SSD's...take the plunge now or wait awhile?

I'm specifically referring to Intels 80/160GB G2 Mainstream drives, i know the G3 drives are expected to come out in Feb/Mar w/25nm chips available in 300/600GB capacities, the current G2 drives can be had for just under $2/GB (on ebay) but i'm not sure on the price point for the upcoming G3's, in theory prices should drop but we all know how that goes so my question to you guys is should someone in my position just buy now or wait awhile?

P.S. i'm not interested in huge capacites but rather a nice boot drive e.g. 80+ GB so my primary concern is cost per GB, thanks.

 

Unfortunately with technology, it advances so rapidly that what is new and fast today is slow and outdated in 6 months. I would step back and weigh your options, do you NEED the drive now or can you wait until a better $/Performance ratio presents itself?

Personally, I am waiting for the G3 drives.

 

I'm waiting for SSD prices to come down to $1 per GB myself. I would suggest waiting, especially since the Intel G3's are around the corner. Some speculate that prices will come down a bit after they are released.

 

I disagree.
Buying an SSD now such as the Intel X25 is a quantum leap in speed.
No matter what comes out 6 months.. or two years.. for that matter won't show that big a difference.
seek time is down near -0- already and read could be somewhat faster but not nearly noticeable.. if at all. as today's SSD's.

I bought a Gen 1 80GB for my desktop 1.5 years ago, now in my laptop, and then a 160gb Gen 2, 6 months ago.

It's a huge difference in loading everything.
Gen 3 will be better but only incrementally and probably only in write speed.
But the OP wants it only as a boot drive.
90% of the noticeable gain has already been made.
Only write-speed and capacity will increase dramatically IMO from here.
And of course price per GB will continue dropping.
I'd buy a Gen 2 now as a boot drive.
In fact it's my only drive/s.

 

Well i don't NEED the drive per se but i do WANT the drive so your point is well taken, i'll most likely just take the SSD plunge being it's only an 80GB drive ($150), it's just hard to lay out that kinda cash when you're used to paying just 10 cents/per GB for mechanical HDD's.

 

Want to save money? Wait for G3.
Have the money and just want the speed? Go ahead and get one now.

 

I agree with unmarc, but am waiting for next-gen SSD's to come out so they really drive down prices on the current products.

 

Its not that gen 3 will be better.

That is all the more reason to wait. it will create bargains to hunt with gen 2. As they release the next size, the sweet spot of 120 gb will reach the $1 gb size


Me too I want 1Gb 1$ first.

 

Yes, gen 3 (Intel) will be better.

 

If you have around 100-120 in extra spending money, then by all means invest in an SSD now. But if you play the waiting game, you will never buy an SSD.

 

what is your intended usage ? Recently changed one of my 7200 rpm HDD to 80G G2 but it didn't give me the 'wow' factor that I experienced when I changed from IBM PC to IBM XT(i.e. floppy to HD). It is noticeably faster but I won't say quantum leap.

 

Heh I remember when i switched from tape drive to floppy on my commodore 64 back in the day. That was dope!

 

First, an SSD is not an investment.

And, judiciously waiting for the right time to purchase does not mean never purchasing, ever.

 

Well, I faintly remembered that my tape drive system back then booted faster than Windows now, not sure what is progress.

 

November 13, 2010
Time for an SSD? At $249 for 120GB, Intel thinks so

On Friday, Intel introduced its most competitively priced solid-state drive yet and will be selling the drive to consumers through major retail outlets. Are SSDs finally becoming a worthy upgrade?

The Intel X25-M 120GB Solid-State Drive is set to be offered at Best Buy and Fry's Electronics for a suggested retail price of $249. Newegg is already selling the drive. Competitive SSDs would include a 128GB drive for $269 from Crucial.

Though still pricey by traditional spinning hard disk drive standards (1 terabyte desktop HDDs can be had for less than $100), it's a dramatic change from two years ago when Intel was selling its 160GB SSD for $945.
[.......]
For its part, Intel is trying to make the migration to SSDs as smooth as possible. The Intel drive also includes a free cloning utility--Intel Data Migration Software, which assists in transferring information from the old hard drive, including operating systems, applications, documents, and personal settings. It can be downloaded free of charge here.

Time for an SSD? At $249 for 120GB, Intel thinks so | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

 

It depends on your usage.

For my kind of usage (web and watching videos) an SSD brings very little improvements. With a 5400rpm drive I work just as well.

But if you're a heavier user, the differences become dramatic.

By the way, my Seagate XT hybrid drive boots a full Windows 7 in 14 seconds.

 

I agree, specicifically for those using a PM55/HM55 chipset, the gains are nominal and mediocre at best, im just frustrated with Intels continued use of this particular driver when they HAVE to know it comes up short.....even when used with their very their own SSD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Actually the PM55/HM55 problem only affects installation performance and synthetic benchmarks.

For normal usage there is no problem, because the CPU comes out of it's idle states anyway.

 

My opinion? Take the plunge. If you get an SSD now you'll be spending maybe 20-30% more then you would in 6 monthes but the price/performance ratio on a boot drive has reached a pretty good sweet spot.

 

If you need a SSD today then go for it. The performance boost from HDD to SSD is big, but the real time performance boost from G2 to G3 is probably not very noticable

 

While that seems like a reasonable stance, what is being ignored is that the next gen SSD's may actually offer what mechanical HD's do now: consistent performance no matter how lightly or 'hard' they're used. Without the ridiculous need to SE.

No reason to buy now, imo. HDD still do a respectable job - at least for the next few months.

 

I went ahead and jumped on the SSD bandwagon and i'm less than impressed, granted my boot time is under 12sec i really see no other benefit other than that, i also agree the G3's will show very little improvement over the G2's, the $2.50/GB price point is not yet justified when comparable HDD's can be had for less than 10 cents/GB.....just MHO.

 

The biggest improvement I've seen is in battery life. Take a look at tomshardware.com SSD roundup. I can verify the Kingston V-series is as bad if not worse than a traditional hard drive. Other than that, I've gained nearly an hour going from the V-series 64GB to an Intel 80GB. From a little over 4 hours to a little over 5 hours. That's worth the investment if battery life is important to you.

The speed boost and system responsiveness is vastly improved, but I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the value of that at all. Sure it's nice for a quicker boot, and same for a little more instant response, but current gen SSD's do require an occasional Secure Erase, meaning low level format more or less, to maintain that higher level of responsiveness. Best to invest in a quality imaging program that maintains drive alignment too, otherwise an unaligned drive can drop performance considerably, and not all imaging programs will maintain alignment when reinstalling the image back on the SSD after a secure erase.

 

Am i the only one who is thrilled to get rid of that stupid clicking noise from the HDD when it is working?

 

I thought that the Intel G2 drives was consistent?

 

If you keep the average free space to be 30% or so.

 

Cloudfire,

The Intel is the most consistent from all I've read/seen.

But I've also seen reports (here) where the drive degraded in just a few weeks of use. Sorry, I cannot remember the user right now.

If I'm not mistaken, it was in the stickied SSD thread where I read it.

 

Yes it was radyabruce who experienced that. Quite a rare case though. Intel SSDs do seem the most reliable to me.

 

Reliable in the sense that it's MTBF is higher than other SSDs? Or it's performance lasts longer before the drive writes slower than a 4200 rpm IDE drive? Or are we talking controller wise?

 

They use the same NANDs as several other SSDs like the OCZ Vertex 2 and Agility 2. It's Intel/Micron made.

What I mean is that I've seen far fewer problems, dead drives and DOAs with Intel drives than with OCZ drives for example. I understand this is no where near scientific though.

As far as I know the Newegg customer ratings show a similar picture, although I haven't checked lately.

 

Ah well that clears it up. I hope I don't have a problem with my Agility 2, I only bought it a month ago. But then again 2-3 years down the line SSDs will be uber cheap..

 

Actually, one of the mentioned advantage of Sandforce's controller is that its DuraClass(basically an OS by itself) is designed in a way that it can use lower grade NAND(thus cheaper flash memory BOM).

Though as you said, Intel's controller so far is the most stable(well least problem reported).

 

It can, you are right. OCZ will be using this option in the new Onyx 2 that uses lower grade memory. It will be cheaper than Vertex 2 and Agility 2.

 

Speaking of which, why does OCZ continue to make both Vertex and Agility series? Agility was supposed to be the cheaper of the two as it was supposed to use cheaper NAND, but they're typically same price or more expensive. It only confuses things IMHO, but I digress.

 

As far as I know Agility and Vertex use the same NANDs. The difference is the firmware of the controller. The Agility is limited to a lower IOPS than the Vertex.

The model using lower grade NANDs is called Onyx.

 

Interesting, thanks. Found this on earlier Vertex and Agility:

The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

" This is the OCZ Agility. You get the same controller as the Vertex, but with either Intel 50nm or Toshiba 40nm flash"

And newer ones:

OCZ's Agility 2 Reviewed: The First SF-1200 with MP Firmware - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

" Both the Vertex 2 and Agility 2 are based on SandForce’s SF-1200 controller. I’ve described the differences between this and the SF-1500 in detail here. It boils down to a bunch of enterprise class features missing and lower sustained small file random write speed on the SF-1200 vs. the 1500.

The Vertex 2 retains the small file random write performance of the SF-1500, while the Agility 2 is a standard SF-1200 implementation. According to SandForce, the Agility 2 is representative of how all other SF-1200 based SSDs will perform using the 1200’s current mass production firmware (more on this later)."

 

It's interesting that Techreport couldn't find meaningful differences while benchmarking.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18864/10

 

Here ya go..
Boot Drive.
Newegg Guerrilla deal today:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...11510-_-EMC-111510-Index-_-SSD-_-20227528-L0B

OCZ 50gb Vertex 2 SSD
$174.99
Less 45.00 savings 129.99
Less $30 mail in Rebate 99.99

and 'Shell Shocker' from 1PM-Midnight PST the 140gb is on sale for 149.99 (after 20 mail in rebate)

 

What's with the weird capacities OCZ is coming out with? I guess it's good because you can shop price and capacity, but with rebates and other specials it confuses things a bit.

Personally I found a 40GB kinda small even for a boot drive especially if you use hibernate and pagefile. 50GB might be ok, but still, I'm finding 60GB the minimum if you plan on loading any decent amount of apps and use a pagefile and hibernate.

 

With SSD's current limitations (aka, % filled) even 100GB (93GB actual) is too limiting for me as a boot drive - and, that is assuming I have at least a dual HD bay system too. (I don't yet).

 

My main i7 rig has a 30 GB Vertex boot drive. After Win 7 AND drivers, I still had 15 GB free

OCZ has too many promotions on all their SSDs, and they keep selling their older crap for more money than the new generation SSD...lol