Is an SSD worth getting?

[hoofhearted4]

like i said, you wont do enough to completely saturate a SATA 2 connection, nvm a SATA 3. the only difference you may see is synthetic benchmarks, but i highly doubt youll notice anything real world

 

also thought i might add, started a new play through on DAO, and load times have drastically increased. boot up speeds, initial load times, in game load times, map transfer times, all increased. idk if its because the last play throughs save was from an HDD transfered to an SSD or what, but the load times werent this fast. so having DAO on an SSD has made a HUGE improvement in load times.

[Alithinos]

To get a clearer idea of how SATA 2 could limit the speed benefits of an SSD take this info in mind:

 

SATA 2 maximum transfer speed rate is 300mb/s.

SATA 3 maximum transfer speed rate is 600mb/s.

 

The more speed the SSD has over the 300mb/s,the more of it is wasted if you are using SATA 2.

So if for example you have an OCZ Vertex 4 that has a speed of 550mb/s,it will be limited on transferring things at the speed of SATA 2,which is 300mb/s.

It will be limited to almost half its speed.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Alithinos

[FMod]

The advantage of SSD is not their linear read or write rate. And the real-life read rate of Vertex 4 rarely exceeds SATA 2's 300 MB/s anyway; it may be 350 or so, usually less.

 

The advantage of SSD is that their random read rate is close to their linear rate.

For instance, I can only measure a lightly filled Revo 3 X2 at about 220 MB/s for random read. And it's a PCI-E drive specced at 1.5 GB/s linear read, delivering 1.4 GB/s in practice. So where's the catch?

 

The catch is that an average HDD will deliver 300-800 kB/s at random 4K read. Velociraptor can give 2 MB/s.

It's going from that <1 MB/s to 15-40 MB/s (and up to 200+ MB/s for PCI-E drives) on random reads that allows SSD to make a PC perform faster. Not the peak linear speed, whatever it is, 300 or 500 or even 1,500 MB/s.

 

 

To use an analogy: the problem with HDD is that they are like 18-wheelers trying to cross a tight indoor kart racing track; while SSD are superkarts just for that track. Applying a federal speed limit of 80 mph to the track won't change a thing, because it's their agility, not their top speed that is the advantage of SSD.