SSD

[jackDEFECTORbauer]

Woot its payday and I've just ordered a 2nd generation Intel X25M G2 SSD from overclockers. Should get it tomorrow unless the courier messes up the delivery.

Although it's not cheap from what I've read it should offer me a massive perfromance boost compared to my Raptor (not even using it at the mo, running a bog standard 250Gb drive)

A review if your interested! http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3605

[Die_Doggy_Die]

Would love one of these but can't really afford it on my rebuild budget - gonna opt for 2 SATA2 drives and Raid them for now

When prices drop will be in need of a reformat anyway and will get myself one then

If you can afford the SSD then go for it - ENJOY

[bambam]

do us a favour and time something on your existing machine before and after the SSD install, e.g. boot or CSS load...

gracias, Bamz

[Slartibartfast]

I bought an SSD about 6 months ago , http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=367355 when I built my pc .Huge performance boost for some thing worse for others . As far as I could find out one of the main problems is that winxp is optimized for mechanical drives but not for SSD's , not to sure about vista . I found a lot of helpful information here
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... hp?t=42487

[bambam]

Huge performance boost

I've seen loads of web performance charts with FunkyDiskoTachometer disk transfer speeds etc. like this from Anandtech (note the Raptor comparison in the last bar):

taken from this review:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=3607&p=4

So... you'd think your PC would totally kick ass. But I haven't seen a good review that actually measures things I'd care about, like boot time. Any1 got a link?

p.s. is it just me? where'd the forum avatars go?

Bamz

[jackDEFECTORbauer]

Not timed it yet, I may do later if I have some spare time, but it does boot noticably quicker. I'd estimate win7 is booted and 100% loaded in less than 30 seconds. Apps open straight away.

I did do a quick bench with hdtune.

Raptor 74gb
approx 70mb peak bandwidth
8ms random access time

Intel SSD
200+mb bandwidth
<0.1ms random access

Might put CS on it, but my steam folder is huge and would fill the drive Just happy that windows runs sweet - they're supposed to be releasing updates when win7 finaly ships, something called TRIM, complicated stuff but supposed to help with keeping the SSD healthy and fast.

One thing I have noticed is firmware on my drive is pre-production - they had better release and update that is compatible (latest one refuses to update)

[groinshot]

I need to get on to sata at least first