HDD and SSD z68 question

[zvermm]

Hello.

I'm planning on building a new system and I ran into a dilemma concerning storage. I am planning on getting a WD caviar black 2tb SATA 3 drive and a Corsair force 3 120gb to act as a system/program drive. I have two questions, thanks in advance:

1. Is this setup logical? Would it provide a noticeable improvement over the HDD alone (it's supposed to be pretty fast)? I mostly game and use graphical applications such as PS, Premiere and Maya.

2. If the answer to the first question is positive, would it make sense to use half of the SSD as cache with z68's smart response technology feature? Would it provide any benefits compared to the original setup?

Thanks again.

 

[RetiredChief]

(1) NO, DO NOT split the SSD for SRT, use it as a OS + program drive.

(2) SSD Benifit. Faster OS load, faster program load times. After program loads the program will not run faster. If data is requested by the program and that data is on the SSD it will load the data faster. If on the HDD then will load at the speed of the HDD. SRT will ONLY improve on the HDD performance if the Data is in the "cache", for non repeditive requests for data, the data will not be in cache and revert to normal HDD speed.

(3) My choice of SSDs is currently the Curicial M4, do not be fooled by SF2281 controller based SSDs high Sequencial perfoormance.
(A) Sequencial performance is the least important matrix for a OS + Program drive, it is the 4k random performance that is important.
(B) Most benchmarks use NON compressed data (NOT real life), and Yes the SF2281 shines when data that is readily compressable is used - BUT compare the performance when compressed data is used such as used by AS SSD benchmark program.

Added:
Screen shot of My M4 (With Firmware 0009) using AS SSD.

 

[zvermm]

Thanks for the advice, you bring up some interesting points.. Though I still lean towards the Corsair because I simply love the company (nothing against Crucial, never used them yet). However, can someone also address the first part of the question? The HDD I'm getting is pretty fast and expensive and I'm not sure it would be cost effective to get an SSD on top of that.

 

[RetiredChief]

SRT will speed up HDD by between 1.5 to a max of 4X. But it is highly dependent on the user and how the computer is used. Remember only what is in the cache is speeded up and the algortium is Guessing based on user pattern.

As to Brand, I'm not to dedicated to any one, (except I do not like OCZ as a company). I have 8 SSDs - spead out over 4 brands. I go more for reliability (intel and samsung then look at price/ performance. Marvel based Sata 3 SSDs are less problmatic than sandforce based. Samsung is comming out very shortly with their 800 series.

 

[zvermm]

That's funny, I happen to dislike OCZ as well, their 1000w PSU died on me twice.

 

[zvermm]

Best answer selected by zvermm.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar