what next?

paradisiac

paradisiac

paradisiac

Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2009
Posts
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Cornwall
hi, i have recently done some big upgrades (mobo, case, cooler, gfx...) and am just wondering, what next? is there anything in my system that im missing, or should be upgraded?
Phenom II X4 B55 @ 3.8GHz Tri-Core
890FX Deluxe3
2x4GB Team Elite 1333MHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2
CF 2xHD6850
Coolmaster HAF 912 Plus
700w Modular PSU
LG E2240S
42" LCD TV
Windows 7 64bit HP.
 
lol it is an option, but £100 for a 2-3 second load time increase seems harsh. if all my games are on another drive, then their speeds wont increase will they?
 
paradisiac said:
lol it is an option, but £100 for a 2-3 second load time increase seems harsh. if all my games are on another drive, then their speeds wont increase will they?
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Get a smaller cheaper SSD as you windows/boot drive.

I can assure you that you WILL notice a difference.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-007-CR&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=910

I have a 60Gb OCZ as my windows drive, then all my games on a 160GB Intel SSD...got a 2tb samsung for media and stuff.
 
Yeah if you have the OS on it's own drive and then your games on another drive it should certainly help speed things up. SSD is a fantastic upgrade to any system mind you :)
 
paradisiac said:
is there a difference after bootup though? mine takes about 20-30seconds to boot now as i use ASRocks quickboot app.
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Yes, there is a big difference.

Applications are much MUCH faster to open.


Cutting and copying files is also much quicker.

It just makes your general "windows" experience much snappier...and no annoying HDD clicking coming from your system :D
 
my hard drives are nearly silent (or the huge case fan on the front is drowning them out). why would you cut/copy files to your tiny windows drive, surely you would be moving them to a mechanical storage drive, so the time would be dependant on that drive?
i like the idea of SSD, i just dont see the point yet on a drive only big enough to store windows and a few apps for £100ish. all my documents/photos/music/videos and software would be on a mechanical drive, so surely, once windows has loaded, it will be down to their speed not the SSD?
 
paradisiac said:
my hard drives are nearly silent (or the huge case fan on the front is drowning them out). why would you cut/copy files to your tiny windows drive, surely you would be moving them to a mechanical storage drive, so the time would be dependant on that drive?
i like the idea of SSD, i just dont see the point yet on a drive only big enough to store windows and a few apps for £100ish. all my documents/photos/music/videos and software would be on a mechanical drive, so surely, once windows has loaded, it will be down to their speed not the SSD?
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I see your point.

Performance components like SSD's and high-end graphics cards can be very subjective....it's not until you've actually used them in your system will you fully appreciate the practical daily benefits.

Reading about them on the web and forums like this only gives part of the whole story...I had a WD Velociraptor (which was by no means a slouch) as my main windows drive before I got the OCZ 60 Gb....I will never go back to HDD's, apart from media storage as SSD's are still very expensive for the capacity they offer
 
It may be first thing that is apparent - but quick load up time is only a minor benefit of an SSD. The real benefit comes when you are using your computer, doing stuff like loading up an application or loading a level in a game, also - just moving files about feels super-quick. Technically speaking, as well as much higher sequential transfer speed -for moving big files (2 to 5x quicker), the big performance boosts an SSD has over a mechanical HDD are access times (over 10x quicker) and random read/write performance (around 100X quicker).

You would be amazed at the number of times when it is the mechanical hard disk (not CPU, RAM or GPU) that are holding things up and causing a bottleneck. Having an SSD means you don't have this limitation - and things often "feel" faster in use.
 
cmndr_andi said:
You would be amazed at the number of times when it is the mechanical hard disk (not CPU, RAM or GPU) that are holding things up and causing a bottleneck. Having an SSD means you don't have this limitation - and things often "feel" faster in use.
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Precisely this!!!

I'm completely sold on SSD's. The traditional HDD has been the performance weak link in PC's for quite some time before SSD's came on the scene.

Compared to HDD's they cannot be considered value for money when their cost/capacity ratio is considered...you have to bear in mind that although it is still a hard disk drive its a completely different technology and isnt accurate to compare its value for money against HDD's.

They are a performance component
 
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ghutchison14078 said:
I see your point.

Performance components like SSD's and high-end graphics cards can be very subjective....it's not until you've actually used them in your system will you fully appreciate the practical daily benefits.

Reading about them on the web and forums like this only gives part of the whole story...I had a WD Velociraptor (which was by no means a slouch) as my main windows drive before I got the OCZ 60 Gb....I will never go back to HDD's, apart from media storage as SSD's are still very expensive for the capacity they offer
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yeh, i really do like the idea of them, and everyone arguments seem to make sense, but then when you think about how very little will be stored on it, how much will it speed things up, for the cost, is it worth it or hang fire til the larger ones become more mainstream forcing the smaller ones prices down. i remember when a 32GB flash drive would set you back nearly £120, now £25. if SSDs dropped the same, then yeh. hopfully we will get some in at work soon so i can have a play in the real world with them and make a decission, i just dont see, even with everyones recommendations, how it will benifit me enough to justify the cost, when everything bar windows will still be on slow mechanical drives.
 
cmndr_andi said:
It may be first thing that is apparent - but quick load up time is only a minor benefit of an SSD. The real benefit comes when you are using your computer, doing stuff like loading up an application or loading a level in a game, also - just moving files about feels super-quick. Technically speaking, as well as much higher sequential transfer speed -for moving big files (2 to 5x quicker), the big performance boosts an SSD has over a mechanical HDD are access times (over 10x quicker) and random read/write performance (around 100X quicker).

You would be amazed at the number of times when it is the mechanical hard disk (not CPU, RAM or GPU) that are holding things up and causing a bottleneck. Having an SSD means you don't have this limitation - and things often "feel" faster in use.
Click to expand...

but would the loading up of applications and levels in games not be dependant on the mechanical drive the application/game is installed on?
 
raid.png


thats my scores now, does it really differ that much?
 
paradisiac said:
but would the loading up of applications and levels in games not be dependant on the mechanical drive the application/game is installed on?
Click to expand...

With a 60GB HDD you should have enough space to install Windows, pretty much all your key applications (web browsers, skype, steam, spotify, itunes, office, photoshop etc.) and a game or two. It would also be very good to install all your documents and possibly your music and photos (depending on how much capacity these take up).

If you are using steam for gaming, you could swap out the game that is on the SSD depending on what you are playing most.
 
Numbers only tell half the story.

Take graphics cards for instance...

When you look at benchmarks of high-end cards like GTX580 the numbers look very impressive as do all its features on paper....but once its in your machine and your using it then you will fully appreciate all that it does...

its the same for SSD's...I was skeptical at first too.

My idea was to order one, hook it up and test it out, if i didnt notice much difference then I was gonna sell it on Members market for a tenner less than I paid.

I ended up loving it and ordering the 160Gb intel drive for my games two days later
 
cmndr_andi said:
With a 60GB HDD you should have enough space to install Windows, pretty much all your key applications (web browsers, skype, steam, spotify, itunes, office, photoshop etc.) and a game or two. It would also be very good to install all your documents and possibly your music and photos (depending on how much capacity these take up).

If you are using steam for gaming, you could swap out the game that is on the SSD depending on what you are playing most.
Click to expand...

my music pretty much fills a 1TB drive, my films fill a 2TB drive too :( so dont think i will be getting these on a 64GB SSD.
with what i have now i am using around 60GB of my 1TB Raid0 so would only leave me 4GB free, now i know windows used to like atleast 21% of the drive to be free, is this still the case?
 
This is how the upcoming Vertex 3 (240GB) compares (taken from this review). A 60GB version of this drive is expected imminently and looks like it will replace the Vertex 2E.

crystalrandom.jpg


If you have a large music and video collection (like you and me) then definately don't put these collections on an SSD - it just isn't worth it and the performance benefit is not huge anyway. However, if you are selective with what you put on the SSD, then really are amazing (I have a 120GB SSD and ~8TB of storage). I really wouldn't want to go back to my WD caviar RAID array primary drive now.
 
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