Another newbie to SSD's... Suggestions please

[kokokh]

So I've built a good pc but am frustrated that I can't make the most of it because of the hard drive bottle neck. so i am now looking at getting a SSD to solve this problem, only i need a relatively large capacity.

I tried raid 0 with two old samsung drives i had but no difference.

With just my OS and software I am at 100GB (alot of music production software). so i was thinking of buying this OCZ Agility 3 120GB only the capacity doesn't seem enough for me.

Or this 180GB vertex 2, only its half as slow as the other.

I think 160-180GB would be ideal but don't want to spend much more than i have to, and also i've heard terrible thing about the marvell chip on my board will this be an issue for me with SATA 3?

What should i do? will i miss the additional speed of the agility 3?

P.S my build

Antec 902
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
OCZ Reaper 6GB 1600Mhz Ram
Intel i7 920 @ 3.2GHZ
Prolimatech megahalem heatsink
2 x Gigabyte GTX 560 TI OC
1 X Samsung F3 1TB
1 X WD caviar blue 2TB
2 X samsung 250gb in raid 0
XFX black edition 850W PSU

 

[tomatthe]

If price is a big factor in your decision, I would probably go with a Sata 2 drive at the 160 or 180g mark just depending on the exact amount of space you need and what buffer you want to leave open.

A lot of people do complain about the marvel sata 3 controller, but if you went with a Sata 2 drive you wouldn't have to bother with it and could just use the Intel one. You could obviously put a Sata 3 drive on the Intel controller as well, but you would probably want to do some testing between the Marvel and Intel ones at that point to see which comes out ahead.

Intel drives are generally considered to be the most reliable, along with that the most expensive. Moving to a Sata 2 ssd would be a very noticeable upgrade to your system, and likely you wouldn't notice much of a difference from not getting a Sata 3 drive.

However, if you aren't saving to much between a Sata 2 vs 3 drive then it does make more sense to go with the Sata 3 drive, but I haven't looked at prices in a while and was just guessing the prices aren't that close.

 

[kokokh]

hey tomatthe, thanks for the advice. unfortunately sata 2 and sata 3 drives are prices very similarly which annoys me. any how ive found a bargain on ebay, a OCZ vertex 2 240GB for £180, so i had to grab it.

thanks again.

 

[kokokh]

i expect the intel chip to be faster since the drive is only sata 2, but i will run some ATTO benchmarks nonetheless, i also have GSATA2 on my board so shall give that a try too.