SSD Choice Advice

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Sherloc

Gawd
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May 11, 2008
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I'm picking up new parts for the first system I'm putting together from the ground up. Now that it's time to pick out the hard drive I'm stuck trying to pick the best SSD for a boot drive. The two I think that are probably the best for me are either the OCZ Vertex OCZSSD2-1VTXT60G 60gb or the Intel X25-M SSDSA2M080G2R5 80gb (G2).

Any advice would be appreciated, or if you have other contenders!

P.S. Running i7 920 + Asus P6X58D + Win 7 Pro x64.
 
The Intel is the popular choice, but you really can't go wrong with either. The price per GB is probably very close between the two. If your only getting one I'd take the Intel since its 80GB vs 60GB.

Right now at the newegg the OCZ is $230 AR ($30) and the Intel is $290. The Intel is actually cheaper per GB by a bit.
 
JohnleMVP said:
The Intel is the popular choice, but you really can't go wrong with either. The price per GB is probably very close between the two. If your only getting one I'd take the Intel since its 80GB vs 60GB.

Right now at the newegg the OCZ is $230 AR ($30) and the Intel is $290. The Intel is actually cheaper per GB by a bit.
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Ye that was what I was thinking. Ne1 else have an opinion?

Also, is installing the SSD the same as an HDD on initial instal? Plug and write OS?
 
Wests said:
Ahhh, thanks for clearing that up.

Either way, the lack of TRIM support makes the Corsair drive inferior.
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I think it's in the pipeline, it's the same barefoot controller that's in the Vertex, Ultradrive GX and M225, but if you want trim now, OCZ, Supertalent or Crucial are the Indilinx drives that currently have it.
 
yeah, I was going to suggest looking at the crucial drives as well :) they support TRIM with the latest firmware update
 
Just don't buy from Newegg unless it's on sale for normal price; grab it for about $240 from somewhere else, like provantage or BHP.
 
Sherloc said:
Also, is installing the SSD the same as an HDD on initial instal? Plug and write OS?
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Pretty much. There are a few little things you might want to do for best performance, but Win7 will take care of many of these (e.g. partition offset) for you. Just let the installer use the default partitioning scheme and you should be fine. You probably also want to have the installer do a quick format rather than full format, though with TRIM enabled it's less of an issue.
 
ND40oz said:
I think it's in the pipeline, it's the same barefoot controller that's in the Vertex, Ultradrive GX and M225, but if you want trim now, OCZ, Supertalent or Crucial are the Indilinx drives that currently have it.
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You're more than a little behind the times.

Any Indilinx drive that is at least running firmware version 1571, most of the vendors have released firmware 1819, supports TRIM. Firmware 1819 adds in garbage collection.
 
You won't notice the speed difference between Intel and others except on the benchmarks. Intel is probably the most popular, but kinda expensive. If you want it cheap, Kingston 40GB is probably the best choice because its basically the same as Intel.
 
Decibel said:
You're more than a little behind the times.

Any Indilinx drive that is at least running firmware version 1571, most of the vendors have released firmware 1819, supports TRIM. Firmware 1819 adds in garbage collection.
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What are you talking about? As I stated, of the ones I know about, only OCZ, Supertalent and Crucial have officially released the updated TRIM firmware for their barefoot based drives. Maybe G-Skill and Patriot have released theirs, haven't checked. But, since we're talking about the Corsair drive, are you saying you can go to Corsair and download TRIM enabled firmware for the Extreme series drives?
 
hmz said:
You won't notice the speed difference between Intel and others except on the benchmarks. Intel is probably the most popular, but kinda expensive. If you want it cheap, Kingston 40GB is probably the best choice because its basically the same as Intel.
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Except that won't support TRIM. If you want TRIM on the $100 level, look at the 30gb Vertex
 
hmz said:
You won't notice the speed difference between Intel and others except on the benchmarks. Intel is probably the most popular, but kinda expensive. If you want it cheap, Kingston 40GB is probably the best choice because its basically the same as Intel.
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agree with ya 100%

get whats cheap :) they'll all perform pretty equally (unless you get one of the first generation drives or a low performance unit)
 
Quick question is there anything I have to do in particular to get trim on my drive? Sorry for noob question but I'm not to familiar with SSD's and this is first PC build. Do I just plug and install OS reboot then go update all drivers and bios?
 
Sherloc said:
Quick question is there anything I have to do in particular to get trim on my drive? Sorry for noob question but I'm not to familiar with SSD's and this is first PC build. Do I just plug and install OS reboot then go update all drivers and bios?
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Depending on your motherboard, you don't need to do much. With an Intel mobo, set your drive in AHCI, install Intel's AHCI drivers and you're set. If you're using an Nvidia or AMD based mobo, set the drive in AHCI and use Windows 7's built in AHCI drivers. Also, make sure you have the latest firmware for your drive.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Depending on your motherboard, you don't need to do much. With an Intel mobo, set your drive in AHCI, install Intel's AHCI drivers and you're set. If you're using an Nvidia or AMD based mobo, set the drive in AHCI and use Windows 7's built in AHCI drivers. Also, make sure you have the latest firmware for your drive.
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Would that be *uninstall* the Intel drivers? Unless things have changed very recently, only the MS drivers support TRIM.


ND40oz said:
What are you talking about? As I stated, of the ones I know about, only OCZ, Supertalent and Crucial have officially released the updated TRIM firmware for their barefoot based drives. Maybe G-Skill and Patriot have released theirs, haven't checked. But, since we're talking about the Corsair drive, are you saying you can go to Corsair and download TRIM enabled firmware for the Extreme series drives?
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My bad, maybe I was reading too quickly but I didn't catch when we switched from general SSD advive to only talking about the Corsair X-series. I must have been confused by all of the posts talking about the Intel X-25 series.

Anyway, looks like Corsair is the one Indilinx drive mentioned which doesn't have a firmware update available.
 
Performance wise, Intel's Second Gen drives are the best but if you want a cheaper but still pretty good drive, get a OCZ vertex
 
Decibel said:
Would that be *uninstall* the Intel drivers? Unless things have changed very recently, only the MS drivers support TRIM.
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I haven't really been keeping up with Intel's drives. I assumed that they would have made it so that their drivers worked for TRIM on their drives. It certainly would be a huge advantage for them since it could potentially allow fully automatic TRIM on RAID setups. My bad for getting that part wrong.
 
So I have to download a new firmware for the SSD after I install the OS correct?
 
Wests said:
Either way, the lack of TRIM support makes the Corsair drive inferior.
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Corsair has released TRIM enabled firmware for beta testers(firmware is not beta but the updater is a beta), and so far from all online user review resources P256 got the lowest failure rate(zero so far from all searchable online user reviews) while you could find lots of failure cases from OCZ vertex series and all other models including intel X-25M series.
 
Price per gig I think the Intel 80 beats out the Vertex 60... And that's at the $300 price point. Be sure to do your own math though.
 
Ah, was wondering why it was diff sku. That makes sense.

What i find humorous is that all the C1's i find are listed at a higher price than their R5 counterparts.
 
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SicKlown42012 said:
Depending on your motherboard, you don't need to do much. With an Intel mobo, set your drive in AHCI, install Intel's AHCI drivers and you're set. If you're using an Nvidia or AMD based mobo, set the drive in AHCI and use Windows 7's built in AHCI drivers. Also, make sure you have the latest firmware for your drive.
Click to expand...

What if you are using XP Pro? Is there a link of a step by step?
 
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