Buying the right SSD

G73JH ssd users, Any recommendations what ssd to buy or not? Thanks a lot.

 

You can't go wrong with any modern SSD (Intel G2, Sandforce 12xx, Indilinx) unless there is some incompatibility with the G73JH that I don't know about.

For an OS drive (random read I/O), Sandforce is fastest and Indilinx is slowest.
So really it comes down to price between Intel and Sandforce, both are close in performance with random reads. But, the sandforce write speeds are much stronger than Intel.

 

What is your price range? They have a $99 SF-1200 drive (the fastest kind) at microcenter.com, it is 64gb. Search my posts I've written about this drive before. You can get a 120gb SF drive for $190-200 if you wait for sales.

I would wait for the new 3rd gen intel drives and the SF-2000 drives. Both are 2x as fast as their current gen brothers. When they come out they will likely be the same price as the current drives, so the price on current gen drives should drop significantly. Go to anandtech.com to read up on it.

I don't see much advantage to the new drives on a G73 bc we are limited to SATA 3.0 which has a max thoughtput of about 300mbps. The SF1200 is pretty close to that at 285mbps. The new drives at 500mbps will require SATA 6.0 motherboards to reach their full potential.

 

I just picked up a Vertex 2 - the SF-1200 w/ special sauce (as anandtech puts it...)

At this point, the drive is bottlenecked by the system, not the other way around. And for $130 CDN, I can't complain. I got the 50gb version (extra overprovisioning) that can be flashed to a 60gb version IIRC (at the expense of MTBF).

Anyways, get something sandforce - unless you've got a Sata 6.0 connection, the sandforce 1200 controller drives are pretty much going to be the best you can get - EVEN in the future, no matter how fast they get, your g73 will maximize the potential of the SF1200 drive.

 

So you've got two people telling you to get a SF-1200 (or 1222 or 1500) drive. The question is... Wait for the new drives and hope the prices drop, or buy now? Only you can answer that. I bought my SSD in October, but I think with the new drives coming in 4 months the price drop could be worth the wait.

 

I disagree. Like I said, SF1200 drives almost saturate the bandwidth available, and getting a $100 drive (60gb) is sufficient for windows and a game or two. Spend $200 or so and get a 120gb one, which will be bigger than you'll ever need - considering the G73 has 2 hard drive bays. Waiting for a price drop that'll put the current gen down $20-$30 isn't really worth it... unless money is an issue **OR** you've never had an SSD before and don't know what you're missing.

You really are missing out. It's quite amazing - but at the same time, on a desktop replacement, not nearly as noticeable as on a laptop that is constantly turned on and off.

 

If the prices only fell 20-30$ then yes it wouldn't be worth the wait to some people (only the individual can decide) but the new drives are cheaper to make because of the reduced flash memory costs. Some news articles say the drives will double the drive capacity for the price. If that happens and a 64gb drive ends up costing $50 and a 120gb costs $100. It would be worth the wait, in my opinion, to get 2x the capacity for the price, and potentially more speed swell. People spend their money differently so it's a personal decision.

Whether the drive manufactures will lower prices that much is anyones guess. They can afford to as the new chips are far cheaper to produce. Plus the main thing keeping SSDs from going mainstream is cost. We will have to wait and see. I personally wouldn't want to spend $100 on 64gb when I could wait a few months and get 120gb for $100. Part of me regrets buying when I did, but I am still very happy with my SSD.

At this point who knows how much prices will drop. RAM is dirt cheap now, but it could go back up. Only time will tell.

 

bha, while I am not sure about other drivers, I'll have just to say that I am vary happy with my crucial c300 with 128 gb, great performances and no problems of freezes or whatsoever (the one I had in the past where related to gpu and audio driver besides they where the latest released)

 

Thanks for the answer guys. Well I probably should wait. For at least April.I'm still curious on how fast will it change my computer. Is it really dramatically fast?

Wait. I dont get it. Sandforce is the brand?

 

It's the controller. Kinda like buying an INTEL computer - sandforce is technically only part of the drive, but one of the most important parts.

 

Here are some good articles about the new drives. As DCx and I've already said, the G73 won't really benifit from these drives because we are limited to SATA II/3.0GBs connections. But the prices should drop so you'll have to decide what is for you.

Intel's 3rd Generation X25-M SSD Specs Revealed - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

SandForce Announces Next-Gen SSDs, SF-2000 Capable of 500MB/s and 60K IOPS - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

OCZ'z Vertex Pro 3 Demo: World's First SandForce SF-2000 - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

As DCx said, Sandforce makes the controllers, which is the most important part of the drive. OCZ, GSkill, Patriot, Corsair, and ADATA all use Sandforce controllers.

I would recommend a OCZ drive personnally. I have a OCZ Vertex 1 (which isn't a sandforce) and it is excellent. My friend has the Vertex 2 and also has no issues. I have the G Skill Phoenix Pro and it works great but there have been issues with them, since you are in the Philippines I wouldn't recommend it just incase you need to RMA.

Here are the links to some good 60-64GB sandforce drives.

Micro Center - Micro Center 64GB SATA II 3.0Gb/s 2.5" G2 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) With SandForce 1222 Controller 122663 This drive is actually an A-Data drive. It used to be $99 but it looks like they raised the price, probably because it got good reviews.

Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Newegg.com - OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

The OCZ Vertex 2 and Agility 2 are identical except the Vertex 2 has better firmware which enable is to do more IOPS. For practical use they are identical, get whichever is cheaper. Both go on sale for $99 after rebate frequently, but I don't know if the rebate works for you since you live outside the USA.

 

sandfoce should be a controller of the SSD, used by OCZ ones, at least, this is what I know...

 

Thanks guys. I probably should wait for around 2 months. Im going to buy it in the states anyway. I hope when the time i get there, the prices are not that high anymore. :>

The Agility 2 has 10k IOPS. Then the Vertex 2 has 50k IOPS. I wonder why do they have the same price? I dont get their marketing strategy. Why make one with the lower IOPS than the other? Is their any other benefits for the agility?

 

Because the IOPS don't make an different to anyone NOT running them in raid 5 or some sort of server farm.

 

Actually, Agility 2 is always cheaper for the same capacity. Btw, they're just Vertex 2 drives that failed to reach the Vertex 2 IOPS, so they got binned as Agility 2 (same as how Intel/AMD bins CPUs).

 

well, i got a Corsair F120. The only regret I have is the fact I didn't picked a bigger one, like 200 or 240GB.

32-64 gb is pointless, 80 is still too low, 120 is barely minimum.

I mean, come on... paying premium only to keep the OS on it??? Or to have a "fast boot time"? It's like getting a really fast gfx card but playing only 3d Mark on it.

And don't say 80GB is enough... The Age of Conan mmo used to take about 30-35GB disk space alone
That is a bit extreme, I admit, but still...

 

Today a SSD isn't the place to store data like all your games or your family pictures. The real advantage of SSDs is the fast access time in combination of silent fast reading/writing of small files (4K).
A game won't become so much faster (load times of course).

 

I don't notice a huge difference in loading times for games. There is a noticeable difference, but I don't really feel it's worth the loss of storage capacity.

 

Yea, that's exactly my point... paying a lot for speed then worrying about space, disabling the hibernate, moving the user profile, moving the page file, disabling browser cache, etc to the fixed drive and not installing a game on the SSD due to "not worth the loss of space"?
Then why getting a SSD? to load Windows in 20 seconds?

Edit: I'm not trying to start an argument, it's strictly my point addressed to the OP.

 

why would you want to install a game on an SSD (think)
that won't made it run faster , just load faster

 

the games i used to play, mmo's mostly, had lots of loading times, zoning, etc...
Age of Conan had 35GB installed and patched (think)

all apps benefit from the high speed and low latency of a ssd drive, some more than another, but all of them do.

 

For me, the most important thing is SSD is how many times I can write data on a disk. What is the standard now ? I remember that 2-3 years ago it was like 1000 times.

 

10000+ is what i heard... Anyways, it does come with a 3 years warranty so I wouldn't worry about writes too much, especially considering that all of them have wear algorithms that are making sure you don't write information in the same place over and over.

However, given the fact that the SSD tech is rather new, having a proper backup plan is mandatory

 

If 10000 write cycles are true, than I will gonna go for SSD soon. Right now I do have 2x320GB in RAID0 ( average 133MB/s ) in mye G51VX. Will there be any difference in performance for me ? I would like to leave one 320GB drive, and add another SSD drive. I do play games ( Need for Speed, GTA 4 and Episodes from Liberty City, Unreal Tournament 3), I do convert movies from my camcorder and that's it. I do not care about booting time for Windows.