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SSD drives and MB with 6gbps worth it??

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SNAAKE:
time to upgrade my computer..its little too old. I ordered most parts but waiting for the motherboard and SSD drive. I already have a good mechanical drive(WD black..its fast) I can use for this new system. but considering SSD drive because its future proof(I guess?)

now there is a $150 difference. $120 for the drive and $30 difference for motherboard. basically the same board with 6gbps support(instead of 3gbps) cost $30 more.

or I can just get the newer motherboard with 6gbps support but skip the SSD drive for now.

inputs?

newmanfamilyvlogs:
This will show you improvement in loading things. Booting window, loading roms, etc. If this isn't a current concern at the moment, then it's money wasted.

If you're running modern PC games that have a loading time associated with them (SFIV, for example), then it'll pop up faster. But most games in MAME (any non-chd) and any other non-iso based emulator are loading the entire ROM into ram, and thus after the initial the speed of the disk is mostly not important (if you don't have enough ram and windows starts paging to disk (the swap file) then you can see things slow down while it's writing).

SSDs make great boot drives, and then traditional hard drives for all the big files. This is how I have my cabinet set up. Windows/Hyperspin/Videos/Snaps on an SSD, roms on two mechanical drives. Windows boots to Hyperspin in 14-15 seconds (including bios time).

I wouldn't worry about 3gbps vs 6gbps too much. You're not loading data of a sufficient size for this to make a noticeable difference. I'm not even sure that many of the currently available drives even take full advantage of the 6gbps controller anyway (I'm sure there are a few higher end SSDs that might), and even if it theoretically doubled the access speed, when it comes to things like loading screens in mame we're talking a fraction of a second vs a slightly smaller fraction. The loading screens in Dreamcast, Playstation, Saturn, etc games also occasionally have limitations on how fast they can be accelerated by the emulator. Those systems had an expected disk access speed, and some games take this expectation pretty seriously. The emulator will only feed data into the emulated system's ram so fast, regardless of what your disk might be capable of, so you'd have to consider that on a case-by-case basis.


Specifically what board/drive are you looking at?

SNAAKE:
thanks :applaud:

this is for personal computer use. wont even be playing games on it other than trying out random things here and there. I am considering the newer version of the board. probably wont bother with the drive for now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131646 $130 board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131668 $100 board without 6gbps sata controller

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148441 SSD drive

newmanfamilyvlogs:
Ah, well that kind of throws all of my assessments out of the window. (: For a regular desktop an SSD is a massive improvement in performance. There are a lot of hidden benefits with such low access times, such as a substantially reduced time penalty when Windows has to page to disk.

SNAAKE:
is that $150 improvement?

(lol)

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