SSD drives and MB with 6gbps worth it??

[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

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)

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Potentially!

What sort of daily activities will you be doing with said machine?

[SNAAKE]

ebay stuff, photoshop, HD video editing , watching HD videos(cant even play 720p now lol), live stream videos, basic web designs with flash, etc etc.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

photoshop will benefit quite a bit from an ssd, from launching faster to having the scratch disk be faster. that having been said, 64gb will be eaten up pretty quickly, so i'll assume you're pairing this with a traditional disk as well.

[SNAAKE]

yeah I will use my other WD black drive for storage. went ahead and ordered that 64gb ssd. thanks

[Dexter]

went ahead and ordered that 64gb ssd. thanks

Good man. I stuck an M4 64gb into my main PC (core2duo) a few months ago and it RIPS along now. Sequential reading from my boot drive has gone from 80MBmp to 280MBps and will shoot up to around 400-450 when I upgrade to a 6gbps Sata board.

Best bang for the buck you can do for your PC (as long as the HDD is the bottleneck, won`t be much use if your CPU is a donkey)

By the way, If you get BSOD`s after install, consider flashing to the latest firmware. Some users have been experiencing issues. You`ll also get a 3-5% performance boost.

http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx

[SNAAKE]

yeah I red about firmware upgrade. cpu is amd 6 core 3.2ghz.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

SSD firmwares are serious business. I recently had all of the data on a Intel 320 SSD vanish during the quiet moments of a reboot. Says Intel: "Oh yeah, oops. Here, apply this firmware patch, and it shouldn't happen again. But hey, backups, right?" 

[spoot]

SSD firmwares are serious business. I recently had all of the data on a Intel 320 SSD vanish during the quiet moments of a reboot. Says Intel: "Oh yeah, oops. Here, apply this firmware patch, and it shouldn't happen again. But hey, backups, right?" 

Serious?  Man, I went with an Intel SSD cuz they seemed to have alot less of this stupidity.      And I assume the flash update wipes the drive?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

It shouldn't. I've already updated another drive that hadn't gotten amnesia yet and it updated without an incident.

http://communities.intel.com/thread/24205

[SNAAKE]

thats why I dont keep important files on the main/boot drive. never know..

[SNAAKE]

posting from the new computer

pretty sure I didnt break anything. heatsink install was easier than I thought it would be. maybe its harder to take it off lol. cpu temp around 50c is normal right?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

For what CPU?

[SNAAKE]

cpu is amd 6 core 3.2ghz.

phenom 2

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

i see l