Still not convinced by these SSD's

[Zarf]

I disagree with other peoples posts that state that gamers don't benefit as much from an SSD. I have a 120GB Vertex 2E which is more than enough to install Windows along with usual apps and some development programs with room left over for a number of games. A lot of people on here have high performance systems and already have high end graphics cards/cpus. The addition of an SSD basically eliminates load times for loading a game and in game loading between levels. This is great!

On top of this, I play Bad Company 2 a lot online and if the level changes and the server has the spawn time set to 0seconds, I am nearlly always the first person who spawns into the game (thanks to the quicker loading time) giving me a slight advantage!

Overall SSDs are so much quicker at loading applications, installing programs (from installers on the SSD) and anythign that requires reading/writing of data such as extracting files. The biggest bottle neck in a computer is likely to be the mechanical drive. This is the one upgrade that will actually make a difference.

It's still a bit of a luxury, you're using up 5-10GB of space per game to shave a few seconds from loading times, which is a pretty poor return at current prices. I'd class SSD's as essential for a boot drive+apps in any new build. For games though, just run a Raid0 of Samsung F4's or similar fast mechanical drives. Hypocritical since I've splurged on 160GB worth, but I'm lazy - could easily get by on half that with a little management.

 

[sHo0sH]

I noticed a MASSIVE increase in boot times and general windows functionality with my SSD. But quite frankly, who gives a **** how long an application takes to install, if when using/loading it its fast!

 

[ScoTTyBEEE]

I couldn't never go back to HDD's.

 

[Shaddow]

I have a mini review which compares various benchies between a

Samsung F3 1TB
Corsair X64
Vertex 3 128gb

My boottimes on an F3 were 78 seconds compared with Vertex 3 of 24 seconds

Also Game load times were greatly improved - for a single player saved 'resume game' in Battlefield Bad Company 2 - it was reduced by half to around 10 seconds.

Here are the results:
http://pcgameware.co.uk/review-ocz-vertex-3-120gb-by-greg/

 

[mame]

I'm just going to wait untill I can buy a 250gb 500 mb/s drive for £99. In no rush at all tbh. As for games, I think my Steam folder is about 400gb currently on my 1.5tb drive so it could be a while before that gets moved to SSD. I'm sure the speed is great but there's a lot to be said for a 2tb HDD for £50-odd

 

[Buchanan0204]

I'm just going to wait untill I can buy a 250gb 500 mb/s drive for £99. In no rush at all tbh. As for games, I think my Steam folder is about 400gb currently on my 1.5tb drive so it could be a while before that gets moved to SSD. I'm sure the speed is great but there's a lot to be said for a 2tb HDD for £50-odd

Good point. It makes me wonder. What if SSD was out first, and that was the norm for years, quick drives, but small capacity. No one could store bluray rips, lots of photos, movies, games etc... then all of a sudden, bam! The new type of hard drive is invented, the mechanical disc which can hold vast amounts of data, was also pretty quick and adequate to run your OS off of. I wonder how many people would be pay £300 for a 2TB drive then.

It would probably be the same thing in reverse. People would switch over complaining how no one cares about speed. Storage is where it's at. It's just because it's a new technology and everyones jumping on the band wagon getting caught up in the fad of counting how many seconds they can shave off boot up times. I turn the pc on and then head for the kettle anyway. Who really cares how many seconds it took. Do we time our tv's, our car engines, how quick the windows roll up and down.... no one cares.

Patience is a virtue after all

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Speeds the OS boot on mine a fair bit, but tbh it is a headache deciding what goes on which drive. Would happily just have a HDD in its place.

 

[Snykch]

Have to say I notice a massive difference. Once I've logged on there's no waiting about whatsoever. Everything I want started does so immediately.

 

[shine]

It all depends on what you are using it for. I use a lot of VM's having my most used on a SSD makes a huge difference to performance but I can't afford to keep them all on SSD so it's a tradeoff. If you can afford a SSD the performance gain can be worth it.

 

[robgmun]

I downgraded from a 60gb OCZ Vertex 2 to a 600GB Velociraptor last month, 10x the storage space, slower boot times (but I never watch it boot anyway, multitasking ***) and no noticeable loss in performance (im a human not a benchmarking tool)

I went from a Velociraptor to a SSD and to be frank i barely notice any difference in speed between the two, i had 8Gb of ram as well so maybe the OS used it all up so the difference would be minimal. It took 40's for my PC to boot up with a Velociraptor and 35's with a SSD, loading times for apps where very similar as well

What i hated was having to be scared of writing to the damn thing without worriing about reducing it's life, whats the point then!!

And now it's stopped responding, so sent it back on RMA, unrealible

Going back to getting a Velociraptor

 

[Dirk]

I went from a Velociraptor to a SSD and to be frank i barely notice any difference in speed between the two, i had 8Gb of ram as well so maybe the OS used it all up so the difference would be minimal. It took 40's for my PC to boot up with a Velociraptor and 35's with a SSD, loading times for apps where very similar as well

Definately a problem with the Drive, your PC or you.

What i hated was having to be scared of writing to the damn thing without worriing about reducing it's life, whats the point then!!

Definately a problem with you.

And now it's stopped responding, so sent it back on RMA, unrealible

Definately a problem with the drive.

Going back to getting a Velociraptor

Oh the joys of a slow, noisy HDD.

 

[SeeKified]

Speeds the OS boot on mine a fair bit, but tbh it is a headache deciding what goes on which drive. Would happily just have a HDD in its place.

Then just put everything on the SSD. Wear levelling these days is good enough for these things not to matter much anymore and as I've said before - once your current drive's had enough, SSDs will be so cheap it won't matter.

 

[OLDPHART]

You don't need to buy a expensive OCZ Vertex Series 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £149.99 split 50/50 os + progs / games and benchmarks + sata one for back up, don't need to tell you how good they are everyone else has.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-015-OC&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427

 

[robgmun]

@ Dirk

Maybe my PC was well kept and housecleaning done on a regular basis. And i barely heard my Velociraptor when i had it, SSD's are not there yet.

They are unrealiable at the moment and if you need to watch how much you write to it then that's not right. I will look at them again a couple years down the line

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Then just put everything on the SSD. Wear levelling these days is good enough for these things not to matter much anymore and as I've said before - once your current drive's had enough, SSDs will be so cheap it won't matter.

There isn't enough space on the SSD and tbh game loading times aren't reduced much anyway. Since most of my games are on Steam, about 750Gb worth, SSDs just don't cut it at the moment.

 

[Rockbottom]

I can't believe some people are saying they can't notice a worthwhile difference between an SSD and a mechanical drive, just built my mate a Sandybridge based system and his budget didn't stretch to an SSD so I stuck a mechanical drive in it and it feels SLUGGISH compared to my rig (see sig).

It seemed to take forever to install all of the software on it compared to when I installed everything on mine. Also Windows Updates seem so slow on a mechanical drive compared to an SSD.

I just love the snappyness of having an SSD, I can load all of my programs (Opera with 15+ tabs, Windows Live Messenger, MS Outlook 2010, iTunes, uTorrent, jDownloader, Binreader etc) as soon as my desktop appears on bootup by clicking them one after another and they all load up at the same time instantly!

SSD's IMO are essential to any modern computer and I would never want a computer again without one!

 

[CaptainRAVE]

I can't believe some people are saying they can't notice a worthwhile difference between an SSD and a mechanical drive, just built my mate a Sandybridge based system and his budget didn't stretch to an SSD so I stuck a mechanical drive in it and it feels SLUGGISH compared to my rig (see sig).

It seemed to take forever to install all of the software on it compared to when I installed everything on mine. Also Windows Updates seem so slow on a mechanical drive compared to an SSD.

I just love the snappyness of having an SSD, I can load all of my programs (Opera with 15+ tabs, Windows Live Messenger, MS Outlook 2010, iTunes, uTorrent, jDownloader, Binreader etc) as soon as my desktop appears on bootup by clicking them one after another and they all load up at the same time instantly!

SSD's IMO are essential to any modern computer and I would never want a computer again without one!

I agree that programs install faster and windows boots quicker - never noticed much of a difference in games though.

 

[OLDPHART]

@ Dirk

Maybe my PC was well kept and housecleaning done on a regular basis. And i barely heard my Velociraptor when i had it, SSD's are not there yet.

They are unrealiable at the moment and if you need to watch how much you write to it then that's not right. I will look at them again a couple years down the line

Who says they are unrealiable, mine is nearly 2years old and never had any problems, l treat it like any other HD and whats this you need to watch how you write to it?

What a load of carp.

 

[413x]

Say you are in my situation its not a good upgrade

Internet is so slow the ff load time is insignificant
Boot once or twice a day and don't wait
Have too many games to put on an ssd
Used similar applications regularly
Right data regularly
Only time really wait is for game load levels

The ssd isn't going to help me, my velociraptors aren't that noisy, they cost 200£ for 600gb of space. They are very quickly for writing large data files and fit all my apps games etc on easily

For me I would waste far more time micro managing where data was being put moving things about etc.. than I would ever save

The only place I could ever see a benifit is game load levels.. the cost for that benifit is unjustifiable

 

[Gazanimal]

Had 2 SSD's.

First was a present from a m8, but it was an early SSD and had no onboard cache & the controller was rubbish. It was 192gb so cost an arm and a leg at the time, but he works in the right areas to get a freebie or three from Transcend. Speed was fast but with no buffer it hurt performance at times.

Then I bought an OCZ Vertex 120Gb which I currently use & the step up was amazing. Still is. I had to RMA the drive once due to failure but you get that from time to time with mechanical drives & no essential data was on it (Backups on another drive )

In the time it took to RMA I had to go back to a Samsung F2 1TB drive & boy was it painfully slow. Everything took longer to open/activate/close etc So pretty much I was over the moon when my SSD arrived back.

Don't get me wrong, there are pros & cons to using an SSD, mostly cost & capacity being the cons presently, but I feel the Pros of speed and lack of heat/noise far outweigh the negatives.

As for the theory that an SSD will fail due to over-usage. It's pretty much a load of ******** now. They will out last most peoples systems & if they were that crap, why would manufacturers (OCZ for example) stick a 3 year warranty on their drives.

Once you go SSD you should never go back.