Adding a new SSD Drive - what to do and what really governs the speed

[loginuser9999]

Hi gang,

Thanks for Toms people for always making everything understandable and clear.

I currently have an Intel 520 series solid state drive with 180gb that my OS, various stuff and a few games on it. I'm a big PC Gamer (thank god I have a patient, gamer Mrs.!)

I am hitting my spacecap with the two-three games I can usually fit, so I feel ready to break down and get another SSD drive. So here are a few questions that, despite building my own systems and being fairly comfortable, I don't have good enough info to answer (so I'm turning to the A-Team here)

1) If I get a second SSD drive rather than having one big ssd drive and I occasionally play games on either drive, do I lose any speed from having a second drive versus just one and/or do i lose speed from having the games on the drive that my OS is not on?

2) I was reading about drives and thought my 520 was super fast, but I saw a new drive that Intel has, the DC S3700 series

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-S3700-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B00A8NWCQY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378917423&sr=8-2&keywords=intel+s3700

I'm not the most astute at reading hard drive stats but is this a major difference from my Intel 520? Is it worth it?

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Series-Solid-State-Drive-2-5-Inch/dp/B006VCP8L2/ref=pd_sim_sbs_pc_6

Will I notice a dramatic change in my games?


Thanks for help in advance!

 

[mauller07]

i would just get a large HDD to put your games on, they see no performance improvement from being on an SSD unless its an MMO or a simulator like flight sim.

jsut leave windows on the SSD.

 

[loginuser9999]

Hmm - ok I believe you but, for example, on Skyrim, my load times on the HDD are 30-40 seconds and on the solid state drive they take 5 seconds. Is Skyrim just unusual? Or are you putting that as a MMO?

Basically, I was going to put total war shogun 2 and total war rome 2 (god i hope they fix it) on the second drive. I have skyrim and a few other things on the first drive

 

[geofelt]

The primary limiter of sequential speed is the 6gb sata interface.
Ignore synthetic benchmarks, they apply to servers with high(32) queue depths.
Normal desktop users do things one or two at a time.
All sata SSD's will perform about the same in normal usage.

You will have no problem with anything you put on a second SSD.
The major issue I see is the task of managing two drives.
A solution would be to buy a larger replacement ssd and clone your current ssd to that. Then market your old ssd.
Intel and Samsung offer free clone utilities for their products.

 

[loginuser9999]

cool thanks both!!