Will an SSD make much of a difference in an old system?

Raskkal

Raskkal

Raskkal

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From a couple of old HP Workstations I've recently managed to cobble together the following rig from bits and pieces that were literally being thrown out. I just wanted something I could play a few old games on like BF2 etc.

Intel Xeon X5450 3.00GHz (2 Processors)
8GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit

So far this has cost me £0 and after testing it with a few (admittedly) older games it seems to run damn well.

I was thinking about investing £60+ on a 120GB SSD and wondered if its really worth it. I imagine boot time etc will be great which to be honest isn't that important to me.
 
Boot time, program load times, reading/writing times, and silence. Maybe I've forgotten other things. If it runs damn well already, and the HDD isn't loud, then don't bother. SSD's are still a (nice) luxury not necessity (well, I suppose it will be a necessity for those who actually do require more speed).
 
For me an SSD is a necessity and I wouldn't build nor spec a PC without one.

Quite possibly the best thing to happen to PC hardware in the last 5-6 years.
 
Agree with the above, really think an SSD is a must in any system. An older system especially as they are often weighed down by bloated software, will have an old mechanical drive and may do a fair bit of paging to disk. An SSD will help with all of these problems.
 
I`ve just replaced a faulty HDD with an SSD in an Acer PC. Dual core AMD (CPU X4050e ?), 2GB RAM, onboard GPU etc, in other words nothing special bought around 2008.

I don't know how it performed before the repair, but it now boots to desktop in just over 30 seconds and it seems to perform rather well for the spec.

Before I comitted to using an SSD, I did test it first as it has an NVIDIA Sata controller. I wanted to make sure it supports AHCI and delivers a decent amount of performance than an SSD offers. It does. :)
 
sublime performance for quicker boot times and silent operation. I can't wait for affordable higher density drive to replace mechanical ones.

I can't see why an SSD should be a miss on your system and you can always port to a newer system later should you choose. it's a no brainer, even on older systems or those that don't support AHCI. it will still be notably quicker.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
sublime performance for quicker boot times and silent operation. I can't wait for affordable higher density drive to replace mechanical ones.

I can't see why an SSD should be a miss on your system and you can always port to a newer system later should you choose. it's a no brainer, even on older systems or those that don't support AHCI. it will still be notably quicker.
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No AHCI = no TRIM ? Maybe not a deal breaker, but preferable to use AHCI.

An old system with Sata I will not benefit from nearly as much SDD performance as SATA II or III. Yes, it is an improvement over a HDD, but I`ve found that the pervceived performance only matches a newer system with a HDD.
 
Trim does not require AHCI. AHCI and trim are completely different things.

Of course an SSD running under AHCI adapter will alsoways work faster than that that isn't but it will still run faster than any conventional HDD so will his system benefit from the upgrade no matter. I had to run my old sandforce SSD under non trim for a while with out AHCI as the motherboard didn't support it. It was still notably quicker than it was before.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Trim does not require AHCI. AHCI and trim are completely different things.

Of course an SSD running under AHCI adapter will alsoways work faster than that that isn't but it will still run faster than any conventional HDD so will his system benefit from the upgrade no matter.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. I thought TRIM required Windows 7/8 and AHCI.
 
:)

You do need windows 7 and above for native trim support though (I believe there is 3rd party trim support for XP but I've never tried it) . Trim is the "garbage collection" for removing discarded data.

AHCi is an interface standard imposed for drive optimisation, such as Native Command Queuing.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
:)

You do need windows 7 and above for native trim support though (I believe there is 3rd party trim support for XP but I've never tried it) . Trim is the "garbage collection" for removing discarded data.

AHCi is an interface standard imposed for drive optimisation, such as Native Command Queuing.
Click to expand...

I am aware that Win 7 or later is required for TRIM and what TRIM does. I just thought that AHCI was also required.

Samsung's Magician software has an Optimisation feature that can be used if TRIM isn't enabled. I assume it does what TRIM does, but requires the user to manually run it.
 
good advice, SSD is one of the best upgrades you can make.

i cringe when i try to give advice to my friends and they ensure me they need a gfx upgrade or a CPU upgrade instead of the 5400rpm drive thats plodding along. its a huge bottleneck of a decent system.

i use SSD's in everything, i replaced my optical drive in my laptop with an 80g old intel first gen SSD. I use an M4 in my gaming PC. would never go back to mechanical.
 
Too be honest the PC I have at the moment dosent have an SSD. However with Windows 8 its booting quickly so an SSD is low down on my list of purchases :)
 
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