SSD to upgrade performance of old C2D system?

[cocksy_boy]

Hi there,

Was just looking at this article on Toms Hardware (hope I'm allowed to link to that!), and was thinking maybe this is a good way to improve my old system?!!

I'm currently running a Intel Core 2 E6300 on a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, Rev 1.0 with 4x1 GB Geil PC6400, and an inno 3D 8800GT 512Mb running Win 7 x64.

Its relatively old kit so I'm not sure how easy it is or even if it is possible to use an SSD on this old board?!

I realise that the graphics card will be the main bottleneck for gaming, but an SSD might just help things like load up times and general multitasking performance.

Also, what would be the minimum size for using as a Windows boot and program disk? My current drive seems to have about 100GB on it, so I'll prob have to go abit bigger than that. I'm about to put all my data onto a NAS, so that's not an issue. I'm happy to move my outlook pst file to another disk if that will help too!

Any thoughts?

[Pob255]

You've got a sata 3Gb/s (often called sata2) so there's plenty of ssd's you could use.

If your still running that e6300 at stock speeds then it's only 1.86ghz so that's also not going to be great for games.
You could pick up a wolfdale c2d E7500 (2.93ghz) 2nd hand for around £50
the 8800gt should still be good at lower resolutions just not full 1080p

Kingston V100 128gb £130 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...-write-230mb-s that's about the cheapest you'll get for a 115-128gb range SSD
Others to look at would be the OCZ Vertex 2E 120gb £134 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...-write-275mb-s

A chunk cheaper the Kingston V+100 96gb £86 http://www.ebuyer.com/246998-kingsto...s-svp100s2-96g

[CooperXS]

SSD raised the snappiness of my old Dell D420 giving it 2nd life

[cocksy_boy]

Thanks for the info.

Would there be any downside to getting a high spec SSD for the old system? I know the PC wont be able to make best use of it (e.g. SATA 6Gb/sec) but that way when i do eventually upgrade to a newer system, the SSD wont be too far behind.

Or are the differences in performance not really worth the extra cash?

[cocksy_boy]

You've got a sata 3Gb/s (often called sata2) so there's plenty of ssd's you could use.

If your still running that e6300 at stock speeds then it's only 1.86ghz so that's also not going to be great for games.
You could pick up a wolfdale c2d E7500 (2.93ghz) 2nd hand for around £50
the 8800gt should still be good at lower resolutions just not full 1080p

Yeah, I'm still at stock speeds, although I bought it to overclock, I've never got round to testing and getting a getting it set up all stable!

Unfortunately, I dont think my motherboard supports the E7500, according to this page. Although, I don't know why it wouldn't - the motherboard supports other CPUs with the same clock speed (1066), but it apparently doesn't support any of the wolfdale cores: the 'best' C2D it appears to support is the E6700. It does support some of the C2Quads, and Extremes, but i expect they're still a lot more expensive even 2nd hand!

When i do go for a new system I'll probably go for one with SLI so in the future I could use the power of my current 8800GT with something newer too.

[edgars70]

I've got a similar pc, intel e4300 overlocked to 2.7Ghz, a 8800GTS card, 4 gig ram and a 1TB Samsung F3 harddrive. I've just bought the Kingston V100+ 96GB ssd and am waiting for it to arrive. I bought it because I want the fast load times of apps and I don't have the time or money to buy a new pc.

From what I've read on various reviews and from others experience, it should make a noticeable difference to the day to day performance of my pc. As usual, I won't be telling the wife about the new device and it will be interesting to see if she notices the difference.

If it makes significant difference, then I'll post again with subjective feedback - cannot be bothered to run loads of benchmarks .

[cocksy_boy]

I've got a similar pc, intel e4300 overlocked to 2.7Ghz, a 8800GTS card, 4 gig ram and a 1TB Samsung F3 harddrive. I've just bought the Kingston V100+ 96GB ssd and am waiting for it to arrive. I bought it because I want the fast load times of apps and I don't have the time or money to buy a new pc.

From what I've read on various reviews and from others experience, it should make a noticeable difference to the day to day performance of my pc. As usual, I won't be telling the wife about the new device and it will be interesting to see if she notices the difference.

If it makes significant difference, then I'll post again with subjective feedback - cannot be bothered to run loads of benchmarks .

Sweet - that'd be great to hear your experiences! Cheers!

[edgars70]

Hi,

It's taken a long time, but I am using the SSD finally. My first impressions were that it was faster than before, but not as fast as I was expecting. However, after a week of using the SSD, I switched my machine back to using the old HDD and you notice the difference immediately. The HDD installation is a lot slower in all the areas you'd expect - slow app start up etc. I think I just got used to the SSD's snappyness and forgot how slow the HDD was.

btw, I spent a long time trying to migrate my Win 7 installation from my HDD to my SSD. I made many attempts and asked for help on these forums, but never got it working. So I gave in at the weekend and reinstalled Win 7 and I am working through the apps as and when I need them.