SSD Now or later this year?

[MadduckUK]

dont bother, the intel mullers it. it would a a SSDNOW V+ (note the +) if you wanted something a bit more competitive, but they take quite a bump in price.

you should have got an 80GB intel from Aria when they were on cheap last week - i nearly did but decided to hold off for a descent priced 128 or better

second gen ssdnows's are being released now as well so if you do go for one watch out for that, they are a tad faster iirc

[Ulti]

Put an order through CCL Computers for the Intel X25-V 40GB one, hopefully all goes well and I receive it tomorrow.

Gotta go out now so I'll leave it here.

[Englander]

Put an order through CCL Computers for the Intel X25-V 40GB one, hopefully all goes well and I receive it tomorrow.

Gotta go out now so I'll leave it here.

Solid choice, can I request a before and after boot time test comparing current HDD and new SSD (say until the desktop is responsive or your Internet browser of choice is open). I managed to forget to do that when I got my SSD and now have no way of comparing short of reinstalling Windows on my HDD (not going to happen) :S

[Ulti]

Even though I put the order through at around 4pm, the payment wasn't taken till 6pm so it seems I won't be getting it tomorrow then and will have to wait till Monday

I'll put some HDTune screenshots up and try to test boot time from the moment I press the on button. Might be a bit biased though as the SSD will be almost clean whereas my HDD will have a bit of data on it even if it's not much.

[Ulti]

Update: They managed to dispatch the order yesterday at 10am and I received it in the post this morning delivered by RM.

I was being stupid and didn't install the AHCI drivers before installing everything but luckily there's a little trick to enable it. Performance then shot right up and I can seriously feel how fast the drive is. Right now I've installed all the main things I use onto the SSD.

My previous hard drive was a single Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB
New boot drive is a single Intel X25-V 40GB

Windows Experience Index for HDD increased from 5.9 to 7.5. I haven't installed any SSD related tweaking programs as I'm happy with the performance, just turned on AHCI in the BIOS and installed the drivers.



Funny how it states my CPU is the weakest "link" in my pc, I really don't agree haha.

HDTune performance has increased quite a bit too:

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB:



Intel X25-V 40GB:



Boot time certainly is faster too. Whilst searching on how to enable AHCI after installing W7, I found out that my board will boot slightly faster if I use certain SATA ports so I've changed the setup.

SATA Mode on IDE and WD Black 640GB as boot drive ~1min 0sec from pressing On to Firefox being up.

SATA Mode on IDE and Intel X25-V 40GB as boot drive ~45sec from pressing On button to Firefox being up.

SATA Mode on ACHI and Intel X25-V 40GB as boot drive ~40sec from pressing On button to Firefox being up.

Takes 17 seconds to reach the BIOS screen with the "Press <DEL> to enter setup" etc.
Takes 25 seconds to reach the black screen where the W7 logo begins loading up.

WD Black 640GB was timed today so it wasn't a clean install, same goes for the Intel X25-V.

I barely even see the blue "Welcome" screen now and the desktop is usable straight away too.

Overall I'm very happy about the SSD. You can see that I've used aproximately 56% of the SSD after installing W7 and my main programs.

[Antagram]

I picked up for my 64GB Samsung SSD MLC for £70 including postage a few days ago.

I know it's not the fastest one around but it still works relatively quickly and boots up to my Windows 7 desktop within 25 seconds.

Is that a Samsung MMCRE64GMPP-0VA?

I got one when they first appeared for £99 at Novatech, and it made big difference to an old laptop running XP. But I didn't notice much of a boot-up speed improvement for my Vista machine. Although it was bought solely for the laptop, where it resides today.

[Tim Rogers]

It seems like a good time to buy to me - the Intel X25-V seems like a solid purchase at its current price, especially with the free shipping on Scan through Hexus.

I'm planning to get one, just to see what it's like. Haven't upgraded anything for a few years so it will certainly be a change!

Tim