Solid State Hard drives

[PureSnipe]

Hah, someone else is catchin on! I bought one of the 80gb SSDs from newegg awhile ago, and, well, on BF2142 online, I get called out on hacking because of how fast I load. Really, could never go back to a disk drive for gaming again.

[AngryDespot]

In SSD news, Super Talent premiered a 512 GB SSD for consumer use:

 

Engadget Article

Official Page

 

What really shocks me about this is that Hard Disks of a similar size don't even have that capacity yet. (Sure, 500 isn't that much less than 512, but it wasn't so long ago that SSDs maxed out at 8 gigs.)

[Thor.]

I thought long and hard about this decision and i am going to buy an SSD drive. I am very excited about this because i heard so much abaut the access speeds, and not to mention the loading speeds aswell as shown on the video :biggrin: .

 

Model

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16820233075

 

Another cool thing about ssd drives is that you get that full128gb space, unlike standerd drives witch advertise a 750gb hard drive when it is in fact a 700gb :verymad: :biggrin:

[Thor.]

Holy Crap, Holy Crap i just got it in the mail 30 minutes ago :biggrin: :biggrin: . So excited i bought a sata box converter witch is alot faster then firewire :biggrin: , i'm just going set it up as a 3rd drive in my case. Its a corsair model at 128gb, for around 370$ witch was a bargain :biggrin: :biggrin: . Cant wait to load fallout 3 in 3 seconds lol, or even Oblivion that would be something.

 

I'm just going to use it for games nothing else.

[Skotte]

What do they mean when they say they have MLC or SLC Architecture? & what difference does it make?

 

Thor, Could you let us know how that drive works for ya?

[Thor.]

Super fast loading times thats what :biggrin: . I haven't tested it yet but tomorrow i will, I am curius on how well Oblivion will load with all those textures, and not to mention outdoor loading :biggrin: . Thats what bottlenecked me with my older system, the outdoor loading.

[Thor.]

Wow Oblivion never felt snapier :biggrin: no lagg or jitters at all :thumbsup: anymore, loads in 2 seconds woot.

 

Also came across a really good deal for a ssd drive take a look. Just my luck aye.

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16820139005

[Thor.]

Hey here is some good news for solid state drives, they are about to go mainstream, meaning a possible price drop this year, of not earlier.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170554/soli...mainstream.html

[Syntax1985]

is it really justified tho? i mean $350 for 128gb is a good price?

 

my fallout 3 folder with mods is 7.5gb.

 

not to mention to name a few =

 

My crisis ( clean, no mods ) = 7gb

Sims 3 ( + mods ) = 6.5gb

Dead space ( Clean, no mods ) = 8gb

The last remnant ( clean, no mods ) = 12.5 gb

Silent hill homecomming ( clean, no mods ) = 8.5gb

Neverwinternights 2 ( + mods ) = 10gb

 

its easy to see quickly if u use it purely for gaming your only going to get about 14 games max on it.

im kinda scared of the value for money really :S, does it really make such an orgasmic differnce its worth it or is it worth waiting for bigger drives / cash ratio?

[LHammonds]

I think it depends if your system's bottleneck is the hard drive.

 

If you have a slow processor and your ram is not quite enough to run the games you have, putting an SSD drive in your system in hopes to make things better is probably not a good idea.

 

However, if you have a new PC with a CPU that is blazingly fast, a lot of RAM and a kicking graphics card(s), then your PC is quite likely to benefit greatly from an SSD drive...at least having your OS installed on it and your apps/games. As the article suggests, I also recommend using regular SATA drives in conjunction with SSD drive(s) to store your data, videos and everything that does not have to be extremely fast.

 

When I build my PC, it will likely have one SSD drive and 3 to 4 SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration. It would be a waste to have an additional SSD to mirror the OS and apps so I will use DriveImage XML to make a snapshot of the SSD and store it on external storage every once in a while in case the SSD drive dies so I can quickly get my system restored onto another SSD or SATA drive. The data drives will be protected with the RAID 5 so if a drive dies, you simply replace the dead drive with a new one and continue to party-on.

 

The costs of the drives was interesting and will change over time (significantly I assume) so I will document their price in the article here for future reference (and laugh at how expensive they were 6 months from now):

 

Intel X25-M Solid State Drive 160GB = $450 ($2.81 / GB)

Samsung 2.5 256GB MLC SSD = $800 ($3.13 / GB)

Corsair 256 GB Internal Solid State Drive CMFSSD-256GBG2D = $700 ($2.73 / GB)

Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD SATA = $405 ($3.16 / GB)

Super Talent FTM28GX25H Ultra SATA SSD = $355 ($2.77 / GB)