Holy cow! 250GB SSD would cost you 699 bucks!

install all your games before steadystate: don't. read up on installation issues on raw ocz.. acrobat reader comes to mind (up to HOURS to install that thing).

if you have 16gb to commit (gta4, again), then it'll take 16gb to read and to write partially random to disk. how long does it take you to copy a folder of 16gb from a disk to itself? it takes a while..

my boottime is 30sec on the desktop and 40 on the notebook with vista. steadystate can take minutes to commit. (this is fact. we waited once 15min to get the system up again after installing some windows updates, virus updates, and nokia suite manually.. hardly in the gigabytes).

for the hassle you get, you should better not spend money AT ALL because the way you have your system right now is just as fast, with less hassle, and generally often faster.

so, in essence, you prefer to just throw money away instead of investing in something that actually gains you something? this just is weird.

the ssd won't help you for games.

due to steadystate writeback, the ssd won't help you in boot times (steadystates always boots twice to commit + the commit time which depends on the amount of data you write onto it)

the ssd won't help you much in starting applications (you have 4gb and superfetch handling this quite fine).

in what, exactly does it help you? in nothing.

i do agree to disagree in quite some cases.. i just want to open your eyes a bit that your idea may not work out the way you want. so saving that bit of money means spending more money in the end. which doesn't help at all.

 

Ok being that you are set on explaining everything in full to me I should also point out that if this solution does not work as I hope and expect I'll be able to sell the drive on for a profit anyway so cost is really not a concern.

In the case of GTAIV and the extreme 16GB install that is an exception to the rule. There are very few games with an install above 7GB. Also I don't play GTAIV on PC as I have it already on my 360.

A 4GB SteadyState cache has been reported to increase boot time by 1 minute. Perfectly fine in my book.

I prefer to throw money away on something that gives me no actual gains? Have you lost the plot? Of course I don't. Close to instant access times and 150 MB/s read speeds? What on earth are you talking about.

The SSD wont help me in games? I think you need to do some more research. SSDs greatly improve gaming experiences.

The SSD wont help much in starting applications? Now you really have lost the plot.

I understand the compromises cheers. Not sure what you're trying to do here? Justify your massive expense on MTRON drives maybe?

 

you should really read up, all the hype about ssd's. but they don't hlep in games, they only help in load time. that enhances the experience, true, but is not greatly improve gaming experience.

the disk sure may have 150mb/s read speed and close to instant access times in best cases.
it doesn't in worst cases. then, you can save 4 items a second. that's.. 16kb/s, or a bit higher than the slowest modems that ever existed.

i don't want to justify my expensive mtrons (which, in my optinion aren't expensive at all. and if i look at your hw specs, aren't expensive for you neighter).

but fact is, ssd's, while great, are not just better. ocz are reported to be quite good, if the stuttering is fixed. but do you want to spend money on "quite good"?. i don't. the reason i bought ssd's was, because i wanted HELL GOOD. like getting an awesome gpu to enhance your games. you don't want to pay for a gpu that gives you .. 5-10fps more. you want one that doubles the fps, you want to see what you spend your money on.

i just warn you that for the most part, you won't see a big change with an ocz of now (the vertex may change that). i don't see much gain for gaming on the 2x mtron even, and thats up to 220MB/s read speed, 0.1ms access time, SLC memory, 125iops minimum (tens of thousands maximum). yes, load times are faster, but THATS IT.

i do see quite some gains in day-to-day usage, but mostly, too, about getting lazy. not caring about defragmenting, about cleaning up, having a system that is always snappy without thinking is great. an ocz with steady state is all about thinking.

even a game that is only 5-7gb, it still means you have to write, then, up to 14gb, and read 7gb, which, on the ocz, should result in about 2.5times the time it would take on an ordinary disk to install, that has the same write performance as the ocz. not including the additional reboot.

your current raid0 should have 120MB/s to 160MB/s with ease, if it doesn't, your system may not get more with the ocz. if it does, you only gain in some percent readspeed. random reads don't matter that much in games.

i just lay out the given numbers from your specs + the numbers from ocz, and the experience i have with steadystate. i would say no, not worthing it. and i really suggest you to do the same. then again, for toying around, i'd do it. so GO FOR IT

look, i hope it works for you, i hope it's worth the hassle, and you never have any issues with it. i had. with steady state, with slow ssds, with terrible random writes, with the fixes for it. the asus eee is still sometimes locked. there just isn't a fix that works 100% (steadystate can't get installed there, it wants a 14gb cache file at start).

i just, straight from the numbers, don't see a big gain for you. (some gains, some losses..).

steadystate may make your boot time faster, but you always have to boot twice, if you want to have your latest stuff saved (favourites, history, latest syncs, mails, konfigs, tweaks, blabla)

 

don't be to hard on him... lets put his into this...
128G.Skill = 360$ (all canadian dollars)
80GB Intel = 850$

so is the 'decent' preformance of the 128GB + steadystate worth saving all that money? maybe

personally if that Intel was <500 dollars I would buy it. but at that price it is hard to justify.

fact remains Intel is wicked fast! significanly faster than the 128GB one. but for 500$ that is up to the individual to decide.

 

http://www.buy.com/prod/x25-m-sata-...r-warranty-mm-900343/q/loc/101/210477489.html

160gb intel 971$, that's with about the same storage like the G.Skill 728.25$ for 120gb of usable storage.

the 80gb intel is at..

http://www.buy.com/prod/intel-x25-m...olid-state-drive-ssd/q/loc/101/209180500.html

529.99$. soon below 500?

it's not THAT much money. one has to pay for high end. high end gpu, high end cpu, tons of ram, ssd. all not cheap.

 

I've read plenty of reports that SSDs help improve games with faster loading of in game textures, sounds etc. Especially so with engines like Unreal3 where it loads data on the fly. I'll try and dig out some specific links.

I don't mind having to think about the few compromises to get these things working to the max. I like tweaking, tinkering, reinstalling - it's how you learn about how things work (and fail). In my opinion the benefits greatly outweigh the sacrifices, especially considering cost.

As I said before lets just agree to disagree. In the end if you are correct and I can't deal with these compromises I will make a few bucks anyway.

 

I ment 500 Canadian.
the only place I can find it here is:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33277&vpn=SSDSA2MH080G1C5&manufacture=Intel
850$ + tax + shipping and handling

Edit I found one a buy.com canada for 750$ still a little steep IMO.

 

this can be true, but only with good ssds.

then you can just get a 16gb usb stick for cheap, and try out on it. then you notice soon how the low write performance really feels. simple: terrible.
i like tweaking, tinkering, reinstalling, but not if the system is very bad at doing so.
you don't want to reinstall on an ocz. you have to install onto a hdd and image-over as you can't just put in a disk and setup on an ocz.

a simple 32gb + games on the hdd would be much better and about the same price.

just wait for those **** ocz vertex tests. they're out very soon and should, in hardware, fix the bugs the ocz have. they may still not be perfect, but a better start to try out fixes (a MUCH better start).

have fun. but just don't cry. instead, go on your knees, kiss my .. feet, and tell me i'm the holy god of ssd. hrr hrr (soon weekend horray).

you know, i've done similar moves like you some times before (buy the cheap one and then overclock.. buy that cheap gf2 it's the same like the expensive one, just for cheap, buy that it really helps much) and others around me, too. and in the end, i've learned one thing: spend more on thing you want to change, and then have something of value that actually changed something. going the cheap way cost me, normally, much more in the end.

but your mileage varies. so have fun your way. and good luck.

 

hm. in america, converted to canadians, it's 650 cad..

i hate to sometimes have to buy things from overseas (i'm from switzerland) that get produced in europe, just because it's cheaper to import it from canada or the us. than to get it directly from the same ***ing region. the world is weird.

 

I agree, but that's not the way it is. I will be looking on ebay for a good deal... I guess that is about all that I can do.

 

you don't happen to know someone close on the other side of the border? .... just kiddin'.. hm..

 

lol I wish. that would be convenient. unfortunatly it's cheaper for me to buy here and then driver across the border(like 10hours each way)

 

wow, I've missed quite big discussion here ..

iaTa, are you still buying the MLC drive ?

 

i guess so. he agreed to disagree and we all wish him the best.

i currently had to copy over 500mb of photos to my mlc usb stick. it estimated one hour. i zipped them up in winrar and copied them now on the stick in 3 minutes.

that's random write issues (and a similar-to-steadystate fix.. random to sequencial). but it's terrible.

 

As someone who has played around with Windows SteadyState on a OCZ Core drive I offer the following observations:

1. Performance (measured by copying thousands of small files and folders) and system responsiveness of the Core SSD + SteadyState was basically on the same level as my Samsung SATAII SLC SSD (running Truecrypt).

2. The main benefit of SteadyState on a Core series drive seems to be its ability to absorb the many small background random writes generated by Windows itself. Without the “preassure” of those small random writes, the Core SSDs seem to be able to hold their own.

I no longer have the Core drive (it was not mine) but if I was running it on my system I would consider having a smaller Windows system partition on it. I would pre-load the Windows system partition with all applications and utilities I know I permanently use. I would then create a second data and games partition. As SteadyState only caches writes to the system partition, I would not risk my data in case of a session crash and I would avoid installing very large games through the SteadyState cache file.

Since SteadyState already is absorbing most of the small random writes on the system, installations to the second partition should go full speed.

 

Well my OCZ Core v1 128GB arrived today and I am completely blown away!

I've just installed Windows 7 build 6956 on the drive as a non-member disk of my Intel ICH8M RAID controller ensuring that I loaded the latest Intel RAID drivers at setup and everything is running absolutely perfectly. No tweaks. No Steadystate. No PC Safeguard (Windows 7 implementation of SteadyState). Windows installed in about 15 minutes flat and I can find absolutely no eveidence of stuttering whatsoever.

Benchmarks:





Simply, the best $195 I have ever spent.

 

Looks good! Microsoft had said they were optimizing Win 7 for SSD use and it looks like they are on the right track.

 

Microsoft have stated that they are not making any major system changes for SSDs in Windows 7. The changes that they are making are really not very exciting so I was expecting all the problems that people have been experiencing in Vista:

http://vista.blorge.com/2008/11/08/windows-7-will-be-more-ssd-friendly/

So not really sure what's going on with my setup. Chuffed.

 

Why don't you just disable steadystate while you install the game so that you don't overshoot the cache, and then reactivate it after the install?

 

because doing so would make installation terribly slow? (you don't want to install a 6gb game with 16kb/s... that'll be 104 days??)

i'm happy for you, iaTa btw.

you could test the iops for 4kb random writes for us?

how long does installing adobe reader take?

 

Adobe Reader 9 install just took about 15 seconds - I LOVE SSDs!

How do I test IOPS for 4kb random writes?

 

you have to use iometer with a certain profile.. wait a sec *grabs out his notes*

1. grab iometer http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/iometer/iometer-2006.07.27.win32.i386-setup.exe?download<br />
2. this iometer config http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=6566&d=1220994173
3. extract the config file (whereever) and then open it (iometer will open)
4. expand your PC treeview thing on the left and click worker 1
5. in disk targets, select OCZ core drive letter
6. click results display tab and move update frequency to say 10s (so you can watch it go)
7. click the green go button. it allocates like 10GB file on the drive, and then will randomly write to different portions of it.

 

It says I don't have permission to access that OCZ forum page, even when I'm logged in?

 

Ok got it:



I assume those results are pretty bad. Thing is I've installed loads of apps / games and have been multitasking all night. Everything is still super quick and no stutters.

 

i have 50 iops on my notebook and 125 on my pc, so yes, it's pretty bad. but as long as it doesn't affect your usage, it doesn't matter, now, does it?

another test you could do: download a zip with a big source package (boost.org comes to mind) and measure the time it takes.

it would be interesting to see if it's different on vista than on win7..

i downloaded this one (the 7z version):
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7586&package_id=8041&release_id=637761

and extracted with winrar (most recent version)

it took 1 minute and 22 seconds. cpu load never got above 50, and was mostly around 30 percent.

resource monitor reports an average of 5-7MB/s with some peaks (bigger files).

if that takes not much longer on your system, you've won..

 

1 minute 22 seconds exactly for me too!

One CPU core was hovering around 90% and the other 30% - although I am on battery power at the min. Will retest on AC in a bit.

Which performance counter are you using for the average transfer rates?

 

Yeah, but then he still installed it on the unprotected partition of the SSD, so it's just the same. The only thing he saved was the disk usage of the OS, can't be that much of a difference.

 

Yes, installation would be to an unprotected partition. However, as SteadyState would be absorbing all the background random writes generated by Windows, the installation would zip along despite not going through the cache file.

 

I'm still perplex as to just how much windows could possibly write to disk in the background. At least on winXP, it blips ones in a while (my hdd led), but how bad can that be?

 

while you're installing something (like adobe reader hell), it just glows all the time. it's all tiny file writes to random targets.

well, here at the work notebook, it blinks at least 1 time a second. it depends on the installation

 

Hate to burst your bubble.

I suggest that you download the utility Process Monitor, which is able to log all disk operations.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

Install it and make a clean re-boot (do not start any applications manually) and then fire it up. Let it run for a 10 seconds (or something similar) and then you can analyze the number of background reads and writes that your installation engages in. You will be amazed (in a negative way).