First Gen SSD to Current Gen Worth Upgrade?

stuup1dmofo

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Hello yall, I've been running my current rig (I5-2500k, MSI p67a-g43 sata 3 capable, 12 gb 1600 vengeance, crossfire hd6950 2gb) with an older first gen 80gb Intel X-25m G1 SSD as my boot drive and was wondering if upgrading to a newer current gen ssd as a boot drive would be worth it. Everything boots up quickly and the drive was recently wiped clean before installing Windows 7 Professional. However, it does not have TRIM support and hence a real chance of performance degradation. I have followed the article on this website for setting up SSD and do not use it to store documents or write anything other than run the OS and programs.

In light of the above information, would upgrading to a newer gen SSD such as a newer intel or corsair, or even ocz be worth it? My sequential read on the X-25 G1 is 250MB/s and sequential write is 70MB/s. Random 4k read is 35k IOPS and 4k write is 3.3k IOPS. I know newer SSDs have numbers that double the read and quadruple the write. Would it make any difference as a boot drive? Will Windows boot and run faster given all my other specs? Should i be worried that my x-25m g1 will slow down and increase boot/load times? Games and media get stored exclusively on my traditional HDD.
 
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For a wag, I'd say you should see about a 20% performance boost going from a Intel 80 gig G1 (I also have) to a 128 gig Curcial M4 (also have) I do NOT recommend the SF2281 Based SSDs (which includes the vertex III's) My primary basis for this is looking at PCMark vantage benchmarks which is much closer to real life than the worthless synthetic Benchmarks.

However to put that in perspective, if Time from windows start to load, to being able to lauch say ie is 30 Secs then a 20 sec improvement only shaves that to 24 Sec. Not really a biggy. As to program loads, lets see one blink of the Eye verses two blinks twice as fast - but not really that noticable.

Here is where you will gain. 20 % improved performance, BUT you can now also...
Your motherboard is equipped with SATAIII 6Gb/s controller integrated in the Intel P67 chipset so you could upgrade to the newest solid state drives available. Upgrading would definitely boost performance and you would be able to make use of the Windows 7 TRIM feature.

What I am uncertain about is just how much of a performance boost you would actually be able to see and feel. I know the synthetic benchmarks look good but they do not always translate well into actual real world performance. Do you run software applications that involve compiling, rendering, or transcoding?
 

stuup1dmofo

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That's exactly what i was wondering. I know the newer ones are far faster, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make in terms of actual real world performance. I do not any software apps that involve compiling, rendering or transcoding. The closest I've ever gotten is converting my CDs into FLAC and perhaps ripping my Blu-Rays. I primarily game on my computer and my career does not involve using software applications.

Any users of ssds out there who have gone from first gen ssd to current one mind chiming in?
 

Zenthar

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On my previous machine I went from a Raptor 36GB (1st Gen 10K RPM HDD) to an OCZ Solid2 SSD (entry level SSD from OCZ, supports TRIM, but overall probably slower than your X25-M) and I find the jump in performance much more pronounced than when I went from that SSD to a Vertex 3 (not MIOPS). So as for being perceivable I would say "yes", but not necessarily by THAT much. And yes sequential read-write are much better in the latest Gen, but you could probably achieve much better simply by putting a few regular HDD in RAID (and get the extra capacity as well) ...

Just though to share my experience.
 
For a wag, I'd say you should see about a 20% performance boost going from a Intel 80 gig G1 (I also have) to a 128 gig Curcial M4 (also have) I do NOT recommend the SF2281 Based SSDs (which includes the vertex III's) My primary basis for this is looking at PCMark vantage benchmarks which is much closer to real life than the worthless synthetic Benchmarks.

However to put that in perspective, if Time from windows start to load, to being able to lauch say ie is 30 Secs then a 20 sec improvement only shaves that to 24 Sec. Not really a biggy. As to program loads, lets see one blink of the Eye verses two blinks twice as fast - but not really that noticable.

Here is where you will gain. 20 % improved performance, BUT you can now also move the G1 over and use it as a "Small" work drive and put most often used data on it. This is what I did. Example, I have a excell spreedsheet that I use almost daily. If I go to my "most recent links" and click on the spreedsheet, the program loads and the spreedsheet is loaded before I can drag the mouse to a cell for editting it.

PS, while the G1 did not/does not support trim, it does have a faily good garbage collector (CG) algorthium

Bottom Line, In my opinion - yes it is worth it.
 
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stuup1dmofo

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Excellent point about real world performance. I believe i will be upgrading to a newer SSD then in the next few months, possibly a 64 gig Crucial M4 and find another use for my 80 gig G1. I was worried about degrading performance upping my boot times as I have been spoiled with lighting fast boot times now. But I suppose there is no rush since I already am using an SSD as a boot drive.

As for your G1, how is that holding up nowadays. I know mine works pretty well for something over two years old, but i'm starting to worry about the "old" girl. I suppose it's my paranoia kicking in. Thanks for the advice about staying away from sandforce controllers, i did notice the not so glowing reviews of SF based drives being quite consistent on the net.

Seems like the SSD scene is moving so much faster (har har) than the traditional HDD scene was a decade ago or even five years ago.

 

cadder

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I don't think you would see enough difference to make the change worthwhile. If you aren't doing a lot of writing to the drive with it almost full then I'm not sure how much you miss without TRIM. BUT if you needed a larger SSD, or there was some other reason to change other than speed, then you could make the change and pick up a little bit of speed at the same time.