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Best Price:Performance SSD For Now?

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Hey guys I want to upgrade my pc by buying some cable sleeving, a few cathodes, and a cheap ($100 around) SSD.

Since SSD pricings have changed so much in the past few months, I was wondering what advice you guys could give me on the best price to performance ratio for a low end ssd. My primary product source is newegg.ca (Canadian resident) if that's any concern.

People have told me the Intel 320 40gb is a good option, however it only has sequential writes of 40mb/s. Not sure how it would benchmark in comparison to a normal HDD (what I got now)

Thanks!

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Don't even bother to bench compare an SSD to an HDD. Besides the linear write speeds the SSD will crush it everywhere it counts for an OS volume. Latency, IOPS, small randoms are far superior with SSD and is why they are so popular. Don't make the same mistake that many others are and get caught up on the benchmark races. Proof is in the real life OS usage.

Is your motherboard SATA III (6 Gb/s) capable or just SATA II (3 Gb/s) capable?

I don't know about newegg.ca but in the USA newegg.com and a few other vendors sometimes have the Crucial C300 120GB ssd on sale for as low as $179.99 and shipping is free. In terms of value that is about as good as it gets in the USA.
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Any cheap SSD will perform on par or better than the latest HDD including the Velociraptors. I would not recommend 40GB SSDs as with Windows 7 it might be a bit tight, 60-64GB for an OS-only drive is probably the sweet spot. If you can find some "EOL" OCZ, Kingston or Corsair SSDs, they could be an inexpensive solution (I think they sometime sell for ~80$), otherwise prices will be in the 115-140$.

op2rules said:
Ahh thanks guys! The corsair 64gb will probably be what I'll get! Who knows, maybe it will go on shell shocker sometime in the next few days!

Either way, thanks for the tips!


SSDs are amazingly re-badged.

I'll bet yah a nickel the ADATA S599 64GB is the exact same drive as that Corsair 64GB (including '3-year' warranties).

I only point this out because that ADATA 64GB SSD has been as low as $95 over the past few months.

Sorry, the A-Data S599 IS NOT a rebadged Corsair C300!

A-Data DID once have a rebadged Intel X25-M 80GB model.

I just got 2 Microcenter G2 Series SF1222 64GB SSD, which are rebadged A-Data S599's. The S599 has a SandForce 1222 controller, just like OCZ Vertex 2's.

I returned 2-OCZ Vertex 2 60GB for 2-Microcenter G2 series SF1222 64GB (rebadged AData S599), in a RAID 0 setup, due to drive throttle-ing. Very noticed on the OCZ drives, not so much on the one runing now. Here is my thread..

IMHO, don't get the Corsair unless you have SATA III 6.0Gbps. On a SATA II 3.0Gbps platform, get a OCZ Vertex 2 or Agility 2 60GB for $119-$129. Yes, I do recommend the OCZ drives, in a single boot drive platform. With reads/writes of 285/270Mbps, beats the Corsair in SATA II.

LOL, that's funny! would likely be because you learned your mistakes the hard way on the Vertex 2's and avoided making as many mistakes and therefore throttling the G2's as badly. The throttling is built into the Sandforce controller and the G2's are not any different at all in that regard. Write to all physical space and.. bam.. there's your Durawrite throttle. A little slower for sure, but no difference from Durawrite implementation, that's for sure.

I tested the P outta' all 3 of those drives and stuck with the V2's due to slightly better overall performance with more aggressive firmware, especially in raids. Sometimes what we don't know.. doesn't hurt us though, eh?

Yea, I remember your input on my thread about throttling.

You are probably right, I was way more careful with the G2 drives (i.e. SSD Tweaks before any updates or program installs), than the Vertex 2's. (Gotta love MicroCenter's no-hassle return policy!)

Comparing the 2: OCZ vs. G2 Reads/Writes: 285/275 vs. 280/270..too close to call. But, I don't know what the IOPS are for the G2, V2 are 50K! So the V2 probably got the nod there. But the G2 were $30 cheaper (each), but no SATA cables or mounting brackets (which I had anyway).

cool. and yeah.. that's why I bought them too. hard to pass up a Microcenter deal when your standing in the store, eh? lol

Either way i don't think most could tell the difference unless you're a benchmark fanatic or doing very heavy vid work(not to incriminate myself on either of those). The controller is the magic there since they all just source the parts and have them built in almost identical fashion anyways, these days. Big thing is that they work without sleep or cold boot issues on the system as that most of the battle with Sandforce. Might be worth looking to upgrade the firmware if they have it available as Sandforce implemented quite a few fixes and maybe you could even use the OCZ toolbox down the road. Good luck with em'.

Within windows for the OCZ toolbox?.. yes. But no.. not while in raid mode. Well at least not the OCZ drives anyways, but there are 3 methods of flashing over there.

Not sure how far you would have to go with that firmware update on those drives and you'd need to check the firmware tools available from the vendor.

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Points:
1) I have RAID SSD's. I do NOT recommend this unless you have a lot of computer experience. No TRIM, and firmware updating is difficult. Intel has RAID0 trim but their drives are overpriced.

2) OCZ Vertex 2 is probably the best deal. May be comparable to Corsair but I doubt there's a better deal.

3) 40GB? Are you sure that's enough. Unless you have XP or Linux it's not enough.

*Space. You need at least 20% more capacity than what you use which is only for eventual loss of space and doesn't account for updates, restore points and new programs. When I installed Windows 7 x64 it was quickly at 35GB (of my 60GB SSD's 55GB real capacity). I bought a second SSD (RAID0). After installing NO GAMES, but basic programs like Nero and others after six months my space used is 60GB.

You need to remember that Windows will do updates and occasionally add a RESTORE POINT which creates space.

SUMMARY:
I recommend anybody investing in an SSD to get a 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 which can be found for about $200. If that's too much my advice is stick with hard drives and wait until the price is right.

If you are very careful you might get by with a 60GB drive. I just don't recommend it.

I have 2x60GB and LOVE IT, although I'd get a single 120GB SSD if I had to do it over! I've installed all my games to a 1TB drive; Steam once setup installs to the same folder, other games must be done manually with customized installation (easy). My gaming folders are: e:\Games and e:\Steam
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^ quote: Intel has RAID0 trim.
Can you provide a link to that as I have looked and as of 15 -> 30 days ago could not find where trim was supported when drive is a member of Raid volume.

There was alot of misinfo around Mar ->May of 2010 that indicated it did support trim (Intel RST Ver 9.6). However this was corrected by Intel.
Ref: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031491...

You can set the controller to raid (do not have to set it to AHCI) and trim will be passed, but not if member of raid volume.

Intel Trim support. NO.
You are correct. This was misreported.
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031491...

Or just read my paste:
"Is there TRIM support for RAID configurations?

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 9.6 supports TRIM in AHCI mode and in RAID mode for drives that are not part of a RAID volume.

A defect was filed to correct the information in the Help file that states that TRIM is supported on RAID volumes."

I see the confusion...
It supports TRIM for drives in RAID mode as long as they aren't part of a RAID volume (not sure what that even means actually).


photonboy said:
It supports TRIM for drives in RAID mode as long as they aren't part of a RAID volume (not sure what that even means actually).
Usually to use RAID you set the whole controller to RAID even if some drives aren't in any sort of RAID configuration (you could therefore have a single SSD working alone and 2 HDD in RAID 0 for example). With original drivers that didn't have the "confusing feature" you therefore had to either install the SSD on another controller or forget about TRIM, even if you didn't want to RAID the SSD itself. What Intel enabled is exactly what is described: if you put your SSD on a controller in RAID mode, but don't use RAID on the SSD itself, you will still have access to TRIM.
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