Is SSD worth it now?

[DDarkie]

I'm looking at getting a OCZ vertex 2 32GB SSD, just to put windows and other important programs on, just for some extra speed and efficency, plus my current bootable HDD is about 3-4 years old. The best price i can get here in Australia for the 32GB vertex 2 is about $110.

My question is whether the speed increase of booting and other windows activities is worth the price outlay for the SSD at these prices?

I use my computer primarily for Gaming, but i also use it for heavy internet browsing and media playback. With the SSD, I'm hoping for a significant increase in boot speeds, but also for an increase in internet browser performance and an increase in other general windows activities.

 

[hell_storm2004]

Well it is defintely worth it. But advise on getting a bigger drive. Something like 120GB or more to really make it useful. 32GB would be eaten by OS alone!

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Well it is defintely worth it. But advise on getting a bigger drive. Something like 120GB or more to really make it useful. 32GB would be eaten by OS alone!

^ +1

That small a size drive for that price is not worth it IMO. My 120GB Vertex 2 with Windows 7 , Office and all the games I am currently playing has 31.9GB free.

 

[RetiredChief]

Is a 32 gig SSD worth it, Probably not.
From a standpoint of boot times, It's niece that you can boot to windows 7 in about 30 sec, BUT how often to you boot your computer. If it is only once a day, then use the money you save in not buying it and buy some coffee and while it's booting get a cup of Java!!. Windows 7 will take about 15+ gigs buy itself not leaving much room for programs.

Internet browsing is highly dependent on your internet speeds and connect speed at site you are going to. When downloading a large file and SSD offers very little in the way of performance increase. Have SSD and cable, but my download speed for a 465 Meg file from a given site veried between 1.5 Mb/sec to as low as 15 Kb/s - SSD offers no advantage here over HDD.

My recommended min size; for desktop is 64 gig (preferabaly 80 Gig, for Laptop, 120 gig. I have 120 gig in desktop and laptops.

 

[varis]

How much RAM do you have? Monitor your system performance and make sure it's not swapping. If it is, buy some more RAM as that will probably speed up your browser more.

 

[varis]

For loading time in games, you could do a simple calculation:

Assume you play a game with significant amount of loading for 20 hours per week.
You go through 3 maps in an hour - each map takes 2.5mins to load on the HDD and .5 mins on a SSD.
That means you save 6 mins per hour with the SSD, assuming you benefit from a faster loading (in BF2 faster loading is critical, so the advantage is even more serious).
Time savings per week are 120 minutes, ie. 2 hours.
If you price your time at $20 per hour, the SSD will save you about $80 per month.

Of course, it's your choice, SSD or coffee

You could also have system requirements that make SSD more attractive, eg. something like this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/298615-13-decisions-range-intel-gaming

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

For loading time in games, you could do a simple calculation:

Assume you play a game with significant amount of loading for 20 hours per week.
You go through 3 maps in an hour - each map takes 2.5mins to load on the HDD and .5 mins on a SSD.
That means you save 6 mins per hour with the SSD, assuming you benefit from a faster loading (in BF2 faster loading is critical, so the advantage is even more serious).
Time savings per week are 120 minutes, ie. 2 hours.
If you price your time at $20 per hour, the SSD will save you about $80 per month.

Of course, it's your choice, SSD or coffee

Most interesting analogy I have ever seen!

Anyways im all for an SSD. I just got a 40GB one a couple days back, and it is plenty for a windows install, all essentials and office suite, and thats it. All I care about putting on the SSD. All games and other apps that I don't use upon boot can go on the caviar black drive.

Loving it now!

 

[EnderWiggin]

I put an Intel X-25M into my gf's old laptop (1.6 GHz dual core Pentium) with Windows 7 and it made an incredible difference in overall performance. Boot time is now mere seconds, application start-ups are so fast that I don't even see the splash screen. I think they are well worth it... even at the $200 I spent on the 80GB X-25M.

 

[adampower]

Agreed. I am really surprised more people don't do the math as varis did. I don't use computers all day but I do use them at work and at home (clearly as I'm here now). Time IS MONEY. And ssd boot/os disks save time.

Every company which has people using computers all day, every day, should think about the time savings involved in computer upgrades. I wish my company did.

 

[RetiredChief]

I agree SSDs are great, Reason I have 5 (Added - smallest one is 80 gig, and yes I make a little more than $20 / hrs but only value game play time @ buck 295), I just don't think a 40 gig is all that great.
And varis, your not going to put many apps/games with less than 25 gigs left after installing Win7, and disabling hibernation, moving swap file and other tweeks and leaving at least a few gigs free.

I'd much rather see the OP save alittle more and get a larger SSD that they will really enjoy and not say latter, gee I'd ......

Added
Forgot to address Op's other concern - media play back. No Benifit. Have 2 laptops, both with Blu-ray drives and 2 desktops, both with blu-ray recorders - An SSD vs HDD = NO Difference in playback.

 

[reccy]

Agreed. I am really surprised more people don't do the math as varis did. I don't use computers all day but I do use them at work and at home (clearly as I'm here now). Time IS MONEY. And ssd boot/os disks save time.

Every company which has people using computers all day, every day, should think about the time savings involved in computer upgrades. I wish my company did.

Maybe im a bit laid back, but to be fair, i dont give a hoot weather my system takes 2mins to load or 2 secs.. I dont sit at the screen the whole 2 minutes looking/waiting for it to load, i'd be doign something else - Toilet, txting, cleaning etc...

The price of SSD's overweight the performance abilites for me.. As maybe i dont get the concept, as a SSD wont help games unless the game is situated on that SSD drive. Meaning the speed of the game doesnt effectively change when its installed on a standard HDD? Or am i missing the point?

 

[alyoshka]

It certainly is, but, not anything less than 80Gb... I've got one the Intel 2nd Revision and it's absolutely amazing.
Although I find myself monitoring my drive too for a lack of space, but, I know I will manage till I get some more dough to either go for a 200+ GB revodrive.... and I hopefully will get someone to buy my 80Gigs and I'll get the 120Gigs in it's place.....
go SSD..... way is pretty much awesome, since I boot up atleast 10 times in a day.... the time now is really not that much of a bother.... earlier I used to leave the rig on the whole day and night just to avoid the booting up time.... now I really don't mind booting it up as many times as I require, save me a hefty sum on the power bills.....
Worth it anyday.....

 

[sub mesa]

I think you guys should wait with SSDs now. In one or two months, the market will be getting new SSDs. That also means the existing older second generation SSDs will be alot cheaper and this would make an excellent time to buy; but not right now!

Especially people who like the throughput of the Revodrive; pfffff half of that is baked air since the listed scores are when writing zeroes or other junk data that is easily compressible. Don't drop your guard! Be critical and be sure that you spend your money wisely.

Cheers.

 

[RetiredChief]

+ 10 1/2 ^
Concur with price drop on current SSDs, at least until stock is depleted.

 

[varis]

I think you guys should wait with SSDs now. In one or two months, the market will be getting new SSDs. That also means the existing older second generation SSDs will be alot cheaper and this would make an excellent time to buy; but not right now!

Mayby we'll have something rushed to the market a week before Christmas. But writes Anandtech:

SandForce conveyed to me that although we may see hardware this year, production firmware and silicon won’t be ready until early Q1. Anything that ships before then is not what SandForce considers production worthy. This is an important distinction as SandForce’s partners often ship with pre-release hardware/firmware in order to gain traction and sales as quickly as possible.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3971/sandforce-announces-nextgen-ssd-controller-sf2000-capable-of-500mbs-and-60k-iops/1

So some scepticism is good. Maybe it turns out there are delays and we won't see drives from the major vendors until late Feb 2011. And higher performance may mean they will be priced higher. Especially if vast consumer segments catch on and demand outpaces supply. In the current market conditions inventories may be thin - I just visited my local store and actually saw a few empty shelves, with still 1.5 months to Christmas.

I think you are right in the sense that when the 3g drives hit the market, there's a good reason to cut prices on 2g. Although the effect may be delayed if 3g and 2g are priced into clearly different segments and prices don't drop much for the few first weeks. So 3-4 months down the road you probably can really get good deals on fast drives, new or old. But by that time the next great technology may be just round the corner. After all SSD technology seems to be heading the right direction rather rapidly, what comes to performance and pricing.

 

[rockitman]

Maybe im a bit laid back, but to be fair, i dont give a hoot weather my system takes 2mins to load or 2 secs.. I dont sit at the screen the whole 2 minutes looking/waiting for it to load, i'd be doign something else - Toilet, txting, cleaning etc...

The price of SSD's overweight the performance abilites for me.. As maybe i dont get the concept, as a SSD wont help games unless the game is situated on that SSD drive. Meaning the speed of the game doesnt effectively change when its installed on a standard HDD? Or am i missing the point?

The loading of the game and it's maps is where the SSD will benefit the user. Much quicker than standard HD. The game will still play the same, things will just load up much faster. With that said, as a gamer myself, I would require all of my games to be installed on the SSD. Game loading is the biggest wait of anything. With that said, I'm a Steam user, and as you may know, if you have a slew of Steam games, you'll be taking up quite a few GB on any drive. My SSD will need to be at least 256GB

 

[alyoshka]

I heard of a price drop too, but, I heard it a year ago too , and for SSDs I am really having my doubts that they are going to go down in the near future...... although the new revisions are in line, but , they just seem to be making the newer ones either more expensive or than cheaper by very little margin.
I still believe that till these drives don't become the basic drives every computer has, until then, the prices are going to stay high, may not be as high as now, but the difference is going to be marginal.
I waited quite a bit before I bought my first SSD, and that too it's been a year since I got it.
The difference in prices now and then is, 2$. And to think of me having to wait another year for a 5 to 10 $ drop, is just something I wouldn't do.
I agree about the synthetic bench marks of Zero fills....... but it still is faster in day to day life.....
My 3D Marks jumped 2000 points after the SSD was put in although I don't see how it would count, I still have to get my Fraps count on Crysis.....
But........ wait , wait just not for too long is what I'd say.
These speed daemons aren't going to drop their prices for anyone.....

 

[varis]

I still believe that till these drives don't become the basic drives every computer has, until then, the prices are going to stay high, may not be as high as now, but the difference is going to be marginal.
I waited quite a bit before I bought my first SSD, and that too it's been a year since I got it.
The difference in prices now and then is, 2$. And to think of me having to wait another year for a 5 to 10 $ drop, is just something I wouldn't do.

We've seen prices drop and performance increase quite a bit in the last 2 years. Can't see why it wouldn't happen the next 2 years into the future too. And maybe all PCs in 3 years will have them.

Look at our prices for the OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G, 16th July to today:

http://hintaseuranta.fi/temp/hintagraafit/t424837.png

 

[alyoshka]

Yeah, 10 Years from now they're going to be dirt cheap.....
but the point is How long should the OP be waiting for a significant drop in the prices......
You plotted a price change for OCZ........ I'd like to see the graphs for a lt of others too, esp Intel......
Standard stuff doesn't fluctuate that much, from what I understand, and stuff that changes continuously in prices and specs shows a trend of reasearch and development at the cost of the consumer....
Intel SSDs, still happen to be from what all the reviews have stated so far, as the most reliable SSD.....
For the prices that an SSD costs I'd expect a huge jump in speeds plus reliability..... not just Hyper Speeds and continuous updates....

You plotted the graph for OCZ, which is not available all over the world..... Intel is....
I'd still suggest if the prices don't drop by a minimum of 50$ than there's no point in waiting 6 Months.....
But it all depends on the person who wants to buy it..... wallet size, budget, and what he's looking for..... and basically what he wants for his money.....

 

[DDarkie]

In terms of using the SSD for games, about 80% of the games i play are on steam, and my steam file is well over 200GB, so if i wanted to put the important ones on the SSD id need to set up links.

i think at this point ill wait until after christmas, which coincides with a big paycheck ill be getting.
so i wont feel guilty about it and it may have gone down a bit!

 

[randomizer]

Using an SSD for games is a bad idea unless you don't put many on the drive or the drive is huge (like 512GB+). It is simply a bad idea to put static data on an SSD. SSDs are for dynamic data that is regularly written, overwritten, and more importantly, deleted. Static data filling up most of the drive will force the controller to write any dynamic data to the remaining free blocks and unevenly wear the drive. Modern SSD controllers are intelligent and pretty good at evenly spreading wear across the drive but they can only do this if it is able to use as many blocks as possible. Data that rarely or never changes works against the controller.

 

[varis]

Using an SSD for games is a bad idea unless you don't put many on the drive or the drive is huge (like 512GB+). It is simply a bad idea to put static data on an SSD. SSDs are for dynamic data that is regularly written, overwritten, and more importantly, deleted. Static data filling up most of the drive will force the controller to write any dynamic data to the remaining free blocks and unevenly wear the drive. Modern SSD controllers are intelligent and pretty good at evenly spreading wear across the drive but they can only do this if it is able to use as many blocks as possible. Data that rarely or never changes works against the controller.

I thought this is not really a blocker because:
1. In typical home use, the drive can last a lifetime - wearing it out needs a lot of writes over a period of many years
2. We don't play the same games every year - the set of "important games" probably changes 2-4 times a year
3. Space on SSD is limited anyway, which prompts the user to clean it out time to time and delete data
4. I understood SSDs contain extra free space, which is not visible or usable to the user, just to avoid the problem you point out
5. Games and the OS partly involve dynamic data - temp files, saves, downloaded data files (maps, textures...), mods, patches and so on

But it is good to note that today's SSD users will have to do more management of the drive's contents, which is an additional cost to the system. The more active your use and the smaller the drive, the more you have to do it.

 

[randomizer]

1. Yes, this is quite true, you will not be able to wear out all of the blocks in any short space of time. But if most of them are written to with a bunch of static data and the remaining few are constantly used with more dynamic data, those in the minority will wear out quite fast in comparison to an equivalent drive used in a more ideal manner.

2. Quite true, but some people keep games installed even if they never play them. I'm one of those people

3. Ideally you would cycle most, if not all of the data on a semi-regular basis. It's no good deleting some data but leaving a large amount untouched. This simply means that, once again, you're overusing the blocks that are being erased and re-written to. With a small OS drive this is not easy though. You don't replace your OS every week. Windows does get a lot of updates, but in many cases it doesn't remove older copies of DLLs when it gets a new version, it simply keeps an archive of them all. On a larger drive the OS is going to have a smaller footprint so it doesn't matter as much.

4. In most cases this is only a few percent of the total "visible" capacity. A few drives have more than most, but they're the exception. You can of course partition the drive to less than its full capacity, giving the wear levelling algorithm more room to work. This is very useful on 30GB drives which typically have a mere 2-3GB over overprovisioned NAND, but at the same time you don't have much space to begin with so reducing it even further isn't very practical.

5. That is also very true, it is much better than, say, videos and pictures. But for the most part the game files are relatively static, especially more mature games that don't receive a great deal of updates any more.

 

[adampower]

I think we are over analyzing ways to reduce the weeknesses of ssds. The problem is that we know too much about them! In reality there are ways we could maximize the use of our HDDs too but most of us don't. Take the average hdd user and put them in the average ssd environment and... let them go at it.

Leave the tweaks and such to those interested in searching them out. Just like the HDDofiles who short stroke their velociraptors. Me, I love my ssd and sure I do a few little things to save space and keep the writes down but I'll burn the ssds I own before they burn me simply because something better came along.

 

[dEAne]

I think we are over analyzing ways to reduce the weeknesses of ssds. The problem is that we know too much about them! In reality there are ways we could maximize the use of our HDDs too but most of us don't. Take the average hdd user and put them in the average ssd environment and... let them go at it.

Leave the tweaks and such to those interested in searching them out. Just like the HDDofiles who short stroke their velociraptors. Me, I love my ssd and sure I do a few little things to save space and keep the writes down but I'll burn the ssds I own before they burn me simply because something better came along.

I agree to that - we still don't know their are other new technologies for the HDD that's more cost effective.