SSD's significant performance boost?

[Allen]

Was gonna create a thread asking these questions, guess I don't need to now!

I was looking at the prices of the 32GB drive, and although, yes, it's small and will come down in price etc, but so does everything.

I am having a problem with my main hard drive at the moment, when I am playing a game or copying large files, my hard drives buzzes incredibly loud. It could be on it's last legs so am looking for a replacement. Would I see an increase in performance by getting an SSD, and would it connect using the same SATA interface?

Even a 32GB drive would be enough for my system drive, Windows, a couple of games and that's all I would need. Maybe even 2x32GB drives or something? With larger HDD's for storing music and other stuff.

In a nutshell, what are people's thoughts on SDD's at the moment? Are they worth it?

[Clunk]

If you use Vista, you won't be able to fit that and a game on the 32GB one. Even a chopped down Vista install plus a relatively recent game can be too much. Two of these would be pretty awesome and you wouldn't even have to RAID them

The M series is better suited for that kind of thing, or even the 64GB E series, but that's going to be serious money.

[TheAnimus]

If you use Vista, you won't be able to fit that and a game on the 32GB one. Even a chopped down Vista install plus a relatively recent game can be too much. Two of these would be pretty awesome and you wouldn't even have to RAID them

The M series is better suited for that kind of thing, or even the 64GB E series, but that's going to be serious money.

Bollocks.

Utter crapping bollocks.

I have NO issue fitting it on a 30gig one, with more than just one game.

[TheAnimus]

Maybe even 2x32GB drives or something? With larger HDD's for storing music and other stuff.

The really nice things about SSDs is they scale pratically linearly.

The problem we have is that RAID controllers seam to bottleneck at 600mb/sec, least the adaptec ones we've been using.

[Clunk]

Bollocks.

Utter crapping bollocks.

I have NO issue fitting it on a 30gig one, with more than just one game.

Let's see you fit a standard install of Vista x64 and Crysis on it without disabling anything.

I have an E-series here and I can't do it - I've even Vlited the Vista install.

Just some simple maths - Standard Vista install from an original 64bit media disc uses up to 20GB, that's including the page file and hibernation files etc, the Crysis install is 12GB or so. The Drive is 29GB when partitioned.

As I said, without disabling stuff in Vista, it just won't fit. I was replying to Allen's post and he said he wanted to fit Vista and a couple of games on there. If you think you can show us how to fit Vista, Crysis and another similar game on a 32GB drive, go ahead.

[Agent]

Bollocks.

Utter crapping bollocks.

Come on mate, that's a bit harsh, even for you

[shaithis]

The thing with SSDs IMO is that it really isn't worth it yet.

They will replace hard drives soon enough, the amount of R&D going into the tech is insane at the moment, as are the continual advances month-by-month.

Give it a year, there are so many business who will adopt the tech in the next year that prices will tumble and capacities will soar. Let the businesses pay the early adopter fees

[Splash]

Let's see you fit a standard install of Vista x64 and Crysis on it without disabling anything.

I have an E-series here and I can't do it - I've even Vlited the Vista install.

Just some simple maths - Standard Vista install from an original 64bit media disc uses up to 20GB, that's including the page file and hibernation files etc, the Crysis install is 12GB or so. The Drive is 29GB when partitioned.

As I said, without disabling stuff in Vista, it just won't fit. I was replying to Allen's post and he said he wanted to fit Vista and a couple of games on there. If you think you can show us how to fit Vista, Crysis and another similar game on a 32GB drive, go ahead.

I think I'd be moving the page file to another disk to extend the lifespan of the SSD. That saves you a chunk of space, and a quick look at my games disk shows that while some modern games are a tad on the large side (my Steam directory is at 20Gib alone, but that has GTA4, FM2009, GTA4, Vice City and the DoW2 beta in there) not all are - CoD4 comes in at 6.45Gib, Fallout 3 5.63Gib, RA3 7.8Gib.

In all honesty were I to make the jump to SSD (and I haven't as yet becuase the value isn't quite there for me) I'd be running my OS off it and pretty much nothing else - I don't *need* WoW to load a little quicker in all honesty, but the reduction in boot time is nice.

[Singh400]

Just some simple maths - Standard Vista install from an original 64bit media disc uses up to 20GB, that's including the page file and hibernation files etc, the Crysis install is 12GB or so. The Drive is 29GB when partitioned.

What 20GB? No way, I'm gonna go right ahead and dispute that, I will post the size of my C:\Windows when I get home. I think it's just under 10GB. Running Vista x64 Ultimate here. I know Vista is a big fat child, but 20GB? No way!

[Funkstar]

My c:\windows is about 9GB, ProgramData and User is onlt another couple of gig. Can't tell how big Program Files and Program Files (x86) would be on a clean install though.

[shaithis]

In all honesty were I to make the jump to SSD (and I haven't as yet becuase the value isn't quite there for me) I'd be running my OS off it and pretty much nothing else - I don't *need* WoW to load a little quicker in all honesty, but the reduction in boot time is nice.

MMORPGs would probably benefit from SSDs more then any other games. The amount of loading they do is obscene. You would probably save more time having the MMO on the SSD and booting from a normal HD.

I really do not get the mentality of having SSD as a boot drive......how often do you boot your PC? Compare those seconds saved with how much time you could save if certain games/apps were on the SSD and I get the impression people must reboot every time they close an app

[Funkstar]

I really do not get the mentality of having SSD as a boot drive......how often do you boot your PC? Compare those seconds saved with how much time you could save if certain games/apps were on the SSD and I get the impression people must reboot every time they close an app

Probably because the vary, vart majority or people would have all their apps on the boot drive as well.

I Certainally wouldn't install most apps on another drive for speed reasons, espectially when they end up puting a bunch of stuff in ProgramData or the User folder, so the slower boot drive still needs to be accessed anyway.

Granted games are different and usually have huge data sets in their own directory.

[Clunk]

I think I'd be moving the page file to another disk to extend the lifespan of the SSD. That saves you a chunk of space, and a quick look at my games disk shows that while some modern games are a tad on the large side (my Steam directory is at 20Gib alone, but that has GTA4, FM2009, GTA4, Vice City and the DoW2 beta in there) not all are - CoD4 comes in at 6.45Gib, Fallout 3 5.63Gib, RA3 7.8Gib.

You are right, the point I was making is that the games need a lot of room to install, my Crysis folder is only around 6GB once it's installed and cleaned up, Crysis Warhead is around 7GB, but they need that extra space to install, and it's only when you are on a tiny drive like the 32GB E-series that you notice these things.

I dare say that with some tweaking it's possible, but why bother? Why not just get a drive that's the right size for you to begin with

[aidanjt]

Not to mention the filesystem overhead. When most filesystems (including NTFS) begin to get full they start sucking more and more. Even if SSDs have no seek time, the CPU still has a bunch of extra work to do. And don't forget that Windows creates a hibernation file equal to the volume of RAM you have. So even if you move your swap off to a mechanical drive that's $RAM sucked from your SSD. Have 8GB of RAM?.. There goes 8GB of space. If you want to keep swap on the SSD for faster swap performance, there goes $RAM*2.5 (at least) of system disk capacity.

Clunk is quite right in his assertion.

[shaithis]

You can turn hibernation off which removes the file....of course, you need to get Vista up-and-running first though AFAIK.

[aidanjt]

You can turn hibernation off which removes the file....of course, you need to get Vista up-and-running first though AFAIK.

Yes, and then you lose power-saving hibernation support. Which is a bit of a backwards peddle since SSDs are suppose to represent magical power saving properties.