Will an SSD improve my overall proformance

IMHO, you're considering an SSD for the wrong reason. It will boot faster and open programs faster however, unless you're dealing with huge files daily you won't notice any performance improvements. In fact, after a few days you won't even notice the launch speed. On the other hand, you're getting a storage device with no moving parts that draws minute current and can be dropped on the floor. Reliability is the real asset.

Boot speed is what you will notice and for some that reason alone is worth it considering the low prices of SSD's these days

My pc has a 60gb SSD plus 2 x 1tb HDD's and boots a lot quicker than before the addition of the SSD

Does your motherboard support SATA III? If it doesn't you'll be buying a SATA III SSD for nothing. Look for higher read and write speeds for your SSD. Typically, a SATA III SSD should have values above 400MB/s in order to be considered fast. Fastest SSD right now I think have approximately 550MB/s read and write speed. If you want more speed, you can put two SSD in RAID0 array which basically doubled your read write speeds. For example, I have two OCZ Agility 3 drives with ~500MB/s read & write. I have them in RAID0 array and I have ~1000MB/s read & write.

Does it improve overall performance? HELL YEAH! My booting takes around 15 seconds. Photoshop, Starcraft II, Diablo III starts up quick. IDK about SC2 and DB3 but I used the same photoshop on my previous HDD so I notice the start up is noticeably very much faster.

In order to set up RAID0, your motherboard has to support it. Your motherboard manual will tell you how you can set it up. I don't store any data on it since RAID0 array can fail more easily than a traditional HDD. I've been using it for over 9 months now though. I didn't have any problem. I paid 200$ for my two SSD's which are now worth only 100$. Right now is the best time to grab a SSD or two or three. Note SSD speed is additive. After my first try, I just had to switch HDD to SSD on every computer I use often.

depends how you define "performance".

For most people, yes, the computer seems much more responsive and snappier in all things! Even things like internet browsing-since every browser uses disk and caching and stuff like that.

That being said, if you are too smart for your own good and follow misguided tips such as moving your browser caches to your HDD, then you don't get this benefit.


All the naysayers, please state if you actually own an SSD and regret your purchase or are just speaking with no real first hand experience (and therefore out of your ass).

I challenge you will be hard-pressed to find a lot of SSD owners who regret their purchase. Even if a portion of this is due to self-justification, ssd purchases have a high satisfaction rate

thanks for the quick replies i appreciate it and yes my motherboard does support SATA III and Raid 0. i have a MSI z77a-gd65 but i never thought about combining 2 SSDs soounds like a great idea. and good i just bought the SDD and ill probably save up for another

I have 8 SSD's, all Tier 1 240GB or Tier 3 128GB units .... in other words, the very fastest you can but in their size ranges.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-...

On one box, I can dual boot off a 128 GB SSD (fastest type available according to THG rankings - SandForce controller with Toggle DDR NAND) and a Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB model.

Boot time to Windows:

SSD - 15.6 seconds
HD - 21.2 seconds.\

Load time for MMO

SSD - 45 seconds
HD - 45 seconds

What will ya SSD for you ?

Raise ya WEI from 5.9ish to 7.8ish
Boot ya system about 5 seconds faster
Get benchmark scores ya can brag about
Open programs a fraction of a second faster

Other than that, not much unless ya using some perty fancy apps and have the space to fit them there .... programs on the HD don't benefit. Kinda like whether I take the Porsche or the SUV to work .... the Porsche is a helluva lot faster 0 - 60 (and beyond) but no matter which one I take to work, it still takes me the same 35 minutes in the morning. That doesn't mean i don't enjoy the ride a lot more, it's just that the justification that it gets me to work faster is bogus.

A better comparison was the former holy grail of storage....RAID 0. Again, great benchies, great server performance and great productivity increases in specialized apps like video editing, CAD etc.....but no perceivable gain in consumer, gaming and office apps.

Of late I been building with Seagate Momentus 750 GB hybrid SSD/HD's. I get crappy WEI score, but it only takes 1 second longer to boot and I don't have to worry about "fitting" everything in a 60 or 120Gb space. More than half of the builds I have done in the last year for peeps w/ 60 - 120 GB SSD's have come back w/ requests to "clean out" their boot drives. When ya count the setup time, tweaking, Windows adjustments, maintenance, etc, you pretty much ate up any potential savings productivity. That doesn't mean it isn't fun to experience, just don't try and say to ya boss that getting you an SSD will let you be more productive, you'll never be able to show a return in investment in real dollars.