Is this SSD good for gaming

[nish-ka-bibble]

Still building my rig and was wondering if this SSD is any good, especially for gaming:

OCZ Vertex 96GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Thanks!

 

[Pyroflea]

It'll give quicker access times than a standard hard drive. I can't imagine it'd make a huge difference in performance for gaming, but it may help a bit. It'll definitely help with other applications that read/write a lot.

 

[foscooter]

Studies have shown that gaming doesn't benefit on a SSD vs. HDD.

IMHO: What really matters is the video card, then RAM, then CPU.

For that kind of money, get a Intel X25-M 80GB Gen2 SSD, read/writes: 250/70MBps. $219.99 here

OCZ has since came out with a Vertex 2 version, but I have no specs on either. Just heard that the Vertex 2 is faster.

 

[Hard Line]

In the rumor mill is a massive price drop in a few months if you can hold off till then

 

[nish-ka-bibble]

Thank you all for your advice and input.
For now I'll use the extra cash on GPU

It sounds like a better plan...for now...

 

[daship]

In the rumor mill is a massive price drop in a few months if you can hold off till then

According to who? You? Dont count on it.

 

[Hard Line]

I read it somewhere a few days ago.. not sure where.. and the price drop was due to the move to 32nm. here are some article after a quick google search ( I find a $100 price drop massive considering current prices)

http://www.guru3d.com/news/intel-34nm-320gb-ssd-coming-soon/

http://gizmodo.com/359882/samsung-planning-on-256gb-ssds-huge-price-drops-by-end-of-the-year

http://www.uberreview.com/2008/06/solid-state-drive-price-drop-coming-soon.htm

 

[Silvune]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2928

 

[Hard Line]

thank you silvune. that is the one i was looking for but couldn't seem to find it..lol

@daship - the way you said that came off abrasive.. just wanted to let you know. i let it roll off my back.. but some ppl may not.

 

[swifty_morgan]

In the rumor mill is a massive price drop in a few months if you can hold off till then

I read something similar a few weeks ago inre to Intel. The article said not to buy the 40 because there was an 80 coming out "soon" for the same price. So yes, I believe it.

 

[batuchka]

The best h/w for a gaming rig is a GPU with enuff teeth for the desired res/settings ^^

 

[RetiredChief]

Concur with batuchka on gaming.About the only benifit to gaming would be in page file loads
Price drop - I hope so. Surely for current generation drives especially ones with poor controllers, but for Newer ones maybe not so much. But they are some much faster in boot and program loads.

Quote from Silvune's link

Quote:
Obviously supply and demand economics play their roles here. We may not see the sort of aggressive pricing we want to on 25nm X25-M drives if demand remains as high as it has been for the 34nm G2s.
End Quote.

Hard Line.
Not to be hard on you, but should not use outdated links. The last two were written in 2008 and the first one in Jul 2009. Would be very misleading if someone went there and did not notice the date.

 

[Hard Line]

NP Retired.. actually, I didn't even notice the older dates, however I was looking for the one that Silvune had posted..I had just googled in the hope of finding the article to back me up. thankfully he did.

 

[RetiredChief]

HardLine:
Yes that is the article you wanted, problem is that articale was dated 30 Jan 10, while much more current is still dated as any near term drop ie 3->4 monthes would have already occured. Remember, The supplier will always try to get the most profit possible (Quote from article in my first reply). And untill the "demand vs supply" tapers off you will not see a large drop - EXCEPT for the poor performing ones.

A good example - When Intel was forced to recall their G2's and subsequently they resupplied the venders, at the same cost, But the venders jacked the retail price up by a WOPPING $100 and did not come down for almost 6 Monthes. NOT all venders, just most, did this including newegg.

 

[Hard Line]

I believe the article ( at least the one I remember ) mentioned this fall for price drops. if I find it, i will post it here for reference

 

[dextermat]

According to who? You? Dont count on it.

+1 corporate pigs want to milk out most money out of sucking technologies: probably 10 years before they get common enough to get affordable

 

[RetiredChief]

Not Totally disagreeing with the Prices will drop - Just that it is not a given and how much is a good question. I'm a fan of BUY NOW and enjoy, and do not cry over spilled beer if the prices drops.

Will probably see some good sales during the back-to-school time frame and for the Xmas time.

Took a look and prices have dropped about 50 ->75 for the 128 gig SSds, Thats for the poorer ones, and ones on sale, or with a MIR. But this is not true for all.

Example (Newegg);
Bought my Patriot Torqx 128 gig for $340 (Sept 09), currently at $364
My Intel 80 Gig was $240 (Oct 09) On sale from about $340, current price = $220 - BUT they threw in an EXcellent Case ($120) for $20.

Another Case in point of Buyer Beware -
I bought a DANE-Elec 80 Gig SSD About $130 after MIR). Advertized as Mainstream Intel - They "forgot" to indicate (When it was Mainstream) and that it was the OUTDATED G1 which does not support win 7 trim cmd. Great price even for the G1, But would not have bought if I had done my homework, or they had listed the model Nr. Stuck it in my older "for work" laptop. My better lappy has the Torqx in it.

 

[Hard Line]

I hear ya.. I am running 2 sammy 500GB F3's in raid 0 great tranfer rates.. but access time of course still 13.5ms when I can buy an ssd with min 170 max 260 and avg 235 with 0.1ms, and at least 256 for under 300, then I'll bite ( and want it to be sata 6Gb/s as I have that on my board)

 

[RetiredChief]

For Sata 6 SSd's Read
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300
Not a big improvement over top of the line OCZ vortex-2

As to your Raid 0, you can improve the seek time by Short stroking them, My pair of WD 640 Blacks had approx 9.5 mSec access time Also improves seek times - still no way compares to a SSD

 

[Hard Line]

instead of short stroking I use ultimate defrag which will use the date stamp from windows to put recently used data at the beginning part of the drive and archive at the end. works well. I saw benchies with the C300 reaching 500MB/s if I find the link I will post it here

This is not the bench I was looking for, but it clearly shows a big advantage over intel ssd http://www.anandtech.com/show/2909

However I did see where you got your info from, I believe they were both tested at sata 3Gbps not 6

 

[RetiredChief]

My Link indicated that they used a Marvell SATA 6Gbps PCIe for the test, so they were tested using SATA 6 and SATA3. The ()'s indicate the Sata 6 Controller.

 

[Hard Line]

hmm i will have to recheck the article because I found another that says different ( comparing to intel ssd tho) the anand chart for ssd put the vertex in a good light but I don't think the chart uses sata 6 cut the numbers stay under 300

I did find this phrase on the random 4k read test: "The C300 offers by far the best random read performance of any SSD we’ve tested. This applies to both the 256GB and 128GB versions of the C300, and while operating on a 3Gbps SATA controller. There’s a roughly 38% performance advantage over the SandForce based OCZ Vertex 2 and Intel X25-M G2"

here is the link ( it was only 1 test that I quoted there are more tests and don't want to appear biased ) The vertex 2 does better in random writes

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300/2

 

[RetiredChief]

Yes the 256 Gig is the fastest on SATA 6, But the 128 (using SATA 6) is only sligthly better than the Vortex-2
Quote
In terms of new, out of box performance, the Crucial RealSSD C300 does very well. It performs like a next generation drive and is significantly faster than Intel's X25-M G2 or anything based on an Indilinx controller. The 128GB C300 tends to be slower than the 100GB SandForce drives while the 256GB C300 is about on par and sometimes faster. The 256GB C300 also pulls ahead if you move to a 6Gbps SATA controller.
End Quote.

The End result comes down to Cost/Performance and what a user will see in real life vs the benchmarks..

 

[Hard Line]

yes I agree with you