News - OCZ launches supposedly-affordable Agility line of SSDs

[HEXUS]

Cheaper flash memory paving the way for lower-cost solid state drives.

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[AdamAnubis]

I think aslong as they're quieter and the same speed as a HDD, then I'd be willing to pay a bit more for the silence/rigidity of them. Other than that, don't see the point of paying a premium for the bragging of having 'slow' SSD drive.

[borandi]

The R/W for the 30GB is better than a lot of solutions out there under the budget range. At least they're not using a JMicron controller

The cheapest SSDs are going for just under 2GBP per GB. So the 30GB model for 55-70 squids?

[nvening]

if they were that price i think i would go for one

[cordas]

I recon I would start seriously consider buying a SSD at around the £100 mark for 60/64GB, thats assuming it was quick and reliable. Yes i could run a lot less for system drive, but I would also be thinking of having any games i wanted to play installed on that drive for the lightening quick level loads, so 60GB is really the minimum size I would go for.

Hopefully SSDs of that size or greater will be going for less than £100 by xmas, if not i am fairly sure they will be by this time next year.

[miniyazz]

Keep an eye out on the Kingston then, at £105 for 64GB it's not to be sniffed at. But we're still waiting on cache/controller, don't know how good it is yet. And the Corsair is good, despite slower read/write speeds.

What everyone here seems to be missing (including the author, Parm) is that once read/write speeds pass a certain point with SSDs (a little slower than mechanical HDD sequential read/writes), for most applications there will be no performance loss when compared to SSDs with faster read/writes. It's the access times and IOPS that make SSDs so much faster than HDDs; the only time very fast transfer rates are needed is when handling huge files (and, to a small extent, loading large game files into RAM). Loading lots of small files, such as when booting Windows or loading most applications, will show a huge difference between mechanical HDDs and almost any SSD, but the difference between say the Corsair 128GB (£170) and the 120GB Vertex (£340) is small. The IOPS is what counts, and both these SSDs have very high IOPS.

Yes you get slightly more performance from the Vertex compared to the Corsair, but nowhere near as much as you'd expect just by looking at transfer speeds, and certainly not £170 worth.

[0iD]

As with any new tech, as production processes get refined, streamlined & numbers increase price will inevitably be pushed down. Another 6-8 months & perhaps prices will be on a par with HDD's.

At the end of the day it's still an emerging tech & in it's infancy. Early adopters will look back & wonder why they spent so much

[tarqueen]

Think I'll wait to see what intel's 2nd round of efforts are like before going for an SSD. The tech seems to be progressing so quickly at the moment it doesn't seem like a good investment unless you've got money to burn.

[Funkstar]

Hopefully SSDs of that size or greater will be going for less than £100 by xmas, if not i am fairly sure they will be by this time next year.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?SAM-SSD64M

Not the best performer, but it's all relative. It might get beaten by the high end SSDs, but it will blow a regular laptop drive out of the water and will hold its own against a regular desktop drive.

[borandi]

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?SAM-SSD64M

Not the best performer, but it's all relative. It might get beaten by the high end SSDs, but it will blow a regular laptop drive out of the water and will hold its own against a regular desktop drive.

Hmm though I'm upgrading an OS/System drive from a 150GB Raptor to an SSD. SSD would excel with the random access time, but the Raptor would chew through on sequential read and writes. Also the size difference. A 64GB would be nice as a system drive, but for 100 notes I'd prefer something a little faster than 90/70.

[scaryjim]

in the meantime, how much would you be willing to pay for a decent mainstream SSD?

I'd baulk at paying much more than £1 per GB. If they can make a 32GB drive for ~ £40, or 64GB drive for < £70 then I might start biting.

Otherwise, I'm quite happy to stick to large mechanical drives for the time being - I'm the biggest bottleneck for most of my PC usage, and if my computer's a bit slow starting up that just gives me time to make a coffee

[Funkstar]

Hmm though I'm upgrading an OS/System drive from a 150GB Raptor to an SSD. SSD would excel with the random access time, but the Raptor would chew through on sequential read and writes. Also the size difference. A 64GB would be nice as a system drive, but for 100 notes I'd prefer something a little faster than 90/70.

And I think we will see that in the next 6 months. I was just pointing out that you can get a decent and usable SSD for less than £100 right now.

This past year has seen the performance of SSDs rocket, but the prices haven't really come down to consumer levels until now. I guess we will not start to see more vendors releasing value lines to make up the lower end of the market. So while I would love to have a £500 monster with insane transfer rates, maxing out a SATA-300 connection, I just couldn't bring myself to spend that kind of money. So for me (and I'm betting many others) while I will happily pay more for an SSD than a spindle based drive, something along the 80-100p/GB is what I'm looking at.

[Saracen]

Personally, I have no great problems with the performance levels of decent hard drives. It's all very well having devices that are, on paper, a lot faster because of negligible access times but the question is .... what difference will it make for me, in real usage?

It's the same question as for other component options. What would DDR3 do for me over DDR2, and at what price? What benefit do I get from a more expensive processor, and at what price? Even what benefit do I get from an OS upgrade, and at what price?

And personally, I don't care what benchmark results say, unless it results in real world benefits to me, and I certainly don't give a flying fig about what we used to refer to as "bragging rights".

SSDs may well be the technology of the future. Goodness knows it's been promised for long enough, and it looks like we might finally be getting there. But, for me, we aren't there yet. The price premium, in terms of cost per GB, is still FAR too high for me. By virtue of me being pretty satisfied with the price and performance of hard drives, I won't be prepared to pay much of a premium for SSDs. Produce a 1TB SSD with decent performance and an acceptable read/write life at under £100, and my interest will pick up. Until then, I don't see the cost/benefit advantage. So I guess I have a while to wait yet.

[scaryjim]

Produce a 1TB SSD with decent performance and an acceptable read/write life at under £100, and my interest will pick up. Until then, I don't see the cost/benefit advantage. So I guess I have a while to wait yet.

You have impressive patience for a frequenter of tech forums

[shaithis]

Personally, I have no great problems with the performance levels of decent hard drives. It's all very well having devices that are, on paper, a lot faster because of negligible access times but the question is .... what difference will it make for me, in real usage?

It depends on what you class as a difference that's worth it.

For me, starting my PC and being in Windows with everything loaded in a few seconds, is worth it.

Double-clicking the Photoshop CS4 icon and having the program being instantly usable, is worth it.

Basically, if you do not like waiting, SSD is worth it.

[borandi]

SSDs work if you use applications which require a lot of random reads/writes. Booting an OS, loading Photoshop CS4, loading games etc. are all beneficial if you have an SSD. If you write email or use MS Word, then no - you're not going to see an advantage.

And I think we will see that in the next 6 months. I was just pointing out that you can get a decent and usable SSD for less than &#163;100 right now.

This past year has seen the performance of SSDs rocket, but the prices haven't really come down to consumer levels until now. I guess we will not start to see more vendors releasing value lines to make up the lower end of the market. So while I would love to have a &#163;500 monster with insane transfer rates, maxing out a SATA-300 connection, I just couldn't bring myself to spend that kind of money. So for me (and I'm betting many others) while I will happily pay more for an SSD than a spindle based drive, something along the 80-100p/GB is what I'm looking at.

I totally agree with you. I saw a huge leap in performance from a regular HDD to the Raptor, and now the prices are coming down, I'd love to get an SSD if the advantages are there and it hits the right price point. For me, that's around &#163;1.40 per GB, so this 30GB model at ~&#163;40 would be nice. But that being said, small platter HDDs still don't go under the &#163;35 mark, due to the base cost per item. Hopefully an SSD base cost is lower.