Some ssd advice with reguards to gaming

Metadeath

Junior Member
Feb 24, 2013
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I've been considering getting an SSD mainly for a boot drive but possibly for loading WoW onto.
Im semi scared of SSDs after seeing the semi frequent reports of fragility when it comes to SSDs and don't want to kill an $100+ investment.

The question I'd like answered is there enough of a performance boost to want to use it for boot and wow or would it be a better idea to leave wow on a different drive?

Are SSDs as frail as I've seen them made out to be? I've had HDDs powered on for days upon months with 0 issues will a SSD be able to handle that?
Whats a good option for around 80$ USD?
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
2
81
Yes, SSD completely worth it for boot as well as WoW.

The good SSDs are not any more prone to dying than a HDD.

Most SSDs come with 3 year warranties. If they fail, RMA for a replacement.

$80 might get you a 120GB or 128GB SSD if you find a good sale. You missed out on all the Xmas sales a couple months ago. Sales are more rare these days, but still happen on occasion.

Example from 12 days ago.

Another recent example for $90.

Keep an eye out in the Hot Deals forum. Pay attention to the discussions, because there are also hot deals on not so hot SSDs. For instance, the Crucial M4 is a good SSD but the Crucial V4 is not. The Kingston V200 is not a good SSD, but V+200 is. SanDisk Extreme is a good SSD and SanDisk Ultra Plus is decent, but the "plain" SanDisk SSD is not very good. My point is to find a good deal, and do some basic research before placing the order. Often people will talk about it in the thread, or you can find reviews.
 
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Metadeath

Junior Member
Feb 24, 2013
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What about OCZ? I have found a few decent deals on some of them but I've seen here ans there reviews about them.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
2
81
OCZ is a special case. :p

They were notorious in the past for rushing to be first to market and ending up with half-baked SSD firmware (partly the fault of SandForce in some cases). Also, some feel that the actual products are lower in quality (I'm not 100% convinced).

Like others I have mentioned, there are good and not so good OCZ products when comparing performance. For instance there are still older Vertex 2 products still on the market which you should not be considering especially since they did an in-line revision that reduced performance and capacity of a number of the models without being open about it to the consumer. Since they are all sold with the same name, I can't be guaranteed of getting a particular one so I avoid them all. Vertex 3? IMO it is a reasonable product.
 

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
4,762
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OCZ are just to be avoided. They have baited and switched on the customers along with shipping very unreliable products for multiple generations, their failure rate is literally twice that of the other manufacturers, often exceeding the failure rates of hard drives which is truly astonishing. Considering alternative suppliers can be found for the same chips its usually best to choose someone else.

SSDs aren't any more fragile than HDD, they should in theory last considerably longer than the average hard disk and end up in read only mode once they have run out of writes. In practice however you need backups just like any normal disk.

Performance wise they are around 5x faster for big transfers and 150x faster at smaller transfers. Some games do benefit (Wow is one of them, as is Arma 2, as is Shogun total war) whereas others do not (Call of Duty) seem to.