Speeding up general Performance - What to go for?

[mikeo01]

Been debating the performance SSDs provide, however they're too expensive and expensive per Gigabyte leaves little capacity for anything.

So, what may be the best to go for, I have couple of ideas on what to do.

1. Buy SanDisk Ready Cache 32GB for higher sequential speeds (£35)
2. Buy 60/64GB OCZ Agility 3/SanDisk 64 for OS and some programs
3. More RAM and set up dedicated RAM cache? Or RAMdisk
4. Buy a Hybrid drive such as the Seagate Momentus XT

I don't want to go RAID, risk of data loss too great.

The size of SSDs doesn't justify spending the money on it.

Thanks for anyone's input

[Rob_B]

Budget?

Overall I'd personally go with #2 for 'overall' performance myself but it depends on your other specs as well.

[mikeo01]

Thanks for the reply, so a dedicated SSD for OS and other programs seems the best way to go?

And what other specs?

[Rob_B]

Well that's what I'd personally do yes, quick boot times and then stick any apps you need on there, keep the other HDD for mass storage et voila.

As for other specs, well how much extra RAM are you talking about? If you have the 8GB as in your spec then is it worth it? RAMdrives aren't always brilliant as the performance is amazing but it's all lost upon reboot/crash etc. Is your current HDD any good? If not then maybe go for a hybrid but if it's ok then stick with an SSD.

[mikeo01]

Well I have 8GB and it rarely reaches 50% in use. I could get the same model (Corsair XMS) and amount (4GB x2) for £26, so in total 16GB.
I was thinking of using RAMdisk to copy the contents to the HDD then load them back up on boot, but from where you're going this would be slower?

My current HDD is a Seagate ST3500418AS, whether it's good or not I don't really know, I have only ever known Seagate drives. Well from Bootracer the drive took a total of 49 seconds to login. I suppose it isn't that bad, any programs to benchmark the HDD to see? I will post the results

[technodean]

As Rob says, get an ssd, you won't regret it. To see how your seagate drive, use crystal disk mark http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...k/index-e.html I think the standard edition. To see how it performs here is my scores for an M4 64gb and an Samsung 830

[deejayburnout]

Get yourself a SSD.

Might be expensive per GB, but I found a big difference in my overall speed of my computer. I found even more in gaming by having one separate drive for Windows and one separate drive for games.

having never used a Ramdisk, I am not sure how much faster it is.

[eagle123]

like the others have done is get a ssd for os and other applications, and a fast storage drive the bigger the better then use the intel irst utility to raid them by using the ssd as a cache drive whilst installing the games on the storage drive it generally speeds up by 30 percent

[mikeo01]

I'm using my phone to write this at the moment, but I used CrystalMark earlier and from that the results seem poor.

Seq was around 120MB/s for read and write.

Random 512KB was about 70-80MB/s IIRC.

4K and 4KQD32 was under 1MB/s.

I am on a budget, so would the Agility 3 60GB be alright? Or the SanDisk 64GB? Over £40 is a lot, considering I will only be using it for an OS and some frequently used programs.

Unless 128/120GB prices drop dramatically I probably won't be looking at them any time soon

Thanks for the help everyone!

[RhinoUK]

Ive done exactly what other people are suggesting and did it one step at a time to what i could afford.
Getting the 60Gb SSD will only allow your OS my docs and pics depending on how big they are on and a couple of programs depending on size, SSD work best with at least your memory size free and pagefile on the SSD http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...er-life-matter and can slow down when near full capacity. I would save up the little bit extra and get the 120Gb version as your main drive

Your current drive looks at 120Mb a tad slow but the max sustained speed is 160Mb, factors such as port controller, cables, driver and firmware can effect these so look for some advice on this in the forums.

[mikeo01]

Just tested again with CrystalMark. 5 times.

I was a bit off

Seq: 117.5 Read, 95.14 Write
512KB: 31.74 Read, 48.25 Write
4K: 0.353 Read, 0.806 Write

On amazon they have the SanDisk 128GB model for £55, but an Extreme 120GB model for £70. That's quite a lot.

Windows takes up around 20-25GB? I can see where you are coming, I would full that 64GB up pretty quick.

I may wait till prices drop further for an SSD then

[DanceswithUnix]

Just tested again with CrystalMark. 5 times.

I was a bit off

Seq: 117.5 Read, 95.14 Write
512KB: 31.74 Read, 48.25 Write
4K: 0.353 Read, 0.806 Write

On amazon they have the SanDisk 128GB model for £55, but an Extreme 120GB model for £70. That's quite a lot.

Windows takes up around 20-25GB? I can see where you are coming, I would full that 64GB up pretty quick.

I may wait till prices drop further for an SSD then

I would. Ignore the sequential speed, half a gig per second makes a nice headline but it is the small random access speed that you really feel. You also want a bit of spare space for the drive to play with to keep performance up.

Not sure why people talk about boot times with SSD. I don't boot that often, and coming back from sleep with rotating media is fast enough. I would have thought a cheap USB3 flash drive plugged in the back set to readyboost would sort boot times for a tenner. I have one kicking around, perhaps I should try it just to see if it actually helps.

http://www.ebuyer.com/386262-extra-v...ev-usb16gb-3-0

[mikeo01]

So basically you need to spend more and waste space for the SSD to be in tip top performance? So a 128GB model is pretty minimum.

My boot time aren't too bad, I only notice boot times when I am overclocking and having to restart a lot.

USB devices are very cheap these days, so would that serve the same purpose as a SSD as cache? (Obviously slower). I may chuck in a USB device and if that a go to see what difference it makes.

Would I benefit more from using that you think? I use a lot of the same programs, so my pattern doesn't change, I assume this is a big factor. It's very rare I change my program habits, only now and again I may need to convert some music (phone doesn't use WMA ). Other than that I do use the same programs.

I will definitely wait till SSD prices will come down, but it's nice to see a lot of other alternatives.

Thanks everyone for the input, much appreciated

[jim]

#2.

And I wouldn't worry much about "tip top performance".

The point is that a good quality SSD, even if it's not at top performance, will far outperform a spindle-based disk. All of the sequential speed etc is largely irrelevant, it's access time that matters. Spindle disks are typically 7ms+, whereas an SSD is below 0.1ms (massive approximations, but you get the idea).

If you can fit your OS install and the programs you most want to speed up into 60GB, then I think you might as well go for it.

[technodean]

I run my old m4 64gb for a year, and only ever used about half (see my first cyrystalmark score 54% used), and that's with all my programs including photoshop and 3 X 1.9gb games saves. But for that I disabled Hibernate which I think is about 7gb and shrunk my pagefile from 8 to 4gb as I use 8gb of ram.

[mikeo01]

Thanks! So basically access time is far more relevant over a standard HDD unless you are looking for high end performance? So opening a 1GB patch file on my HDD takes some time, 5-10 secs, on a SSD it should be lower? Do you really need to splash out on an expensive SSD to get better performance over the traditional hard disk drives?

Just went over how much my current files take up. To my surprise not actually that much. If I moved all my large files such as patches, updates, games folders etc to my HDD that would leave quite a lot of room for programs. Not loads of room, but enough to allow some programs to be installed onto my HDD (stuff I don't use as much).

A 64GB SanDisk is £40 whilst the standard 128GB model is £55. I may wait and see if they drop, because £15 extra for twice as much space is a good deal.

EDIT:
Thanks technodean. I have hibernation turned off also because it uses a lot, I don't even use it, sleep does the job nicely. My paging file would be configured on my HDD so that should save about 8GB worth. The only other folder that does eat up a lot is Winsxs, which I may have to think about.

My personal files take up next to nothing, but patches and game folders take up the most. But 5GB is enough for my personal folder I think

64GB may just be enough for me by the looks of it