Speeding up general Performance - What to go for?

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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

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What I usually say is that an SSD is ridiculously faster than a hard drive, and you can notice it (although not nearly as much as you would assume if you thought experience would improve linearly with benchmarks). Yes, there are differences between SSDs, but they're so comparatively small that you just won't notice them. Any SSD will give you the performance improvement you're looking for, and unless you start benching, I doubt you could subjectively tell which was quicker unless you tested side by side. Even then it might be tricky.

There are obviously some totally separate issues, like for example that SandForce drives have developed a reputation for being unreliable. But speed shouldn't concern you when picking an SSD, imo.

As for WinSXS, it is my understanding, having googled the issue for a while, that the folder size is commonly misreported. My layman's understanding is that it aims to catalogue all of the DLLs and system files on your system, so that your computer can revert to older version where necessary - they may not actually be located in that folder though, they just appear to because that's the catalogue. So it shows up as being gigantic, when it actually isn't. I know that's true because on some systems where I've used tools like Treesize Free (that may be handy for you by the way) the individual folders add up to more than the drive.

In short, don't worry about WinSXS. And certainly don't try to delete items from it.

So in other words don't purely go by benchmarks because an SSD is an upgrade regardless?

What drivers should I look for? Obviously I am hoping it'll last as long as a hard drive, or close to it. Are there any specific drivers to look for? Or are most running on the latest these days?

And ahh right, so winsxs is just a shell pointing to files, so in other words best is to ignore it? :P

Thanks for clearing things up, puts SSDs into perspective. I assumed the lower end SSDs were significantly slower and noticeable. I was worried lower end SSDs may feel like a slightly faster hard disk drive.

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Originally Posted by mikeo01

So in other words don't purely go by benchmarks because an SSD is an upgrade regardless?

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Yes.

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What drivers should I look for? Obviously I am hoping it'll last as long as a hard drive, or close to it. Are there any specific drivers to look for? Or are most running on the latest these days?

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Not sure what you mean by drivers?

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And ahh right, so winsxs is just a shell pointing to files, so in other words best is to ignore it? :P

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As I understand it, yes, but I'm no expert - just the result of a google session a while back!

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Thanks for clearing things up, puts SSDs into perspective. I assumed the lower end SSDs were significantly slower and noticeable. I was worried lower end SSDs may feel like a slightly faster hard disk drive.

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Back in the old days (relative to SSDs at least), when SSDs came out, there were some really rotten ones that were, at worst, slower than hard disks.

That's all a long time ago now though, and we're long past that stage, technologically. I've had a few now, and no matter which one you get, they're a very different beast to hard disks. I don't doubt that there are differences, but IMO outside of benchmarks you really won't notice those differences - unless one is faulty of course.

I think what he means by drivers is in fact controllers. Sandforce or Marvel. Main difference between the 2 is that sandforce compresses the files (kind of like zip files) where marvel doesn't. The ones to stay away from are ocz's vertex 2 & 3 as according to TTL ocz knew that over 50% were gonna fail before they hit the shelves, but may have been resolved now by firmware updates. Nobody knows for sure how long ssd drives will last as they are still relevantly new. Once you have an SSD you won't go back. I have 2 Crucial M4's, Kingston v200, and a samsung 830. And just look at Snootyjims builds above, he has an SSD in all his too.

I did wonder. If so, looking at the information Agent has provided I would avoid anything with SandForce at the moment. I think OCZ might just have released an Indilinx drive as well.

Yep, there's really not much difference in usage between the current gen SSDs, they're just all so fast now.

From my experience, they all feel equally responsive to me as a general user. I have a 240GB Samsung 830 in my desktop, 64GB SSD (unknown model) in my Samsunt 700T tablet/slate, OCZ Vertex Plus 120GB in my parent's desktop and a 128GB Kingston V200+ in my parents laptop. I don't doubt there are differences in more heavy read/write/access tasks but as a general user I don't really do much.

I actually got rid of my HDD and just condensed everything so that I could fit it onto my Samsung 830 240GB, it's really nice to not have a mechanical drive as now everything is super fast. Likewise all the other systems I've listed in my post don't use mechanical hard drives too as my parents don't have many personal files and neither do I. Realistically this probably won't apply to many technical people though.

Personally I've been rather lucky with SSDs and never had any problems with any of the controllers but the Vertex Plus drives and the Sandforce drives from OCZ were the main culprits in SSD failures/problems. The Sandisk drives are pretty popular and I've not seen any reports questioning their reliability either so I would assume they're "safe". If you want to be really safe then you could try look for the Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 series but I'm not sure if they're still sold now. They do cost a little bit more than the Sandisk drives though when they're not on sale.

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Originally Posted by snootyjim

Yes.



Not sure what you mean by drivers?



As I understand it, yes, but I'm no expert - just the result of a google session a while back!



Back in the old days (relative to SSDs at least), when SSDs came out, there were some really rotten ones that were, at worst, slower than hard disks.

That's all a long time ago now though, and we're long past that stage, technologically. I've had a few now, and no matter which one you get, they're a very different beast to hard disks.

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Yeah sorry I meant controllers. Well just been reading about SandForce controllers and the newly released 5.0.3 drives, I take it this will apply for any SandForce SSD? Hence buying a cheap SanDisk allows me to take advance of this? I heard there was an issue with TRIM on the old SandForce controllers? I take it those days are gone now.

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Main difference between the 2 is that sandforce compresses the files (kind of like zip files) where marvel doesn't. The ones to stay away from are ocz's vertex 2 & 3 as according to TTL ocz knew that over 50% were gonna fail before they hit the shelves, but may have been resolved now by firmware updates. Nobody knows for sure how long ssd drives will last as they are still relevantly new. Once you have an SSD you won't go back.

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So really the bad reputation was because of the OCZ SSDs, so that put a lot of people off and causing new comers to the SSD world (me :P) to be weary of them? Not making OCZ sound awful here, just grasping what SandForce controllers are all about. So it isn't exactly bad, just the older drives were bad not the controller itself?

So I can be sure SSDs these days are less likely to fail because they've revised and sorted out problems?

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Yep, there's really not much difference in usage between the current gen SSDs, they're just all so fast now.

From my experience, they all feel equally responsive to me as a general user. I don't doubt there are differences in more heavy read/write/access tasks but as a general user I don't really do much.

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So from your experience an SSD for general use is just as snappy as any other SSD? I'm a general user, it's very rare I do anything that requires large files. The only things I do is virtualisation and gaming, but virtualisation isn't a problem, that's fine on my HDD and I only use it for projects, so it isn't important or high in demand in terms of performance.

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but the Vertex Plus drives and the Sandforce drives from OCZ were the main culprits in SSD failures/problems. The Sandisk drives are pretty popular and I've not seen any reports questioning their reliability either so I would assume they're "safe".

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So really the failures were linked to OCZ SSDs years back? I am looking at SanDisk because well, they're SanDisk, instant trust and from the reviews they seem decent :P

So SandForce controllers are a bit shaky at the moment, but then I see a lot of the cheaper SSDs use them.

Thank you for the informative input everyone! :)

To be honest, go with the reviews etc. It all comes down to many things such as the components they use, the controller, and then the firmware. With the sandforce controller, it doesn't matter what brand you buy they all use the same firmware, where as Marvel controllers don't come with firmware so people like crucial have to design their own firmware.

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Originally Posted by mikeo01

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3. More RAM and set up dedicated RAM cache? Or RAMdisk

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

Thanks for anyone's input :)

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I second the RAMDISK option, cheapest way to see real world changes in use, especially during heavy gaming. The combination of a OS SSD with a sizable RAMDISK and speed won't be much of a concern for years to come (other than for benchmarking optimisation).

The concern with a RAMDISK is that the memory is volatile ram. This means you'd want to choose the RAMDISK software very very carefully, so that few if any unreplaceable files are ever loaded into it (best reasonable hedge on cost ben analysis).

The problem is with the SandForce issue is that they appear to have issues several months down the line, so any reviews would miss it, and any new products may or may not have the issue - until some people act as guinea pigs, who knows?

Personally I'd stick with Indilinx/Marvell options. In the old days Intel and Samsung made their own controllers, but I don't think Intel do any more. Samsung I'm not so sure.

As Ulti said, SandForce drives are a very different beast to all the others. They attempt to compress data on the fly, making writes quicker and taking up less space. Of course though, there's more to go wrong.

Longterm reliability,stable firmware and consistent performance over a range of different data types is what you should look for in an SSD. I would probably look at the Crucial M4 and Samsung 830. Regarding the SandForce drives,they do appear to be better now,but I would still go for the drives I mentioned.

Thanks everyone :) I think I will wait a bit until either prices come down on the M4 and 830 series or wait till SandForce drives sort themselves out.
Price is a big concern for me so hopefully SSDs will drop within the next year

Check out this dicussion and although 10 months old gives some good benchmark and performance figures as well as some advice on usage

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18368624

Thanks, yeah definitely going to wait till prices drop.

However I may go with the quick SSD cache solution to bump up performance, it's quite cheap at around £30. My computer usage doesn't really change so caching some most used programs may improve performance in those areas until SSDs finally come down to a good price

Think that's worth it? SanDisk Readycache, 32GB sounds enough for a cache, and it's read speed is decent. I can't see SSD prices to drop to HDD prices any time soon.

Mike
i am not sure your MB is Z68 or other onboard hardware controller for caching so you will need a controller card or software to use the SSD as a cache drive if it isnt. Maybe someone else more experienced can confirm.
check out http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/rocket...w-32184-9.html for some advice. If it isnt i would use the SSD as the boot drive and save up for the M4 128Gb model. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...5mb-s-35000-io you wont regret it but if you cant wait go for the 60Gb model boot drive to get the performance boost your after.

I'm seriously considering SSD cache as the way to go for most general use machines - the extra speed of an SSD without the hassle of watching where your programs are being installed. Until 240GB+ SSDs get down to genuinely mainstream prices (say, £60ish) I'd find it way too frustrating to use one on my main gaming PC.

You might find 32GB is a little light, depends on exactly what you use the machine for. Also ebuyer has a couple of reviews of that drive that says it hasn't made any noticable difference, although that could just be numpties who haven't set it up right! *shrug*. Given it's double the capacity for less than double the price, and there are plenty of reviews for it, I'd be tempted to go for the 60GB Corsair Accelerator instead.
Hexus review: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storag...sd-cache-60gb/