Upgrading SSD from 64GB M4 to 240GB 520

My friend with the HP DV7t-6xxx, 64GB M4 and 740GB HDD, called to let me know that his latest Warcraft update filled his M4 and he wants me to put in a 240-256GB SSD.

I was all set to order a 256GB M4 for him, then I saw that Newegg has the Intel 520 for $200 after rebate this weekend.

As near as I can tell, the Sandforce BSOD on awake from sleep issue is rare on the Intel drives and easily fixed with BIOS power configuration, the 520 is faster than the 830 or the M4, the 830 uses more power.

Is there any serious reason not to go with the 520?

Currently, I've got Win7 and Wow on the SSD.
Now I've got to decide whether to just clone that to the new SSD, or do a clean install with all the programs on the SSD. What about the pagefile, leave that on the HDD, or does that make too many writes?

 

Intel SSD's are my top choice - at that price it is insanity to go with anything else, imo.

Clean Win7 install highly recommended.

 

Why go with mail in rebate when you can get a 256GB M4 for $200 from Amazon?

I doubt you'd notice ANY difference in performance between the drives. I have both Samsung and Crucial drives and I'd be hard pressed to say which was in my machine, when I know the Samsung is faster than the M4. Power consumption difference between the Intel, Samsung, and Crucial are more or less negligible, but idle power consumption for Intel 520 technically is higher:
http://www.ssdreview.com/review/com...256gb-25-inch-cxm03b1q/power_consumption.html

Regardless, do a clean install is best.

 

benchmarks are for number junkies. lets not pretend they make a difference in real-life usage. thats why I always recommend getting the cheapest drive at a specific capacity with exceptionally few exceptions.

you're using a sandforce drive, be aware of slowdowns when transferring movies*

*let me disclaim this, even the compressed performance of Sandforce drives (with good NAND) is more than good enough for the extreme majority of people (even for most people using their hardware for business cases). not to mention the small capacity of the drive.

 

I'd just go with the M4 for $200. I bought a 330 180GB that is suppose to come with a ~$70 mail-in rebate that I **still** haven't received (I ordered it in early June). I'm not very happy in that regard, but the drive itself is fine (non of the infamous Sandforce issues, since SF-2281 is suppose to be miles above the older Sandforce controllers).

As Generic User #2 stated, you really won't notice the difference between given 256GB, SATAIII drives. The most noticeable difference between HDDs and SSDs is the access time, and all of the SSDs have access times of around a millisecond or faster anyway. As for transfer speeds, I noticed no subjective difference between my Intel-controller 320 160GB and SF-2281 330 180GB in transferring movies and other large files.