Please help me in choosing the correct SSD

[youssef 2010]

I have a limited selection of SSDs in my country. I will tell you the ones I'm interested in and please recommend one of them


A-Data S599: TH's SBMs often include these drives so, I'm thinking of buying the 128GB version http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211471

Kingston SSDNow V+100 96 GB SSD: The capacity is less than A-DATA but, if it offers significantly better performance, I'm game http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139412

OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGT 100 GB: If this drive's performance is significantly better than the previous two, I'm willing to forgive the extremely high price http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227532

One of the latest TH articles is talking about Second-Generation SandForce SSDs. Do you I should wait until they're available in my country?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post

 

[adampower]

s599 and agility 2 are very similar in that they employ a sandforce 1200 based controller and sata 2 connectivity. The Kingston uses a Toshiba controller (I'm pretty sure). In benchmark tests the Kingston is somewhat less of a drive.

All three are good drives and you will see an improvement over HDD spinning drives.

I would choose the A-Data.

You can wait for sandforce 2000 drives but they are a small upgrade from sandforce 1200.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

I just bought that very Kingston 96GB SSD for my boot drive (NewEgg had a big sale on it recently) and all I can say is "Wow!" Performance is awesome compared to the previous 1TB platter drive (which is now my data drive). Having to remember to install everything to the second (data) drive will take some getting used to.

Read this review: Linky. It shows the upgraded performance compared to a 7200 RPM platter drive in a notebook. The performance boost in a desktop will be similar.

Even at full price, the price/performance ratio is much better than most SSDs. You get roughly 85% of the real-world performance of the best SSD (OCZ Vertex 3), for $100 less.

I purposely bought a non-SandForce drive because the performance is much more balanced. With a SandForce, they get great performance with compressible data, but they suck with non-compressible data.

 

[youssef 2010]

@Leaps-from-Shadows: You're comparing SSDs to HDDs where I'm interested in the best SSD of the three that are available in my country at the current time

@adampower: Thank you so much for your reply, it's really enlightning, I would also choose A-DATA but I thought this co

 

[youssef 2010]

@Leaps-from-Shadows: You're comparing SSDs to HDDs where I'm interested in the best SSD of the three that are available in my country at the current time. However, thank for reassuring me that whatever my choice will be, I will enjoy an excellent performance boost compared to my HDD.

@adampower: Thank you so much for your reply, it's really enlightening, I would also choose A-DATA but I thought TH's community might have other ideas.

 

[youssef 2010]

@Leaps-from-Shadows: You're comparing SSDs to HDDs where I'm interested in the best SSD of the three that are available in my country at the current time. However, thank for reassuring me that whatever my choice will be, I will enjoy an excellent performance boost compared to my HDD.

@adampower: Thank you so much for your reply, it's really enlightening, I would also choose A-DATA but I thought TH's community might have other ideas.

 

[adampower]

Leaps-from... is right, however. The jump from platter to ssd is so huge that the difference from one ssd to another is relatively small. Tom's Hardware has done a couple of these review/rating things and they feel the same way. The price/GB versus performance gain really favours the low end drives. However, there are better drives for similar prices... hmmm I don't know if I'm making any sense... Here's the link.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssd-caching,2966.html

You can see which drives Tom's writer, Andrew Ku, thinks are most suited to different price points. At the end of the day you will have to choose between the drives you can buy.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

@Leaps-from-Shadows: You're comparing SSDs to HDDs where I'm interested in the best SSD of the three that are available in my country at the current time. However, thank for reassuring me that whatever my choice will be, I will enjoy an excellent performance boost compared to my HDD.

That's exactly what I was telling you -- you don't need to get the most expensive one, as you'll never notice the difference in real-world applications anyway. I also outlined reasons why the SandForce drives aren't necessarily the best choices. Plus, I gave you my real-world experience (not just an opinion after reading some artificial benchmarks) of one of the exact drives you were asking about. Evidently you weren't looking for that kind of information. *shrug* Oh well...

 

[youssef 2010]

@Leaps-from-Shadows: You totally missed my point, I meant I will be spending money on this SSD so, why not use this money to get the most performance possible?

You don't know how comfortable you made me feel about SSDs because there's nothing like a personal experience when you're looking for info. It's just the most accurate form of info ever.

At the end of the day, at least you took the time to reply to my post. I can't thank you enough for wanting to help me.

Sorry for posting the same comment three times but the good ol' chrome kept returning an error.

 

[youssef 2010]

Okay, the playing field just narrowed a bit more, now there're only two SSDs available( The rest are too small for my needs):

A-Data S599: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211485 . I was thinking about buying the 128GB version. Sadly, only the 64 GB is available at the current time.

Corsair Force Series F80A: This SSD has the same transfer rates as the S599 but has more capacity http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233161&Tpk=F80A

 

[adampower]

I put an f80 in my wife's laptop some time ago. She loves it. Never touched it since.

That being said. Sandforce is sandforce. 34nm NAND is what it is. Between s599 and f80 I would go with price/gb. 64 gb is fine but you need to manage it well. In fact, until you get to 240gb and retire your spinners to storage only, there will be some management anyway.

Go for it. You'll be glad you did.

Check for 'tweaks' before you install. Basically you should unplug all spinning drives from your mobo. Set bios to ahci. Install win7 to ssd and, preferably, instal the latest intel F6 rst driver during install. After that, tweak as you wish.

 

[youssef 2010]

I put an f80 in my wife's laptop some time ago. She loves it. Never touched it since.

That being said. Sandforce is sandforce. 34nm NAND is what it is. Between s599 and f80 I would go with price/gb. 64 gb is fine but you need to manage it well. In fact, until you get to 240gb and retire your spinners to storage only, there will be some management anyway.

Go for it. You'll be glad you did.

Check for 'tweaks' before you install. Basically you should unplug all spinning drives from your mobo. Set bios to ahci. Install win7 to ssd and, preferably, instal the latest intel F6 rst driver during install. After that, tweak as you wish.

What is the F6 rst driver? I have an AMD board so is there a similar driver for AMD?

 

[adampower]

Sorry I got my threads crossed. The intel driver is good for intel southbridge or sandforce chips.

For AMD board just use the microsoft driver. Just install win7 with your bios set to ahci mode and it will install the driver automatically.

 

[youssef 2010]

@adampower: Thanks. I know my question might seem stupid but it's mt first SSD so, I wanted to know everything I can to avoid the usual problems i.e. the unusual problems will be enough for me this time

 

[youssef 2010]

Best answer selected by youssef 2010.nnUpdate: Got the Vertex 3 Max IOPS and I couldn't be happier. Thank you guys for your precious help and support.