SSD what are they good for?

So, what do SSDs do? Are they just good for games or what? also, I use windows 7 so how much room do I need. If I put windows on the ssd will everything I run be faster say like Microsoft office. I will be paring it with a 750gig hdd that I will store everything on but windows I guess. So, to gain any performance from the ssd the program needs to be stored on the SSD right?

 

speed is the answer.
width='425' height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2GNoexREA_A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2GNoexREA_A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width='425' height="344"></embed></object>

 

SSD speed up load times in games and programs. Windows will start much faster, programs will start much faster and game loading times will be reduced. However, you will not get higher fps in games.

For games to load up faster, you would need to store them on the SSD, so you would need a big SSD... but general performance in game loading times and program loading times will also improve because if you store Windows on the SSD the cache file and stuff can be accessed faster by the OS.

If you use Office a lot a SSD makes sense, to really benefit from it as a gamer you would need a big SSD which is just too expensive. Cheaper option are two 7200 rpm HDDs in RAID 0 or two hyprid HDDs in RAID 0.

Edit: You always have to take such videos of manufacturers advertising their own products with a grain of salt... I doubt UT will load up this crappy on a 7200 RAID 0 system, it loads faster with my single 7200 rpm HDD. They compared the SSD to one of the weakest 7200 rpm HDD.

 

What is the differance between a A-DATA and a SATA one?

 

what's a-data?

 

A-DATA is a company creating various flash drives and memory cards (Low quality i might add).
A-DATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SATA is a standardized computer interface for connecting hard drives and cd/dvd-roms.
Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Got to invent LetMeWikipediaThatForYou)

 

A-DATA is a company, S-ATA an interface...

 

so for a gamer sdd makes no sense for what they cost ?
If only the load time gets increased, it doesn't really make sense to spend that much to be few seconds beofre others in the game ?
at least that's my understanding from what you guys wrote here

 

a-data is a manufacturer and sata is an interface type

edit: damn...beaten by 3 people. Getting slow in my old age.

 

It helps somewhat in performance.

Check out some reviews.

 

For gaming it makes little sense, but it will increases the overall speed of your OS - did you never wonder why Windows is so damn slow even though you have awesome hardware installed?

 

ok so what I have been reading the A-DATA is also a USB flash drive is that right? so this would need to be sticking out of the laptop to use it because it needs a usb port.. So you could put games on it.

 

OK, but how much space do I need for Windows? will 30 gigs work or less or more?

 

40 GB will be enough, that's the smallest SSD size I think. Unless you have USB 3.0 or eSATA don't store games on an external device, the speed will be limited by USB and you will not gain any performance, most likely lose some.

 

NO.

It's a company that creates different kind of hardware solutions for computers.
Like flash drives, memory cards, SSD's and so on.

 

If you have lots of money to spend buy SSD possibly a high end requirement for high availability read-only data these days.

It has issues and sometimes the speed difference is not even noticeable. The life of the product can be an issue especially if you are doing many writes to it, it has a hard life cap.

The technology is still too new. Revisit it in a year or two. Impressive but still immature.

 

I jus put a Seagate Momentus XT 320GB HD into my Sager. It is a hybrid SSD drive that uses 4GB SSD memory for cache but uses standard 7200 rpm platter for more storage. It makes a big difference in load times for me. Have not used it for gaming yet, just got the laptop. I would think if you could RAID 0 two of these in a laptop, they would give SSD a run for the money. There is a vid that shows a great comparison of XT vs SSD on youtube.

YouTube - Seagate Momentus XT

Cheers...
Nate

 

Does any one try the new OWC Mercure Extreme Pro SSD?
I heard good feedback from somebody but want to check.

 

This is the same Windows 7 x64 image cloned onto both an Intel X25-M 80GB 2nd Generation SSD and a Seagate Momentus XT 250GB Hybrid Drive with 4GB NAND and 32MB Cache. A Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500MB drive on the eSATA port is also included for comparison. All other hardware and system drivers are the same. Benchmarking was done with Passmark Performance Test x64 7.0 Build 1016. It's the random seek and read/writes that really set an SSD apart.



The system is noticeably quieter and cooler with the SSD compared to the hybrid drive, without the faint hard drive grinding noise when booting or opening large programs like PhotoShop. Booting Win7 takes ~5-7 seconds after POST to login with no delay opening many programs at once afterward. The hybrid drive took longer to boot and had a considerably longer lag after login to open several programs. I suspect battery life will be improved by 20-30 minutes, but I haven't done any scientific testing in that area. With no moving parts, it certainly should last longer on a mobile platform than a typical hard drive.

I'm using the hybrid drive as external storage on the e-sata port, so I get the best of both worlds. I put Office, Quickbooks, PhotoShop, and things I really need on the road on the SSD and everything else like games and media on the external hybrid drive. When I want to play a game, I'm typically plugged into AC anyway with a USB mouse and gigabit LAN, and plugging in the external drive is not a big inconvenience.

System specs:
Intel Core i5 520M
Intel HM55 Mobile Chipset
4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1066MHz Crucial RAM
nVidia GT 330M Video
Intel Chipset Driver 9.1.2.1007
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 9.6.0.1014

 

Most of you guys are forgetting (or just not mentioning) the single most important factor that makes SSD superior to a traditional HDD which is the lack of moving parts. Being this is NotebookReview.com and not DesktopReview.com or a variation of the latter, the lack of moving parts can be quite significant for people, especially those who travel a lot with it and use it in in various settings. Besides the fact some bad turbulence can ruin your data, if I read correctly, SSDs last longer, too, because of the fact there are no moving parts.

Sure speed is great, but if people cared that much about speed then they'd just invest in traditional hard drives with a greater RPM rate to compare with today's SSD speeds instead of investing in SSDs. The fact SSDs have zero moving parts is quite vital, especially with technology bringing potent computers down to size to fit in the palm of your hand.

SSD is very innovative but I"m not sure if you should invest in it just yet. The read and write speeds of SSDs are going up, and I wouldn't be too happy using a SSD I bought last year that has a max read/write speed of 100MBps/85MBps when I could've bought an SSD with double the capacity and double the read/write speed for the same price today. SSDs are still a relatively new technology and constantly improving significantly while traditional HDDs are getting dozens of Dollars cheaper while significantly increasing in capacity. I'd wait another year or two to invest in a massive (256GB+) SSD and get the hybrid 500GB 7200RPM + 4GB SSD HDD today.

Mr. M

 

I disagree with you. The fact that the SSD has no moving parts is not only contribute on having quite system, but also a fast one, because moving parts mean slowness. the fastest HDD (10000RPM) can't stand the speed of an average SSD.

Beside, if your motherboard has a SATA2 interface, then the actual SSD's market is very mature concerning the speed; the nowadays Sandforce-based SSDs give you almost the maximum speed that you can get with your SATA2-interface computer. Of coarse, when upgrading to SATA3 motherboards, the actual SSD speeds can't follow; but this is computer's world, keep evolute and evolute, and if you always wait for a new technology then you will never join because there is always a newer coming soon !

 

Added a Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200.4 drive on the eSATA port to my previous benchmark chart for comparison to the Momentus XT Hybrid drive and Intel X25-M SSD.

 

i really dont feel like reading all of this, but im going to say reliability. thats pretty much the biggest thing.

i got like a smudge of as5 (cooling paste which is capacitive) on my seagate 320gb, like a TINY smudge, now the seek time is freakin 36ms.

a hard drive hasnt been that slow since they were 40mb.
whats the deal here? couldnt they just put tape over that damn pcb?

yea im done with disks.

 

be aware that laptops with a the pm55 and hm55, basically anything with a core i cpu, will get slow 4k sequential read/write's.
guys in the hardware forum believe that something in this series of chipsets is hampering ssd performance across the board. thus if you have these chipsets, you will assuredly not get the advertised performance of any ssd

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-can-not-take-full-advantage-fast-ssds-5.html

 

I'm not seeing a big issue with the HM55 chipset and 4K random read/writes. I haven't done as much testing with 4K sequential read/writes, but 1K seq is good. Perhaps you meant 4K random since most of the posts on that thread are discussing random. I also see no appreciable difference enabling or disabling Enhanced C-State on the CPU. Here are my results:


Intel X25-M 80GB 2nd Generation SSD
Intel Enhanced C-State Disabled


Intel X25-M 80GB 2nd Generation SSD
Intel Enhanced C-State Enabled


Seagate Momentus XT 250GB Hybrid Drive with 4GB NAND and 32MB Cache
Intel Enhanced C-State Disabled


Seagate Momentus XT 250GB Hybrid Drive with 4GB NAND and 32MB Cache
Intel Enhanced C-State Enabled


Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB Drive 16MB Cache on eSATA port
Intel Enhanced C-State Enabled

Everything else remained the same:
Intel Core i5 520M
Intel HM55 Mobile Chipset
4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1066MHz Crucial RAM
nVidia GT 330M Video
Intel Chipset Driver 9.1.2.1007
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 9.6.0.1014
Windows 7 x64 Professional
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.0f x6

 

Did you read the comments on the video?