Not convinced by SSD

This thread had me thinking about the way our systems work and I have to agree with the OP.

He really has such a good point about the only benefit being windows/apps starting up faster and that the cost does not relate to the performance benefit. Especially when were talking about shaving off a few seconds, it really is a waste of money right now.

Everyone knows that input and output is the slowest process that a computer can perform. So technology has been developed to get around this bottleneck, hence the introduction of RAM into our systems to hold a cache of data that the CPU can randomly access at high speed.

We have software and hardware developed for tens of years to get around this bottleneck. So now we have an SSD which is almost an alien to the evolution of our current systems. Such a powerful piece of hardware that really can't be fully utilised, it's essentially a really large block of RAM but our CPU's are using RAM as well as the SSD. So it's not running anything any faster, just loading it faster... and that's about it.

I think our systems will have to evolve a little more to harness the power of the SSD but at the moment you're just getting redundant thrills for a ridiculous amount of money. It's way better to spend that cash on a better graphics card, where you're system can produce better graphics and run games/3d apps a lot faster. Or a better CPU where it can run programs faster and do more in less time with much more efficiency.
 
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The response time being virtually 0 on an SSD also make Windows snappy (not that you would buy it just for that, but it one of the reasons).
 
I had 2x Vertex 30GB in Raid0, now I have one left and preperring myself to buy Vertex 2E 60GB.
After having them in Raid config and single drives I can say that there was a little speedup having raid, but one drive is enough for SATA2.
I have few PCs and only my gaming rig has SSD and I have to admit every time I'm going to do something on other PC I cannot believe how slow they are! You sit there, staring at the monitor, HDD led is going crazy, cursor changes to sandglass... time is passing by... ;)

Seriously, after you try SSD there is no turning back!:)
Perfect solution for me is 60GB for OS and soft + some slowly loading games.
Rest of the stuff can be kept on small HDD.
Me for example, perfect solution is SSD + 2.5" HDD 7200rpm. I have Scorpio Black 320GB for games and other stuff, SSD has OS, soft, games.
Both drives take very small space in my build, are silent and cool. I will NEVER go back to regular 3.5" drive. Same as regular ATX case:)

SSD + SFF F T W !!! :D
 
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I'm not gonna lie, the ONLY thing that has been holding me back has been pricing, as I am sutbborn with early adopting, and normally stop myself until things have matured. I got fed up with SSD pricing all together when they started to rise again with nand prices and availability. However, the new Corsair 64GB C300 has just come in at a very good price point (£1.76 per GB). Whilst this is nothing like the price per GB for 1TB drives, it is atleast becoming more affordable, and I said I would buy when a good drive with good software support and trim comes along when the price per GB went under £2 and the drive was atleast 64gb.
In terms of whether they are worth it. Will post back when I get round to using mine. I can't see how I am going to be dissapointed.
 
I wonder what the access time for an SSD is like compared to RAM. If they are close it would be interesting to see a system built that has no RAM just an SSD.

I bet you'd get one hell of a performance boost.
 
I purchased a Kingston Value SSD 12 months ago. It has the JMicron controller, and has a terrible write delay on large files. I have had to move all temp, outlook files etc onto HDD.

The drive is rapid once things are installed, however the write issue can sometimes lock the machine up.

The newer SSD with trim/on board cache (kingston value had 1k!) I can't see there being a problem with.
 
trentlad said:
I wonder what the access time for an SSD is like compared to RAM. If they are close it would be interesting to see a system built that has no RAM just an SSD.

I bet you'd get one hell of a performance boost.
Click to expand...

Well according to benchmark reviews, the CPU responds at 1ns, the ram at 60-90ns and a Mechanical HDD at 9,000,000ns.

The 80Gb intel drive has a read access time of ~0.08milli sec which equals 80,000ns. So SSDs are still much slower than ram, but much better than a mechanical HDD. It may be a while though before a RAMless PC.
 
i spend a lot of money on computer hardware

i always have done,

for me, the most 'worth it' component i have purchased in the past 5 years are my ssds

yes the jump to dual core was great

the jump from a 9800gtx to 280sli was good
and the onward jump to 5870 crossfire was meh

going from core2quad to i7 was pretty decent too

i work quickly on my pc, since moving to solid state drives i couldnt go back

plus it takes noise from my system

now my hard drives are in my nas downstairs, away from earshot
 
rjkoneill said:
for me, the most 'worth it' component i have purchased in the past 5 years are my ssds
yes the jump to dual core was great
the jump from a 9800gtx to 280sli was good
and the onward jump to 5870 crossfire was meh
going from core2quad to i7 was pretty decent too
Click to expand...

That's pretty convincing. Although I don't know if those upgrades are exactly a large enough jump from your previous setup to compare.

Still for the money it is very comparable.
 
I was a little anti-ssd a while back, but now I have upgraded both my Dell XPS 1330 laptop and my self-built i5 desktop machine to Intel SSD's (80gb in the Laptop and 160gb in the Desktop). The reason for upgrading the latop was because it goes everywhere with me and having suffered one HDD failure a few years ago (which very nearly was a real PITA) and knowing the HDD in the 1330 was over a year old and had been banged around a bit(I fell on it during the snow for example), I felt it was a good time to upgrade to hopefully a more reliable mechanism (SSD). The desktop machine stays on 24/7, and SSD's are quite 'green' so that was quite a consideration taken into account when upgrading the dekstop, especially as I had only bought a temporary 'cheap' 7200rpm 160gb HDD for the desktop when I built it back in December. I am also quite a heavy user (VM's etc) so for me it made sense to upgrade the desktop also. I also work with both my computers a lot so every little performance gain helps.

If I was a light home user, mostly browsing the web and playing a few games I doubt I would upgrade however, it's just not cost efficient. The latest 7200rpm drives are plenty fast enough. I think SSD's need to come down by 50% (price wise) for the normal home user to consider them a good upgrade over upgrading other components.

Just my opinion :). SSD's are now mainstream but for many people they are NOT worth the money IMO. For power users (like me), especially when costs can be offset againt company tax they make much more sense.

I am very happy with both SSD's. The laptop especially feels much much more responsive and will easily be quick enough for at least another 2 years. I felt less of a gain in the desktop however, but that might be because I'm still running two raid 1 HDD's for data storage and/or the machine is pretty fast anyway whatever type of drive is installed.
 
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