Are SSDs Worth It For Me?

[Iinspire]

Maybe im just trying to justify a reason to buy one..but it just doesnt seem that its worth it for someone like me. I only play games (MMOs, and league of legends), do home work, and browse the web. No video editing/photo shop. And i only turn off my computer like once a week.

Most of the people who buy SSDs say "MY WINDOW LOADS IN LIKE 13 SECONDS!" I rarely have to load windows lol. Are they useful for anything else..? Besides loading like 5 secs faster?

 

[PepitoneConQueso]

I'm having a similar debate for my future build.

My laptop has one, and its amazing. Programs load in seconds and everything in the OS is just much faster. But in the end its a luxury, it has pretty much no performance upgrade for gaming, except maybe load times though while playing online that has more to do with your internet.

If you were to get one one a budget you would get a 64GB one, install your OS on it, and a few heavily used programs (Chrome, iTunes, Spotify, etc.). Installing games on such a small drive is not really feasible as modern games are getting larger and larger (BF3 beta requires 20GB!).

The realization I'm coming to is that they're not worth getting unless you can get a big enough one that suits your needs. Theres no sense in compromising for a luxury, either you can afford one or not. So I think I will hold off until I can afford a 128GB drive and transfer my OS to it, the prices of these things have no where to go but down.

 

[Iinspire]

I can afford one, since my credit was good enough for a newegg preferred account. But ehh, my google chrome opens almost instantly now lol. But thanks.

 

[PepitoneConQueso]

If you can afford one go ahead and get it, its a noticeable increase in speed for everything. But that is literally the only benefit, that and increased durability and lifespan.

 

[tsnor]

FWIW: I put an intel 320 in my laptop. It's nice. But I'm not motivated to add one to my gaming system.

I did put a pair of fast spinning hard drives in my gaming system, RAID 0, and benchmarks shot up to 200+ MB/sec sequential bandwidth. I'm sure there is a difference now, but I really can't see or feel a difference in boot time or game load time.

So my 2cents would be skip the SSD, the extra complexity of a small c drive is not worth the gain assuming you saw any.

 

[leandrodafontoura]

Yes, SSD is a benefit for eveyrone, no matter what you do. People love saying that about windows now cause, im do not know if you are aware of it, Mac OS boot up in 10 sec and shuts down in 2 sec on a HDD

anyways, heres what you get with a SSD

-Better boot up and shut downs
-applications lunch faster
-files transfers take less time
-game loads faster
-Installations are faster

Regarding application lunching faster that is really a joy, the seconds you gain from lunching your web browser or opening that picture or that word document, are really welcome

 

[chulex67]

dude, after getting and ssd, i dont like to use other people pc or laptops, they feel to slow and laggy.

 

[Iinspire]

dude, after getting and ssd, i dont like to use other people pc or laptops, they feel to slow and laggy.

I got a lapop without a SSD and its not laggy and slow lol, but thanks everyone else. I do have a hackintosh so i sometimes boot up windows 7 but not that often lol.

 

[tsnor]

FWIW: nice list posted above, I've added comments.

Some IO operations are random read/writes. Some are sequential. Most modern spinning drives will be in the same neighborhood as SSDs for real world sequential processing. SSDs kill spinning drives for random processing.

Better boot up and shut downs -- YES, but not pure sequential hibernate.
-applications launch faster -- Maybe. Win7 by default preloads apps you commonly use if you have a reasonable amount of memory (6-8GB)
-files transfers take less time -- Probably not if transfer over network or from disk to disk or DVD to disk. For copying files from one place on the same disk to another it depends on whether the disk can detect the two sequential streams -- some can and some can't. If the disk can't the SSD will kill the spinning disk, otherwise the SSD will only be a bit faster. If your anti-virus gets frisky it could bottleneck the fiel copy also.
-game loads faster -- maybe. Depends on how sequentially the game load file is laid out. Game designers work to get games to load levels quickly.
-Installations are faster -- YES hugely so. Lots of random read/writes. Especially windows install.

 

[lukemacneil]

I can afford one, since my credit was good enough for a newegg preferred account. But ehh, my google chrome opens almost instantly now lol. But thanks.

... having the credit to buy one isn't the same as being able to afford it. That kind of thinking is going to get you in trouble. Just sayin'

 

[paulhar]

What do you normally feed your applications with for lunch?

Yes, SSD is a benefit for eveyrone, no matter what you do. People love saying that about windows now cause, im do not know if you are aware of it, Mac OS boot up in 10 sec and shuts down in 2 sec on a HDD

anyways, heres what you get with a SSD

-Better boot up and shut downs
-applications lunch faster
-files transfers take less time
-game loads faster
-Installations are faster

Regarding application lunching faster that is really a joy, the seconds you gain from lunching your web browser or opening that picture or that word document, are really welcome