably the best upgrade option out there.

Don't worry about SATAII either, even the latest SSDs don't come close to saturating the bus.

Bonus: no need to defrag - ever.

I'd have to disagree on the SATAII comment - modern SSDs certainly do get held back by this. I'd not say its in any way a blocker to getting an SSD and would still wholeheartedly endorse the upgrade - but your max performance will be limited. You'll probably see about 285MB/s max on sata2 with a drive that may be capable of 500MB/s. Real world difference is much less dramatic than this but it is still a limitation.
 
An ssd will give any PC a big boost. Chucked one in my 2008 shuttle PC that is in the front room hooked up to my TV and made a massive difference.
 
I installed an SSD on SATA II before i built the rig in my sig.

It was a brilliant upgrade and as it moved to my new build, you can't lose anything buying one now.

And yeah, you can get your windows key easily, i use Belarc myself.
 
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