Replace My AM2+ Setup For Around $500

[THRiLL KiLL]

pppbbbttt... they need to do thier homework

yes, there was an issue, as a good chunk of amd systems are using marvel as a sata controler. this has been fixed with recent driver updates

http://www.behardware.com/news/11249/trim-with-amd-marvell-ahci-drivers.html

 

[mfenn]

Well I'm getting a lot of talk over at HWC that AMD + SSD is a bad idea, especially due to the lack of TRIM. AkG is saying that even though the OS and drivers have TRIM, it may not get passed over to the SSD. Any clarifications on this?

You are fine as long as you use the SATA ports built into the South Bridge and not on some addon controller.

Now, why you would want to build AMD right now is a different conversation altogether.

 

[mfenn]

Yes if you've never used an SSD you should go with that. You have enough cpu power. It is surely the HDD that makes your system feel slow. You can install the SSD in your system as the new boot drive without reinstalling windows. You just need to make your partition small enough to fit onto an SSD. For example if you buy a 64GB SSD then you want to reduce your partition to around 54GB max (to be safe, trust me you dont want to screw this up). Now in order to get your drive down that small may take some work. You can uninstall your big games. You can copy any movies/music onto an external/usb flash drive. I use easus partition manager to shrink my partition.

Once it is shrunk I use the standard windows 7 backup to back up my drive. You'll need ~60GB of free space somewhere to do this btw. You can make a new partition on your old HDD and put the backup there. I use acronis true image home to do this on XP. Acronis is nice because I keep my boot drive under 28GB, which acronis can make fit onto my 16GB thumb drive.

Cloning from an HDD to an SSD is not recommended because the partition alignments are different for HDDs and SSDs. You will very likely end up with misaligned partitions which will cause you SSD to need to perform two writes to flash for every one write that the OS sends.

The best idea is to reinstall Windows fresh to the SSD. You can then back up and restore that all you want.

 

[geokilla]

You are fine as long as you use the SATA ports built into the South Bridge and not on some addon controller.

Now, why you would want to build AMD right now is a different conversation altogether.

I'm not building an AMD rig. I'm simply keeping/upgrading it to speed it up.

 

[mikeymikec]

Only when prices are as high as they are and when you have a deep need for IO. When 1tb drives settle back down $50, I'll pick up 10 1tb hard drives for the price of one puny SSD.

RAID 0
160MB/s x 10 = 1600 MB/s and a respectable IO count.
Realistically:
Raid 0
160MB/s x5 = 500-800MB/s, $250. No SSD can touch that in terms of performance per dollar.

Realistically, yes they can. The problem with hard disks isn't their maximum throughput for most people, it's the seek time. On those terms, what you're saying is like "broadband can't touch my load balancing 10-line dial-up rig!". Broadband doesn't feel fast just because of its maximum throughput, it's the latency.

Also, how often do you think that RAID0 setup is going to get pushed to its limit, versus the amount of times that it will be asked for such small amounts of data that one wouldn't notice the difference between a single HDD and that array? Not to mention what will happen when one disk bites the dust.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm not building an AMD rig. I'm simply keeping/upgrading it to speed it up.

You haven't actually said what you want to be speeded up.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

Realistically, yes they can. The problem with hard disks isn't their maximum throughput for most people, it's the seek time. On those terms, what you're saying is like "broadband can't touch my load balancing 10-line dial-up rig!". Broadband doesn't feel fast just because of its maximum throughput, it's the latency.

Also, how often do you think that RAID0 setup is going to get pushed to its limit, versus the amount of times that it will be asked for such small amounts of data that one wouldn't notice the difference between a single HDD and that array? Not to mention what will happen when one disk bites the dust.

simple. Raid 5.

but the cost of setting up a raid (and maintiang it) cost way more then a simple 64gb sdd (for os) and single large capacity hdd would cost.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

also getting back on topic.

If you want a decent boost, with out breaking the bank, go on the forums here and pick up a used icore7 920 cpu/motherboard combo and a couple more sticks of ram for tri-memory setup. and then go to new egg and buy a new 64gb sdd drive (for around 100)

that will put you in the 500 range. If you need help finding stuff in the fs section let me know and i can pm you links (and no i dont have any for sale, so this is not a shamless promotion :awe

 

[geokilla]

You haven't actually said what you want to be speeded up.

I have in the OP.... Basically it's feeling sluggish when I multitask. I probably need to do a format...

also getting back on topic.

If you want a decent boost, with out breaking the bank, go on the forums here and pick up a used icore7 920 cpu/motherboard combo and a couple more sticks of ram for tri-memory setup. and then go to new egg and buy a new 64gb sdd drive (for around 100)

that will put you in the 500 range. If you need help finding stuff in the fs section let me know and i can pm you links (and no i dont have any for sale, so this is not a shamless promotion :awe

Thanks for the offer, but I'm in Canada

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

I have in the OP.... Basically it's feeling sluggish when I multitask. I probably need to do a format...


Thanks for the offer, but I'm in Canada

?????

there is a canadian newegg

http://www.newegg.ca/

 

[geokilla]

?????

there is a canadian newegg

http://www.newegg.ca/

You were talking about buying used parts in the FS/FT section.

Yea I know there's a Canadian Newegg but prices are not always the best there. I shop around on RFD looking for the best price ^^

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/pro...=77903&acd=SyIrj13jmG8-eerifxgC_2UFF.yhMihJpA

Is this SSD good?

 

[sm625]

You were talking about buying used parts in the FS/FT section.

Yea I know there's a Canadian Newegg but prices are not always the best there. I shop around on RFD looking for the best price ^^

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/prod..._2UFF.yhMihJpA

Is this SSD good?

Wow you just owned the entire slickdeals community. I would buy that if I was you. While you're waiting for it to be dilivered, read up on how to flash the latest firmware. Also, try this this: http://www.mydefrag.com/ Run the "system disk monthly" option. That is one piece of software I wish I had 5 years ago. It makes my computer much faster than any other defragger I ever used.

 

[mfenn]

I'm not building an AMD rig. I'm simply keeping/upgrading it to speed it up.

I thought we determined that the best way to speed up your machine for $500 was to get an Intel CPU/mobo plus SSD?