Upgrade Fever - Raid SSD's?

[atlasprime]

Hi everyone,

I was speaking to a co-worker on upgrading his PC and well... it caused some upgrade fever for myself.
Im currently running a core I7 530 @ 3.6ghz. 6Gb ram, and a radeon 5870. Windows 7 Ult on a 60gb OCZ Vertex 2 turbo.

Looking to replace my SSD and my Gfx Card.

Was thinking about getting 2 Corsair Force 3 SSD's and stick them in raid but idk if this is a good idea. Any thoughts on this?

Also if anyone has GPU knowledge and can think of a solid replacement for a 5870. Feel free


Thank you much in advance!

 

[tomatthe]

Research corsairs forums before buying a force 3 drive. Personally I went through 3 of them in a 6 months span, and then a performance 3 drive which lasted about 2 months and was replaced with a refurb. Look elsewhere imo for an ssd.

I assume you meant running them in raid 0, but that wouldn't really have much of a real world performance boost, and trim wouldn't work properly. Some debate if trim not working matters much anymore with the improved garbage collection ssds have now, but I would rather have it working then not.

Video card wise, take a look at these, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

Basically decide what you want to spend, and see what is recommended in that range.

 

[geofelt]

What do you wish to accomplish?

Any modern SSD will perform about the same in normal desktop operations.
The OS mainly does small random reads and writes, a task any SSD is exceedingly good at.

Raid-0 shows impressive synthetic sequential benchmark numbers using a program that has little resemblance to what we do mostly.
If your motherboard supports 6gb sata, then one of the newer gen drives may give you a slightly faster level load time.
If you need more space, replacing the 60gb ssd with a larger one is not a bad idea. Otherwise, there is probably not much advantage.

For gaming, the graphics card is all important. The 5870 is still a good card.
If you will upgrade it, make it a big jump, or you may be disappointed. Think 7970, or at least 7950.
Better, yet, wait a month or so to see what Nvidia's kepler will offer. Today, AMD has little competition in the >5870 price range, and kepler will keep them honest.

When you get the upgrade itch, scratch it.
How about a second monitor?

 

[atlasprime]

What do you wish to accomplish?

Any modern SSD will perform about the same in normal desktop operations.
The OS mainly does small random reads and writes, a task any SSD is exceedingly good at.

Raid-0 shows impressive synthetic sequential benchmark numbers using a program that has little resemblance to what we do mostly.
If your motherboard supports 6gb sata, then one of the newer gen drives may give you a slightly faster level load time.
If you need more space, replacing the 60gb ssd with a larger one is not a bad idea. Otherwise, there is probably not much advantage.

For gaming, the graphics card is all important. The 5870 is still a good card.
If you will upgrade it, make it a big jump, or you may be disappointed. Think 7970, or at least 7950.
Better, yet, wait a month or so to see what Nvidia's kepler will offer. Today, AMD has little competition in the >5870 price range, and kepler will keep them honest.

When you get the upgrade itch, scratch it.
How about a second monitor?

Thank you for the input. The previous post has ruled out raid 0. I just like bragging rights when it comes to loading games with my buddies haha. Ultimately, i need an excuse to clean out my case for some new hardware.
You are right about the 5870. I will wait for the nVidia response.

As for the SSD, perhaps a single solution then. Seems the force 3's are crappy according to 1st post. I was reading about Chronos Muchkin sp?. My goal is super fast load times atm.

 

[geofelt]

Thank you for the input. The previous post has ruled out raid 0. I just like bragging rights when it comes to loading games with my buddies haha. Ultimately, i need an excuse to clean out my case for some new hardware.
You are right about the 5870. I will wait for the nVidia response.

As for the SSD, perhaps a single solution then. Seems the force 3's are crappy according to 1st post. I was reading about Chronos Muchkin sp?. My goal is super fast load times atm.

If your sata port is 3gb, your load times are probably as good as it will ever be. The sata speed is a limiting factor.

If you have 6gb sata, or will upgrade to sandy/ivy bridge, then a new gen drive can be of help.
Larger SSD's will transfer faster because they have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0.

Today, I would look first to Intel 520 or Samsung 830. They seem to be the most issue free.

 

[atlasprime]

If your sata port is 3gb, your load times are probably as good as it will ever be. The sata speed is a limiting factor.

If you have 6gb sata, or will upgrade to sandy/ivy bridge, then a new gen drive can be of help.
Larger SSD's will transfer faster because they have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0.

Today, I would look first to Intel 520 or Samsung 830. They seem to be the most issue free.

I do have a 6gb/sec sata port. Was wondering when I was going to use it haha.

 

[atlasprime]

If your sata port is 3gb, your load times are probably as good as it will ever be. The sata speed is a limiting factor.

If you have 6gb sata, or will upgrade to sandy/ivy bridge, then a new gen drive can be of help.
Larger SSD's will transfer faster because they have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0.

Today, I would look first to Intel 520 or Samsung 830. They seem to be the most issue free.

What should I look for when SSD shopping. IOPS? Write/read speeds?
My SSD now is like 200 Read/Write or something. Ive seen some 500/500 SSD's out there now.

 

[geofelt]

What should I look for when SSD shopping. IOPS? Write/read speeds?
My SSD now is like 200 Read/Write or something. Ive seen some 500/500 SSD's out there now.

My criteria would be reliability and price per gb.
Intel has a 5 year warranty, that tells me something.

You can tell a bit of difference in performance between drives with a benchmark, but not in real life.

 

[atlasprime]

My criteria would be reliability and price per gb.
Intel has a 5 year warranty, that tells me something.

You can tell a bit of difference in performance between drives with a benchmark, but not in real life.

Dare I consider a revo drive x2? lmao

 

[geofelt]

Dare I consider a revo drive x2? lmao

Only you can answer that.

Look for some ocz revo drive support forums, and you will get some guidance.

 

[yer_momma]

Nothing wrong with Raid 0 on SSD's besides the lack of trim support. I've been running two Corsair SSD's in RAID 0 for nearly 2 years. Every 6 months or so I just make an image backup, dis-join the drives from the RAID and do a secure wipe on them, then put them back in the RAID 0 and restore the image backup. This process takes about an hour and restores performance to like new. Even after running for 6 months without trim they are still far, far faster than a standard 7200rpm hard drive.

That being said I just built a Corei7 2600 system with a single Samsung 830 series SSD and it absolutely screams. I've never seen a system boot so fast that the 4 Windows 7 logo colors never actually have time to come together before the desktop shows. with EUFI bios it's less than 10 seconds from pressing the power button to the desktop.

 

[atlasprime]

Nothing wrong with Raid 0 on SSD's besides the lack of trim support. I've been running two Corsair SSD's in RAID 0 for nearly 2 years. Every 6 months or so I just make an image backup, dis-join the drives from the RAID and do a secure wipe on them, then put them back in the RAID 0 and restore the image backup. This process takes about an hour and restores performance to like new. Even after running for 6 months without trim they are still far, far faster than a standard 7200rpm hard drive.

That being said I just built a Corei7 2600 system with a single Samsung 830 series SSD and it absolutely screams. I've never seen a system boot so fast that the 4 Windows 7 logo colors never actually have time to come together before the desktop shows. with EUFI bios it's less than 10 seconds from pressing the power button to the desktop.

Thanks for the input!

After some thought. Ive decided I want to embark into uncharted waters for myself. I went ahead and purchased a 128gb RevoDrive 3. Should be arriving tomorrow. Curious to interact with the technology. :-D

 

[geofelt]

Thanks for the input!

After some thought. Ive decided I want to embark into uncharted waters for myself. I went ahead and purchased a 128gb RevoDrive 3. Should be arriving tomorrow. Curious to interact with the technology. :-D

Do post your experience here.

 

[atlasprime]

So far this thing is a monster. Load times across all my applications are staggering. I bought it for novelty performance reasons and its def doing exactly that. League of Legends is a chump game but I always get a nice warm fuzzy feeling when my loading bar smokes everyone else. Also been playing some Anno 2070 with my buddy which requires a good deal of loading. Ill be about 50% complete before he even starts.

My only complaint is that I want to put everything on the RevoDrive 3 now... and i know i wont be able to do that. lol