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SSD someone needs to talk me into buying one


Guest Doubleome

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Guest Doubleome
Posted

Hey guys,

 

Building a new machine for BF3 it will be roughly 1800 dollars.

 

Now my problem is, I have never had an SSD people say its awesome but is it really worth spending about 150 dollars on 60 GB 525/450 read/write for just starting up windows and having maybe one game installed ? Im looking at a agility 3 Ocz 60gb atm.

 

You start up your pc at the start of the day so you gain about 30 seconds each day ? time I currently spend getting a drink while my PC starts up. Imo unless you dont care about the money its not worth getting an SSD. Dont get me wrong I would love to have one but it will only add more and more to the price of the machine.

 

SSD's do last 228 years so you would say you will never have to buy a new one but in 2 years time the speed of current SSD's will be cosidered slow.

Guest RET.Maj.Skyler=US=
Posted
For a gamer or someone who uses big programs. Yes it is definiy worth it. Ya windows loads faster when you start your computer which is cool, but the real advantages is everything runs, installs, loads quicker then you can belive. When I rebuilt my computer I bought a 2TB hard drive, sata 6.0 with 64mb buffer. It is really quick made all my games run/install/load faster then I have ever seen. I am always 1-3 of the first people to load a game and start playing after the round finishs. Now with a SSD (which I will be getting one soon) I would always load in before anyone. No wait time, no lag or freezes. Never a slow moment with it. Even while installing a big application and playing a game at be same time
Guest RET.CW4.ThievingSix=US=
Posted

SSD's do last 228 years so you would say you will never have to buy a new one but in 2 years time the speed of current SSD's will be cosidered slow.

 

Good-high end SSDs will last far longer than the cheap SSDs due to the nature of the wear leveling design, write amplification and finally the quality and type of the NANDs (SLC/MLC). First of all, all NANDs have finite WRITE lifespan, not READ. They can have unlimited read lifespan, it doesn't take much to read. Write lifespan is dependent on which NAND type it is and the quality of it.

 

SLC: Single Layer Cell, MLC: Multiple Layer Cell, it means one bit is written per cell for SLC where as MLC can have multiple bits per cell.

 

SLC can have 100,000 P/E cycles (Program and Erase), meaning it can be written 100,000 times before it can no longer be written, what this mean that while you can still read those data, you can no longer write to it. Unlike HDD, once a sector is dead, you can't read data off it. MLC are now around 5,000-10,000 P/E cycles depending on the quality of it.

 

The smaller the the capacity of the SSD, the faster that P/E cycle get used up per cell, which means 30GB SSD will die "gracefully" much faster than a 120GB SSD. However understand that, in order for the SSD to die completely, each cell has to be dead or the controller itself crapped out.

What this mean is that 30GB will decline in capacity for writing capacity. Suddenly 30GB becomes 29.8GB only, slowly dying over time yet all data is still there. Good SSDs usually have extra reserve of NANDs for this purpose as well, 60GB probably have 4GB of NANDs in reserve for multiple purposes.

 

So a good 30GB MLC SSD can last 3-5 full years of hardcore usage (24/7 intensive workload). The same SSD but with SLC NANDs will last far far more than that, maybe 10-20 years. 60GB MLC would probably last far more than 10 years. 120GB should last 20+, 1TB would last a century.

 

In saying this though a SSD will produce an average speed increase of 6-15% in all your applications. But of course at a price, your not going to see any increase in FPS in-game so unless you do lots of file transferring and video editing or rendering you won't see a huge increase. Your game load time will improve however.

 

Your current boot time longevity seems more of an issue with your current processor than anything else, i doubt an SSD will show any huge increase on its own over another hard drive because its likely that your CPU is the bottleneck.

Guest Doubleome
Posted

Think it comes down to these. Both sub 100 euro 60GB SSD Sata/600.

 

I hope this link works, in this website I compared both the Ocz Agility 3 vs the Corsair Force 3 series, had to choose 120gb cuz they didnt have the 60GB version for both shouldnt matter I guess. They seem very close but my eyes cant tell which would be a better option.

 

Agility 3 vs Force 3

Guest CC.Decayed=US=
Posted

Just stay away from corsair SSD. Terrible support.

 

I have 2 60gb vertex2 in raid0 for my OS and games. I can load windows in under 15 seconds, etc. But who cares right? The main thing is the gaming. It's way faster to load.

 

What the rest of your system btw? Too many people will go all out on every other piece and forget about HDD. The sata 3 ssd are pretty reasonably priced nowadays, and no reason to choke your system with a mechanical bottleneck. If you're spending $1800 on a system, it's a damn shame if you are going with mech drives.

 

Also, a lot of people talk about sequential reads and writes, but this isn't really the beauty of a SSD. It's the random access times of 0.001 seconds which gives you an advantage. There is no way any mechanical drive will ever match up to the speed of an SSD.

 

I recommend you put your OS and all games and programs on the SSD. Put all other files on your storage drive.

Guest Doubleome
Posted

Basicly same build as Crazy has.

 

i5 2500k (might wait for i7 3820)

Twin Froz II gtx 580 possible SLI in the future

Corsair vengeance 8gb 1600 ddr3 dual channel

Prolly corsair HX850

MSI Z68 GD65

1TB samsung HD103SJ who doesnt these days.

Possible 60 GB SSD for windows and BF3.

 

SSD budget is hopefully under 100 euro.

 

Btw was looking into Intel Smart Responce Technology, noticed it does reduce the live time of your SSD which is already about 100-200 years. They did make special SRT SSD's but they cost WAY too much.

Guest CC.Decayed=US=
Posted

Bottom line with longevity is you will be upgrading before it dies. I doubt anyone keeps hardware longer than 5-10 years if they want to stay at a competitive scale, I'd say maybe 3-4 years on avg. My PATA drive still works on my old machine I built but it's like 4GB lol and slow. Eventually lightpeak will probably create a whole new generation. So I wouldn't worry too much about all the big end numbers. People make a big deal about it, but as long as you back up, if you have any major issues, you can always RMA.

With that build I would definitely say go SSD. 60gb is tough though, I have 120gb and I have to uninstall games I don't play as much. Currently I have BC2, BF3 Alpha, and a couple of other games like L4D2 and TF2. And I'm at like 90 gb with other progs and windows pro.

But you do want to go SSD so you are maximizing your computer. It's not a huge chokepoint, but if everything else is top of the line, why not HDD too?

If not I'd at least recommending getting a smaller drive like a 500 samsung. Definitely try to have a dedicated os/games/progs drive separate from your 1TB storage. It will help for thing like Fraps esp.

Sad thing is, I have no problems with my SSDs but I have to RMA one of my Sammy F3's. I have 2 1tb in raid0 as well, and one is givin me bad sectors. Just being lazy about it atm lol.

Guest Doubleome
Posted
Was prolly going for 1tb or 500gb HDD for games + progs, have 60 GB ssd for windows + BF3 maybe some small programs like skype xfire teamspeak etc. Then maybe later a 1tb drive for fraps.
Guest CC.Decayed=US=
Posted
Well you get a little more benefit if progs and games are on the same drive as windows, if you have 7 at least. it's more optimized but it's not a huge deal.
Guest Doubleome
Posted

Ye my current vista does that aswell. So that means that system with the ram trick doesnt work if the programs are on a differnt drive ?

 

But I dont really get the thing where people say HDD is a bottleneck. Sure load times are longer but it doesnt hurt the preformance once stuff has already started and loaded, just gotta wait abit longer.

 

But anyway if I were to use a 60GB sdd for windows BF3 and startup programs like xfire etc, that means all the stuff on my HDD wont benefit from the fact Win 7 uses like 1 GB of ram to make stuff faster ?

Guest SpRayAndPrAy
Posted

Corsair vengeance 8gb 1600 ddr3 dual channel

 

Do you really need 8gigs of RAM? You could probably get 6 gigs of 1800+ RAM with better timings for the same price of an 8gig set.

Guest MAJ.Kaossilator=US=
Posted
But I dont really get the thing where people say HDD is a bottleneck. Sure load times are longer but it doesnt hurt the preformance once stuff has already started and loaded, just gotta wait abit longer.

 

Exactly as you say, once something has loaded, it's typically fine regardless of the hard drive unless it's making loads of read/write calls to the drive in question. Usually programs like to use system memory for that kind of thing, which will take the hard drive largely out of the loop.

 

Do you really need 8gigs of RAM? You could probably get 6 gigs of 1800+ RAM with better timings for the same price of an 8gig set.

 

I currently have 4GB Mushkin Black DDR3 1600 and it works just fine. There is no appreciable benefit to 1800+ over 1600, and certainly not for the expense. Not until you get to the ridiculously high clock speeds, but then (unless I'm missing a deal somewhere) you're talking about spending a lot more money for a little gain.

 

That's part of the reason why people still call the hard drive the bottleneck - you will get a lot more benefit from a faster drive for load times and read/write cycles than you will from system memory, even though most processes use the memory more intensely.

Guest Doubleome
Posted

I read that for the sandy bridge from 1333 to 1600 is the only improvement worth paying money for, after that its pure enthousiast overlocking etc.

 

And 6gb would mean tripple channel ? + 8gb is just a slight money increase and more then 4gb can never hurt I guess.

Guest CC.Decayed=US=
Posted

Yeah you can't use 6gig unless you have the intel triple channel chips. Marketing ploy imo.

8gb is so cheap right now, it's worth getting. In case you do want to upgrade, better to get the 4gig pair now, then have to upgrade 2x2g to 2x4g. But 4g is plenty. The thing about ram is it's a variable cost. You can easily see swings of up and down where it gets real expensive (in 2009 it was like 100 for 4g) or very cheap right now you can get 8g for as low as 70 with rebates.

 

Like Kaoss said, once you're in the game, there isnt a whole lot of difference. However, you have a badass system, yet you are not the first to load, it's obviously a bottleneck. Is it a huge hindrance, no. I just think it's funny that people will spend upwards of 1500-2k on a computer to get all the bells and whistles but are ok with loading slower. I mean if you want to really get down to nuts and bolts, most people don't need to SLI/xfire either. Or oc their cpu's. Games will still play fine and as long as you are averaging maybe 75-80 (to compensate for the occassional downspike) you are golden. But they still do it to just so they can go from 110 fps to 115 fps, but when it comes to drives they balk.

It's like getting a 2600k vs a 2500k. Do you need it? Is it really gonna improve your gaming experience? No.

 

Also, it depends on what you aim to do.

For instance, the best way to fraps and minimize fps drop, lag and stutter is to have windows/fraps/game running on ssd doing all the reads and then the write to a separate drive.

Guest CC.Decayed=US=
Posted

I may have agreed with this 2-3 years ago lol. Raptors are loud and expensive. I'd rather go Sammy F3 than a raptor nowadays.

 

And SSD's blow raptors out of the water.

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