Which SSD?

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Supreme [H]ardness
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Thinking of ditching my Raptor for an SSD drive. Which would be a good replacement?
 
Now THERE'S a question.

I've got 2 G.Skill TITAN SSDs in RAID0 and they're freakin' awesome. They replaced my 3 Velociraptors.

I am also eagerly awaiting OCZ to release their Vertex SSDs. Those SSDs are really showing a lot of potential, on paper and in theory. If they really rock and their cache makes a big difference, I'll be getting some of them.

Of course the Intel SSDs rock too but they're very expensive and very small.

Those are the ONLY 3 I would even consider getting at this point. OCZ's Apex SSDs look to be good, but are extremely similar to the TITANs.
 
Brahmzy said:
OCZ's Apex SSDs look to be good, but are extremely similar to the TITANs.
Click to expand...

They're actually identical to the Titan, just a little later to market (and probably with fewer firmware bugs, based on the early reviews of the Titan on NewEgg).
 
So what about a single Titan vs. my single V-Raptor? Or two of the Gskill non-Titan 64G in Raid 0?
 
The Titan (and the upcoming Apex) are very much two of the "jmicron SSDs" joined using a jmicron two-port RAID1/0 controller chip. So the performance of the Titan should nearly exactly match two of the G.SKILL FM-25S2S-64GB drives.
 
until I see the Intel X25 drives losing, I'm sticking with them
and HD Tach doesn't count :p
 
EnderW said:
until I see the Intel X25 drives losing, I'm sticking with them
and HD Tach doesn't count :p
Click to expand...

When it comes to price I think they lose. The Titans may not be as fast on reads but I believe they're faster on writes, and they're a hell of alot cheaper.
 
The new controller in the Vertex is the only real competition against the X25-M as far as I know. Either way Intel priced their drives way to high for the size.
 
I would not ditch a Vraptor for a single SSD. At least 2 SSD in raid0 on a controllercard with 128/256MB cashe at least or 2 Vertex/Intel in raid 0 on the motherboadrs controller is the only thing that would make sence.
 
MassiveOverkill said:
When it comes to price I think they lose. The Titans may not be as fast on reads but I believe they're faster on writes, and they're a hell of alot cheaper.
Click to expand...
If you look at price/performance, they still dominate on 4k writes. 80GB is enough for me so I have no intentions of switching anytime soon.
 
How would two 300GB Velociraptors RAID 0 ($460 for both) compare with with that $400 80GB Intel SSD?

How about two GSkill 64GB SSD RAID0 ($270 for both)?

How about a single Titan 128GB SSD at $320?

Is it crazy that I kind of want the intel?
 
The Intel SSDs are too rich for my blood. I'm waiting for the OCZ Vertex (and reviews of them). If it looks good, I might get two of the 30GB models for $260 total.
 
notsane said:
How would two 300GB Velociraptors RAID 0 ($460 for both) compare with with that $400 80GB Intel SSD?

How about two GSkill 64GB SSD RAID0 ($270 for both)?

How about a single Titan 128GB SSD at $320?

Is it crazy that I kind of want the intel?
Click to expand...
the Intel will have the best all around performance
its weak area are sequential writes, but most people don't need fast writes for the OS drive
and the smaller size, but it's not hard to stay under 80GB if you move all the My Documents, Desktop, etc folders to a different drive
 
Well, I have 4 X 30 gig OCZ Solid SSDs on order. They will be run in Raid 0 off of a Perc 5i SAS controller. I went with the cheaper drives since I was going to RAID 0 them, and this setup will prolly cap out the PERC 5. 600 MB/sec reads and 360 MB/sec writes in theory. I think the Perc will cap out at about 400 MB/sec though. :mad: Can't beat the price though.

For about $400 bux, plus $100 bux for the controller, I will have a 120 gig drive that should absolutely smoke the 80 gig Intel SSD.

I'm hoping to have the parts by this weekend to start playing. I will set it up for BM only to start with so I can do write testing. Can't wait to install Vista on it though.

Don
 
So going for the Perc 5i solves the cache problem and lets you use cheaper drives w/o stutter huh? Good to know!
 
Well, the Perc 5i has 256 meg of cache on board. I also have 8 gig of RAM on my mobo with a 4 gig ram disk that houses my page file courtesy of RAMDISK + by Superspeed.
Stutter should not be an issue for me. :D

My other thought was that running 4 SSDs in RAID0 should alleviate any stutter problems also. After I install Vista, I will search for all the optimizations I can.

Mine is coming with a battery backup unit so I am less likely to get hammered by a power glitch.

The biggest plus though is the price. Similar controllers run $300 bux or more new.

I debated waiting for the Vertex drives to start shipping, but decided I didn't want to be too cutting edge.

Don
 
DonDon said:
Well, I have 4 X 30 gig OCZ Solid SSDs on order. They will be run in Raid 0 off of a Perc 5i SAS controller. I went with the cheaper drives since I was going to RAID 0 them, and this setup will prolly cap out the PERC 5. 600 MB/sec reads and 360 MB/sec writes in theory. I think the Perc will cap out at about 400 MB/sec though. :mad: Can't beat the price though.

For about $400 bux, plus $100 bux for the controller, I will have a 120 gig drive that should absolutely smoke the 80 gig Intel SSD.

I'm hoping to have the parts by this weekend to start playing. I will set it up for BM only to start with so I can do write testing. Can't wait to install Vista on it though.

Don
Click to expand...
smoke it at what? HD Tach?
 
Gskill Titans are looking pretty good.

Not as fast as the intels but a lot more space and not as expensive.
 
I don't know, we'll see.

I'll have to dig around for some other benchmarks to run when I get things up and running.

Any suggestions.

Yes, it should smoke it in HDTach.

The other issue was the controller. Most MOBO controllers can't handle the bandwidth of multiple SSD's. My current system does not even have RAID onborad. I wanted to wait until later in the year to upgrade the rest of my system to an i7 system, and the Perc 5i and cheaper SSD's was a great alternative. It will slide right into a new system down the road.

Yes, write stutter was a concern when I was researching this setup. That's why I went with a controller with 256 meg of onboard cache.

Don
 
I am reading about issues with XP and most are running Vista with the SSD drives. Is there an issue using XP with an SSD drive? I would really like to move to a drive that is faster then my 150 V-raptor to help with noise/heat/vibe etc.
 
The 64GB G-Skill Drives are on sale today for $20 less than yesterday at $119 with free shipping. They say this is a limited supply, not sure how many they have.
http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx

I just ordered one to play around with. I may use it as a game install drive or external. I decided to spend the extra $$ on a second GTX285 instead.
 
DonDon said:
Well, the Perc 5i has 256 meg of cache on board. I also have 8 gig of RAM on my mobo with a 4 gig ram disk that houses my page file courtesy of RAMDISK + by Superspeed.
Stutter should not be an issue for me. :D

My other thought was that running 4 SSDs in RAID0 should alleviate any stutter problems also. After I install Vista, I will search for all the optimizations I can.

Mine is coming with a battery backup unit so I am less likely to get hammered by a power glitch.

The biggest plus though is the price. Similar controllers run $300 bux or more new.

I debated waiting for the Vertex drives to start shipping, but decided I didn't want to be too cutting edge.

Don
Click to expand...

That sounds like a great idea. I am going to have to look into it more, may need more RAM if I set up my pagefile that way.

I suppose I could always move my pagefile to my WD 640AAKS and load OS onto the G-Skill. Would that solve the stutter?
 
notsane said:
That sounds like a great idea. I am going to have to look into it more, may need more RAM if I set up my pagefile that way.

I suppose I could always move my pagefile to my WD 640AAKS and load OS onto the G-Skill. Would that solve the stutter?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure. The biggest thing that will help me with stutter is the cache on the controller. The Ramdisk makes a huge difference when I switch between programs. My system used to be very slow after closing out of a game and then trying to browse the web. Now it does not even hesitate for a moment.

Ramdisk+ is 50 bux. Very much worth the money if you have the RAM to make it worth while.
 
I put the pagefile on mine. I move Internet cache, and temp files there.
 
EnderW said:
what do you use your ramdisk for?
Click to expand...

I use the entire thing for my page file. It's like having 8 gig of ram on a 32 bit system. I have no page files on my hard drive.

I read about this a few months ago in the [H]forums, but did not have the money to implement it until last week. It cost me about $180 bux total, but it is the best performance increase since I got my Q6600 last year.

Don
 
So, depending on what you're using your ramdisk for, isn't there a "ramp-up" time on every boot?
Every time the box is booted to desktop, the ramdisk has to be created, configured, pagefile created, possibly temp folders etc. need to be moved/created. I'm specifically thinking in the applicatioons to SSDs as boot drives. A lot of peeps are using ramdisks in that application. Now that sleep resume functionality is freakin' borked on the x58's, I've been forced to do complete restarts. How much "time" is required every reboot for said ramdisks to be "ready?"
 
Brahmzy said:
So, depending on what you're using your ramdisk for, isn't there a "ramp-up" time on every boot?
Every time the box is booted to desktop, the ramdisk has to be created, configured, pagefile created, possibly temp folders etc. need to be moved/created. I'm specifically thinking in the applicatioons to SSDs as boot drives. A lot of peeps are using ramdisks in that application. Now that sleep resume functionality is freakin' borked on the x58's, I've been forced to do complete restarts. How much "time" is required every reboot for said ramdisks to be "ready?"
Click to expand...

While I have not timed it, I did not notice any difference in my bootup time. This is RAM you are talking about. Typically 1000X faster than your average hard drive. Creating, formatting, and creating the page files takes microseconds, not milliseconds or seconds like a hard drive.

While it is possible to create Ramdisks that can survive a reboot, they rely on an image on the hard disk, and so you would have to live within the limits of said hard drive. I leave my page file set for windows to manage, so it does not need to create the entire page file during boot.

Don
 
I just picked up a G.SKILL 64gb (FM-25S2S) ssd to play with... seemed to have good stats for a 64gb ssd and the price is right for sure... going to put games on it... I am hoping the uber fast random access times will make "stuttering" better on lotro... but we will see... I am guessing it will improve things, but not eliminate it all together... this will be going on my x58 system..
 
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