Mechanical HDDs are bottlenecks? SSDs are better?

I've heard that if you really want a high end system, you need to have an SSD (Solid State Drive) to complete it. I've heard that even if you have the most kick-ass graphics card and processor, your system will be severely bottlenecked by a mechanical HDD, even if its 10,000 RPM. Is this true? How much faster is an SSD that a HDD? Is it worth the extra cash? Considering that you're paying more money for less storage.

SSD's are alot faster than conventional harddrives, however they're not bottlenecks when its comes to performance.

SSDs are hardly worth it imo.millerlight89

i have to agree even tho i have read/heard alot of good things about them but for the price it's not interesting me very much : /

To me they are worth it, at least the small to medium sized capacity ones. Being able to load Windows7 Ultimate 64 and click on Mozilla and have my browser up and running in less than 5 seconds from seeing the Windows start screen is great. Guess I am just pretty impatient, apps load almost instantly with an ssd, their access time is like 0.1 ms or something, where most mechanicals are 7.0ms+.

To me they are worth it, at least the small to medium sized capacity ones. Being able to load Windows7 Ultimate 64 and click on Mozilla and have my browser up and running in less than 5 seconds from seeing the Windows start screen is great. Guess I am just pretty impatient, apps load almost instantly with an ssd, their access time is like 0.1 ms or something, where most mechanicals are 7.0ms+.

BeavermanA

[QUOTE="BeavermanA"]

To me they are worth it, at least the small to medium sized capacity ones. Being able to load Windows7 Ultimate 64 and click on Mozilla and have my browser up and running in less than 5 seconds from seeing the Windows start screen is great. Guess I am just pretty impatient, apps load almost instantly with an ssd, their access time is like 0.1 ms or something, where most mechanicals are 7.0ms+.

millerlight89

Whee, SSD, I want one. In a year or two everyone will agree it is the way to go. Not enough people had use/own one and too expensive to gain popularity as of yet. I kind of regret never getting a raptor or raid setup, single drive is slllowwww. In a more technical standpoint as gigs advance into terabytes mechanical reads are too slow and SSD is like an SD card on steroids loads instantly because the way is store allows it to read faster.

I learned the hard way... I bought a RiData drive and it was just terrible. Because it had a JMicron controller. The controller is so bad it can't keep up with the data flow so it causes all your apps to freeze up for a few seconds over and over and over. Pretty much anytime you are doing anything that is moving data, like a virus scan, or windows update your apps choke and freeze.

Almost all cheaper drive use Jmicron so they all suck. Intel is the only brand out there that is any good and they are still too expensive and all SSDs loose speed over time.

The technology is just too new and too expensive. Luckily NewEgg gave me a full refund for that RiData drive I bought. I had it less than 24 hours before I returned it!! Pure garbage!

Another thread,you lied!MonsieurX

This thread has nothing to do with my RIG!

I've heard that your system will be bottlenecked by a mechanical HDD. Is this true?BluRayHiDef

It's a slight improvement but not really worth the money. Also the improvement is only seen in loading data... maybe if a game was designed around an SSD then there'd be a huge overall performance boost, but that's not happening anytime soon. The only thing that makes them valuable is for portable systems because you don't risk scratching the HDD when you bump your laptop and the hdd is spinning. At $6 a GB it's not practical for gaming.

Not worth it, but I may get one when there is a price drop.

I am interested in SSD for performance but we still don't know enough about reliability. Considering how flash disk die so easily I have my doubts and will probably wait a couple of years for the prices to go down and the technology to mature.

At $6 a GB it's not practical for gaming.

jrhawk42

To be fare we do use them at work and they are a big improvement there. I work for a large bank and our builds have a ton of security, HD encryption, etc ,etc. Laptops with 5400 RPM drives take a good 5 to 7 mins to fully load at when booting up. With the SSDs they will load in about 50 seconds. This is a huge improvement and because of this we are not even ordering PCs with regular drives anymore. But we only by Intel SSDs and they really are the only band you should look at. Not just because I say that but read some articles on Anandtech, Tom's etc. They all same the same thing too.

I think for some applications, especially the business world and laptops good SSDs are worth it. But not for home PCs and games.

Just looked some SSD's up on Newegg to see what the prices and storage are now since it's been awhile since I last looked. I'm very surprised to see that they've already come out witha 1TB SSD. And it can be your's for the low, low price of only $3,799.00.

That highlights an important point. Most SSDs in a sane price range for a HDD have too little memory to be useful, especially if you put it in a gaming rig. Case in point: My Steam partition is nearly full and it's 112GB in size and I still have about 10 games or so that aren't even installed. That doesn't even include the other games that I have on other partitions which probably eat up at least another 50-75GB of space. Hell, Vista just by itself consumes more than 12GB of HDD space. And then when you factor in all the music, movies, TV shows, pictures, and non-gaming applications that you're sure to put on your disk, you realize you need a lot of storage space. So what is a gamer going to do with a meager 80GB worth of SSD space? Sure, it's blazing fast, but it better be considering how often you're going to be installing and uninstalling games on your PC in order to make room for your newest game.

Right now on newegg most 1TB drives run about $100-$150. In contrast, that same amount of money will only get you a pathetic 30-40GB of SSD memory. And if you want to get that same 1TB of memory in SSD space then you're going to need to blow the aforementioned $3,800. Considering the insurmountable chasm in storage space for price, I'd say that an SSD is most certainly not worth the money you'd blow on one with a decent amount of memory. I mean, why blow $700 on a 250GB SSD when you could use that money to get an HD 5970 instead? And for the cost it would take to get a truly decent amount of memory (imo 500GB) you could put two HD 5970s in crossfire. Now I don't know about you, but I'd choose crossfired 5970s over an SSD any eight days of the week.

I got a 120Gb SSD just for the heck of it. It's fast for loading windows, it's instant acces when your looking for something in your computer. I haven't tried a game on it... well, if you can afford it, then it's worth it... if not, then your not missing a big step in improving your PC.

They aren't meant to store all your random crap. Most people just use them for their OS and commonly used apps, where the SSD shines. I have 2x500 and a 320gb for storage, but those aren't frequently accessed and don't even need to be that fast because the app that uses the files takes the longest to load, which is on the ssd. If your desire is to replace all your drive capacity with ssd tech, that just isn't practical yet unless money means nothing.

I am interested in SSD for performance but we still don't know enough about reliability. Considering how flash disk die so easily I have my doubts and will probably wait a couple of years for the prices to go down and the technology to mature.

Gog

Just looked some SSD's up on Newegg to see what the prices and storage are now since it's been awhile since I last looked. I'm very surprised to see that they've already come out witha 1TB SSD. And it can be your's for the low, low price of only $3,799.00.

That highlights an important point. Most SSDs in a sane price range for a HDD have too little memory to be useful, especially if you put it in a gaming rig. Case in point: My Steam partition is nearly full and it's 112GB in size and I still have about 10 games or so that aren't even installed. That doesn't even include the other games that I have on other partitions which probably eat up at least another 50-75GB of space. Hell, Vista just by itself consumes more than 12GB of HDD space. And then when you factor in all the music, movies, TV shows, pictures, and non-gaming applications that you're sure to put on your disk, you realize you need a lot of storage space. So what is a gamer going to do with a meager 80GB worth of SSD space? Sure, it's blazing fast, but it better be considering how often you're going to be installing and uninstalling games on your PC in order to make room for your newest game.

Right now on newegg most 1TB drives run about $100-$150. In contrast, that same amount of money will only get you a pathetic 30-40GB of SSD memory. And if you want to get that same 1TB of memory in SSD space then you're going to need to blow the aforementioned $3,800. Considering the insurmountable chasm in storage space for price, I'd say that an SSD is most certainly not worth the money you'd blow on one with a decent amount of memory. I mean, why blow $700 on a 250GB SSD when you could use that money to get an HD 5970 instead? And for the cost it would take to get a truly decent amount of memory (imo 500GB) you could put two HD 5970s in crossfire. Now I don't know about you, but I'd choose crossfired 5970s over an SSD any eight days of the week.

gameguy6700

:roll:

Really? Did you just search for the most expensive drive possible? Most people buying a SSD get one just for their OS. Usually in the range of 60-120GB and cost $200-$400. You are over exaggerating.

Right now on newegg most 1TB drives run about $100-$150. In contrast, that same amount of money will only get you a pathetic 30-40GB of SSD memory. And if you want to get that same 1TB of memory in SSD space then you're going to need to blow the aforementioned $3,800. Considering the insurmountable chasm in storage space for price, I'd say that an SSD is most certainly not worth the money you'd blow on one with a decent amount of memory. I mean, why blow $700 on a 250GB SSD when you could use that money to get an HD 5970 instead? And for the cost it would take to get a truly decent amount of memory (imo 500GB) you could put two HD 5970s in crossfire. Now I don't know about you, but I'd choose crossfired 5970s over an SSD any eight days of the week.

gameguy6700

I'd go with HDD for now. And holy snip zit! That's a very expensive one! D=

I am interested in SSD for performance but we still don't know enough about reliability. Considering how flash disk die so easily I have my doubts and will probably wait a couple of years for the prices to go down and the technology to mature.

Gog

SSD's only degrade if you continually delete and write data. If you only access data from the drive and scarcely delete and write data, the drive will last virtually forever.