DigitalEmperor
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2004
- Messages
- 760
Hey everyone, I am in search of a little advice. I just recently had an Alienware m17x r1 replaced, and while most of the components are massive upgrades, I accepted a WD 5400rpm hard drive in place of my old WD Black 7200rpm.
I notice the difference tremendeously on World of Warcraft load times / texture pop-ins, and less so, but still noticebly, on other games and Windows 7 start time. These are the two performance statistics I care about more than ANYTHING ELSE.
I figured I have a budget to replace the drive in it, and I will be coming out ahead with the other upgrades I received. Which ever drive I get will be my OS/Applications drive, and I will change over the 5400rpm to a storage drive. Also, I am trying to spend as little as possible, and I am willing to sacrafice some performance for value (but not reliability/useability).
The drives I am looking at (in order of most interest to least):
$65 ($1.02/gb) Corsair Nova Series 2 64gb - nearly the miracle $1/gb mark, very good advertised specs, but there isn't many (if any) real reviews of the drive, and there are some reports on corsair's support forum and on newegg's feedback section of the drives controller choking on multitasking
$130 ($1.35/gb) Kingston V+100 96gb - very close to the m4 and vertex 3 in benchmarks, with the advantage of an additional 32gb for the same price
$110 ($1.72/gb) Crucial m4 64gb - seems to be the most recommended drive, seems to have mixed benchmark results, but overall very good to excellent. value falls off on the $1/gb ratio on this drive.
$100 ($0.20/gb ) Seagate Momentus XT - not an SSD, but rather a hybrid featuring 4gb of SSD like NAND. none of the problems that come with SSD, tons more space for the money, but performance on World of Warcraft not really measured NOTE: with this drive, I would consider getting a 2nd down the road for a 1tb raid 0 setup.
[Strike=Option]$130 ($2.03/gb ) OCZ Vertex 3 64gb - seems to be the highest benchmarked drive in my budget, but reports of BSOD's and other reliability issues scare me away.[/s]
I notice the difference tremendeously on World of Warcraft load times / texture pop-ins, and less so, but still noticebly, on other games and Windows 7 start time. These are the two performance statistics I care about more than ANYTHING ELSE.
I figured I have a budget to replace the drive in it, and I will be coming out ahead with the other upgrades I received. Which ever drive I get will be my OS/Applications drive, and I will change over the 5400rpm to a storage drive. Also, I am trying to spend as little as possible, and I am willing to sacrafice some performance for value (but not reliability/useability).
The drives I am looking at (in order of most interest to least):
$65 ($1.02/gb) Corsair Nova Series 2 64gb - nearly the miracle $1/gb mark, very good advertised specs, but there isn't many (if any) real reviews of the drive, and there are some reports on corsair's support forum and on newegg's feedback section of the drives controller choking on multitasking
$130 ($1.35/gb) Kingston V+100 96gb - very close to the m4 and vertex 3 in benchmarks, with the advantage of an additional 32gb for the same price
$110 ($1.72/gb) Crucial m4 64gb - seems to be the most recommended drive, seems to have mixed benchmark results, but overall very good to excellent. value falls off on the $1/gb ratio on this drive.
$100 ($0.20/gb ) Seagate Momentus XT - not an SSD, but rather a hybrid featuring 4gb of SSD like NAND. none of the problems that come with SSD, tons more space for the money, but performance on World of Warcraft not really measured NOTE: with this drive, I would consider getting a 2nd down the road for a 1tb raid 0 setup.
[Strike=Option]$130 ($2.03/gb ) OCZ Vertex 3 64gb - seems to be the highest benchmarked drive in my budget, but reports of BSOD's and other reliability issues scare me away.[/s]
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