Dilemmas with SSDs..

[target50]

i dont know which brands are good...
are there any good brands for SSDs that can be recommended?
im looking for something around 128GB at decent price range.

and another question... my MOBO only has SATA 3Gb/s headers. would that drastically change the performance of SSDs? and would it still be worth buying SSDs if i dont use a 6Gb/s port??

 

[Pinhedd]

Toms posts a monthly list of the best SSDs at each price range. I very highly recommend consulting that

Your motherboard lacking SATA III is not a huge deal. Any SSD on SATA II will still vastly outperform any platter drive on SATA III. You will not get the best possible performance from the SSD but it will still be a huge improvement

 

[bloodstorm69]

It is definitely worth it! and realistically it won't impact the performance of the drive much at all, my reccomendation for an inexpensive no frills drive would be the Crucial M4, not sure on the 128 gig ones, but in the last week I have seen the 256 gig ones as low as $180 with free shipping.

 

[geofelt]

My current brand recommendations for SSD's are for Samsung 830 and any Intel.
They make their own nand chips, and have the werewithal to do better testing and validation.
120gb is a good size, expect to pay about $1 -$1.20 per gb.

The real value of a ssd is the random i/o response time which is minimal, 50x that of a hard drive. That is what the os does mostly. It will make desktop operations feel so much quicker.

Sequential speeds can be impacted by 3gb, but you will not notice it, except in synthetic benchmarks. It will still be 2x the speed of the best hard drive.

I think a ssd is absolutely one of the best performance upgrades you can make to a pc.

Is it worth it?
I think so.
But your circumstances may differ. Only YOU can decide worth.

 

[Supernova1138]

Yeah, SSDs are definitely still worthwhile if you only have SATA II. My motherboard only has SATA II, and my Crucial M4 128GB is still quite fast in day to day use. As said above, SATA II will hold back an SSDs performance in benchmarking scenarios like sequential reads and writes, but in real world use, it's mostly 4k reads and writes that are done, not sequential, and 4k reads and writes are not affected by the slower speed of SATA II.

 

[fantastik250]

I'm also using my Crucial M4 on my SATA II ports, it's still fast.

 

[target50]

sweet! thanks for all your responses! i am definitely going to keep these advices to choosing my SSDs!! really helped a lot

and definitely going to get my hands on a SSD soon...

 

[JackNaylorPE]

From a performance and longevity standpoint, nothing touches the SSD's with premium toshiba toggle mode flash (Patriot Wildfire, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G (latest revision), OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS, and Mushkine Chronos Deluxe). Add proice to the ix and the Chronos Deluxe stands alone.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4328/mushkin_chronos_deluxe_120gb_solid_state_drive_review/index13.html

To sum it all up with a bow on top, [with the Chronos Deluxe] you get amazing performance, extremely long service life and a hassle free low price point on a drive that literally has very little competition in the marketplace.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4328/mushkin_chronos_deluxe_120gb_solid_state_drive_review/index5.html

Another option would be a Hybrid HD / SSD ...... SSD will boot to Windows in 16 seconds....the Seagate 750 GB Momemntus does it in 17 seconds

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=806&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=7
$150 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148837

Older 32 MB cache version is $80 ($20 off w/ promo code EMCNDNB37, ends 6/14)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148599