6860fx + gen2.5 SSD = WIN

Just wanted to let you know, the latest gen of reasonably inexpensive SSDs is a MAJOR speed upgrade. I would say my new SSD makes much more of a difference than the equally priced T9300 CPU I put in recently.

I bought a 60gb OCZ Vertex drive, did the happy flash dance to the latest firmware, did the twist to partition it correctly for XP (not needed for Vista or W7 btw), and cranked up a fresh install, then did the tweaks to help the SSD's lifespan (turning off stuff like background defrag, etc).

Using Crystal Disk Mark, I get 3.5x the benchmark speeds that I got with a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 hard drive - I'm seeing 180mb/sec reads on large files Loaded with everything I normally use, it boots in <20 seconds after BIOS, and every application loads 2-3 times faster, including games.

Just wanted to throw that out here. If you want your machine to feel a LOT faster, the latest SSDs are a good option imho.

 

It doesn't take the newest SSDs to see significant improvements over HDDs. I've been just as happy with my OCZ Core V2 and Apex as with my Vertex. The Vertex IS the better drive, but my 120gb Apex ($219) was much more satisfying at that price.

 

I've heard lots about the stuttering problems with gen2.0 drives and earlier, so I didn't want to just say "SSD" since I've only owned the Vertex. Good to know you can run the earlier gens as well.

I did think about buying a Core/Solid/Apex, leaving the OS on the regular hard drive and running my programs from the SSD since that would eliminate all stuttering problems, but part of my issue was the heat from the Seagate- that thing is scary hot at 50c, and I wanted it out of my laptop.

 

I've been running my OCZ Core v1 for months now as a non-member RAID disk and I've never experienced a millisecond of stutter. I also like you find the speed increases superb and agree it's one of the best upgrades you can ever make.

 

I don't see how people are getting stuttering from the earlier drives. I just follow the tweaks right after installation and it's good to go. Granted the access time for the Vertex is twice as fast at .1ms compared to .2 lol, but it's still loads better than HDDs while being quite a bit cheaper than the Vertex (at least for what i paid for them).

 

I guess the issue is that if you don't get the stuttering with the older generation, you're fine. But if you do, you're doomed to use a computer that hangs up for seconds at a time until you can figure it out and fix it.

I'm just glad they have made the new controller chips that cure the stuttering issue for good. I haven't even applied all of the recommended tweaks (my page file is on the SSD, no RAM drive or anything) and the Vertex just works like a champ. Can't wait until they roll gen 3.