Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Solved

Good SSD for gaming and recording

Last response: in Storage
Share

I'm looking at getting either a HDD or an SSD to boost my game performance. I'm going to be recording games (mostly GTA 4, BC2, BF3) and i want to know if getting a HDD or a SSD would help much. I currently have a single WD 500gb caviar blue 3gb/s and it can't keep up while recording with fraps. It stutters when turning around and when going fast in games. And could you give some advise on a good cheap SSD to get. I will be buying from http://www.umart.com.au/ and my budget is around $150 max. Thanks :) 

More about : good ssd gaming recording

Register or log in to remove

First I would make sure that the reason your getting stutters is your HDD.

After you have done that and you really believe that is why, then get an ssd and use it for a system disk, not one for storing game footage on and that should relieve some of the stress on your HDD.

The common usage is SSD for OS and apps, then a HDD for storage and files that write to disk allot.

Unless your mega rich and for $150 max, I assume your not, then never use a SSD for the purpose of storage.

I would like to be more of a help but everything depends on what your hardware is capable of and you did not post any info about that, so if you could update us with that information.....

If your MB can only run SATA II then you can get some decent ones right now on sale since SATA III is the new standard. That is in the US though and I don't know about AU.

The OCZ Vertex series is the best all around and the C300 is the most popular (i.e. entry level) SSD in the SATA II flavors.

You could get a SATA III for a little bit of future proofing, but if your not upgrading your MB anytime soon, then stick with the SATA II and save some cash.

super_hello22 said:
I'm looking at getting either a HDD or an SSD to boost my game performance. I'm going to be recording games (mostly GTA 4, BC2, BF3) and i want to know if getting a HDD or a SSD would help much. I currently have a single WD 500gb caviar blue 3gb/s and it can't keep up while recording with fraps. It stutters when turning around and when going fast in games. And could you give some advise on a good cheap SSD to get. I will be buying from http://www.umart.com.au/ and my budget is around $150 max. Thanks :) 


I agree, SATA II or III would be good to know.

Here a good solid SSD for Sata II would be the OCZ Vertex II, they run about $200US for 120GB. For your price range, you'll probably be looking at the 64 GB drives. I would steer you away from those as the smaller drives are quite a bit slower. However I have a 40GB Intel SSD that is definitely alot faster than any mechanical drive. So I would look at drives from OCZ with sandforce controllers. I hear the new drives from Corsair (Force series) are quite good too. Of course Intel is considered tops for reliablility, and perform well also, although they are not the cheapest.

Try to get as much real estate as possible. Try to pay under or near $2 per gig. In your case I have seen several drives in the $150US range for 80GB models.

The 80GB OCZ vertex II at umart looks good

buzznut said:
I agree, SATA II or III would be good to know.

Here a good solid SSD for Sata II would be the OCZ Vertex II, they run about $200US for 120GB. For your price range, you'll probably be looking at the 64 GB drives. I would steer you away from those as the smaller drives are quite a bit slower. However I have a 40GB Intel SSD that is definitely alot faster than any mechanical drive. So I would look at drives from OCZ with sandforce controllers. I hear the new drives from Corsair (Force series) are quite good too. Of course Intel is considered tops for reliablility, and perform well also, although they are not the cheapest.

Try to get as much real estate as possible. Try to pay under or near $2 per gig. In your case I have seen several drives in the $150US range for 80GB models.

The 80GB OCZ vertex II at umart looks good



Yeah I mostly agree except with the part about the new Force drives.

They have just recalled all of their Force 3 120GB drives to replace parts of the PCB and fix firmware, I know he is looking at 60GB drives but still....

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/corsair-force3-recall-...

To the OP

As far as Intel drives, try and think of them like the Cadillac of SSDs, they get you there comfortably and with no worries, it will just take longer to get there.
Related ressources
Ask the community

Thanks for the feedback guys.

My setup so far is:
AMD Phenom II 955
ASUS M4A785TD-M evo motherboard
WD 500Gb caviar blue 3gb/s
4Gb OCZ gold series 800Mhz DDR3
ATI HD 6850
Running Windows 7 ultimate 64bit

I will be upgrading the motherboard to fit in another HD 6850 and possibly a bulldozer cpu in probably 2-4 years. It will be some time before i even have enough money for an SSD, maybe 6 months. I get $50 a month to spend. That's 4 months to get the 80gb OCZ. This is why i am looking for a very cheap but good performing drive. Thanks again :) 

Best solution

super_hello22 said:
Thanks for the feedback guys.

My setup so far is:
AMD Phenom II 955
ASUS M4A785TD-M evo motherboard
WD 500Gb caviar blue 3gb/s
4Gb OCZ gold series 800Mhz DDR3
ATI HD 6850
Running Windows 7 ultimate 64bit

I will be upgrading the motherboard to fit in another HD 6850 and possibly a bulldozer cpu in probably 2-4 years. It will be some time before i even have enough money for an SSD, maybe 6 months. I get $50 a month to spend. That's 4 months to get the 80gb OCZ. This is why i am looking for a very cheap but good performing drive. Thanks again :) 


Wow, that is a tight budget to work with!

That said for your setup an SSD would be the single most noticeable upgrade you could make.

Maybe go ahead and max out the RAM on your board too, then you can not only be faster but could also make a RAMdrive for all of your temp files (pagefile, scratch disk etc.) to go on and that would defiantly give you a performance boost, which you will need for gaming in an 2-4 year time frame. 4GB will not cut it for a gaming/video capture system for too much longer, RAM is fairly cheap now and you don't have to get it all at once.

Other than if you want to upgrade your vid card in that time, I would not spend anymore than that on this rig with that MB.

I feel that in 2-4 years even 2 hd6850's will be way outdated and you could get say a 6970 for cheaper (if you could even find another 6850 by then), just cross that bridge when you get there. Most newer boards let you mix and match cards now (even between Nvida and ATI) so don't worry about it right now too much.

BTW, have you ever run your windows resource monitor while playing and recording? That should help you pinpoint the bottleneck in your system while doing that.

One last thing, make sure you update your MB bios, drivers and SSD to the latest firmware before installing.

Hope it helps and good luck with your upgrades!
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Storage categories