How many people run SSDs?

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Ancalagon

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I'm thinking of buying a 240GB OCZ Agility 3 for my home desktop. Just wondering who else has an SSD and what they find the performance to be like? Is it worth it?

Its frikken expensive though.
 
Best money I have ever spent on my pc...

No idea why people are more likely to spend R5000 / R7000 on a video card, yet they disregard the slowest component on any system... the harddrive.

Opening applications installed on the SSD feels like it was minimized on the taskbar the whole time.
 
I agree - great investment. Space can be a bit of an issue (I have a 128GB drive in my laptop), but the performance boost is great.
 
Hmm I'll think about it.

My only concern is that my car needs some work - about R15k worth I think. Sigh.
 
I have one. System drive.. boots faster.... And in general everything happens faster... Basically just increases loading times of all apps.

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Running a 120gb Vertex 3 and really enjoying it!! At R2.5k it is a significant investment but in terms of performance vs cost it's worthwhile. I have a 18 month old mobo so had to spend an additional R600 on a SATA 6gb PCI Port Card. While I was at it I added another 4gb's of ram so all in R3400.00 but my machine is effectively relevant for at least another 18 months which is acceptable...
 
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I have an Intel 80gig X-25m in my laptop and the speed boost is great.
 
There is an issue with the new Sandforce based SSD's and BSOD in windows. I just bought an SSD last week and am experiencing it. I suggest you research thouroughly before you buy.
 
It really depends on a lot of things. If you have a laptop or something similar with a slow hard drive, yes, it will make a big difference. If you have a desktop PC with a 7200 rpm HDD, (and more importantly, lots of RAM), you'd have to know what to look for. Windows will boot up significantly faster, (say 20 seconds vs a minute before) and eerily quietly, and log in pretty much instantly. Some programs will start faster (most start pretty much instantly from a mechanical HDD anyways), the first time in the session you use them. Thereafter they will load from Windows' prefetch/superfetch/whateverfetch in RAM, which is still many many times faster than an SSD. Games on the SSD will load significantly faster, if they had long load times before. Most modern games however load pretty quickly anyways however.

Will it improve performance? Definitely. Is it a nice thing to have? Hell yes. Is it worth the money? Depends on your usage, but I'd have to say for most people, not yet. Especially the bigger ones. 60GB or so seems the maximum sane amount. More RAM and/or a Windows reinstall is usually a better idea. If you have enough, your swap file basically never gets used, and like I said, even cheap RAM is still a few orders of magnitude faster than SSD's or mechanical hard drives.
 
The 250GB SSD's are way too expensive for my taste.

I have a 30GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD at my office with Ubuntu 11.04 x64 on it, and a G.Skill Phoenix 120GB at my home for my gaming PC.
 
TJ99 said:
It really depends on a lot of things. If you have a laptop or something similar with a slow hard drive, yes, it will make a big difference. If you have a desktop PC with a 7200 rpm HDD, (and more importantly, lots of RAM), you'd have to know what to look for. Windows will boot up significantly faster, (say 20 seconds vs a minute before) and eerily quietly, and log in pretty much instantly. Some programs will start faster (most start pretty much instantly from a mechanical HDD anyways), the first time in the session you use them. Thereafter they will load from Windows' prefetch/superfetch/whateverfetch in RAM, which is still many many times faster than an SSD. Games on the SSD will load significantly faster, if they had long load times before. Most modern games however load pretty quickly anyways however.

Will it improve performance? Definitely. Is it a nice thing to have? Hell yes. Is it worth the money? Depends on your usage, but I'd have to say for most people, not yet. Especially the bigger ones. 60GB or so seems the maximum sane amount. More RAM and/or a Windows reinstall is usually a better idea. If you have enough, your swap file basically never gets used, and like I said, even cheap RAM is still a few orders of magnitude faster than SSD's or mechanical hard drives.
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Well i don't know what ssd you have but it sounds pretty crap :D. Got a 128gb in my home and office pc

The performance difference is day and night. You make it sound like the ssd is okish mean while it is the biggest speed boost i have ever given my pc :D. Most dramatic upgrade that has ever come to pc's. 60gb is not the right size at all, 60gb is the absolute minimum and i would not even recommend it if you game. It's not 60gb firstly so 2 games with windows 7 and your done. Most modern games have long load times, ssd cut it in half.

60gb as the maximum sounds more insane to me, it is the best 4k and 2k i have ever spend. Cannot think of a pc upgrade i loved more.
 
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killadoob said:
Well i don't know what ssd you have but it sounds pretty crap :D. Got a 128gb in my home and office pc

The performance difference is day and night. You make it sound like the ssd is okish mean while it is the biggest speed boost i have ever given my pc :D. Most dramatic upgrade that has ever come to pc's. 60gb is not the right size at all, 60gb is the absolute minimum and i would not even recommend it if you game. It's not 60gb firstly so 2 games with windows 7 and your done. Most modern games have long load times, ssd cut it in half.

60gb as the maximum sounds more insane to me, it is the best 4k and 2k i have ever spend. Cannot think of a pc upgrade i loved more.
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How much RAM do you have then? And no, most games don't have long load times now. Far Cry, Silent Hunter 3, those things had long load times on PC's of the day.
 
6gb and 4gb.

Games for me have not had long load times for about two and half years or so i reckon. SSD madness i tell you :D
 
Lol, it's not SSD madness, it's just the way newer games are. Most of mine are installed on my big mechanical drives, they don't load long either. If you have 8GB or more in Windows 7 (ie your swap file isn't really being used) the difference is much less.
 
TJ99 said:
Lol, it's not SSD madness, it's just the way newer games are. Most of mine are installed on my big mechanical drives, they don't load long either. If you have 8GB or more in Windows 7 (ie your swap file isn't really being used) the difference is much less.
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The interesting thing is i tested my system when i got the ssd and the load times were almost double, two years ago i think i was still playing battlefield 2 crysis 1 etc, my computer felt like a dog compared to the ssd version. Bare in mind all i did was image to ssd, so exact same copy different hdd.

Granted if you are choosing between a vga card and getting an ssd you would be a fool to go for the ssd but if you have 2k spare you just gotta get a 128gb even a 96gb is ok ssd :D, i am not certain about anything less than that unless you don't game of course. then even a 30gb should be fine and they are cheap now, like 800 bucks for a 30gb perhaps even less. Even 2k for a 128gb is cheap considering the performance. You are not going to find anything to change your pc into a beast for 2k :D

Anyways i am sounding like too much of a fanboi now :D but damn they are awesome.
 
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