Best option for performance.

[Onlyusemeisaac]

Okay, I currently have two 360GB regular HDD's in RAID0, which gives me pretty good, and cheap, performance. I shall soon be running into some money and I'm thinking of an upgrade. I mainly do gaming, with a bit of recording and video processing on the side.

Here's my question, would I be better getting one 128(-ish)GB SSD or two 64(-ish)GB SSD's in RAID0, for best performance/£?
My price range is about £100 - 175. It would be really helpful if you could even recommend some drives!

Thanks a bunch :]

 

[Onlyusemeisaac]

EDIT: I'm looking for SATA-II as I do not have a SATA-III mobo currently, unless the price difference is marginal and it'l semi-"future-proof" it.

 

[k1114]

2 ssds in raid 0 will be faster. The crucial m4 is good, don't know how much it costs for you though.

 

[Onlyusemeisaac]

How good are they over long-term in RAID0? I know that some have limited 'trash' clean-up. As TRIM isn't available in RAID. The 64GB version of the M4 is £92 for me.

 

[jitpublisher]

I would get a single 64GB SSD for your OS, and you do know that a good single SATA II drive like a WD 1TB Black is going to be faster than the drives you have in RAID right now? I am using a 60GB SSD for my OS, and the WD 1TB for programs and storage, and the performance I am getting is pretty decent. But if you want the raw performance of the SSD's over a regular drive, (they are simply amazingly fast, I'll grant you that) I would buy the 64 SSD for the OS, and a 128SSD for programs, if that is enough storage space for you. But bottom line, just putting your OS on a SSD by it's self makes for a very, very snappy PC for everyday use. Boot times for instance are just crazy, my PC takes about 15 seconds total.

 

[Onlyusemeisaac]

I'd quite like to have an SSD thats large enough for the OS + everyday programs + one or two of my most played games. I don't think 64GB would be large enough for me :/ My current setup gives me pretty good sequential speeds, I think. Not sure if a single 1TB drive would give similar performance, although I may be wrong.

 

[k1114]

Well you did ask best performance but I would agree with jitpublisher, I would go with 1 ssd, that's plenty of speed (and I do render so speed is important).

 

[Onlyusemeisaac]

Okay, thanks :] Sorry if I wasn't the too clear. So the 128GB M4 would be a good way to go?