SSDs Sata And Other Questions

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pilks

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So the time has come for me to irresponsibly blow money on my computer.
My current set up is:
i7 930
12 gig ram DDR3
HD 6950
5 X 500 gigs
1 x 2TB
Asus P6T
750 Watt Power Supply
2 x 20 Inch Screen
1x 23 Inch Screen

Now I am wanting to go for 2 60gig SDD drives to RAID them and install my current games I am playing and my OS onto it. The drive in question is:

ADATA 60GB S511 Series SATA III 2.5 Inch

Now the question is I have SATA 2 on my MB. Now it is my understanding that the drives alone have Max Read: up to 550MB/s, Max Write: up to 500MB/s. Given the fact SATA 2 has 3GB bandwidth overhead. Just one of these drives will consume 85 to 90% of the available bandwidth making RAID 0 ineffective.
Is this correct?
Next question :
Does RAID 0 on SSD affect access time drastically ?
Next Question:
Is this SSD fine or would another brand be better?
Next question:
Would it be better to save cash and go for complete MB, Ram upgrade and CPU in say 3 months ?
Or should I spend the money else where in my system?

My justification for SSD is the performance gain used with building and compiling my Silverlight Projects. Seen the difference and it is amazing !

My main uses for my system are:
Semi serious but Casual .NET development
Screwing around with any software This includes VMs
Gaming.

Thanks for the help
 
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I would not bother with raid, rather get a bigger SSD as 60GB is not going to allow you to install many games or big apps.
 
Gathered so getting 2 X 60 gigs running in RAID 0 will give me 120 GIGs
 
imo you don't need to upgrade in three months.

Adata is a good brand. Other options below. All above 450ms read/write

Corsair CSSD-F90GB3-BRKT
Corsair CSSD-F120GB3-BRKT
Adata S511 120Gb
Kingston sh100s3/120G
Corsair CSSD-F120GBGT-BK
 
Just remember that the SATA II (3Gbps) would give you a theoretical maximum of 300MB/s data throughput, so 1x SATA III SSD alone will saturate the SATA II bandwidth!

So if you're considering RAID 0 with SATA III SSD's, I would suggest that you either get a new motherboard, or at the very least a good SATA III PCI-E controller with RAID 0 support.

The SUNIX SATA III PCI-E 1x card that Rock Bottom Computers suggested would be limited to a total of 500MB/s, so I won't recommend it for a RAID 0 SSD configuration!
You'll need one that utilizes at the very least a PCI-E 2.0 4x slot!
 
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Pada said:
Just remember that the SATA II (3Gbps) would give you a theoretical maximum of 300MB/s data throughput, so 1x SATA III SSD alone will saturate the SATA II bandwidth!

So if you're considering RAID 0 with SATA III SSD's, I would suggest that you either get a new motherboard, or at the very least a good SATA III PCI-E controller with RAID 0 support.

The SUNIX SATA III PCI-E 1x card that Rock Bottom Computers suggested would be limited to a total of 500MB/s, so I won't recommend it for a RAID 0 SSD configuration!
You'll need one that utilizes at the very least a PCI-E 2.0 4x slot!
Click to expand...

Rock Bottoms Card would be the only option i have Given the fact that my other PCI Express Ports are consumed by a low end 3d Card to run my third monitor.
So logically it would make sense,correct my logic here, would be for me to get one 120G SSD (OCZ Vertex 3 ) And the expansion Card. The motherboard option would mean having to get a new CPU . My Current rig is powerful enough for the next 6-12 month and really cant justify the cost.

I can get the 120G OCS Vertex 3 for 119 pounds , would this be a better option?
 
Look, in the end you'll only be sacrificing the maximum sequential read/write operations if you're going to connect it to a SATA II port, instead of a SATA III one. The random read & write operations may exceed SATA II's bandwidth slightly, but usually not by much.

The whole point of the SSD is for faster random read & write operations, and not really for sequential operations.

I'm running a G.Skill Phoenix 120GB SSD (SATA II with max rated speed of 285MB/275MB read/write) with my Asus P6T Deluxe v2 and I'm very satisfied with the performance increase over the that of HDD's.

When I mentioned that you can get a new motherboard with SATA III support, I didn't imply that you have to get a new socket motherboard. You do get socket 1366 motherboards with USB3 & SATA III support, but they're still fairly expensive.

If you can get the OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 SSD for 119 GBP (just under R1500) without shipping it and then having to pay tax on it, then you should most definitely do it, because they go for about R2400 in SA!

Another myBB forum member recently installed a SATA III PCI-E card and the performance increase wasn't as big as you'd expect. So I'd say stick with your current motherboard, even if you get a high performance SATA III SSD.
 
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killadoob said:
What will you be using the 500mb read and write for?
Click to expand...

Well RAID will put it up to 1024mb/s
To be honest i am not sure , I just want a faster response time from my pc. Faster to open and close things.I need compile times to be alot quicker when working.
 
pilks said:
Well RAID will put it up to 1024mb/s
To be honest i am not sure , I just want a faster response time from my pc. Faster to open and close things.I need compile times to be alot quicker when working.
Click to expand...

Look majority of us won't use 200mb read and write let alone 1000, bare in mind it is not the read and write that opens everything so fast it is the seek time, raid 0 used to be faster when drives had low read and writes but i doubt raid is any faster now than a single setup if you don't max out the read write bandwidth. So if you don't use 500mb read and write you won't notice a difference.

At the end of the day though raid 0 is a great idea, i mean whether you have a 120gb raid 0 setup or a 120gb single drive setup it's exactly the same thing. In terms of cost it may not be as the raid could be higher, not sure of the pricing so i could be wrong.

If the pricing is the same though go with raid 0.
 
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