CPU upgrade vs SSD

So, I have an ASUS G51VX-RX05, and I will have about $350-400 to spend in the next week. I just sold my T9600 and an external hard drive to get enough money to buy a T9900 or X9100.

So, would a T9900/X9100 be a worthwhile upgrade over my current P7350? I'm mostly interested in games and crunching for SETI@Home. It will obviously make a big difference in SETI@Home, but games didn't seem to be particularly affected by my initial upgrade from P7350 to T9600 (Crysis in particular, but I noticed an improvement in Mass Effect / ME2 and Half-Life 2).

Recently, I looked up prices of 120-128GB SSDs, and they fit in my budget, if I skip the T9900 of course. My current hard drive is a WD Caviar Black 7200 rpm HDD (320GB).

Which should I choose, the T9900 or this Corsair SSD? They're approximately the same price.

 

SSD > T9900. But I'd get an Intel or Indilinx instead

 

Intel's drives are way too expensive ($550 for 160GB), and I want something that's at least 120GB because I only have space for two drives in this laptop (I'll be using my current 320GB hard drive as the data drive).

 

What about the 80GB flavor then? If you're keeping your current drive as well, loosing 40GB on the SSD shouldn't be much of a problem?

 

so you're using P7350 back now?
I would keep the T9600 and OC it, sold the P7350 and bought SSD
but since it sold, yeah get SSD

 

SSD would be great... i would get an 80GB or 64GB one and then using spare cash , buy a T9900... it OC's better than X9100 and runs cooler...

 

I fit were up to me, SSD would be the choice. An SSD can make your whole system feel like it will last another ten years. But you might want an Intel based one as the performance of the other SSD's will eventually degrade over time. Hell, the difference between a T9600 and a T9900 really isn't all that much.

An SSD will make your whole system feel "snappier".

It really depends on what you want though - a large difference in CPU intensive tasks like SETI@Home, or a really responsive and quick system.

 

This may be true, but I doubt any SSD on the market will last ten years. SSD's just arent good for what they are. They are much too expensive, and the manufacturers do not trust that they will even last. Until Intel, Corsair, Kingston, or any SSD manufacturer puts a lifetime warranty on the drive, I am simply not going to buy. For harddrive intensive uses, just get a desktop.

K-TRON

 

A SSD won't actually help framerates while your gaming, but it will extremely lower your boot, program, and gaming load times. A faster processor might help with framerates while gaming, but won't have too much of an effect because the GPU is typically the bottleneck for that. I see you already have an 11,182 3dmark06 so I would go for the SSD.

 

That's why if you have the money, get a commercial SLC drive. Tested and proven to work in mission critical settings for the past 20+ years but also $10+/GB (as compared with less than half that for consumer MLC drives)... But hey, you get what you pay for.

 

How is the Samsung 256GB SSD compared to Intel or Indilinx?

 

80GB isn't enough for all my programs. I'm planning to install all my programs and my most commonly played games on the SSD (~10 GB of programs, 70-80GB of games, out of which 41.5 (!) GB is the Steam folder, 15GB for Windows 7).

I considered that but I wouldn't have got more than $75-100 for the P7350 as compared to $200-250 for the T9600.

Yeah, I'm going to have to update that 11,182 3DMark06 score, that was with the T9600...

I know the SSD isn't going to help performance in games, but if it makes my computer "feel" significantly faster than with this 7200rpm hard drive, I'll take it.

 

That's what SSDs excel at - improving general responsiveness.

After having gotten used to an X-25M, every time I switch over to another computer with an HDD, I think multiple times every day that either Windows or the program I'm using has frozen because everything takes so long to respond.

 

It's just as slow as the 128GB flavor. It's only the 64GB flavors that differ in performance (even slower). That being said, I say "just as slow", and "slower", but this is only relative to Indilinx and Intel in random writes. In the grand scheme of things, these Samsungs are still pretty good; it's much better than the JMicron stuff we got back in late 2008 and early 2009.

In that case, there are still plenty of Indilinx-based drives at the same price and capacity as the Samsung:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150636 1421439416&name=120GB

OCZ seems to have hella MIRs at the moment too, if you feel like turning those in.

 

but as they are not much faster than hdds in most reallife cases, they're not worth any cent payed more than for a hdd.

but yeah, at least they work, unlike jmicrons

 

One of the benefits of SSD which most folks overlook is the increased battery life.

I have a T400 with a Samsung SSD. The specs, while above 7200rpm dives, are below Indilink and Intel SSD's. That said the increased battery life has made the drive worth it!!!

 

They're still an order of magnitude faster than HDDs when it comes to random reads/writes, so they're worth something, just not what Samsung's charging for them.

Performance-wise, Samsungs might not be the fastest, but they don't suck either. The real problem is that from a value point of view, they're a huge ripoff, with the competition delivering much faster speeds at the same price per GB.

I'd say that the right price for them is about 1/3rd of what they cost today - a price that accurately reflects its performance, but still considerably more expensive than a mechanical HDD.

 

as soon as more than one job is hanging, they drop down to hdd performance. have one here, it feels like a snappy hdd.

better than any 5400rpm disk, for sure. 7200, not so sure.

 

But the Corsair P128's advertised sequential write speed is higher? Also, what controllers do Intel drives use? Intel's own controllers? Their advertised sequential write speeds are also slower than the Samsung drives.

Also, about that OCZ Solid 2 drive? Why is it so cheap compared to the others? The write speed isn't much less than the OCZ Agility drive, but it's $80 cheaper.

I apologise for all the questions, but I want to make sure this is money well spent.

I won't be seeing that benefit, I'll keep my current 7200rpm drive in its bay, and add the SSD to the spare hard drive slot. Battery life will probably decrease...

 

rule nr. 1 about ssds:

SEQUENCIEAL READ WRITE SPEEDS DON'T MATTER

what intel has is the lowest latency on any ssd existing (0.065ms read latency, f.e.). what intel has, too, is absolutely great speed at RANDOM reads and writes. and THEY matter. and THERE all others (especially samsung) lack.

and if that's not enough, intels are great at random parallel read writes. which is what others (and hdds) completely fail at.



and yes, intel uses their own controller. and as you know intel, they don't care much about number. they design hw that is designed to deliver the best experience by being clever, not by having bruteforce numbers.


the other manufacturers always push the sequencial speeds as they're easy to reach and great for marketing.

 

Do you have an SLC one or an MLC one? I can't speak for the MLC ones, but the old SLC one I picked up off ebay was decent and definitely faster than the Caviar Black 1 TB it replaced.

Sadly, as we've just been reminded, big numbers work better than actual performance when it comes to selling a product, even for high priced enthusiast products like SSDs. Not everyone's read that Anandtech article.... thesis... thingy.

Seems like the only computer component where actual performance sells more products than big impressive numbers is desktop GPUs, which for some reason are an exception.

 

the slc ones should be fine indeed. mlc sucks. and most available right now are mlc. but then again, mlc intel beat my slc mtrons (which beat the slc samsung, too). so.. mlc intel wins.

everyone likes big numbers.

 

Oh that was encouraging. so a 250GB SLC drive costs 2.5K.... rip-off

Anyways , 1 word in the SSD world from what i learnt.. Intel... u can't go wrong with them but they are expensive...

 

This totally depends on what "value" to you is. There are significant amount of people that will want higher numbers in their games, aka SSDs aren't worth it to them.

Yea, SSDs will increase your battery life/decrease load times/make it more responsive, but if you don't really care about battery life too much or are patient to wait for programs to load, what benefit is an SSD to you?

 

HAHAHHAHAAAHAHAAHAAH!!

i've yet to see one person who is patient to wait for programs

thanks intel, greatest laugh of the evening!!

 

LOL, nice to see what I said was funny.

All my friends think SSDs are waste and is secondary/tertiary to CPUs/GPUs. I do not agree, but I'm PARTICULARLY sensitive to things like what SSD brings. Which is why I spent colossus amount of money on the 80GB G1 and will do so on the 320GB later this year.

 

Comparing your system (midrange CPU + IGP) to their desires, I'm willing to bet that you and your friends have completely different needs to begin with

 

Yes exactly. If you think the other way, SSDs don't make your loading times instant, and it doesn't necessarily boost the frames, and considering how much it costs, why buy one? You aren't waiting when the game loads, which take fraction of the time you would spend in one map. And usually with enthusiasts come the need for lots of space, another reason SSDs don't provide.

The way I see it though, if you can tolerate the fps, and lower the settings, you won't notice any graphics enhancements during the heat of the battle. Seriously the only game you can really do that is Sims.

Company of Heroes running at 1024x768 High with 25-30 fps. Lag? I don't think so.

And I LOVE tech, especially when efficient.

 

Exactly. Right now I can only afford an 80GB Intel drive, but if I buy Indilinx, 120GB falls just within my budget. 80GB is not going to be enough for everything I want to install on the SSD, especially since I'm planning to leave 15-20% free space for write performance.

So, I could either buy an Indilinx drive right now, or wait until later this year to buy an Intel drive and for now get a T9900.

 

A lot of it has to do with how gamers think of their computers.

Some view it as just another console. Let's call this the Nintendo DS approach. You could never sell an SSD to these people unless if their budget is $2000+, because they're so focused on one thing (gaming) that they assume everything else will magically work itself out.

Others view it as both something to do day-to-day activities on as well as an entertainment device. Let's call this the iPhone approach. These are the people who would be willing to make sacrifices in order to make the all around experience more pleasant, and would consider getting an SSD on even a fairly modest budget.

As much as I hate using the phrase, there's several non-Intel SSDs "just around the corner" that are advertising overall faster performance than the X25-M. All of them should be available long before the next generation X25-M is launched though, so if you decide to wait those might be worth checking out as well.

 

well u could get the indilix one but i don't know if it will do as well... really its up to u now.

 

Oh well, I'll just wait for SSDs to get cheaper/bigger (preferably simultaneously). I know exactly what I'm going to get with a T9900, but I really want an Intel drive considering the 4KB random read/write performance, but 80GB is too small and 160GB is too expensive.

Anyway, thanks for all your help guys, this forum is super-awesome. I will wait on the SSD for a few months, I'm sure Mass Effect 2's loading screens won't mind too much.

P.S. Also, T9600 -> P7350 = 11,182 3DMark -> 10,245 3DMarks (3DMark06) . I wish the stupid test wasn't so CPU-dependent, or that Vantage was free.