Best SSDs For The Money: April 2011

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opmopadop

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Any chance you can add a summary table to see the best SSD sorted by price group?

Makes it easier rather than clicking around on multiple tabs ;-)
 
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Deleted member 489584

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Great article, and I had wondered when we would start seeing these pop up!

Personally, I would like to see a graph showing the history for price/GB of SSD's. Maybe even sorted by performance brackets (low/mid/high). The beginning of the article would be a fine place to see it updated monthly.

I see a lot of articles talking about how much cheaper newer SSD's are to manufacture using smaller tech. We consumers could use the chart(s) to see if these savings are being passed on to us, and if so by how much.
 

billj214

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Would it be possibly to build an SSD Hierarchy based on speed and not price similar to GPU charts?
Are there any drives which support raid?
Do functions like Trim make any drive more reliable or a better drive?

Excellent article, definitely helps consumers with all the choices.
 

biao39

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What about OCZ RevoDrive X2 $409.99
Sequential Access - Read up to 740MB/s
Sequential Access - Write up to 690MB/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?
Item=N82E16820227659&cm_re=ocz_revo-_-20-227-659-_-Product
 
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> a file operation completes 85% faster on a high-end SSD than it does on a high-end hard drive, but there is only an 88% speed difference between a high-end hard drive and a low-end SSD.

Typo? This doesn't make any sense to me.
 

agnickolov

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I just got a 240GB OCZ Vertex 2 for $410 on newegg.com, and that's before $30 rebate! It's a better value than the 200GB one in the $400 category and of similar value to the 256GB RealSSD for $420.
 

assafbt

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Nice on identifying a need and posting this new article series, however one thing will make the notes on the smaller drives obsolete in a very short while, and also requires mentioning on the higher capacities.

I mean Z68 Chipset's SSD caching. I refer readers to the article from this very site: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68-express-lucidlogix-virtu-ssd-caching,2888-2.html
Soon smaller cheap drives will be able to give a significant boost to a whole system's performance, and your cheapest drive is just shy of the 18.6GB minimum to qualify to it. Furthermore, you consider the pros and cons of smaller SSD-s only in the mindset of how are they as boot drives, or system drives, and soon they will have a whole new role as HDD boosters.

Considering cache brings whole new factors into the deal - for instance, for cache you should have a look at sole read performance as write speed is bound to the HDD write speed for write-through scenario which might be the popular scenario. Also, suddenly 32GB that is barely enough for boot drive, gets reconsideration as it may very well be more than enough to cache an HDD. Which brings another question to light - how much SSD cache is optimal for a certain HDD size? Is 32GB good only upto, say 1TB, or is 40GB needed already for 512GB, but is also enough for 2TB, and so forth.

So - clearly smaller SSDs require another look with caching, but also bigger SSD-s. Consider someone who purchased a 160GB, but requires performance for 600GB of software? 3 super sized SSD-s are not a rational expense for anyone - Z68 allows for partial allocation for caching if I remember correctly, and giving 30GB from the 160GB to cache a 1TB HDD may be a solution that allows a system drive + certain crucial apps on pure SSD, plus a cached HDD for the lower priority performance requirement. So thinking about these things applies (even if to a lesser extent) also to the bigger SSD-s.

Just my thoughts for improvements, otherwise a good read on readers needs, and a good article.

Assaf
 

TopGun

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Count me as another who is interested in a SSD hierarchy chart.

I'd actually like to see hierarchy charts for cases, PSUs, heatsinks, mobos, dvd burners, etc. I know a lot of those categories would be pretty subjective, but they'd be soooo helpful.
 
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"Steam has a bad habit of not letting you choose where to put your games once it's installed"

not true, you can drag and drop the steam directory anywhere, even onto a totally new computer and it will work.
 

jednx01

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I really wish that prices would drop on the prices of SSDs. I can't wait for the day when SSDs (or whatever new and faster option comes out) get as cheap as modern standard HDDs.
 
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"a file operation completes 85% faster on a high-end SSD than it does on a high-end hard drive, but there is only an 88% speed difference between a high-end hard drive and a low-end SSD" - Does that mean low-end SSD's are faster than high-end SSDs? I think there is a typo somewhere.
 

ekidhardt

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I like this article! Thanks for putting it up.

One note however, is that I'm pretty sure that two 32 gig drives, or two 64 gig drives in a raid 0 is going to rock the pants off a single 64 or single 128.

I would really like to see you add those comparisons. Just as Toms does with video cards in SLI/Crossfire.

thanks!
 
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