SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

[Hendrick4life]

I would love to upgrade my HDD to SSD. Um what im looking for though is a 500 GB SSD. while I know the price will be steep im willing to spend the money for it. I only have one HDD bay which makes it difficult to make the decision. My G50-x1 had two bays but it died. Is there a way to get the performance of a SSD to work with my current HDD through PCI, or what?

[HTWingNut]

I would love to upgrade my HDD to SSD. Um what im looking for though is a 500 GB SSD. while I know the price will be steep im willing to spend the money for it. I only have one HDD bay which makes it difficult to make the decision. My G50-x1 had two bays but it died. Is there a way to get the performance of a SSD to work with my current HDD through PCI, or what?

Get a momentus xt.

[raydabruce]

I'm going to be buying a gaming laptop soon and I'll be putting an SSD in it first thing.

I've done a little gaming with my current laptop (i3-370M & Intel HD) and the Corsair Nova I have is great for getting game maps and levels to load much faster than with any platter drive. But I'm going to buy a new drive for the Asus gaming laptop and looking for suggestions.

I'm guessing that sequential speeds for larger files would be my priority for an SSD in a gaming scenario. Any thoughts on this?

[Phil]

Hey Phil (or anyone really) do you think it's worth it for me to wait for the g3 in terms of price AND performance?

Intel G3 will probably not be a spectacular improvement in performance.

Actually for any spectacular improvement a SATA 6 Gbps connection is needed.

+1 for Seagate Momentus XT now, very good deal on Amazon.

Get an SSD when prices come further down.

[raydabruce]

+1 for Seagate Momentus XT now, very good deal on Amazon.

Get an SSD when prices come further down.

Newegg has that drive for $99 right now, free shipping.
(I won't buy from Amazon because I'd have to pay sales tax -- they are located in my state.)

I wonder if the XT would boost gaming performance noticeably ??

Edit: Reviews by owners don't recommend it for gaming. Apparently good for speeding up repetitive usage patterns.

[HTWingNut]

I wouldn't say it's not recommend it for gaming, it's still a fast drive. You just won't get the same performance boost with game loads as you would with an SSD. Also note that some games are dependent on real-time game data loads (i.e. Oblivion) where most others only load in between levels or at the start of a multiplayer map, and many times that can be limited by other components on your PC. But in general SSD's are NOT very advantageous for games anyhow.

[jedisolo]

I updated the firmware on my samsung 470 drive but I'm not sure what the firmware fixes.

[tilleroftheearth]

Hahaha nice man i'll take your word for it then.

Usage? I hear everyone always talking about usage but does it make that big of a difference really?

On a day to day basis i download music, load tracks up on Traktor, play them, mix them, edit audio files (i produce on the fly as ideas come to me), surf the net.... thats it really...

then theres the occasional game that i fire up n play for a while... but yea i move files around on my computer pretty often,,, constantly keeping my songs neately organized that i backup every couple of days to my external harddrives (yes... i have 3 copies of my songs/files LOL)

what would that usage mean in terms of a SSD that would suit my needs?

Well, you don't need to take my word; buy an SSD and find out for yourself.

With the type of use you put your system to, I would say that you need at least a 240GB SSD. Not because you want to keep all that data on your system - but because you want to have as much free space as possible on it (to sort of, kind of ensure it gives consistently good/great performance).

A 50% filled SSD (or less) will give better performance than any HDD available (even an XT Hybrid). Depending on the way you use it though, it can give worse real world results too. Fill it past 60 or 70% and if you use it a lot (like I do) you'll be wondering why you spent the extra money for. Not to mention all the work arounds you'll be doing to keep yourself confined to the much smaller capacity of today's SSD's.

So, the SSD that would fit your needs (and mine and about a billion other people too) is simply not made yet.

At least not one that you can just drop into your system and forget about what you're doing and whether it will boot up the next time you hit the power button anyway.

This is the reason to wait for the new generation SSD's. Not for performance, not for price (but those will come too) - but for everyday usability and the ability for the SSD to become 'invisible' in everyday use - just like we do with our HD's now.

Btw, my next SSD will be an Intel. No doubt about that.

[Phil]

Newegg has that drive for $99 right now, free shipping.
(I won't buy from Amazon because I'd have to pay sales tax -- they are located in my state.)

I wonder if the XT would boost gaming performance noticeably ??

Edit: Reviews by owners don't recommend it for gaming. Apparently good for speeding up repetitive usage patterns.

It's a very fast 7200rpm for gaming. Not as fast as SSDs though.

I don't really recommend the XT for the Acer 1830T though, it's such a small and light notebook. Vibration is quite noticeable and you'll get etter battery life with an SSD.

[Supremesabre]

HELP!!! Will my Asus F83VF(c2d P8800) support SSD? I went to device manager and saw

Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller. It's 1 year old...

Are there any more things to check?

Am thinking of getting phoenix pro 120gb....or intel x25m

some help pls! thanks