archied1

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I'm putting together an ASUS P8P67 Pro system that will be primarily used for gaming. I'm considering these two SSD options:

Vertex 3 120 GB plus a hard drive (probably WD 1TB Black)

Vertex 2 240 GB by itself ($389.00 right now on some sites)

The cost is close to the same for both options. I'm pretty frugal about how many games I have loaded up at once, so 240 GB (option 2) would be plenty for me as a single drive option. So the only real question is, for gaming purposes do I sacrifice too much performance by going with a Vertex 3 120 versus a Vertex 2 240? For the sake of simplicity, I'd prefer to stick with a single drive if it won't affect my gaming (and I suppose OS-responsiveness as well) in any meaningful way.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
A solid state drive will not do very much for gaming. When you start a game it will load faster. When you need to call up a list or map it will load faster. That's about it. SSD's will not improve FPS.

My personal preference would be for a single, large capacity ssd.
 

axipher

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For gaming, uif you play lots of multiplayer games that have big levels with lots of high-res textures, you will have shorter load times between levels. But I would personally choose the smaller SSD and put all the games on the 1 TB. 240 GB will fill up really fast with games, documents, music, and programs.
 

adampower

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Interesting discussion. The vertex 3 120gb seems to have some detractors as it does not perform as well as the 240gb. This makes some sense as the 120gb with 25nm nand has the same number of dies as the 60gb drives based on 34nm nand. So, there should be a similar relationship between 'old' 60gb/120gb drives and 'new' 120gb/240gb drives. Anyway, to keep a long story long... I think I'd grab the 240gb vert ii. Leave the spinners in your backup/nas system beside your tape drives.

I'm with Johnny. Single, high cap. ssd. Maybe c300 256gb?
 

axipher

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I myself am running a 60 GB Vertex 2 (the 34mm version AKA NOT the Extended version) alongside a Western Digital 1 TB Black 64 MB Cache and I have no complaints at all.

These are some results from transfering files within Windows 7.

Vertex 2
Sustained Write: 150 MB/s
Sustained Read: 180 MB/s

WD 1 TB Black
Sustained Write: 100 MB/s
Sustained Read: 110 MB/s
 

dmcomputerguy

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How would you tie those two together? Hopefully something other than the RocketHybrid card. I ask because that is exactly what I want to do. Not for gaming, but the result is similar. I have the RocketHybird card and I am 100 percent dissatisfied with it so I'd like to know other ways of connecting a SSD with a HD, unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you propose.
 

adampower

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Interesting thought to tie them together. One could do this with a z68 motherboard. But, generally, one would use a small, cheap, ssd for that application. I assumed the op was thinking of having a 120gb boot drive and a 1tb 'storage' drive.

axipher. Yours is a great system. Mine is very similar with corsair f80 boot drive and 1tb cav black. BUT i would, and will, have a larger ssd and all storage elsewhere when I build a sandybridge system. That is why I recommend the larger second gen ssd. It is a difficult decision. I respect your arguments for the small ssd with large hdd
 

groberts101

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the Vertex 3 120GB performs at sata 3 speeds whereas the Vertex 2 will be capped to sata2. The Vertex 3 is stronger all around and has better GC, less throttling and faster overall feel even in light usage(though slight).

Buying a sata2 SSD with a capable mobo like that is like planning for obsolescence as soon as you buy it. I would steer clear of older Sandforce drives with 3G capability and cross over to sata 3 as the benefit will be fully realized in the longterm. Then later on if you want more capacity?.. simply add another V3 for a raid setup and continue to use the HDD to keep the SSD leaner.
 

axipher

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I recommended the Vertex 2 with an HDD simply because in the original post, it was the combination of a fast boot drive with lots of storage space versus one lower capacity main drive.

Just to add another point to the argument, the original poster could also add a larger data drive down the road. I love having 2 seperate drives because I plan to Get a second 1 TB Black and put it in Raid 1 as safety since I store all my documents on the data drive. As it stands though, if I lose either drive, I'm not at a total loss.
 
Somebody got a coin??
Myself, although I agree with what groberts101 stated, I'd probably opt for the slightly slower 240 drive - but really on the fence waiting for the wind to blow one way or the other. As to obsolescence - Not a big thing as a year from now the difference between the two will not greatly change, but Newer ones wil also make the Current SSD obsolescence. Would not use this as a criteria.
Big diff in Seq read/writes, but in the small file random the diff is not so great. The 120 gig kind of caps really using the High seq ability such as editing large jpeg photoes, or dvd video files, But this is not the OPs intended purpose anyway.

With either option, he should still get a HDD.
With Sata III, - made coffee before turning on, gets to stir coffee once, SATA two twice
Opening programs, Sata II I get to blink twice, with sata III, only one blink.
Point is I cut the boot time from 20 sec to 10 sec - But how often do I boot, and I know this addes up to days over a Year, that assumes I do something productive in that 10 Sec.

One point is with the 120 and games on HDD the SSD will only be maybe 50% full
With the 240 gig drive and trying to load everything on it - ends up 90% full, not so good.
 

archied1

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Thank you all for the input. I am leaning towards the single drive option. Were I to go with the two drive option, I wouldn't tie the two drives together, I'd just use one for the OS and a few games, and the other for everything else.
 

flong

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I don't own the V3 or the V2 but I have studied all the reviews. I agree with the above opinion that you should move to SATA III and the V3 SSD with a 1 TB HDD or you also might want to consider the Crucial C4 which may be cheaper (it is the update to the C3 300). In the reviews the C4 and the V3 lead most of the benchmarks in the 120 GB size but you need SATA III to get the most out of these drives.

SATA III connections allow you nearly twice the speed of SATA II. The whole industry is moving quickly to this new standard. You may also want to look at the new Seagate HDD that is SATA III - it is extremely fast for an HDD even topping the Velociraptor.

An ideal setup would be the V3 or C4 120 GB with the new SATA III Seagate HDD.
 

flong

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