SSD for A64 3200+ sata-150 system?

[biostud]

my parents computer is a A64 3200+ with sata-150 and an old 80gb harddrive, winxp and 2.5Gb RAM.

They use it for light office/web and to store their digital photos. It's pretty slow to work with, so would you put in a SSD drive (Vertex 2 60gb) + win7?

is win7 necessary for SSDs, or should I just reinstall winXP?

or what would you do to upgrade it (same price bracket ~$350)?

 

[dmoney1980]

SSD+ XP = headache. Go for win7. I'm sure the SSD will be bottlnecked a bit with the rest of the system, but should still feel MUCH faster than a mechanical drive. Are you planning to use Windows 7 64bit ?

 

[Blain]

Don't blow their money on an SSD, they don't need it.
Just buy them a nice 1TB HD (any brand at all), and be done with it.

 

[dmoney1980]

or what would you do to upgrade it (same price bracket ~$350)?

I actually didnt see that line until now. For $350 you can upgrade quite a bit. Do you have a micro Center near you ? If so they have AMD CPU / motherboard combos for below $150.
Have you built PC's before ? If you have than I say look around for some good deals on cpu's / motherboards. If not then an SSD for windows plus a 1TB hardrive for their pictures would cost you less than $250

 

[biostud]

I actually didnt see that line until now. For $350 you can upgrade quite a bit. Do you have a micro Center near you ? If so they have AMD CPU / motherboard combos for below $150.
Have you built PC's before ? If you have than I say look around for some good deals on cpu's / motherboards. If not then an SSD for windows plus a 1TB hardrive for their pictures would cost you less than $250

I live in Denmark, and I have build the computer they have, plus all my own computers the last 15 years

Basically as cheap as possible. A spinpoint F3 1TB seems like a good option, as it's cheaper and the less I have to do the better. (they have my old GeForce2 Asus V7700 as their videocard )

 

[fuzzymath10]

A Seagate hybrid might be a good choice. Enough room to be a primary drive and the flash memory really helps if the same applications are used frequently like in your situation.

The 250GB version is probably a bit more expensive than a plain 3.5" 1TB drive, but it is worth it if 250GB is enough storage for them for awhile. There's also 320 and 500GB versions.

 

[biostud]

does the momentus require win7 or will xp work fine?

 

[Blain]

Buy This WD Blue for $58 shipped (with $12 discount code)... And be happy!

 

[AstroGuardian]

Will work with XP. But XP on an SSD? Don't see the point here. Just reinstall fresh XP on the old drive and it will be snappy as the first time...

 

[mvbighead]

You really have two options if you're looking at drives as the only upgrade:

1) Cheap but quick SATA drive such as the Samsung F3, Seagate 7200.12 (500GB or 1TB), or some others, and reload XP. It's a very cheap option, but should improve speed quite a bit as the newer drives are much, much faster than older SATA drives.

2) SSD + Win7. More expensive, yes, but will likely yield better performance. Your CPU is limited, but should be sufficient for general webbing tasks.

I'd probably go with option #1, and save the money for a future CPU/MB/Memory upgrade.

 

[fuzzymath10]

does the momentus require win7 or will xp work fine?

It is OS agnostic. Works fine with XP.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My feelings: if you go the SSD route, then definatly go the Win7 route as well, as SSDs generally need TRIM support to perform at their best, long-term. But go for a retail upgrade edition of win7, as that way, you can move the license to a new machine when you decider to upgrade the CPU/mobo/RAM.

Personally, I'd probably take the cheaper route, considering the age of the machine, and just buy a 500GB Samsung or WD SATA drive.

Then build them a SB rig in the next year.

 

[ShawnD1]

Don't blow their money on an SSD, they don't need it.
Just buy them a nice 1TB HD (any brand at all), and be done with it.

NOOOOOOOO
Don't buy anything "green". I once put Windows Vista on a 1TB WD Caviar Green. I can't even describe how slow that is.

Just get a standard Caviar Black. The 500gb Caviar Black I put in my mom's computer was only something like $80 at the time, and it's a great drive. It's fast, it's cheap, it's big, it's black, it doesn't pay child support, and ... D:

Another cheap upgrade you should do is to put one of your old drives in their computer as a second hard drive. Use it for the swap file and backup. The computer I'm using right now has a 120GB slow as hell IDE hard drive from about 7 years ago. It's slow, but it's good enough for a swap file and it has backup copies of all my music and pictures

 

[LokutusofBorg]

A $40 500GB drive would be night and day difference in that old computer. Couple that with a $200 "guts" upgrade of mobo/CPU/RAM and they'd have a new computer for $250. Use the rest of your $350 budget to upgrade the components that won't work with the new stuff (PSU, etc.).

An SSD for older computers or light IO loads doesn't make sense. Digital photos are borderline, but if they've been using an old 80GB drive, then the jump to a new SATA drive would be as eye popping to them as an SSD would.

 

[biostud]

I tried to run crystal mark 3.0 on their old harddrive and it gave me sequential read and write speeds around 10Mb/s

 

[razel]

I tried to run crystal mark 3.0 on their old harddrive and it gave me sequential read and write speeds around 10Mb/s

That's why it's so slow. You're lucky it's a SATA. Just don't spend too much money on a current model HDD and they'll be happy.

 

[ShawnD1]

I tried to run crystal mark 3.0 on their old harddrive and it gave me sequential read and write speeds around 10Mb/s

Dude your hard drive sucks. The backup drive in my computer is a 120GB 5400rpm IDE drive and even that thing can read and write at 30MB/s.

Newer drives are totally awesome. The 1.5TB drive I'm using for my OS was something like 120MB/s. The sequential speed tests higher than my SSD. The random speed is another story.

 

[VirtualLarry]

i've changed my opinion slightly. if you can afford the ssd, and win7, go for it. it should be like a night and day difference for them.

edit: make sure that win7 will install and run on that machine first, though. download an iso of win7, install it in 30-day trial mode. see if it supports the system chipset, ide/sata ports, and video card.

 

[biostud]

That's why it's so slow. You're lucky it's a SATA. Just don't spend too much money on a current model HDD and they'll be happy.

The old one is ide but I spotted some SATA connectors on the mboard.

 

[Blain]

Buy This WD Blue for $58 shipped (with $12 discount code)... And be happy!

The discount code ends today... Hurry!

 

[Emulex]

no NCQ kills ssd performance big time - sata-150 sometimes is PATA with a sata bridge - which would suck.

find out what you really have. sata-150 with NCQ would be an awesome upgrade still. no latency is SSD