SSD Capacity/Performance

[Anteaus]

I'm about to order 3 SSDs, all Samsung 830 series. Two of them will be 128GB drives and will be used as system drives for my laptop and desktop. The third drive will be 256GB and will be used only for games on the desktop.

I've read that as drives reach capacity performance can drop off significantly. I'm confident the system drives will be fine, but I know I can fill the 256 easily given my gaming habits. Can someone please verify if what I read is true and if so how bad is the impact? If there is a performance decrease how much room should I leave free on the drive in order to prevent it from happening?

Thanks in advance.

 

[sm625]

You will never get your money's worth in performance for that 256GB drive. A 1TB platter HDD will work just fine for most games. If there is a game you play a lot, copy the folder onto the ssd, and copy it back when not playing. It takes all of 30 seconds to do and saves you $200.

SSDs are only worth it for system files, swap files, and antivirus files.

 

[jwilliams4200]

I've read that as drives reach capacity performance can drop off significantly. I'm confident the system drives will be fine, but I know I can fill the 256 easily given my gaming habits. Can someone please verify if what I read is true and if so how bad is the impact?

For most gaming, your primary consideration is read speed. There is little or no change in read speed as the SSD is filled. Filling the SSD can have a significant effect on write speed, but very little on read speed. So I would not worry about it unless you think having degraded write speed is going to affect you.

 

[Anteaus]

You will never get your money's worth in performance for that 256GB drive. A 1TB platter HDD will work just fine for most games. If there is a game you play a lot, copy the folder onto the ssd, and copy it back when not playing. It takes all of 30 seconds to do and saves you $200.

SSDs are only worth it for system files, swap files, and antivirus files.

Well, games are a money pit and and in that sense I'll never get my money's worth out of any of this. From my end I've decided that if I'm going SSD I'm going all the way or not at all. I have a few large games that will benefit directly from SSD (FSX for one and thats almost 40GB with addons), so while I may not see the benefit in every game, I think all my gaming will be that much better off.

As for copying, wouldn't copying large games all the time lower the lifespan of the drive, especially on a smaller drive where there aren't so many places to write data?

 

[Anteaus]

For most gaming, your primary consideration is read speed. There is little or no change in read speed as the SSD is filled. Filling the SSD can have a significant effect on write speed, but very little on read speed. So I would not worry about it unless you think having degraded write speed is going to affect you.

Thanks

 

[thelastjuju]

I wouldn't worry all that much about the paranoia you see over speed degradation.

Its probably from the same people who overclock their RAM so they can score a few nanoseconds higher on an artificial benchmark.

IF the SSD write speeds are temporarily "slower" while the internal garbage collection keeps up or whatever, an SSD is SO much faster than an HDD that you probably won't even notice.. and your load times will still vanish into thin air either way, even if it is not at 100% full speed, as writing is much rarer than reading too.

 

[Cerb]

I've read that as drives reach capacity performance can drop off significantly. I'm confident the system drives will be fine, but I know I can fill the 256 easily given my gaming habits. Can someone please verify if what I read is true and if so how bad is the impact?

It's true, but the impact depends on your definition of significant. If you don't hammer it with torture test type loads, the difference will mostly be stuck in benchmarks. In real usage, the impact is not much different than filling up a HDD. In fact, it's almost exactly that kind of difference in a TRIM-enabled environment (which you will likely have)...except that the worst case will still be faster than a HDD, usually by an order of magnitude or more.

The kind of torture test results reviewers get is useful, because the last thing you want is to expect great performance across the board and for all time, and then find it can be backed into a corner and need a secure erase to freshen up (any SF controller earlier than a 2281, FI). But, they don't represent the kind of performance you should generally expect.

IMO, your best bet will be to just get a 256GB OS/apps drive for your desktop, and a decent spinning platter for any additional data. Separate SSDs will add complexity, and not gain you enough to be worth it.

As for copying, wouldn't copying large games all the time lower the lifespan of the drive, especially on a smaller drive where there aren't so many places to write data?

Yes, but the difference is linear, so it's not too much of a concern, usually. With desktop loads, most 128GB or so drives should be able to handle many hundreds of terabytes of writes; and the bigger the file, the less writing will actually need to be done, usually.

 

[Anteaus]

IMO, your best bet will be to just get a 256GB OS/apps drive for your desktop, and a decent spinning platter for any additional data. Separate SSDs will add complexity, and not gain you enough to be worth it.

I had thought about this exact thing at first. My current HDD is a 1TB black that has served me well and will continue to do so as a data drive. The truth is that for my purposes 256 is really too little for all I do with my computer and imo having two drives is less of a pita then constant moving data around to make room for stuff. Ideally I would prefer a single 512GB SSD but I can buy all three of the drives mentioned above combined for $100 less than than a single 512GB.

Money is not a driving factor here except in the sense that I can stick SSDs in both my systems for less than the price of the 512GB, so for me the value is minimal in that specific situation. I'll inventory my computer tonight before I order and see if running a single 256 SSD is viable, given my specific needs.

Thanks.

 

[Hellhammer]

Samsung 830 is a great drive in the sense that the Magician tool allows you to manually adjust over-provisioning. In other words, you can make the 256GB drive a 230GB one so it will have more for space garbage collection, which will protect you against write speed degradation.

 

[bryanW1995]

Can you "under provision" with ssd magician, ie, turn your 256gb drive into a 265gb one?

 

[Coup27]

Can you "under provision" with ssd magician, ie, turn your 256gb drive into a 265gb one?

Nope.

 

[tweakboy]

I use my SSD for everything,, OS , apps DAW.

I wanted to match my backup drive which is 500GB , soo I can always create a image on the external ,,,, up to over 400GB. I got like 15 games installed.

Keep a eye out on the degrading speeds. Use CrystalMark

What are you getting now with crystal ?