How much of a difference does an SSD make?

OK, I have an SSD (runcore pro IV) in my netbook and it made a huge difference. My question is how much of a difference will it make in my m11x (i7, 8GB RAM and 500GB 7,200 RPM HD)? I already spent a nice chunk on the machine and I'm wondering if the performance boost will be worth dropping at least another $250 for a decent (OCZ vertex or another Runcore) SSD drive.

 

There have been a ton of other threads on this already, so you should look through those. I don't have one, but the consensus seems to be that if you can afford it, go for it.

 

Will it give you more FPS in games? Not really. No.

Will it make your computer much faster in almost all other tasks? Yes. Will you notice it? Not until you look back and realize how slow a HDD is.

 

IMO is not worth the price, for a 256GB or more, to save some seconds, most because you can get a 500GB HDD 7200rpm for the price of a 40GB SSD

Maybe in a Desktop, having a 40-60GB SSD for the boot and some programs/games, and a 500GB HDD for the rest of the stuff...

Mostly the price,n if you can aford them, go ahead...

 

^^^ yeah, if you can swollow the price, it's one of the most subtle upgrades you can make (you never notice applications launching faster... until you use a HDD again).

For me, it was worth every penny to upgrade.

 

It's worth the price if you're often opening/closing programs or if you turn your laptop on/off a lot. Otherwise, you won't really benefit.

My laptop sits with Chrome and Word open 95% of the time and is almost never off, so an SSD would have pretty much no benefit for it. My PC is turned off/on every day and is launching new stuff all day, so an SSD was a great addition.

 

I've posted about this topic a few times before.

The benefit of an SSD is not load times or boot times - any decent drive can boot an OS or load a single program relatively quickly. Where an SSD shines is its ability to multitask, measured by IOPS (I/O's per second). It is basically a measure of how many read/write operations a drive can handle simultaneously, and is a measurement of how well the drive multitasks.

An SSD will absolutely smoke a mechanical hard drive in this area. A 7200rpm mechanical hard drive has an IOPS rating in the neighborhood of ~500-600 IOPS. A fast SSD will have an IOPS of ~35,000 - 40,000.

Here is a video I made showing an extreme example of this: Windows 7 boot + loading 27 apps at boot time on an SSD, in about 1 minute.
YouTube - Why I love my SSD - Windows 7 boot + loading 27 applications in about 1 minute.

A real-world example of when you'd actually want this:
You are installing a game/app in the background, and launch a web browser. Even simple tasks like web browsing will be noticeably slower and feel laggier, because the install process already maxes out the IOPS of a mechanical drive.

 

I have a 256GB SSD and I can tell you it was worth every penny. This thing flies. Night and day IMHO.

 

You have 8GB RAM but didn't get an SSD? lol...

 

Just got my Pheonix pro 2 and I must say its a crazy improvment from (hitachi)

 

I travel around a lot during the day and am turning my machine on and off a lot, and I'm thinking about an SSD. I love the performance boost but the 256GB drives are a bit pricey.

 

I have narrowed it down to the Seagate Hybrid 500GB (about $110) drive and the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB (about $220).

 

That was the same situation I was in before I bought my Vertex 2 120GB.

It's upto you. Do you want more space, or are you willing to punch in a higher cost? That's really the only question. The SSD will be consistently faster, while the Momentus XT will be nearing parity in some areas, and just a tweaked 7200rpm laptop drives in others - though it's much cheaper.

 

It will improve some games, oblivion, fallout etc where they fetch date from the HDD often will have less pauses but it wont actually improve FPS.

I have a 60GB Vertex in my desktop. I paid £120 a while back, put it this way, i'll never have a PC again with a standarrd HDD as my OS drive. Everythings is so much faster and snappy.

 

Momentus XT hybrid drives make the boot up time and your common tasks very quick - almost SSD quick. Everything else is just the same as a regular HD will lots of storage space (assuming you get the 500GB one). This was the best combo of price per GB and speed for me.

 

+1 on this. I will never build a PC again without a SSD for the OS. Night and day difference.

 

After a shedload of research I went with the Vertex 2 120GB. My M11X will have an i7 and 8gigs of ram. Seems stupid to not "go for it" on the hard drive too. Thanks for all the replies.

 

I have converted 3 machines so far to SSD.
Each of these were machines I had been ising already so I could make a fair observation of the differences after the SSD.

The MX11 was fairly dramatic. Windows loads and runs so much better it is hard to believe it is the same machine.

I did a Toughbook CF-30 and a Fujitsu 4220 also.
It is amazing how much more tolerable Windows can be when it boots and runs fast.

No question I will look to go SSD in the future.

I got a 17" Macbook on Tuesday and I am already agonizing a little about just how big to go.

Never look back!

Ed

 

I feel the need to correct a lot of misinformation here since SSDs aren't cheap...

Actually, one of the most noticeable benefits of an SSD usually is the OS boot time. Not sure if this is a typo since you say that later in your post though...

IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) are not a measure of how well a drive can multitask. There are two different ways to measure IOPS: sequential and random. If you're talking about 4kb random IOPS then yes, that could be a reliable way to measure the drive's ability to "multitask", but plenty of the different IOPS measurements have nothing at all to do with multitasking.

Not necessarily. First, it depends which drives you're referring to and which IOPS measurements. If you're talking about large sequential write times, then you can still find some HDDs that beat SSDs. Second, some SSDs have terrible controllers and extremely inconsistent (or consistently poor) performance. Third, if your SSD doesn't support the TRIM command, you could see the performance of your SSD take a dive after you've been using it for a while.


Basically, if you're considering buying an SSD you need to 1.) Figure out what you'll be using it for, 2.) Figure out which metrics best indicate performance for those uses, and 3.) Look up some benchmarks.

If you can't find benchmarks for the specific drive you're considering, drives with the same controller usually perform similarly (but not always).

 

Maybe on old SSDs. I mean which SSD sold now doesn't support trim? New SSDs, like with Sandforce controller are far far ahead of any HD. The difference in regular usage is clear as night and day.

They won't improve FPS in games, but they will pretty much everything else.