Solid state drives

[shaithis]

I thought Scans price was about the same as everyone elses.......which are all substantially higher then the Hexus artical mentioned they would cost......

I am hoping they are available before August 4th....

[sammorris]

For ref, avoid all first gen SSDs, including the OCZ Core, OCZ Core V2 and OCZ Solid Series. These do not have buffered controllers and perform similarly to 3600rpm 1.8" drives for running windows. Even today's eco drives flatten them for performance.

[dangel]

I thought Scans price was about the same as everyone elses.......which are all substantially higher then the Hexus artical mentioned they would cost......

Might well be - hence my question really - why (given exchange rates) the hike for the UK? Or are these just initial costs for pre-orders?

[sammorris]

I don't look at the prices of pre-orders too much, they usually change when the product appears in stock, often higher than before, but sometimes lower.

[Funkstar]

Pre orders are likely to be the MSRP rather than the buy price plus markup that online stores usually operate by.

[shaithis]

Might well be - hence my question really - why (given exchange rates) the hike for the UK? Or are these just initial costs for pre-orders?

Can't say I have seen scan mark-up pre-orders before, although I just may not have noticed them doing it....

Looks like they won't be arriving in stock until August 14th - bah

[dangel]

Can't say I have seen scan mark-up pre-orders before, although I just may not have noticed them doing it....

Looks like they won't be arriving in stock until August 14th - bah

Probably due to the recall - which wouldn't of affected me anyway! gah!

[GheeTsar]

You could always pick up the 1st gen Intel drive if you need it in a rush - Scan are doing it for £207 on today only. Admittedly that's still £40 more than the price of a a 2nd gen drive, but the performance is not much different.

[dangel]

There's enough different for me to wait tbh - and it's not as though my mechinical drives don't work right now

It's just always annoying when there's delays - but i'm old enough to be patient!

[sammorris]

Despite the 70MB/s write speed (much rage about this, write speed is the one thing I was hoping to see improved with SSDs, ah well longer install times are better than longer loading times) the Intel next gen SSDs still seem to wipe the floor with the others in real world tasks.

[dangel]

Your drive spends most of it's time doing random reads and writes (the latter less so) and so sequential write speed works out to be pretty meaningless for an OS drive (or indeed for most tasks as you don't often deal with very large sequential files). I was all set to go for a SSD with high sequential write - until I realised it's marketing bull****. I did wonder why Intel went the route they did but they utterly destroy other drives in relevant benchmarks.

[sammorris]

Exactly - the random reads on an early SSD are completely non-existant, and the latter ones are better, but the Intel ones absolutely destroy them. At £170 for 80GB too, I think they work out cheaper.

[Terbinator]

I too are waiting on the new intel drive, maybe bang it in a new i5 system

[sammorris]

I was considering the i7 800 series, but I ideally want a system with full PCI express bandwidth, and so far I can't see any sign that the 1166 boards will have that without relying on an nforce chip.

[MoonPig]

I'm not too sure SSD's are worth it right now. Yea, they have great response times and better Read times, but the price/size is horrid. I'd rather Raid 0 afew WD Blacks and get over 1TB space.

The only way im getting an SSD is if the Size is even to the Price. So, 120GB for £120 (or close to).

Lets say i got a 60GB one, Windows 7 will take up 20GB of that. Then theres afew apps, so 10GB more. Then i have 30GB for my 90GB Steam folder... So i have to pick 3 games to fit on it for quicker load times... I'd rather wait afew ms more and have more space/money.

[sammorris]

I would never use an SSD for data, in much the same way I would never use a RAID array for my OS drive. Not using separate drives for the OS and your games seems like such an old fashioned way of doing things these days, having done it since 2005, I don't see how I live without it for my main system - the only difference is my work PC which runs everything off a WD10EADS (It needs to be quiet, more than it needs to be fast)