New cheap SSD from Intel

[coolts]

Guys

 

I have been chin-stroking about whether to take the plunge into the brave new world of SSD’s for a while now but have been put off by the cost. This however, is £93.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3773/

 

Its only 40gb and the write speeds are less than my HD, but the read speeds………

 

As an OS disk + apps there would be room on there for, say, a couple, “games of the month”, which would then be relegated to the HD to make space.

 

As an OS drive which is all about read vs. write it makes total sense. FC and BS would also benefit as once installed, there are almost no writes really, (presumably).

 

Has anyone gone SSD yet and what are your thoughts & experiences?

 

Its payday……….and my wallet is trembling……only £93……..

[Wags]

Just as an FYI based on my experience with Intel X-25M:

 

Using Win7 64 I was never able to get the OS to recognize it as a valid drive to install the OS to. However, I was able to use it as a secondary drive.

[Konovalov]

Looking at your sig it looks like your system is a very new build. And considering it's high specification, the only thing you are missing is an SSD drive. If I was you I would definitely jump at it with the Intel 40GB drive as a OS drive.

 

With SSD's I keep hearing how this can make such a big difference to ones computing experience. If you are not sure then perhaps hold off for another 6-9 months as there are so many new developments in the SSD market all the time. Also hopefully SSD prices which have spiked upwards in recent times will have come down towards the end of 2010.

[joey45]

I'm gonna wait longer for SSD's but prices wont come down that much for a long time yet... Not when HDDs have more space at a less price.

[coolts]

Thanks Guys

<Wags> I have had similar issues with RAID pre-install drivers (they never work and who has floppies now anyways?). With a SSD, you will probably need to update the SSD firmware (needed for TRIM support as well).

<konovalov> Its a new build all right, but right now, I am slightly put off by the low write speeds of this SSD. Phenomenal read though. An OS drive, though is all about read speeds once installed so it may be ideal. 40gb though.....Seems....small.

I am not paying >£100 for an SSD though. Paid £240 for a 20mb Amiga drive back in the day, but not now. To be honest, all the talk of "20 second boot times" seems irrelevant when my BIOS farts about for more than that finding the RAID array.

FC loads quick on my RAID1 setup. ARMAII would run really well on an SSD due to its massive I/O bottleneck, SH5? well, that a dog of an engine anyhow ATM. A few patches might whip it onto shape as they have for ARMAII

<Joey> I have been playing the waiting game but what with Apple, Google and MS buying NAND flash memory like it was going out of fashion, prices will remain high for the foreseeable future IMO. in fact, if the iPad takes off, they will go up.

I was caught out with DDR3 on my new build. In March my RAM was £100. I paid £160 last month. sometimes waiting too long is the wrong thing to do, especially in a recession.

[Conuk]

can certainly recommend SSD ... like night and day... once you use one - you wont want to go back BUT....

 

my 80gb quickly gets used up.... ( I have 2 x 150gb raptors for less intensive gaming / progs & 1 tb for stuff)

 

so I would wait - save up and at least get 80gb...

 

just my thoughts guys.

[M31]

I bought a 60GB OCZ Vertex SSD about six months ago to test the waters and love it, about two months ago I flashed it to firmware revision 1.5 to take advantage of TRIM in Windows 7, as an OS drive its absolutely brilliant, currently using a 300GB Velociraptor for FSX and 2 x 150GB Raptors for games.

 

Its amazing how quick this comp boots up and is ready to use with an OS SSD.

 

I was about £190 for that drive back then so that's a very good price for the Intel one.

 

I'm looking fwd to adding more SSD's in the future as capacity's go up and prices go down.

 

Apart from low load times due the the low seek times, SSD's have several advantages, low power consumption due to no moving parts, silent for the same reasons, shock proof, all these make them ideal Laptop drives as well, also once the drive does eventually die (mine is guaranteed for three years) they remain read only so that you can still get your data back.

 

Mechanical drives are going to become a thing of the past sooner than we all think.

[manne]

Just as an FYI based on my experience with Intel X-25M:

 

Using Win7 64 I was never able to get the OS to recognize it as a valid drive to install the OS to. However, I was able to use it as a secondary drive.

No problems here. I have the X-25M 80GB with Windows 7 64-bit, installed fine without any custom drivers or anything.

 

Phenomenal read though. An OS drive, though is all about read speeds once installed so it may be ideal. 40gb though.....Seems....small.

40GB is pretty small. It's doable, but small. I have the 80GB, with Windows 7, ArmA 2 (with mods), DCS: Black Shark and my software. I think I have about 15GB free. Mods from arma really take lots of space.

 

FC loads quick on my RAID1 setup. ARMAII would run really well on an SSD due to its massive I/O bottleneck, SH5? well, that a dog of an engine anyhow ATM. A few patches might whip it onto shape as they have for ARMAII

I didn't have a real performance increase with ArmA 2 and the SSD unfortunately (and that was the main reason I bought it :(). It loads much quicker, but once in-game I don't see any difference, some things run actually worse like more pop-up, texture popup (sometimes 10+ seconds before some tall buildings are textured!!). Never had those problems with normal HD, very weird.

 

Now that I'm used to it I wouldn't go back though. Boot time is real fast, launching Photoshop CS3 takes <3 seconds. It's also very nice to simply start using your PC IMMEDIATELY after it's booted. <1 second login screen, then to desktop, launch Firefox and browse. It all happens in a few seconds. My PC doesn't seem to get any slower either, even when installing more and more software. It's still very quick.