SSD performance vs HDD performance on M17

OK my question is fairly simple. I know SSD's have better sustained speeds run quieter and cooler and decrease boot times and are more durable and use less power, but is the performance increase of the SSD worth the price difference (256GB SSD +450 over 250GB 7200 rpm). I only need 250GB portable space inside the laptop and can always get another HDD or SSD later if I need more portable space as i have 4TB of space in networked drives in my home.

So the question. Will I get 450 dollars worth of quietness, battery life, speed, and durability if I choose the 256GB SSD over the 250GB HDD or would I get better performance upgrading the t9550 2.6ghz to the t9600 2.8ghz which would be +250 and than using the other 200 for various accessories.

I appreciate everyone that takes the time to weigh in with their opinions as I know time is valuable. Much thanks for everyone's help in advance.

 

Welcome to the forum!

You won't really notice a difference between those two processors.

I've used SSD's as my primary drive on my current and my last laptop.

What you will notice with an SSD is much faster boot times and apps opening is faster.

It's kind of hard to accurately describe how it performs. When I got my M9750 it had two standard 7200rpm HDD's. A week after I got it I installed two SSD's and I was amazed how a new top end laptop could feel so improved.

I have a SSD in my current M17 which is the primary drive, and a 250Gig HDD for storage duties.

Short answer=you won't feel a difference between the t9550 and the t9600, but you will feel a difference with a SSD.

Hope this helps.

 

I would like to add one more question if I may. Is it easy to install a SSD drive if I get the alienware with the +50 250GB HDD than buy a SSD for the 2nd storage drive spot would it be an easy install and would it be less money to spend 50 on the 250 HDD + the cost of an aftermarket 256GB SSD or just 500 on an alienware installed SSD. Ok and one more question what is the brand and model of the alienware pre installed SSD drives? What is the read and write speed of the alienware installed SSD's? Can I get a faster better performing aftermarket one?

 

No problem,

Get the SSD from Newegg.com, the OCZ Vertex seems to be a great performer at a decent price.

Installing it is a no brainer. Remove one screw then slide the HDD carrier away from the laptop. Screw the SSD to the carrier and slide it back in and install the retaining screw.

Just give A.W. tech support a call when you get the SSD and they'll be happy to walk you through it and if needed they will walk you through the OS install. Cause you want to install the OS on the SSD.

Here is a guide from the A.W. site:

http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/...F9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1tMTcgSERE&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

Well alienware charges 500 for a 256GB SSD if I buy the OCZ vertex 250 from newegg it will cost 800 but i'll also get the 160gig HDD that comes with the alienware. Do you think 500 for the alienware 256GB SSD is a better deal than 800 for a 160GB HDD + the OCZ vertex 250GB SSD. Is the alienware one a slower lower quality SSD?

 

I'd consider the 120Gig Vertex for $377.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227395

At this point in the evolution of SSD's you still have to give up some space for the performance unless money isn't a factor.

The SSD offered by A.W. isn't as fast as the Vertex.

If you just want to get it ready to go, the SSD that A.W. installs is still way faster than a standard HDD.

I think you would be happy either way.

 

I can't comment on the M17, but I upgraded my M9750 to two OCZ Vertex 60GB and... oh my god, FAST. FAST FAST FAST. Compared to the drives I had before, there is a massive difference in read/write speeds that have a dramatic effect on load and basic usage.

(I also have 2X Vertex 60GB in RAID 0 in one of my desktops, too!).

Given the cost of the drives and the every changing state of performance, the 60GB is the real sweet spot. Get a good, fast single drive for your OS/games and a bigger drive for storage. You can spend $400 to $500, but unless you absolutely must have everything installed at once, a 60GB can cover a lot.

 

Thanks rob I think I am going to get the laptop with a 320GB HDD since its only 25 dollars more than the 250GB one. I would choose none but you have to have something so I'll just go with that. Than I will get that OCZ Vertex 120GB for 377 from newegg. I thought about it and 120GB is more than enough to hold my OS and all the main programs I use such as utorrent and starcraft and diablo. I can always sell the 7200 rpm 320GB HDD and get a 256 or 512Gb secondary SSD drive in a year or 2 when prices are down and performance up. This sounds like a great plan to me as like I said earlier I have 4TB of networked drives holding all my music and media and pr0n so the 120GB SSD drive should be plenty for my OS and applications and I can reap all the performance benefits of a bad azz OCZ vertex SSD. Thank you rob and thank you inkjammer for your input. It sounds like SSD drives put HDD's in the dust.

 

gotcha

 

lol i use the vertex and i boot in about 7 seconds on windows 7

the vertex is amazing

 

7 seconds is really amazing!

 

nice.. lotsa OCZ Vertex users here!! I just bought a 250g Vertex myself. I'd be happier if I could get my read/writes higher though. What kind of reads/writes do you guys get with HDtune?

 

Yep, mine boots in about the same. It's amazing. My main PC, that I built myself, has 2X OCZ 60GBs as well, same configuration as my laptop. When I was benchmarking, a single Vertex 60GB drive was outperforming my second PC (Alienware Aurora w/Phenom Q9950, 8GB of RAM) with two VelociRaptor 300GBs in RAID 0.

A single Vertex > two VelociRaptors in RAID 0. While the raptors could read data faster in most parts, the instant access/seek time of the SSDs blew it away. I was impressed. I bought them for my laptop first, and after comparing my laptop to a high end desktop... I went out and bought SSDs for my main desktop, too. I was that blown away, especially given how much slower laptops are to desktops even at their best.

The Vertex are the first SSDs I'd say rank as a "must have" for the performance crowd. They're not just fast, they're !@#$ing amazing, with zero stutter and drawbacks that I can see. OCZ's support has been phenomenal, too.

EDIT: After post, it boots in 12 seconds... but it certainly feels like "about 7!"

 

I am totally sold. I am waiting for allpowerful and I will def be configuring 2x 120GB OCZ vertex in RAID 0. Thought about 2x 250GB ones but I only need 250GB total of space and I believe you get faster performance from 2 120Gb vertex drives in RAID 0 than 1 250GB vertex SSD drive without RAID since it can use raid striping or whatever and use the speed of both drives to load stuff faster.

 

yeah Im sold as well. Mind you I always imagined that any HD with no moving parts would be the way forward.

So RAID 0 is the best then I take it.

 

Raid 0 offers a fairly decent increase in speed + storage, but it have zero data security (if one of the two drives fails you lose ALL your data). While I'm a RAID 0 guy, I always recommend getting the fastest single SSD you can and then a beefy secondary drive to store your data on. This really gives you the best of both worlds - speed and lots of storage.

I got the two Vertex 60GBs because they were cheap, but if you got a single 120GB (which offer faster performance) you'd be set. And seriously, with a single Vertex from any series, you're not going to be missing out on performance at all. A single Vertex is blazingly fast.

 

Thanks for the reply inkjammer!

I see what your saying. So its better all round to get a single fast SSD and use the secondary drive for data storage....well thats good because I already have a 500GB HD in port 2 for storage so I only need the SSD.
Im not that security conscious either and dont believe in worrying about HD failures but if I could get the same performance with a single fast SSD over RAID 0 then thats good enough for me.

Does anyone know what score they get on the Windows performance index in Windows 7 with a SSD HD??? just wondering really.

 

A single OCZ 60GB Vertex had a 6.9 in Windows 7. Two netted 7.9.

NOTE: Keep in mind SSDs vary between make/model. The Vertex 30/60GB drives are about 5% slower on reads and about 20% slower on writes than the 120/240GB drives (though "slow" is a relative term since these are still' smokin fast!). The single fastest of the Vertex series is the 120GB.

 

Yeah, if Western Digital and Seagate have any sense at all, they better be looking into SSD development.

Kind of like Kodak, though cellulose film isn't totally dead, it's gone by the way side to digital cameras at least in the consumer market.

Cost and size are the only limitations for some and we've already seen HUGE strides in the last couple of years.

 

That score will be of 6.9 will be enough for me. thanks.

I agree totally with what your saying Rob about the reference to Kodak when it comes to WD and Seagate....Im really surprised not to see the 2 biggest HD manufacturers not flooding the SSD market with their products, if your not fast your last.

 

Yeah

The writing is on the wall and those companies have enormous resources right now.

For cost effectiveness and mass storage they are still viable, but I have to question for how long given the rate of advancements in the SSD arena.

 

InkJammer or Rob41,

I'm starting to feel like there's something really wrong with my computer =(. It takes me well over 1 minute from power on to finally get to the desktop with my SSD. Well over twice that with my 7200 rpm Seagate drive. This is newly imaged from Alienware as well. (Alignment aside, I've gotten that down). What kind of benches have you run? Could you post crystaldisk, atto, or HDTune marks so I can compare my m9750 with yours please?

 

well did you tweak vista according to OCZ forums?

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

 

The link Moo provided is good but if you want to do it even easier or don't trust yourself to make changes in the registry, check out Vista Manager:

http://www.yamicsoft.com/vistamanager/index.html

I used Vista Manager which is great for a ton of stuff with a nice interface and is really a complete package.

Then.........I went to the above mentioned OCZ link (which really is good) and was going to follow along to make the reg changes and discovered that I already did through Vista Manager. There was no more tweaking to do at that link cause it had already been done.

I also have very few start-up programs. I like a lot of eye candy so I have Window blinds, Object dock, side-bar, and my anti-virus programs running and it only takes me about 30 seconds till I can use my puter from a cold boot. That's less than half the time it took prior to the SSD install.

I'll show a picture of my HD tune results tonight.

 

i will post my vertex to


also you really need to update to the newest firmware and try a clean install. If you have windows 7 i would use that it is optimized for SSD's

here is mine

first is what i just ran



next is comparing with my 160 gig seagate




crystal mark





these would be faster but i never updated to a newer firmware and 2 of those were on vista

 

Here is a shot from my M9750:



My M17 has only one of these SSD's and the scores on that are more than half of this score. Accept that the burst rate on the single SSD on my M17 is closer to 100.

BTW, these SSD's are the first gen (SLC) re-branded Samsung units. The Vertex units are faster.

Also, the CPU usage on the M17 is like 3%

EDIT: Here is a shot aI just did on my M17:



Wonder why your CPU usage is so high Moo? I've got all my junk running and my browser too.

 

eh Mr Moo....you run your OS off a 32GB SD?? is this enough do you think just for drive number 1?? just wondering because this would be a more affordable option for me at the moment (moving out of Mum and dads next week so moneys quite tight)

 

Thanks for the info guys.

I'm running on XP 32-bit. I've already performed all the tweaks I can perform for windows, but my HDTune reads were only averaging about 115mb/s with a fresh install. Lower after use obviously, but not terribly lower. While this is better than the average 7200 rpm drive at ~64mb/s it's not nearly the 200mb/s reads I was hoping for. I had hoped there was a bios setting somewhere that you guys changed that maybe I could do as I think I'm limited by the SATA controller built into my m9750.

Anyways, Rob41 those Raid 0 marks aren't all that high at about 150mb/s but that IS Raid so I can expect a slight if not double the performance over a single drive. These measurements though are with slower SSDs right?

Mr.Moo, for your m17, I can see it as a definate improvement over an m9750. Perhaps you have a better built in SATA controller vs what I have, hence you're reading at ~200 limit that I was expecting to see.

 

Tonytoff,

Basicaly, a 30Gb Drive is the bare minimum and thats just for the OS. You will need a secondary drive for your software as I suspect Mr.Moo is doing. Fast SSD as a boot drive for fast boot-ups and snappy OS and a standard high capacity 7200rpm drive for everything else. I use my second bay for SSD backups as I'm not sure how stable SSD's are just yet.

 

If you run Vista not really. You can but you've really got to watch it.

I've gone to my "users" folder and moved things like documents, pictures, movies etc. Clearly, you're not going to be loading many games on a small drive either.

It's best to disable "hibernate" as well as those file are written to the C drive and don't forget to to reduce the frequency and allocated size to your system restore points.

I am doing this now with a 32Gb SSD and my storage drive is a conventional HDD.

If you do this, Maximum PC has an excellent "how-to about setting this scenario up.

BTW, SSD's are at least as stable as mechanical HDD's.

The other option, of course, is to use a larger SSD or a pair of them in raid 0.

 

your SSD may be hindered by XP

try downloading windows 7 then installing that on there ..... i am curious

 

Nope,
I got Vista. I have the first model that OCZ sold. It's a re-branded Samsung.

 

Hmm.

At least on the m15x, AW offers a 256gig ssd as primary storage for +$501.

At Newegg, 250 gig OCZ Vertex goes for $799.

Is the OCZ *that* much better?

 

Even with the SSD that A.W. offers you'll enjoy much increased performance.

With that said, the Vertex is much faster than the unit offered by A.W.

The difference between a HDD and the SSD offered by A.W. is greater than the diff. between the two SSD's.

Just depends on how much you want to spend.

 

the vertex and intel do not use jmicron controllers which mean it does not stutter.

the vertex is faster and does not stutter

 

but the Gskill Falcon is $100 cheaper than the OCZ Vertex and uses the same flash chip and controller. I ordered one today. Check this out.......

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/27...lid_state_disk/index10.html#Thanks-for-voting

 

very nice find +1

 

thanks Mr. Moo. Read about it today on the ASUS W90VP forums. I am still deciding between the new AW and the ASUS W90, and visit both forums. I was sold on it immediately and ordered one form the egg. I had to get this for the desktop in the meantime

 

how much is the difference between the ssd of AW and the gskill falcon's ssd?? Because I just ordered a 128GB ssd update directly to my laptop while it being repaired from Aw and it's only $100 some thing, so I suppose that there must be a pretty huge difference between the 2 SSDs?? Should I keep the order or cancel it and order the 1 from gskill falcon??

 

depends what SSD is in the AW

not stuttering i can tell you that

 

The SSD that i ordered from AW is Samsung 2.5" 128GB SSD SATA-2 HDD, I also just ordered a 4GB of Ram from AW, any advise if I should keep the order or cancel it and from other sites?? Especially the SSD.

 

cancel the ram from AW you can get ram 140 dollars cheaper

and a SSD cheaper from Newegg

 

Are u sure the ssd is cheaper?? Because the ssd of AW is only $100 something and the ssd gskill falcon is $300+, but aw's RAM is about $200 bucks. Also, could you please tell me where can I find some guide to make the ssd after I install it to be the primary drive?? And how to fully install all the function of the aw system??

 

i can help you do that myself

also the AW SSD is ok but the gskill or vertex is gonna be faster

the SSD is ok i guess but get the ram off newegg

this kind http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...10260381 1052939102&name=204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM

any of that will work

 

Wow, thanks a lot Moo, ur the only 1 helped me every single time I have question or concern. I have a question about the 4Gb of Ram, what is the difference between DDR3 1333 and the 1066?? Is it faster or what?? Also, i saw some of the RAM in newegg you showed me? Some of them is only 2gB, so is it ok to order 2 of them just like I order the 4Gb with 2 modules right?? Because dual channel won't work if 2modules are not the same, so I just want to make sure.

And thanks a lot, hope you can help me to install the ssd drive and the os in it.

+ rep

 

are you getting the SSD from newegg or AW?

you can get 2x2gb or 1 4gb stick

either way it will work

1333 ram will be the same as 1066 unless your overclocking

the 1066 is cheaper so just get that

 

I decided to get the ssd from newegg, can you recommend me some good ssd?? Would be really appreciated ur help.

I heard that RAM in dual channel mode will be much faster, but I'm thinking of upgrade it to 8GB of RAM, will I use any close to that much of RAM?? Or actually, what's the purpose of 8GB of RAM?? Just to make the system run faster?? Should I buy 4gb or RAM or 8GB??

And I have no clue about overcoocking so 1066 definitely be my choice.

Also could you please send me the guild to install SSD drive and how to make it to be the primary drive to install the OS in it??

Thanks a lot for quick replies .

I gotta go to sleep now, have to go to school early tommorow, see ya Moo.

 

i play games on 2 gig 4 gigs is plenty

and look in my sig for m17 hot to guides to install a hard drive

g skill hard drive is on sale

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231255
60 gig


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231256
120


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227394
60 gig

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227395
120 gig

here is a a guide on how to change the HD

http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/...F9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1tMTcgSERE&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

I had this posted in the deals section for awhile, there is still time left to take advantage of it, its the best SSD deal right now that I know of: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=380637

Vertex for $307

The Falcon was close the other day as it had a rebate, but that rebate is gone and overall the Vertex has more support behind it and is more known to perform, the Falcon is new on the block and has not proved itself yet.

 

So which one is a better deal?? Moo's SSD or vicious's SSD??

And for RAM, could any1 please tell me what brand is better to pick??

I'm new to hardware stuffs