To force sand, or just sit back and marvel...

At the end of May I will be ordering a new laptop, and I'm going to be going the 120/128GB SSD + 1TB HDD in the optical bay route. I've narrowed down my choices to the Crucial M4 and the Kingston HyperX - 128GB and 120GB respectively. Now before you all heap on the hate for SandForce, I did read some of the reviews that members of this forum have linked to, as well as search online myself. It seems that SandForce isn't necessarily awful, and actually for day-to-day tasks better in many cases. For large RAID arrays and constantly reading/writing massive files, Marvel comes out on top -- but that's not what I'm doing in my laptop. I just want a nice snappy SSD to install the OS and a couple games on and then everything else will get dumped onto the 1TB behemoth residing in the ODD.

I would like though, some opinions on which of the two drives I linked to is better, and preferably why. They are nearly identical in cost (the Kingston actually $5 cheaper, but lacking 8GB) and their ideal read speeds are also pretty much the same. Since I won't be doing much (any?) video editing or massive writes to the SSD regularly, the Kingston's supposed faster write speed isn't a factor here either.

Going purely on price, Kingston's drive looks superior. Its ideal speeds both are faster than Crucial's, and it's $5 less. I want to know if the SandForce controller really is so wretched that nobody with good intention would actually suggest buying a drive using it.

Please, discuss.

 

I don't think that many people actually have a problem with SandForce performance.

It's the reliability issue and the fact that marvell gives you more bang/buck.

keep in mind that Sandforce failure rate is not actually 50%+ like some people would like you to believe.

 

Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like one way outperformed the other. I know about the reliability gripe people have, but as you said, it definitely can't be >50%.

The more bang/buck thing you bring up is important, and if I went for a 240/256GB SSD I would definitely take the Crucial ($10 cheaper even after rebates and 16 more GB). But at this smaller size, especially with the 120 costing less than the 128GB SSD, I would choose more on other factors.

I would like some other opinions as well though, because at this point I still don't see any large difference between the smaller drives I posted.

 

the problem is that it affects day to day performance, the bsod is there, the system hang ups...

 

Hmm so you're saying that the Crucial drive would be a better choice? I will be using this laptop for college, so I can't have it crapping out on me all the time (or ever, preferably).

 

Just have to add on: Let's go SAMMY!

 

yes I have one sandforce, while it gave me more issues before on my old msi, it still causes me some troubles on my mbp.

 

For a small percentage of users.

 

Tyranids,

It's not that you're guaranteed to have problems with one SSD over the other. However, if you take a look at real-world feedback, it is the probability of having a problem that you need to consider. Considering price is negligible here, you want to minimize the chance of something going wrong.

Does that mean you won't have problems with either drive? No. Either drive may have problems in your configuration. It is just that the odds of encountering an issue is less of one over the other is drastically smaller in one case, and that is where you need to make the call.

 

incorrect, for users that use a certain type of motherboard, I dont like to be in the lottery, and I lost both when I played, msi and apple.

 

Uhm... Is it known which motherboards set it off?

At this point I think I'll go with the Crucial drive, because after looking at pricing and things I've decided to actually go with a 256GB SSD. But just for knowledge's sake, I'd still like to know exactly what trips up with SandForce.

Thank you all for your input, it's been helpful to read.

 

nope we dont, and sincerely to buy a drive that will function properly depending on the hardware is quite a stupid thing to do, those things are plug and play and have a clear standard for gods sake

 

+1.

Sandforce controllers seem to be the only ones that don't just plain WORK with everything out there. And even then, the other drives (namely the Samsung 830 and the Marvell-based drives) trounce it in real-life usage scenarios.