Envy14- i5 450 and Momentus XT -OR- i5 520 and standard hd?

Which would you guys pick? the options are:

i5 450 and a Momentus XT hd

or

an i5 520 and the standard harddrive

I cant afford both, so which would be better for me? I am into gaming and web design if that helps.

 

ide take standard Hard drive

 

I agree, standard HD and upgrade to a real SSD down the road when budget allows.

 

I'd take a 520, standard HDD and an upgrade to the next gen of Momentus XT when it comes out.

 

I'd go with the higher cpu right now and then upgrade the laptop Momentus XT. SSD drives are still expensive and you only get small amounts of storage (64GB-256GB). Momentus XT drive tops out at 500GB atm and about 1/3 of the price of a 160GB SSD from intel. It's all about personal preference though. If you only keep a few files, the SSDs will be adequate but I transfer, decode and store large files on my laptop so the XT is definitely a must.

 

What's the cost difference? What are you using your computer for?

 

cost difference is the momentus is $30 more. And like I said, web design and gaming.

 

I'm with Niber. Intel is releasing their new SSDs with NAND on a 25nm scale Q4/2010 or Q1/2011 which should push prices down and increase storage sizes. Having very recently replaced my standard 7200rpm hard drive with the OCZ Vertex 2 I can say that I'm impressed with the difference between the two.

From what I've seen of reviews of the Momentus XT I'm not terribly impressed with it, even if it is much cheaper than the current SSDs. Seems like a lot of people are swearing that it's a great compromise between a mechanical drive and an SSD though.

 

Hey guys, in my other thread it compares the i5 450 and the 520, and I have found that there isnt really a performance increase between the two. heres what I found...

The 450 and the 520 are the same, except for the 520 has:
- .33GHz more turboboost
- Intel® Virtualization Technology (running 2 operating systems at a time)
- Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (something about security)
- AES New Instructions (better encryption, so better security)

So it seems to me I will get a much bigger performance gain if I go with a Momentus XT. What do you guys think?

 

I will admit I can't give you an unbiased answer as far as the Momentus as I'm running an SSD and have never used the hybrid drive, but as far as the processors go I'd stick with the i5 450M and save $100.

Beings as the only "performance" difference is .33GHz in turboboost between the two processors you can really guarantee that the Momentus XT would yield you a more noticeable increase in system speed.

 

If you're truly gaming you'd see a bigger performance boost with the 520m, believe it or not!

New MacBook Pro Core i3/i5/i7 Mobile CPU Benchmark | Mhackintosh blog

Compare the i3 350m and i5 430m, same Ghz but big performance increase.

 

Those benchmarks are useless in showing any difference in gaming since each game title vary in CPU load, with most depending a lot more on the GPU.

 

that also doesnt show the 450

 

There isn't that much speed difference between the CPUs. I have the Momentus XT and it does load and shut down just like an SSD which I have on my other laptops. HDD access is also faster due to the 7200rpm. Why spend more money on an SSD with lesser capacity down the road? SSD technology has been slow to becoming affordable. If you're going to use your laptop now why are you waiting to upgrade it later for a better drive and in the mean time sufffer slow performance? It makes no sense. I would just go ahead and get the Momentus XT and enjoy the performance of your laptop.

 

YES get the XT! While it won't give you ANY frames per second, it will make your computer much more responsive.

 

That Momentus XT looks cool. Not sure about how effective the algorithm is. Could do some things manually though, like set a usage profile for specifically accelerating windows startup, services and page file, and some major applications that the user would like to have speed up.