Alienware with SSD

I have read many many many threads and posts about SSD. I know it has faster read and write times than standard xxxrpm drives.

Does anyone know or have a real benchmark with in game FPS to show difference (before and after) in games to see if it does, even a little, provide a small boost in FPS? Even if it increases the Average, in my mind that is an increase in FPS. I looked in the hardware forum and there is almost a thousand pages on this and I have yet to see a real benchmark. One company OCZ (i think) produced a crysis benchmark but I am interested in what real people, with alienware laptops see on their prospective notebooks.

Thanks,

StevenX

 

Havn't seen any benchmarks on this, but I don't think it's going to be many if any, since most of the information gets loaded into the memory. The differance may be negligible. Still though, might be interesting to see. Problem with benchmarks is there is generally a margin of error.

 

DR650SE - are you saying that the more ram you have the less impact a SSD drive makes?

Thanks, StevenX

 

as long as all the data(for a game) is in main memory you will not see much of a difference with a SSD drive (if at all). The only times a game should access the hdd is while loading. You may however see better results with streaming (e.g. textures popping up earlier).

The biggest difference you will see are load times. Applications will load a lot faster (also games) and windows will also boot quicker.

Thats what you can really expect.

 

I am sooooo.. freakin hung up on this... My m11x comes tomorrow (hopefully in PERFECT CONDITION!)... I want to swing out and pick up a ssd to be ready but i dont know if i will see a real difference in games between a 5400 sata drive and a corsair ssd.

 

of course you will see a difference, but the difference might not justify the price. I bought an SSD (ocz vertex) and while it is fast, I am 99% sure it wasn't worth the $380 I spent on it.

 

you will see little to no difference in fps in games, the ssd only helps with only loading times, the ssd is not doing anything when gaming. your gpu is the one that processes all the game information not ssd. but ssd will increase overall system performance.

 

More RAM might help,but nothing really requires more than 4 GB. Any more is only justified by sime heavy multitasking or using things such as large CAD files. For better FPS, your better off OCing your GPU. SSD would only benefit the load times. as far as FPS,pretty much no diff. I've played Need for Speed Shift on both HDD and SSD, and there was no differance.

 

From what I've read you'll see some FPS differences in games that rely heavily on pulling data off the hard drive, such as MMOs. Not sure how much of a difference, as I don't play those games.

 

Mine came with a 320GB 7200rpm drive but I took that out same day I got it and fitted my 80GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD.

You won't see any increase in FPS from my testing, but load times & overall system responsiveness is greatly improved.

My testing was playing the like of Mass Effect 1 & 2, The Witcher, Portal

 

FPS will not increase in most, if not all games because everything is loaded into memory and thus the fps is limited by other factors (GPU, CPU). I would HIGHLY recommend the ssd upgrade as it is a worlds difference compared to my 320gb 5400 rpm drive in there earlier in basically everything but games.

 

SSD is a slam dunk for things like WoW where regardless of how much RAM you have the game still constantly swaps data to/from the drive.

Outside of games, it will definitely make everyday performance snappier too as load times and stuff when you open windows and apps will be much faster.

 

I picked up the crucial 60gb drive....i dont have tons of funds left over. i already created a USB win7 install drive per instructions in another thread. Does win7 come with SSD support or do i have to download drivers? best wishes Stevenx

I forgot to say thanks to everyone for your opinions and assistance! Thats why these forums are the very best!

 

your ssd should be automatically recognized by your laptop.

 

from the 2games i played, I dont really see much of an improvement in load time with the ssd. For some reason the cpu affects loading on some games(like mass effect 2) as well. Mass Effect 2 on intel x25-m loads just as fast as a 5400rpm. street fighter iv sometimes load slower than the 5400rpm harddrive. The only benefit the SSD has on me right now is the fast boot time of windows which imo is not worth the price. This is just from observation test from the same machine with different harddrives.

 

do you need to defrag your SSD ? or SSD requires no defragment ?

 

SSD does not need to be defrag-ed, as far as I know.

 

^^^ true do not defrag your ssd, can do harm to your ssd if you do. ssd has trim, and trim is automatic.

 

if you dont notice the difference between a 5400rpm and an SSD you're doing somethign wrong :x

 

^^^^ Agreed - my SSD versus the previous 7200 rpm drive I had in the m11x is night and day difference.

 

For the price we got to pay, it's better be significant

 

I read somewhere here that defraging certain SSD's will brick them =/ Plus, TRIM is an auto-defrag anyway, doesnt need to be done =]

 

Are they using the Samsung's SSD in the Alienwares?

 

I wanted to ask... the SSD I purchased has a mini usb connection as well as the SATA II. Can I load the win7 os as a primary partition while it is plugged in externally to the usb? (Just to save me some time so I can multitask)

Thanks,

StevenX

 

Having it plugged in usb will more than likely slows it down, plus you cant boot from usb methinks

 

you can definitely boot from USB. That I have already done. When you boot hit f12 and choose the usb drive (assuming it is plugged in). The drive has to be set to a primary partition and I have already done this plus added the windows 7 install.

 

no difference between5400rpm and ssd for street fighter 4 and mass effect 2.

 

DiaBiosx, any difference in load times at all? Any difference in smoothness between maps or rooms or transitions in fights or anything?
Thanks,

StevenX

 

Anyone bought the SSD from Alienware. Just wanted to know who's SSD they use.

 

Unfortunately I dont have an SSD yet. BUT from what I've seen of my friends computers (Not AW, they're custom rigs) there IS a difference thats notable in MMORPG. I.e. WOW, X3.

 

Samsung SSDs. While not the best, they are not terrible.

As far as SSD's go, your going to want to do as little writing to them as possible. Once all the blocks have been filled, thats when your performance degrades. SSDs have limits. One of them being that they can write to 4K pages, but can only delete in 64k blocks. If your unfamiliar with how they work, google brings up several good articles, and wikipedia is very informative as well.

You are also going to want to turn off defrags. There is no need to defrag an SSD, in fact it will only harm your drive to start moving information causing all blocks to be written to. Turn off and system restores, as it just fills space on the SSD. Better to go with a better back up option. You will also want to trun indexing off, and refrain from using hibernate as they all write unneccessary information the the SSD.

 

As far as I've read, once Trim is enabled in Windows 7 it turns off the parts of the OS that are not need for an SSD. The Intel utility also keeps the SSD in optimal condition. The life expentancy is meant to be comparable to a standard 2.5" drive (I'm using an Intel X25-M SSD)

 

I have see reports of SSD prices falling by year end

 

Anyone know what kind of ssd drives(model) come with a new m17 r2system,also the 6gig mem option,is that 2x3g modules?


Thanks

 

I only had time to play with the 5400rpm for the first mission on mass effect 2(when shepard just woke up in cerberus) and it was pretty much identical to the SSD when transitioning to other rooms, again ME2 takes cpu into account for loading I think. There was a bit of stuttering when going to different rooms with my SSD for the 1st mission, but I didnt have mass affinity(program to fix a loading bug) at that time.

ATM with mass affinity, ssd it is very smooth going to different rooms but I dont know whether it is because of mas affinity or ssd.

 

The 6GB option is a x1 4GB and x1 2GB.

 

Yep, SSD's do nothing for FPS, but my load times and save points are faster than standard drives.

 

After utilizing the SSD for 2 days I believe it makes a big difference. Games are much smoother and of course load times are fantastic.
Just my .02.

Thanks,
StevenX

 

So nobody knows What ssd model comes with the m17x r2 .

Id like to know, to check the specs. Is it a big secret,lol?

 

Sorry Gflyer. I dont know. My m17 came with 7200rpm. StevenX

 

Samsung SSD

 

So I just beat ME2 and planning to uninstall on my ssd since it uses 12gb. DragonAgeOrigins is gonna be 8gb, which i also plan to uninstall after I beat it. How badly is that gonna kill my SSD?

 

Thanks Fastlane

 

if you have trim then no need to worry, its not gonna kill anything.

 

For single players games It seems SSD is a waste of money other then load up time. I am going to wait untel they drop in price. But for online games like WOW, LOTRO and STO everyone saying it Worth the Price.

 

Yeah for me it's the difference between walking around like a bum asking for a ride or Flying the CHOPPER!!!!!!

Which would you Prefer?



GET INTO THE CHOPPER!!!! NOW!!!!!

 

No actually I use it on my Alienwares that have switchable GPU's from integrated to external so that I don't overwork or over use my External GPU's and prolong the life of my GPU and System reducing on overall heat. By having fast boot up speeds I'm pretty good about switching around.

 

are the alienware SSD's worth the money. Or can a better one be had for around the same price AW charges? The 128GB is $206, 256GB is $513 with EPP... I havent been able to find a 128GB or 256GB drive that compairs in price/GB on amazon or newegg. if anyone does please link it!

 

Pricewise they seem definitely worth but I remeber people saying they are not that great and that an Intel-x25 are a much better deal in the long run

 

they got to be better than a traditional hard drive though right?