Post by Whatsit on Aug 31, 2009 19:41:39 GMT -5
For those who are interested in the current Solid State Drive market, AnandTech just posted a big SSD update;
www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631
It's great if you want to understand the current technology, but it's also 27 pages long, So I'll summarize below. Note that information in the review generally assumes you'll use the drive as an OS and applications drive, which is the main strength for SSD. If you just want a file storage drive, get a traditional, mechanical drive.
Oh, and I read the entire thing because I'm going to purchase one soon, which is why my summary has a very 'purchase reccommendation' slant to it.
Oh! And for any SSD doubters out there, this is what SSDs can do for your computer;
Bah why are there no units there? It's measured in seconds to load. So the SSDs are 4.5x as fast as the fastest mechanical drive when loading applications.
www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631
It's great if you want to understand the current technology, but it's also 27 pages long, So I'll summarize below. Note that information in the review generally assumes you'll use the drive as an OS and applications drive, which is the main strength for SSD. If you just want a file storage drive, get a traditional, mechanical drive.
Oh, and I read the entire thing because I'm going to purchase one soon, which is why my summary has a very 'purchase reccommendation' slant to it.
- There are some god-awful SSD drives on the market. If you buy a SSD as part of an OEM computer from the likes of Dell and HP, you'll get a terrible drice. So don't do that.
- Worthwhile consumer SSDs on the market now come in two flavors, based on the controller chip; Intel and Indilinx. More on Intel in a bit. Some Indilinx drives are;
- OCZ Vertex
- OCZ Agility
- Patriot Torqx
- G.Skill Falcon
- Super Talent UltraDrive GX
- OCZ Vertex
- Indilinx drives have good performance across the board.
- If you want the cheapest possible SSD that's actually worth using, get an OCZ Agility.
- Intel drives have super-fast small file read and write, good large file read, but sub-par large file write.
- This means that photoshop, and other large-file editors will actually slow down if all their data is on the SSD.
- The consumer-level Intel drives are the X25-M series.
- Second-generation X25-M drives have recently hit the market, with somewhat improved performance, and will be fully supported by Win7. The first-generation ones are still good, but second-gen are much better.
- In price-per-gigabyte, the Indilinx come out a little ahead.
- (Actually right this moment, Indilinx is a lot cheaper, because Intel didn't manufacture anywhere near enough second-generation drives to meet demand, so prices on that drive have gone a little crazy. Expect adjustments once the early adopters settle down)
- Performance for games varies a lot by game, but it's generally at least as good as the best mechanical drive.
- As far as general advice goes, pick either an Intel X25-M or an Indilinx listed above for the price and size you want.
Oh! And for any SSD doubters out there, this is what SSDs can do for your computer;
Bah why are there no units there? It's measured in seconds to load. So the SSDs are 4.5x as fast as the fastest mechanical drive when loading applications.