SSD boot drive vs SSD with Smart Reponse paired with fast spinning disk

[insin]

Hi folks,
I hope you guys can help me out with a bit of a dilemma. I am looking to upgrade my system to the following.

- i5 2500k
- Asrock Fatal1ty Z68 Pro Gen3
- G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB

I am mainly going to be using it for gaming, development with with Visual Studio and a little bit of visual work with Adobe CS5.

I was initially thinking of getting a 120GB drive for the OS, games and programs. That should be enough if I keep it tidy. But with the motherboard having a Z68 chip set it gives me the option of using Intel Smart Response.

So I specced up some options which both weigh in at around the same in cost:

Option 1 - 120GB Vertex 3

Option 2 - 60GB Vertex 3 + 300GB WD Velociraptor in RAID 0 with Smart Response turned on, and 100% of the SSD utilised as the cache.

Now the second option seems to make sense to me. I tend to play the same game for a while and use the same programs. And these would sit in the cache and be ready when I need them. I understand there can be some limitations when it comes to write speed but I'm not overly fussed by that.

Has anyone tried this sort of setup?
Can anyone see any pitfalls?
Any alternative suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[insin]

Abort on this.

I have decided to suck it up and get a 240GB Corsair Force 3 SSD. I would still be interested if anyone has the answer.

 

[k1114]

The ssd alone is preferable so you have direct control of what is utilizing the sdd. Velocs are really not worth it. Another option would be a 60gb boot drive + regular 7200rpm hdds in raid 0, still not using ssd caching. The main benefit of a ssd is the access times as raid 0 can match the throughput of a ssd. But imo load times aren't too bad for games on a single 7200rpm hdd.

 

[insinfinity]

Cool, thanks for your reply.