Is an SSD worth the upgrade?

[darkstar845]

I am thinking of buying an SSD maybe about 128GB because anything above is still expensive for me.
But the thing is that my computer is only X58 and has only SATA 2.0 ports and I wont be able to use or feel the full capability of SATA 3 ssd like Intel 330.
I won't be upgrading my motherboard and CPU yet, I am still saving up for the new generation of AMD/Nvidia GPUs.

 

[game junky]

Yes, a SSD will still be pretty quick (even on SATAII ports). Top end performers will top out at around 270-280MB for read speeds and 255-270MB for write speeds.

Access times will increase substantially and your boot time will be impressive compared with a good old 7200rpm drive.

If all you're looking to do is improve your gaming performance then you will not be depressed by switching to a SSD but you'll get more benefits from upgrading your GPU (depending on what you have).

If you're looking for a good entry level drive, I would recommend the Samsung 830/840 - incredibly reliable, very quick and usually fairly close to $/GB.

 

[Scott_D_Bowen]

The Samsung 830 and 840 series aren't really entry level, they're the best SATA interface SSD's on the market.
- The 840 kicks everything, even I run two Samsung 830's, one in each rig, and I'm the author of PreCacher.

A Solid State Drive is more about the <= 0.2ms to 0.125ms response time than the sheer throughput in MB/sec.

You can still get an SSD down to about 5,800 KB/sec if you read lots of tiny files (under 64KB) from one within a 2 minute period.

Doing the same on a HDD would take much longer.

~150MB/sec with 8K I/O per second is heaps more responsive than <= 150MB/sec at just 120 to 500 I/O per second.


Using an application that I just wrote you can cache all files on your C: drive under 64KB and parts of the MFT when Windows loads (if in StartUp group) and enjoy SSD like performance from 50% to 80% of your file access. [].

Spread the word:
- http://scottdbowen.id.au/PreCacher/