If you had to choose fast drive/fast cpu versus ssd/slow cpu?

[Emulex]

Say the fastest core 2 duo there is. 4gb of ram. 640gb WD fast drive. typical work use. XP or WIN7 32-bit only.

Or give up 2gb of ram; 640gb trade for intel 80gb (or 40gb) and drop down to a E5300 (with intel-vt)

Has anyone tried this for typical use? (light gaming sims; more business work).

2gb of ram costs alot these days! with 32bit o/s you might only get 1.2gb out of 2gb (4gb issue) - same with win7 32bit.

Has anyone thought about or tried "trading down" the meat of the system for the lustre of 250mb/s ssd reads and near zero latency?

what are your thoughts?
1. weekly defrag hard drive
2. time to backup machine (wake up-backup-sleep)
3. time wasted for antivirus scan (wake-up-scan-sleep)
4. any power savings from lessor cpu/ram and ability to instant shutdown the ssd/come out of sleep faster (or hibernate or cold boot WOL)?

 

[baddog60]

Why not get an AMD X2 that you might be able to unlock to an X4. Then you could afford the SSD and with the possibly of a higher end CPU. You can always add more memory later if you need to save money that way.

 

[fffblackmage]

4. any power savings from lessor cpu/ram and ability to instant shutdown the ssd/come out of sleep faster (or hibernate or cold boot WOL)?

Generally, the "lesser" cpu will consume less power.

It seems like you're going to be using virtualization. If that's the case, you want more ram. I kinda doubt you need the "fastest" C2D, unless "work" mean some really cpu intensive programs.

And no, I have no thought about "'trading down' the meat of the system for the lustre of 250mb/s ssd reads and near zero latency." I've thought about adding "the lustre of 250mb/s ssd reads and near zero latency" to my system.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

That's a tough trade to decide on, for sure. I would bet if I'd used an SSD then I would probably strongly lean towards the SSD + lower-end "meat". I haven't tried one yet though, so I'm not one of the converted. It really comes down to an almost religious thing, I think, and I mean that in a non-bad way. Once you've tasted it, you love it, etc.

If your typical work load is CPU/RAM intensive then it obviously swings things the other way. That's the only compelling reason to consider for the "non-converted" IMO. I'm a developer so most of my work stuff is pretty CPU/RAM intensive. If your work load isn't CPU/RAM intensive, I say jump on board the paddy wagon and become a convert. I doubt you'll regret it.

40GB does seem really small though.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I've been running benchmarks on the Core i5 661 setup on my sig and when my freespace went from 25GB to 15GB, frames went down up to 10% in average. If you are going to fill up your SSD to near maximum, the benefits will decrease astronomically.

 

[Emulex]

remove gaming
put in

browsing/office/web-apps/ no virtualization but in dire cases (lowest end cpu i could think of).

How much slower is the fastest core 2 DUO versus the E5300? 20%?
Even as a developer you probably have used perfmon to watch your cpu spin itself in wait-lock for disk i/o to happen (or just look down at the disk i/o light - and watch it light up) - neither of these really happen much with SSD any more.

 

[JAG87]

I'd take the cheaper CPU, cheaper HDD, Win 7 x64 and 8GB of ram.

With Superfetching and Sleep/Hybernation, I see absolutely no point in an having an SSD. If you are stuck to x86 and low ram, surely go for SSD.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I'd take the cheaper CPU, cheaper HDD, Win 7 x64 and 8GB of ram.

With Superfetching and Sleep/Hybernation, I see absolutely no point in an having an SSD. If you are stuck to x86 and low ram, surely go for SSD.

This, and your last post Emulex, more closely emulate my priorities. RAM (and x64) are top of the list, second would be hard drive perf (so I've been wanting an SSD quite bad), and then CPU. I do a lot of database work, and I'm compiling code all the time.

 

[TemjinGold]

Why not get an AMD X2 that you might be able to unlock to an X4. Then you could afford the SSD and with the possibly of a higher end CPU. You can always add more memory later if you need to save money that way.

This. In your price range, AMD gets my vote.

 

[jimhsu]

Windows 7's resource monitor is a useful way to gauge system requirements.

Of relevance is:
CPU - obviously. How much CPU usage do you get when performing everyday tasks? Are you ever "bottlenecked" in time sensitive situations (video, 3D work, gaming, etc)?
Memory - Does you "In Use" bar ever approach the maximum (don't use the task manager reading)? Are you swapping to disk at all?
Disk - Watch the Disk Queue Length when performing everyday tasks. Does it ever significantly exceed 1 and stay there? As a server admin rule of thumb, optimal disk queue lengths should be below n, where n is the number of disks in your RAID array (or 1, if using a single disk).

Many symptoms of users feeling their PC is "slow" is caused by one or more of these three factors (the remaining one is poorly designed software/interfaces, which is (as they say) a "software problem"). It's up to you to identify which ones are most applicable.

 

[pjkenned]

How much slower is the fastest core 2 DUO versus the E5300? 20%?

It's a lot slower. Also, why not core i3-530 or i5-650? Fry's has the i3-530 with a pretty bad biostar motherboard for $119 after $15 rebate this week. No speedstep but 3.6ghz is super easy to get and you get hyperthreading.

Also, as a point of reference, my i5-650 consumes less Kill-A-Watt watt's (Maybe KAWw from now on) than my Atom N330/ION system at idle (but 50w+ more encoding video) so having a fast dual core doesn't mean costly nor high power consumption.

 

[ncage]

Say the fastest core 2 duo there is. 4gb of ram. 640gb WD fast drive. typical work use. XP or WIN7 32-bit only.

Or give up 2gb of ram; 640gb trade for intel 80gb (or 40gb) and drop down to a E5300 (with intel-vt)

Has anyone tried this for typical use? (light gaming sims; more business work).

2gb of ram costs alot these days! with 32bit o/s you might only get 1.2gb out of 2gb (4gb issue) - same with win7 32bit.

Has anyone thought about or tried "trading down" the meat of the system for the lustre of 250mb/s ssd reads and near zero latency?

what are your thoughts?
1. weekly defrag hard drive
2. time to backup machine (wake up-backup-sleep)
3. time wasted for antivirus scan (wake-up-scan-sleep)
4. any power savings from lessor cpu/ram and ability to instant shutdown the ssd/come out of sleep faster (or hibernate or cold boot WOL)?

Go watch this video with the man himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOGz7t6wL8A

You will see the SSD makes the most significant performance improvement over ANYTHING. Including Core i7, more ran....ECT