thinking of getting an SSD with my new rig

[Fuzzykins]

Considering that's the biggest performance boost you get by using one, I'd say it's not. Sure you can get a bigger one and put games and such on it, but the OS or other programs with heavy I/O will utilize it far more.

Unless you shut down and reboot frequently, which you won't in an 8 hour gaming session, it's not worth it. It doesn't really benefit you outside of starting/restarting your computer.

[ispano]

It helps with far more than just booting.... hence why I stated heavy I/O.

[Evildeffy]

I usually don't put my Games on SSDs in the first place, I feel it's almost a waste for the performance it brings over a simple RAID0, which is what I do.

I have RAID0 SSDs (2 * 120GB), SCREW MAGNETIC BOOT STORAGE!
The difference btw for games on SSDs... is gigantic, to say it's a waste is to not have tried it for more games then just WoW.

[Fuzzykins]

It helps with far more than just booting.... hence why I stated heavy I/O.

Examples of said tasks?

[ispano]

I have RAID0 SSDs (2 * 120GB), SCREW MAGNETIC BOOT STORAGE!
The difference btw for games on SSDs... is gigantic, to say it's a waste is to not have tried it for more games then just WoW.

Enjoy the loss of TRIM, not that's necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer TRIM over using RAID for SSDs. I've tried other games besides WoW on an SSD. Most games when loading are loading large files where the high I/O capability of an SSD isn't as important. It's a bit faster than traditional drives, but hardly an issue.

---------- Post added 2011-08-12 at 12:30 AM ----------

Examples of said tasks?

Like all the random I/O Windows does even when idle. Heavy Multitasking of different types of programs. A drive isn't defined by it's raw transfer speed alone.

[Evildeffy]

Enjoy the loss of TRIM, not that's necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer TRIM over using RAID for SSDs. I've tried other games besides WoW on an SSD. Most games when loading are loading large files where the high I/O capability of an SSD isn't as important. It's a bit faster than traditional drives, but hardly an issue.

Like all the random I/O Windows does even when idle. Heavy Multitasking of different types of programs. A drive isn't defined by it's raw transfer speed alone.

The loss of TRIM is unimportant with Garbage Collection firmware, the rig is on when i go to work or w/e, it will do what TRIM does without problem and to the same effect, TRIM is just cutting the edges, nothing else.

The difference between magnetic storage and SSD for games though even in RAID0 is noticable, but not by a bit, but pretty significantly, neither is hardly an "issue" but it's nevertheless very much faster no matter what way you spin the bottle.

[ispano]

That's if the drives you have actually use GC. I'll assume yours do, but many don't, hell not many people even know about it. Theoretical peak throughput and actual throughput in real world usage is different. Yes the SSDs will be faster, I never stated otherwise. But the difference in most applications, isn't as broad.

[Evildeffy]

That's if the drives you have actually use GC. I'll assume yours do, but many don't, hell not many people even know about it. Theoretical peak throughput and actual throughput in real world usage is different. Yes the SSDs will be faster, I never stated otherwise. But the difference in most applications, isn't as broad.

The only drives without GC capabilities (and mine do have it ofcourse, Firmware level) are the Generation 1 SSDs which have JMicron/Samsung controllers, every other SSDs have that as standard now.

Most applications, such as mini programmes, i agree, somewhat higher applications (Photoshop etc) they are.

[Fuzzykins]

Enjoy the loss of TRIM, not that's necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer TRIM over using RAID for SSDs. I've tried other games besides WoW on an SSD. Most games when loading are loading large files where the high I/O capability of an SSD isn't as important. It's a bit faster than traditional drives, but hardly an issue.

---------- Post added 2011-08-12 at 12:30 AM ----------



Like all the random I/O Windows does even when idle. Heavy Multitasking of different types of programs. A drive isn't defined by it's raw transfer speed alone.

"Random I/O Windows does even when idle. Also, you won't NOTICE this because it doesn't affect what you're doing, and it was designed to be that way. Heavy multitasking of different types of programs would actually be better handled by a CPU upgrade; or the programs would have to be bottlenecked by HDD transfer rate.

[ispano]

The only drives without GC capabilities (and mine do have it ofcourse, Firmware level) are the Generation 1 SSDs which have JMicron/Samsung controllers, every other SSDs have that as standard now.

Most applications, such as mini programmes, i agree, somewhat higher applications (Photoshop etc) they are.

Not necessarily. For a while, OCZ were the only ones that really had GC firmware, even when other companies were basically selling the same drive, but with their own firmware. And this was with Gen2 drives.

Also forgot to add, that RAID0 on SSDs, is many times slower in game loads over a single. Also that TRIM isn't something you really compare to GC, but as something that makes GC more efficient.

---------- Post added 2011-08-12 at 12:50 AM ----------

"Random I/O Windows does even when idle. Also, you won't NOTICE this because it doesn't affect what you're doing, and it was designed to be that way. Heavy multitasking of different types of programs would actually be better handled by a CPU upgrade; or the programs would have to be bottlenecked by HDD transfer rate.

Are you telling me I need a new CPU Fuzzy?

[Evildeffy]

Not necessarily. For a while, OCZ were the only ones that really had GC firmware, even when other companies were basically selling the same drive, but with their own firmware. And this was with Gen2 drives.

Also forgot to add, that RAID0 on SSDs, is many times slower in game loads over a single. Also that TRIM isn't something you really compare to GC, but as something that makes GC more efficient.

Are you telling me I need a new CPU Fuzzy?

That was because of the exclusivity deal from OCZ, they had first dibs on firmware, all Indilinx drives got it later though, but not much later.

And games on SSD RAID0 actually do load faster, i've tried, several brands, several setups then a single SSD, the Single SSD will boot faster then RAID0 though, that is true, after that it demolishes single drives.

And yes you need a new CPU, now gimme that board and it's CPUs and inherent memory, you're wasting it anyway since you can't use 24 threads even in most video editing software :P

[ispano]

With a good RAID controller it's faster for sure, but in my experience, onboard RAID controllers are not "good" RAID controllers. I've also seen the phenomenon many times around the web, aside from my personal experience.

---------- Post added 2011-08-12 at 12:58 AM ----------

Tell you what, you get me a good job so I can BUY a new system, hell a normal job that pays enough for me to make my rent and bills with at least a little left over, and i'll think about it. Also, you're correct. Most single programs cannot use 24 threads, but multiple programs at once that can use multiple threads, can.

[Evildeffy]

With a good RAID controller it's faster for sure, but in my experience, onboard RAID controllers are not "good" RAID controllers. I've also seen the phenomenon many times around the web, aside from my personal experience.

---------- Post added 2011-08-12 at 12:58 AM ----------

Tell you what, you get me a good job so I can BUY a new system, hell a normal job that pays enough for me to make my rent and bills with at least a little left over, and i'll think about it. Also, you're correct. Most single programs cannot use 24 threads, but multiple programs at once that can use multiple threads, can.

How do you rate the ICH10R controller then? As far as Onboard go, they seem to score stupidly high other then expensive separate controllers and even alot of those fail to keep up with the ICH10R.

Personal experiences of mine, especially compared to any other chipset or controllers, the ICH10R is well capable and frighteningly fast.
They fail to scale beyond 3 drives properly though, but since i have a RAID0 of 2 drives, that's a non-issue.

And for multiple programmes, yes they can if you set the affinities manually.

Edit: Off to bed, 3 AM, need sleep.

[ispano]

How do I rate it? I use SoftRAID instead of it. Prior to that I had a dedicated LSi card. I only have the two VRs in RAID0 now so it's not needed.

I'm not saying the drives don't scale, it's just that depending on the load they don't scale in those situations. From what i've read of others not getting more than 1 drive's performance in game load times, in fact WORSE performance, this matches up with my personal experience. Also from what i've seen is it's not necessarily the game or SSDs fault, but an issue with the RAID controller and/or striping.

And no, you don't have to set affinities manually. If Program A is using Cores 1-6 to max, Program B won't be trying to use those cores. As for HT, I tend to turn it off since there's very little that actually is inefficient enough with the physical cores to make HT worthwhile.

[Evildeffy]

How do I rate it? I use SoftRAID instead of it. Prior to that I had a dedicated LSi card. I only have the two VRs in RAID0 now so it's not needed.

I'm not saying the drives don't scale, it's just that depending on the load they don't scale in those situations. From what i've read of others not getting more than 1 drive's performance in game load times, in fact WORSE performance, this matches up with my personal experience. Also from what i've seen is it's not necessarily the game or SSDs fault, but an issue with the RAID controller and/or striping.

And no, you don't have to set affinities manually. If Program A is using Cores 1-6 to max, Program B won't be trying to use those cores. As for HT, I tend to turn it off since there's very little that actually is inefficient enough with the physical cores to make HT worthwhile.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...780a,2374.html

This is 1 article i could find on short notice, have a look at performance and responsiveness, the ICH10R is very well matured and responds fast.
The fact my CPU is OCed to 4,2GHz may play a part in it though.

However I've got 2 Vertex 1 Turbos (Thank you OCZ for the free Turbo upgrade) in RAID0, which i've directly compared quite recently against a Vertex 2 34nm NAND (not the cheap shite 25nm) and other comparisons and such but this being the most recent, and he booted about 4 - 5 seconds faster then me, (he also has nearly the same system i do, just upgraded to the newest versions) but when it came to loading games, Half-Life 2 f.ex, WoW or StarCraft (just the games i tried when i set his rig up again due to him not watching what he downloaded and infected himself with a rootkit and MBR destroyer) it was noticable that i loaded faster then he did by quite a bit.

His CPU was OCed to 4,4 GHz, Nehalem i7 930 (build date prior to SB, still well enough of a contender), a full 200 MHz faster then mine.

Perhaps you should give it a try again, who knows, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Anyway, to bed now for real!

[ispano]

The RAID card I used was superior to that one, forgot the exact model but it was LSi for sure. As for benchmarks, this is a bit old but: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...omparison.html

Also it seems to be the 4k reads/writes that cause issues. In some games where it doesn't do heavy sequential transfers, like WoW seems to do, but some sequential but also many smaller ones, the two SSDs in RAID0 are the same if not a bit slower than a single drive.

[haxartus]

The RAID card I used was superior to that one, forgot the exact model but it was LSi for sure. As for benchmarks, this is a bit old but: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...omparison.html

I've always seen SSD raids as pointless for regular use. I'm not buying a SSD for the transfer speed, I'm buying it for the access times.
If I want fast transfer speeds, I'd get several WD Blacks, put them in raid and get whatever speed I need and enormous amount of storage. But the access times would be light years behind a single SSD.

[MrHappy]

You're misinterpreting his intention.

He knows it is, but he's saying it's a waste JUST for the OS, as the price/performance ratio sucks.

And i agree with him, best off saving a month longer for a 120GB SSD and have your OS and some games and applications on it.
Far superior then cringing to small spaces and lateron wishing you went for bigger, because once you get used to games on SSDs you don't ever want to get back to magnetic storage.

well SSD's are not necessarily faster than SATA drives if you are looking for pure performance you get a comp that has SCSI HDD's but thats pricey. the point to SSD's they dont break down (no moving parts for those who dont know that SSD's are) and they use less power. but the reg SATA HDD's still read/write faster than SSD's currently do. I would wait to get an SDD untill u have a motherboard with USB 3.0 otherwise save your money

[Fuzzykins]

well SSD's are not necessarily faster than SATA drives if you are looking for pure performance you get a comp that has SCSI HDD's but thats pricey. the point to SSD's they dont break down (no moving parts for those who dont know that SSD's are) and they use less power. but the reg SATA HDD's still read/write faster than SSD's currently do. I would wait to get an SDD untill u have a motherboard with USB 3.0 otherwise save your money

...Wait, what?

[ispano]

...Wait, what?

My thoughts exactly.