OCZ MaxIOPS SSD performance vs WD Raptor

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Soyo13

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I'm reaching the limit on my 36gb WD Raaptor which I use for Window 7, various software, paging. I install all of my games onto my 250gb 7,200 RPM HD. The Raptor only have 4gb free space now.

I would like to get two 120gb OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS and put them into Raid 0 array. But for now just one of them. However my current mainboard don't support 6Gbps bandwidth.

I will be upgrading my mobo, cpu, ram in due time.

Will I still see significant improvement gaming wise over my current WD Raptor even at 3Gbps? I never shut down my PC unless required reboot is necessary so boot up speed dont matter to me.
 
madrebel said:
hard drives dont improve gaming performance.
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Er.. that's wrong. An SSD won't necessarily give you a big FPS boost in games, but it will help out with any sort of 'loading' by a lot.

eg: Loading levels, joining servers, all the things are cause data to be read from the hard drive, will be quicker on SSD.
 
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Loading levels will be VASTLY improved.

I just installed a single 64GB Crucial M4 the other day as a cache drive (Z68 SRT), and BF3 level loading is immensely faster than it was previously with just the 320GB 7200RPM Scorpio Black. I am incredibly surprised at how noticeable the improvement has been, and like I said that is just caching a lot of the program.. it isn't even installed to the SSD.

I bought a pair of them, and my plan is to have them in a RAID0, but I wanted to see what kind of improvement I could get out of one in SRT mode before I went through and re-installed/re-imaged Win7.
 
don't waste your money on the max iops edition. Just get 2 120gb and put them in Raid 0. I got 2 of them for only 270$ at newegg.com last week. They are fast as ES ACHE EYE TEE.

1o51md.jpg
 
Soyo13 said:
I'm reaching the limit on my 36gb WD Raaptor which I use for Window 7, various software, paging. I install all of my games onto my 250gb 7,200 RPM HD. The Raptor only have 4gb free space now.

I would like to get two 120gb OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS and put them into Raid 0 array. But for now just one of them. However my current mainboard don't support 6Gbps bandwidth.

I will be upgrading my mobo, cpu, ram in due time.

Will I still see significant improvement gaming wise over my current WD Raptor even at 3Gbps? I never shut down my PC unless required reboot is necessary so boot up speed dont matter to me.
Click to expand...

Responsiveness of the machine, application and game load times will be faster by what will feel like an order of magnitude (or two). I recently put an SSD in my old Q6700 SATA2 system, boot times are cut down massively, BF3 maps load in 10 seconds instead of 60-75s etc. The system "feels" much much much faster, it's not even close. Also the old 36GB Raptors are outpaced by modern 7200rpm drives (I used to have one of those Raptors years ago).
 
grambo said:
Responsiveness of the machine, application and game load times will be faster by what will feel like an order of magnitude (or two). I recently put an SSD in my old Q6700 SATA2 system, boot times are cut down massively, BF3 maps load in 10 seconds instead of 60-75s etc. The system "feels" much much much faster, it's not even close. Also the old 36GB Raptors are outpaced by modern 7200rpm drives (I used to have one of those Raptors years ago).
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The loading of BF3 levels has been my favorite part so far. Being a few seconds instead of a minute+ each time is great. Makes it easier to jump into a game when I first open up BF3, and it also gives me some more time in the beginning of a match to configure my kits.
 
Let me put it to you this way.

I put in my 256GB Crucial M4 just after I jumped back into my gaming habits. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT. I'll never use a spindle drive for anything other than raw storage again. I also install nothing but M4's in all new work laptops and workstations as a result. I cannot bring myself to cause such suffering to any employee of our company.
 
For gaming performance it depends on the game and your other hardware. In my case, I play a lot of LOTRO on a 5870 in eyefinity with hi-res textures and maxed out video settings. Before I got the SSD, just walking around the world would stutter and fps would drop as the game kept loading textures, and waiting on my slow SATA-1 disk. With LOTRO on the ssd, everything is smooth all the time. I guess that is a variation on improving load times, but for me it had a nontrivial effect on gameplay.
 
It's not what you are looking for, but I've got 12 MAX IOPS drives in RAID 50. It rocks- instantly responsive on everything. I would say it has made the biggest difference out of everything I've ever done to a computer.

About 1100MB/s, 4k random and 17k sequential IOPS on my OS drive; 1.1TB.

I was running 2 15k drives before this array on the same machine in RAID0 (2 x X5680 Xeons, 12GB RAM), and this upgrade (including the LSI 9265-8i) has made an order of magnitude difference in the performance of the machine. It is simply a drastic improvement.
 
What I cannot understand is why/how folks are still just now figuring this out. I've been running RAID0 SSDs for 4-5 years now (early days) with 100% success thus far.
 
jen4950 said:
It's not what you are looking for, but I've got 12 MAX IOPS drives in RAID 50. It rocks- instantly responsive on everything. I would say it has made the biggest difference out of everything I've ever done to a computer.

About 1100MB/s, 4k random and 17k sequential IOPS on my OS drive; 1.1TB.

I was running 2 15k drives before this array on the same machine in RAID0 (2 x X5680 Xeons, 12GB RAM), and this upgrade (including the LSI 9265-8i) has made an order of magnitude difference in the performance of the machine. It is simply a drastic improvement.
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Does lack of trim support in raid have any negative effects here when it comes to SSD use VS spindle drives?
 
stevebaynet said:
Does lack of trim support in raid have any negative effects here when it comes to SSD use VS spindle drives?
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No. People worry WAY too much about TRIM. There are a few use-case/scerareos that tre could be an issue WITH SOME SSDs in RAID, but for 99% of users, they would never know, even if there was an issue. Most SSDs will outperform spinners by leaps and bounds, even when dirty (not GC'd or TRIM'd).
 
My entire office just spend 10 minutes trying to figure out ES ACHE EYE TEE.

Thank you for the entertainment.


oldmanbal said:
don't waste your money on the max iops edition. Just get 2 120gb and put them in Raid 0. I got 2 of them for only 270$ at newegg.com last week. They are fast as ES ACHE EYE TEE.

1o51md.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Brahmzy said:
No. People worry WAY too much about TRIM. There are a few use-case/scerareos that tre could be an issue WITH SOME SSDs in RAID, but for 99% of users, they would never know, even if there was an issue. Most SSDs will outperform spinners by leaps and bounds, even when dirty (not GC'd or TRIM'd).
Click to expand...

Agreed- it is so much faster that any degredation in performance over time is going to be trivial.
 
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