Express card SSD vs 8GB RAM

The price difference is basically negligible -- about 15 dollars difference for the SSD so just going by performance what will give me a faster computer.

Express card SSD:
ExpressCard 32GB SSD Solid state disk [106014] - $87.98 : Era Adapter

If anyone has a better SSD for express cards I'd appreciate it. I haven't been able to find many. That one has very few details so I don't really know if it's any good.

edit: I've also seen the Verbatim SSD Express Card 32GB but I can't find a price.

Is it possible to get one with less than 1ms access time?


I use my computer mainly for Chrome, Digsby, JDownloader, and watching movies/ playing games. I don't believe I can install Windows 7 to the express card/ boot from it but I'd probably install programs to it.

I have a Seagate Momentus XT, which makes me wonder if I need extra RAM since I'm already using 4GB of cache on the disk and it might be a bit redundant.


Also, what are expresscard speeds? I think I have 2.0/34 or something.

 

Where exactly do you feel that your computer is being slow?

 

Well before I upgraded my HDD I felt serious slowdowns in opening applications/ generally just using the computer. That's not really a problem anymore.

I'd really just like to have my applications open up as quickly as possible. I'm not sure if the best way to do that is to have more RAM for caching with eboostr/ just regular win7 caching or if a SSD would make things faster.


edit: I would probably move both of my program files (86/regular) to the SSD. I'm thinking I can do a lot more with it so that's what I'm leaning towards but I'd like a second/third/whatever opinion.

 

I think that if you have the Expresscard SSD that you probably won't use it as much as you think you will.

I didn't find too much info about speeds for the card you linked above, but I found the following: Review Verbatim SSD ExpressCard 32 GB - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

If you got speeds like that, I think you would find little improvement in speed and mainly more heat and use of power when on battery.

Are there any programs in particular that seem to open slowly?'
Chrome for instance, seems to open up in just a second on my laptop.


Regarding RAM, I think 4GB is fine for general use but I suppose you can check out the numbers on your PC to see how much it adds up.

 

Digsby and JDownloader are pretty slow. I realized I could also use the SSD for caching but it wouldn't be as fast as the RAM.

According to that review the verbatim SSD gets 40MB/s better sequential reads and 5-6MB/s better ran4k reads.

It doesn't mention the access times unfortunately.

I feel that with my RAM usage I would not necessarily benefit from 8GB unless I used a program like eboostr to cache with it. I normally don't use any more than 40% of my RAM when I have my programs running.

 

the 8gb ram will be faster

 

The ExpressCard SSD's are slow, hot running, and last I checked you weren't able to properly install a OS and boot into that OS on the ExpressCard SSD; so it is basically a 32GB internal flashdrive for 'expanded storage'


The 8GB ram will help you out, as you can then disable pagefiling and not have that slowing you down ever again (and if you want to, you can use part of that ram as a 'ram disc' or basically a super fast ~4GB temporary storage space -it is temporary because once your computer shuts down, you lose what was on that ram disc; so be sure to backup that data!)

 

I'd get a samsung 470 64gb drive,,they vary from $99 to $129, time your purchase, I moved from seagate momentus 7200.4, 320gb, 16mb cache to Samsung 470 64Gb,,Seagate was benched marked at about 80mb/s read and write, Samsung 470 consistently benches at 250/170 plus mb/s,, thats 3times faster read and 2times faster write 4k read/writes are way over 3x faster read and write ect ,everything loads and works faster,,I found out I was not in need of 320gb size, I use seagate freeagent(5 year warranty) 500mb usb 2.0 drive for backups and storage.

The Number one speed up for laptop is drive-using same processor. Bag your system an SSD. SSD's are so fast your across the finish line before the spinners have started up !

The slowness of your system is probably too many drivers loading at startup, I set mine up only to use what I need to bootup , that way you start what you use manually,,I used CCleaner to adjust startup menu.. I boot now in about 20-30 seconds from 60-90 seconds. I also got rid of adobe pdf reader and now use free Nitro PDF Reader(can fill out forms with this one), Nitro has much smaller footprint on running system resources.

Cheers
3Fees

 

I've used a RAMDisk before but it was persistent (remained after shutdown.) I don't really know what I'd use a volatile one for and persistent ones are too slow for shutting down.

I don't see how the SSD is slow? Sequential reads are 50% faster than my HDD... random reads are like... 7x as fast.

I could probably disable my pagefile already. I think I'll give that a try and see how it goes.

I can't afford a sizeable SSD. My system isn't really slow at all. It's "optimized" as much as possible. Very little starts up and my boot time is 15 seconds.

 

In the end I'll get both. It's a matter of what I get now and what I get later.

 

confused, so you just have some money that you don't know what to do with ? charity may be.

 

I'm much too selfish for that.

I'm curious as to which would give more beneficial results.

 

if the computer is not slow, neither.

 

That makes literally no sense considering that "slow" is 100% subjective. Someone with an 8 core sandy bridge with quad raid SSD's and 32GB of RAM would probably think my computer is slow. I think it's fast.

I'm asking how to make it faster, not fast.

 

that is exactly what I tried to say, it sounds like you feel your machine is fast(your subjective feeling) then how else can you make it faster ?

 

Well that's what I'd like to know... how to make it faster. Hence this topic, the question being: Will an express card SSD give me more or less of a performance boost over 8GB of RAM?

I'm looking for a discussion that will hopefully let me know which situations one would be better than the other or if one would always be better.

 

Are you running a 'optimized' fresh install of Windows 7 with no AV? (that is as fast as it gets, and it is what I so on all my computers running Windows; I also dual boot that with some variant of Linux -fast, light, and for all intensive purposes 100% bullet proof)

Like I said, those EC SSD's aren't that great; and I don't think the issues of not being able to install a OS and boot from it has been solved (this is a known issue with these EC SSD's -well I read about everyone complaining about that with the older ones, I don't think it has been solved with the new ones yet, as it was a OS problem I think); so it is a very expensive flash drive

The ramdisc will lose all the temporarily stored info on it if your computer does not shut down properly, so be careful of that



Buy the 8GB ram and then save up for a 'real' SSD.

 

if you don't use the SSD it cannot make your computer faster even if its speed exceed 1GB/s. On one hand, you said slow/fast is subjective, on the other hand, you ask for answers that is universally true. Not sure how that can be answered.

The question(being asked a few posts back), in what way do you feel your computer 'slow' ? I can tell you my computer can be very slow at downloading because my ISP has a 1Mb/s speed cap. neither SSD or RAM is going to help me.

 

It's a fresh install and I've disabled unused services as well as unused startup programs. I run an AV, MSE. It's lightweight.

I wouldn't be booting from it. That's impossible with Win7.

The Wintec Filemate 48GB has very good performance it seems. I don't see what's wrong with it?

Maybe I'll buy 8GB of RAM. But right now I have pagefile disabled and I'm using 1.41GB of RAM. This is how much I average, honestly. If I open CCleaner + JDownloader as well as Digsby + Chrome (I have a few tabs open) I go to 1.58GB. Again, not a big deal. I feel that the RAM might be wasted.

Just trying to see both sides.

 

Does anyone know what the access speeds are like on this?

Amazon.com: Wintec FileMate 48GB Ultra ExpressCard: Electronics

edit: apparently .4ms

 

All performance tuning does is change what you're waiting on. If you're not waiting much and/or your apps finish jobs quickly, then there's really nothing to do.

Solution in search of a problem ??

 

Obviously the computer isn't instant. I'm sure the SSD and RAM will effect things in different ways.

 

again, that expresscard 'ssd' is a repackeged shdc card. Hell it might even be running on the usb (part of express card) instead of the external pci interface.

Without proper overprovisioning of memory/flash, use of uprated flash devices instead of consumer-grade sdhc-style memory, and an intelligent controller, lose one memory cell on the thing and you've lost the device and all contents.

 

How do you know that newsposter? You're talking about:
Amazon.com: Wintec FileMate 48GB Ultra ExpressCard: Electronics

?

I haven't seen one that comes close to those speeds. Either way, because I can't find enough info on it I'm going with the ram.

 

a little web research (and common sense re costs) will get you to the reference design pages for the express card 'ssd' devices.

Looks as though the same device is being OEMs and relabeled by about 6 sellers.

This happens a lot in China. Someone comes up with a standardized piece of hardware, makes a million pieces of it, and sells the part to other jobbers who package it up with their own artwork. It's one reason why so much cheap hardware out of China looks the same.

It's also why it pays to try and find the original maker for their design/support docs. And why you want to find high-er res images so that you can get a feel for what kind of controller and memory chips are being used.

 

Well the lack of info is why I'm going to get the RAM instead.

 

just be aware that they specifically state they're not a simple usb-plug. and the speeds you can get, you can't get them in a usb port.

so it IS an ssd. and it connects trough pcie. but the question is, what controller does it have.

 

An express card SSD is uselesss except for ready boost, or as you have mentioned ebooster. Ram plus a standard SSD is the better option.

As far as more ram helping out. It may help out in the background. as you use the system it caches more and more data to the free ram. at some point as free ram is used up it wil start cycling the cached data. The more ram you have then the better for this....................

 

Yeah the SSD would be for installing programs to. But I'll be getting the RAM anyway simply because I don't know enough about the SSD.