I need an SSD education

[Crosshairs]

OK, so I have been reading all I can on here about SSD drives and I convinced myself I need to get one....I really have no need for one, but just wont be happy until I get one...

So...getting that out of the way, there is so much information, I just cant make heads or tails out of it.

I'm currently running Windows 7 X64 on a pair of 80Gb Velociraptors in RAID 0.
Its plenty of room for me, so I figured a 160Gb SSD would serve me just fine.

whats the best drive right now that offers good performance and a decent price .

Obviously I want to see an improvement over my current drives,but all I really do is play online FPS games, so is it even worth it?

Any and all information that you guys can give me will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Shalafi]

no, for fps games you probably won't see much of a difference

however, you will see more of a difference in everyday computing, for instance, windows will boot up much faster, your folders and files will be accessed much faster, things will just flip open when you clicky. Your write speeds will increase tremendously, which is a time saver if you do large chunks of data transfers and you're the impatient sort.

for games, the one game a SSD really shines in is games like WoW, because of all the crap that has to be loaded in heavily populated areas, and where textures and stuff are loaded directly off your hard drive.

Your load times for some games will see a small improvement, but probably not much.

your SSD choices are limited only by your wallet, the Intel 160 GB costs like $500ish but it's the best 160 GB if you're going to spend that kind of money. Most people's argument is the $/GB ratio of SSD's as their reason for not buying or holding out for lower prices. I do think this year we will see the $/GB ratio shrink even more, as they have been putting out higher capacity drives and pricing them at the levels that the smaller capacity drives were at when they were new, so what this basically means is that time is ever your friend.

BUT, be aware of one other thing, yes you could spend $500 and get one 160 GB, but it's actually faster if you get 2 80 GB Intel SSD's for $230-$250 each and then RAID them, you will see more performance out of that kind of setup than you would from a single 160 GB SSD. Do a little research, I think you will find that to be true.

In fact, you should do a little Googling, the University of Google is a fine teacher. What I've told you is the basics based on what you're requesting in your post, the rest is best learned through a little web based research so you can find some answers you want. I think that a lot of sites out there have done some SSD gaming benchmarks, so you can look at some of those charts.

But for the most part, by and large, the SSD benefit you will see will likely be in windows booting up faster, and in your everyday computing environment being quicker and more responsive, and a small decrease in loading times in some games, and an even better decrease in games like WoW that are heavily drawing from your hard drive to load environments.

 

[Damar]

 

[Cabn12]

would two cheap 40gb or 30gb ssd drives in raid 0 for about $260 be a worthwhile investment over a larger single SSD? Main use would be photo editing. I'd also be using a Velociraptor 300GB drive as my storage drive and installing apps and my home directory on it.

 

[Shalafi]

i'm not sure if it's a worthwhile investment, i'd rather ask Enginurd that question, he's more knowledgeable when it comes to things other than games than I am. It wouldn't hurt, but your VR wasn't a worthwhile investment, I can tell you that, since there's now Samsung Spinpoint drives with larger capacities than the VR's that are only an increment slower than the VR's. WD really needs to move on to SSD's if they want to remain king in the HD arena. But right now for the money, Intel is best, but OCZ has some amazing deals on their 30 GB SSD's, makes it hard to pick and choose, but OCZ's are not bad buys for the meager investment you'll have to make if you take them up on their deals, i think there's one going on in the Hot Deals section on the forum now.

 

[Damar]

would two cheap 40gb or 30gb ssd drives in raid 0 for about $260 be a worthwhile investment over a larger single SSD? Main use would be photo editing. I'd also be using a Velociraptor 300GB drive as my storage drive and installing apps and my home directory on it.

One thing it would do for certain is put your OS at higher risk of loss. If one of the drives has any sort of hiccup, you'll lose all the data on both drives.

Performance you might see some benefit, but you'd also lose the ability to use TRIM commands (if that matters to you, some people treat having access to TRIM like a religion, so I mention it as an FYI.).

 

[Impulse]

would two cheap 40gb or 30gb ssd drives in raid 0 for about $260 be a worthwhile investment over a larger single SSD? Main use would be photo editing. I'd also be using a Velociraptor 300GB drive as my storage drive and installing apps and my home directory on it.

Not worth it imo, the smaller drives are actually a lil' slower (particularly the 40GB X25-V when it comes to sequential writes), and if you get a SSD you really wanna have your OS and apps on it imo. The cost of the drives doesn't merit it either (2x30GB drives comes out to more than a single 60GB). With larger drives it makes more sense tho. Regardless, a 80GB drive should still be more than large enough for your OS, apps, a couple of games, and several large video/photo files...

Generally two drives in RAID will perform faster but do note that you'll lose TRIM support ('till RAID drivers w/TRIM support are released), so if you're keeping them for the long haul you'll wanna keep an eye on that. Other than that I agree w/everything Fail said... But keep your expectations in check, for multi-tasking and general productivity they're a great upgrade but for gaming it's kind of a waste of money.

The 60GB OCZ Agility for $180 is a pretty good deal if you can't swing the $240+ that the 80GB Intel X25-M goes for. As far as data loss, if you're not making regular image backups of your OS and you depend on the system for productivity or your job then you're just asking for trouble (or at the very 'least, unnecessary down time).

RAID increases those risks, yea, but w/a dutiful backup routine it shouldn't be a big deal. That lil' extra bit of hassle and TRIM support vs the extra performance gained from RAID'ing two smaller drives is a pretty personal choice tho... A lot of people wouldn't see much of a benefit in RAID'ing two smaller drives if they're not writing or reading large files frequently enough imo. OTOH OCZ's GC (Garbage Collection) firmware works well enough if you give the drive some idle time once in a while, and you can always take down the array and force manual TRIM cleanups (either w/Intel's Toolbox or OCZ's wiper tool).

I'd probably add a 2nd 80GB X25-M to my existing one a year from now if the price of 120GB+ drives still isn't under $300~.

 

[engiNURD]

Fail and Impulse seem to have covered the most important points.

As a quick reference on pricing, as everyone knows, these drives are priced high mainly due to the high price of flash memory. Best prices I've seen on the... OCZ Vertex/Agility 30GB: $85AR; Intel X25-M 80GB G2: $215 (black friday; or $125 via Intel Retail Edge); 160GB X25-M G2: $425; ST UltraDrive ME 64GB: $140; Kingston/Intel 40GB: $80AR.