The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

The link is faulty. I simply googled the product.

 

I fixed the link for you, sorry it got screwed up.

Stevo

 

Steve,

Why a Sata II SSD? It's half the speed of a fast Sata III. My Patriot is almost twice as fast, and it's still in IDE mode.



I'll pay the extra $40 to double my speed!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220603

Best Regards,
Russ

 

SATA II or III isn't going to make much difference with the SSD I believe there is enough headroom to handle even the SSD performance. My SATA II hard drives perform just as good as my SATA III new drives, for the most part. Your graph proves that I may only take a 30+% hit in performance. I'm suspect to those numbers as well.

Saving $60 bucks, is the true savings, right now when I'm tight for dollars is worth it for me and I'll upgrade it down the road so it was just a cheap way to test the waters.

Thanks for the input Russ and you're right I would have rather of had the SandForce than the route I went,
Stevo

 

Stevo,

I don't know why you would be suspect of those numbers. There's too many people reporting that they get slightly better performance than claimed by Patriot. Even in IDE mode, mine continues to get faster as it learns my computing habits. Bloody thing is just plain fast! The truth is, that the only reason I went for an SSD now was the cost of a new replacement HDD. 60GB turned out to be the perfect size choice, because with everything installed, I have 31GB of disc space left. When I first got it, and only had Win 7 and Avg installed, it took 14 seconds to boot up. After installing all of my software, it changed to 18 seconds. If I let "The Windows Experience" set the start menu, it takes 11 seconds to boot. Programs like Photoshop CS3, that normally takes 10-12 seconds to load, takes about 3 seconds. I sincerely doubt that those numbers are suspect. I would post my original pic of the performance, but it's on the old boot drive. If you look back about a month or so you will find the pic. The performance has improved dramatically since then. Maximum Write speed so far is 427MB/s, maximum Read speed, 401MB/s. It was 406 write and 260 read when I first installed Win 7 on it. It appears to me that it's working perfectly. AHCI should improve those figures to about 525MB/s write and 490MB/s read. It's one fast Mother Frogger, that's for sure!

Russ

 

Trust me, the amazing performance of an SSD compared to mechanical disks has absolutely nothing to do with SATA 3. Continuous speeds mean nothing, its all about random access speed, and for that, not even the best SSDs can really saturate ICH9, let alone SATA 2.

 

Program load times and system boot time I have no problem with your numbers. As the list of habits builds for sure your access times will decrease, but that isn't bandwidth which are the numbers I find to be suspect. I also believe your bandwidth numbers maybe burst and not sustained, then they make sense. If true SATA2 vs. SATA3 isn't going to hit me performance wise as bad as you have stated.

Bottom line your SSD is better and I'd like to have it but for a $60 difference and being tight for money right now it made sense for me to buy the SanDisk on sale. Also I'm not going from a faster SSD and will see a big increase in performance just going to the SSD I picked, so it is still a win-win for me.

Glad to see that you are loving your new SSD as I was wondering if it kept your enthusiasm still, it seems it has...

Thanks Russ take care,
Stevo

 

Stevo,

The price quoted is for the 120GB Pyro. I have the 60GB one which is $80.99 with the $25 MIR and free shipping. I have all my programs installed, including all my video software and the XP Mode software, and it still doesn't use half of the drives space. I don't see any need for a larger boot drive.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Apples for Apples it is a $60 difference from what I paid for and to what NewEgg has for the same size Patriot.

A 60GB is too small for my needs as I'm a power user and my C: partition bloats more than the average Joe's. If I used a 60GB I'd be close to filling it up and that is without having MyProgramFiles on it as well. I find it better to have at least 10% free space as I don't like to fill hard drives to the max since they become real slow if you do. SSD's may not suffer in this way but until I've played with them some I prefer to be conservative. If I built a system for my parents, sisters, or even most of my friends it might be enough space, not for me on my main system.

If I put my VM's on it I would need at least a 320GB as I have almost 200GB's or better in VM's and I could see that growing as well too.

Again glad to hear all is well and that the 60GB's is working great,
Stevo

 

40 suffices for me, just. With hiberfile disabled i have 2.5GB free. I'd like bigger, but for the cost, I can live without for now.

 

You're a moderator and never got your hands dirty? I give you guys wayy to much credit LOL! Just teasing.

 

Hi there Lethal, welcome to the thread, long time no see

 

No worries Lethal and good luck. If you have questions or run into problems everyone here is pretty sharp and should be able to help you with any needs you may have.

You'll hit a home run I'm sure,
Stevo

Sam,

My C: partition is 48.9GB used out of 90GB available and that is without my Profile folders on it or Program Files (except Common folders, AV Suite, Partition Tools, and Acronis which are on the C: partition). The few tools installed to C: don't take up much space so the rest would be the Commons and 7 bloat from other stuff installed on E: partition. This isn't due to using sleep mode either or backups of any kind. I probably could still use a 60GB but I would like to have my "Program Files" folders on my SSD too which will add another 20GB. This would put me at 70GB approximately without headroom so a 60GB wouldn't work for that setup.

Stevo

 

Lethal_B, I did it with help from these people here, and if I can do it I KNOW YOU can.

 

Then you have some severe C: drive whoring programs installed. I know the exact phenomenon you mean, and do suffer from that, but even with profile data and a fair few other program files (e.g. MS office, a couple of games, loads of small applications) I still only end up using 35GB on C.

 

Russ,

My new notebook came with CAS7 (7-7-7-21) RAM and I just upgraded it to G.Skill CAS9 RAM, with the same FSB rate, which improved my Windows 7 rating from 5.9 to 7.4, 7.9 is the highest rating possible. So lower CAS cycles don't always mean higher performance unfortunately.

Also I tried both internet indicators for Windows 7, the first one you posted which is like XP's is really nice but the second one which looks like a stop light stinks in my opinion. It screws up your Num/Caps/Scroll Lock functions which I use and I can't get use to their LED's showing activity. Thumbs down on the second one.

Just thought you might get a kick out of that,
Stevo

 

I imagine not all ram is created equal. Gskill is good stuff. The Ram in the notebook was probably cheapy stuff. HP, Dell, etc... they use the cheapest stuff possible. At least that has been my experience. Infineon for instance is something I've seen a few times.

 

The down side of my RAM purchase is that my lappy doesn't really accept 4 modules even though it has two RAM bays. It turns out I should have looked at it closer since only the top slot of each bay holds a stick of RAM. So if I want 16GB RAM I will need to buy a new pair of 2x8GB's instead of 4x4GB's.

On the bright side my lappy's second SATA bay works so I can add a second drive. The hight is limited so I'm going to buy a SSD and load the OS on that using my 640GB HDD for work & data. I'm thinking of getting this SSD but I'll have to pull the case cover off the SSD which will void the warranty, but allow me the space needed to make it fit.
Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F90GB3-BK 2.5" 90GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)


Or I'll just buy another one of these;
SanDisk Ultra SDSSDH-120G-G25 2.5" 120GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

The case on the SanDisk looks like it will breakdown better just leaving the board and nothing else.