128gb SSD vs 256gb SSD- REAL World Difference?

[copernicii]

Intel i5 2500k
Asus P8p67 pro
Ati HD5870

Currently I have a 60gb OCZ Agility 2 in my desktop as a boot drive.
Im looking to upgrade to a Samsung 830 series SSD
Since this is a desktop, storage capacity of the new SSD is not a huge issue for me, my main question is there a REAL WORLD difference btw the 128gb vs 256gb Samsung 830?

I know in benchmarks that the 256gb is far faster than the 128gb, but the 256gb variant is nearly double the price. Would I notice a huge difference between the two?

-Some gaming (skyrim, BF3, TF2), mostly productivity (PDFs, Microsoft Office)

 

[blastingcap]

I haven't really felt a difference. 4K random read/write is what you want to look at, not sequential transfers which are rare (you aren't using the SSD to move around huge video files or anything, in all likelihood) and will be fast even on the 128GB version. Those 4k random r/w speeds separate the men from the boys when it comes to SSDs... except that you will have a hard time finding a boy in today's market, like the horrible early-version JMicron-controlled SSDs. The men drove the boys out of the marketplace.

That said, I'd get the 256GB SSD anyway if you are putting games on it, as games can take up a ton of space, esp. with savedgames. You don't ever want to fill up an SSD or even get it sort of close to max... that's asking for trouble due to how SSDs handle file deletions and overwrites and such.

Alternatively get the 128GB SSD for boot/OS/web etc. and stuff the games on a fast HDD if you have a budget. Your games will take slightly longer to load but it's usually not a big deal. Unless it's Shogun 2 (epic loading times).

 

[Yellowbeard]

The biggest "real world" difference you'll see IMO is capacity. These days, a 128 is going to fill up FAST with just the stuff you have listed above. Any drive, SSDs and HDDs, are going to slow down as they become more filled.

 

[stateofmind]

blastingcap,

according to the reviews on anandtech, the Intel 330 120GB and 180GB performances are quite different with the 180GB having a good advantage in the incompressible data case:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5817/the-intel-ssd-330-review-60gb-120gb-180gb/4

I'm asking out of ignorance - won't you feel it?

 

[Yellowbeard]

blastingcap,

according to the reviews on anandtech, the Intel 330 120GB and 180GB performances are quite different with the 180GB having a good advantage in the incompressible data case:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5817/the-intel-ssd-330-review-60gb-120gb-180gb/4

I'm asking out of ignorance - won't you feel it?

It really depends on what you are doing. If you were doing a large or massive file transfer with highly incompressible data, you might. But, most of the world will never see the difference without either a stopwatch or a benchmark result.

You'll see VERY little difference in day to day usage.

 

[blastingcap]

blastingcap,

according to the reviews on anandtech, the Intel 330 120GB and 180GB performances are quite different with the 180GB having a good advantage in the incompressible data case:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5817/the-intel-ssd-330-review-60gb-120gb-180gb/4

I'm asking out of ignorance - won't you feel it?

OP was asking about Samsung 830 128GB vs 256GB I believe, not Intel 330 120GB vs 180GB.

If you read what I wrote, I said 4k random is the most important measure and even the link you linked to shows that all of the SSDs are competent. Even the slowest one, the HyperX 3K 240GB has over 40MB/s speeds on 4k random read which is phenomenal compared to HDDs; the Intel 330s of 120 or 180GB capacity were pretty close, both in the fifties.

And 4k random writes were all out of the world, the slowest one being 46 MB/s (Intel X25-M G2 160GB) which is still excellent. The Intel SSD 330 120GB was at 78.6GB, and the 120GB was at 151.3GB which is out of the world compared to HDDs. Etc. etc. Just focus on the 4k random read/write numbers and if they are 40MB/s or higher, I doubt you would feel much of a difference even if they went to 400 MB/s.

I used an Intel X25-M G2 for a while and it was hard to tell it from a Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 (128GB or 256GB) until I did something like a large sequential transfer, which didn't happen very often since I didn't use it as a storage drive for music/photos/videos or anything. Mass storage is the kind of job you'd want to give to a much-cheaper-per-GB HDD.

 

[stateofmind]

thanks

 

[pauldun170]

Intel i5 2500k
Asus P8p67 pro
Ati HD5870

Currently I have a 60gb OCZ Agility 2 in my desktop as a boot drive.
Im looking to upgrade to a Samsung 830 series SSD
Since this is a desktop, storage capacity of the new SSD is not a huge issue for me, my main question is there a REAL WORLD difference btw the 128gb vs 256gb Samsung 830?

I know in benchmarks that the 256gb is far faster than the 128gb, but the 256gb variant is nearly double the price. Would I notice a huge difference between the two?

-Some gaming (skyrim, BF3, TF2), mostly productivity (PDFs, Microsoft Office)

I have both.
No difference besides capacity

 

[Mr. President]

I'd also go with the 128gb unless you simply need the space. It's seek times, and not throughput, that mainly makes SSDs faster than HDDs. In practice, the times that you see a disks throughput maxed is actually quite rare.

People tend to think of a game's loading time as time being spent reading from disk when significant parts of it is actually decompression being done on the CPU. I often keep the resource monitor running on my secondary display and I almost never see read speeds go above 100mb/sec unless I'm doing file copies.

 

[corkyg]

AFAIK, there is a difference of 128GB more capacity. Anything else is really only noticeable in these ubiquitous benchmarks yhat many users seems so fond of.. Oh yes, there is also a difference in cost.

So, for normal use, I don't believe you'll see any other differences.

 

[tweakboy]

Intel i5 2500k
Asus P8p67 pro
Ati HD5870

Currently I have a 60gb OCZ Agility 2 in my desktop as a boot drive.
Im looking to upgrade to a Samsung 830 series SSD
Since this is a desktop, storage capacity of the new SSD is not a huge issue for me, my main question is there a REAL WORLD difference btw the 128gb vs 256gb Samsung 830?

I know in benchmarks that the 256gb is far faster than the 128gb, but the 256gb variant is nearly double the price. Would I notice a huge difference between the two?

-Some gaming (skyrim, BF3, TF2), mostly productivity (PDFs, Microsoft Office)

830 series are all same speeds no matter how man GB you get. the agility 2 is a disaster Im surprised it still works. Grab a 256GB because 128GB might not be enough....but if you grab the 128GB it is same speed as 256 and 512GB.

 

[Blain]

830 series are all same speeds no matter how man GB you get.
Grab a 256GB because 128GB might not be enough....
but if you grab the 128GB it is same speed as 256 and 512GB.

wrong again tweakie

 

[copernicii]

Thanks guys for the responses, this was really helpful. Ive been casually trying to google the answer to my question on and off the past couple weeks. And nothing really came up between 128gb vs 256gb real world differences.