The only way an SSD is going to make a significant difference in browsing speed is if the machine you're using has a limited or suboptimal amount of memory. Upping the memory will make a bigger difference in that case, because Windows will cache the browser..
The biggest difference I've noticed with SSDs is that big games load in far less time, ie BF4..
You must be trolling us or are you that blinded by NV? Sapphire Tri-X 290s + SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB for the OS would mop the floor in
overall user experience over 970 SLI and a mechanical drive. As you know the more programs/media you install/uninstall on a mechanical drive and the more things you are running in the background (browser, anti-virus, apps), the slower it the mechanical drive gets and no amount of de-fragmentation can help. In fact, if you open 30 tabs in any browser with an 8-16GB RAM computer and check your memory usage, it will be well below 8GB, but then proceed to use the computer for 10 days, leaving it turn on at night, it will become unbearable slow without restarting at least once. This doesn't happen with an SSD.
In the real world app usage an SSD is
3-10X faster than a mechanical drive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQjc-XW0G7Y
In boot times into desktop on a system with many programs/games installed, it's a night and day difference, in the magnitude of 4-5X faster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRu9OeKNk28
And here is an inclusive test including boot time (
SSD is almost 600% faster for a power user), and loading 25 apps (SSD takes 24 seconds or nearly 450% faster vs. 1 min 50 seconds on a mechanical drive):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv5dCXiXFaw
If you combine booting up and loading your apps for work and so on, the difference will add up to 5 minutes or more which is a lot when you are just sitting there and waiting for things to happen! Worse, when you start working and switching between various apps, you will run into Not Responding browser errors, Flash Crashes that hang everything you are working on, random stuttering and complete unresponsiveness for prolonged periods of time in Windows 7/8 on a mechanical drive.
I would go as far as to say any 2014 system without an SSD/M.2/PCIe SSD or similar storage cannot be considered a modern system no matter what CPU and GPU it has because outside of games this computer will get outperformed by a MacBook Air. I refuse to spend $300 on a modern CPU + $500 on a modern GPU and then end up in the year 2007 in overall system feel. D:
So if you're going to be keeping hardware for a while, may as well get the latest tech.. GTX 970 has full DX12 compatibility, R9 290 does not.
This is a 100% grasping for straws comment.
1) NEVER in the history of any GPU generation did the first generation card with next generation DX could ever play the next generation's DX game effectively. Not once. I remember all the NV marketing that 7800GTX 256MB was ready for the next gen UE3 game engine and that was all but marketing gimmick. By the time UE3 games came out, they wiped the floor with that card. You always need 2nd or 3rd generation card of the last DX generation to max out next generation games. That's why right now we are using 3rd or 4th gen DX11 cards to play DX11 games (HD5870 was the first DX11 card in Sept of 2009).
2) Since Fermi and Even Kepler and GCN 11.2 will have partial support for DX12, unless you can tell us specifically what exactly does 970/980 have in DX12 that makes "full" DX12 support such a killer feature, it's meaningless to keep bringing this up. Fact is, 970/980 are already struggling in today's games (AC U, FC4, DAI), so what makes you think they will be fast enough for native DX12 games?
3) You keep talking about future proofing but it's better to buy a $220-250 290, save $80-100 on not buying the 970 and in 12 months, sell the 290 and use that $80-100 + resale value from the 290 towards a much faster card. You know what, let's talk about a real world example: someone bought 7970 1Ghz for $300 when you bought 770 4GB for $450. Now both 7970 1Ghz and 770 4GB are about the same in performance in the last 6 months but person 1 has $150 left over in the bank/savings towards his next upgrade, while the latter gamer has a 770 4GB that isn't any faster and $150
less. Your idea of future-proofing for 5-10% more performance has been disproven historically with previous generations. Future proofing comes into play if you are considering $250 7850 vs. $400 670 when there is a
big performance difference.
How are all those PC gamers who paid $100s extra to future proof with 680 4GB against 7950/7970 doing, or Titan users where Titan is often only as fast as a 280X/290 but cost $1000 at launch?
Facebook
Twitter