New Computer

[Rhius]

When I upgraded to an Intel 320 series 160gb SSD I experienced a performance increase far greater than any other incremental upgrade I've ever done. I am literally blown away at how fast Win7 loads, as well as any other application.

At the same time I picked up a 1TB WD Green drive for storage; when I'm done playing games, I archive them on the Green drive instead of deleting them outright.

SSDs are expensive but they kick the shit out of HDDs, imo; very much worth it.

Video cards, on the other hand; don't pay more than 200, maybe 250. You don't need more performance than that.

[Meraxiss]

I actually only put a 250gb HDD in with my SSD, as I have a 1TB external that holds the majority of stuff. But I agree with you on the VGAs Rius, the performance for dollar just doesn't keep abreast much past $200, at that point it makes more sense to wait for prices to fall or newer/better cards to come out.

[Carlctrl]

Yeah, I very much want to get a SSD, but not worth it for me atm. Speed is nice, but now I don't know what I'm missing. Once they get a bit bigger for the current cost I'll get one.

Back when they first came out I remember reading that SSD's had a pretty limited lifetime. That for a specific "block" of space you could actually graph out how long it would be before it was unusable if it was being accessed everyday. If i remember correctly, it would typically only last about 1-1.5 years for a daily user. I now read that this is only true for SSD's based on flash memory and for DRAM SSD's but i can't tell if the retail SSD's i see are flash or DRAM. Does any body know anything about this?

[Meraxiss]

they are flash based nand, and they say the life is now 1.2 million writes?, anyways its like 15 years or so, more than the life that you would have in a computer

[Zierlyn]

The thing with SSD drives is they do experience a SIGNIFICANT decrease in speed very quickly (like 50% slower in a few weeks) if they do not have some sort of "garbage collection" software built in. Almost all SSD drives come with collection software these days ("trim" is a common one, and usually you'll see it listed in the specs) so it's not too much of an issue. To keep the speed up with current gen SSD drives you'll still probably want to re-format your hard drive once a year or so (and really, it's good to do that with regular hard drives as well).

If money really isn't an option, there are PCI-E SSD drives, particularly the OCZ Revodrive X2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227660
This is what I want in my next system. =p It plugs into a PCI-E slot, eliminating the speed bottleneck of SATA. The one I linked is the 160GB version ($450 for anyone not clicking the link) but there's a 100GB version for $400.[/u]

[Rhius]

Windows 7 has all the trim support you need, and Intel drives come with a lightweight software utility that'll configure your system in the optimal way for an SSD.

I, uh, have never heard this before, about reformatting an SSD once a year. I think that's completely out in left field.

[Zierlyn]

Reformatting once in a while is actually a good idea. Windows by nature is a very bloated and sloppy OS. As you install and uninstall things, stuff gets left behind, etc. Even defragging doesn't really completely clean up a regular HDD.

It's not really necessary to completely reformat a HDD or SSD, it's just the only real way to actually clean up a hard drive and bring everything back to full working order.

I wasn't aware that Win7 came equipped with trim. Was it added in a service pack? I had thought that Win7 was released before SSD's were ready for commercial use.

[Meraxiss]

It was a service pack, Mac still lacks any kind of trim support. Win7 should also automatically disable defragmenting on an SSD, and I have not heard of a necessity for reformatting beyond the typical recommendation (years) with any storage device or OS. The biggest factors that affect SSD performance are the size of the drive, this impacts write speed significantly more, and the amount of available free space. Essentially size and speed are directly linked, and the more you have the faster the drive with all other factors being equal (SATA vs PCI-e, etc.). I think this may be the reason Z has heard of the performance slow downs in the drives, as people add more and more shit onto the drive it slows down because it has either a) not enough space to move data or b) Trim is not enabled. I have had my SSD in for several weeks and NOT experienced any slow downs, there are of course necessary steps to take to make sure that trim is enabled as well as other options to increase performance as well, but with newer and better technology and products even these steps will become automatically integrated. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911.html

[Zierlyn]

Wiki has a decent explanation of the Write Amplification effect that happens with SSD drives, and how garbage collection (trim) deals with the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_amplification

The reason I recommend an occasional reformat (I still think once a year is good if you're doing a lot of installing and uninstalling) is just to keep things a bit tidier, maybe get rid of any lingering viruses or malware from old programs long since forgotten. Also it cleans out the registry and starts it fresh. This isn't something specific to SSD's, and who knows, maybe because SSD's are direct-read, it might not even affect them.

[Rhius]

Zierlyn wrote:

The reason I recommend an occasional reformat (I still think once a year is good if you're doing a lot of installing and uninstalling) is just to keep things a bit tidier, maybe get rid of any lingering viruses or malware from old programs long since forgotten. Also it cleans out the registry and starts it fresh. This isn't something specific to SSD's, and who knows, maybe because SSD's are direct-read, it might not even affect them.

This isn't 1995 anymore, Z, and Win7 isn't Win95 either =)

[Zierlyn]

No, but it's still Windows, it still uses a registry, and useless registry entries still build up over time. I'm not talking about massive changes here, mind you. I'm only talking about shaving a couple seconds off here and there.

It's the real-life equivalent of emptying and moving a chest of drawers in order to vacuum underneath it. Arguably pointless, but dust still does get under there.

[Sanakil]

I got yo back Z!

It could be taken as a personal preference, but I agree with you, every now and again you feel the need to just start fresh and clean up the tidbits left behind from your uninstallings and the such.