Using a smallish (~64GB) SSD to speed rig

[marcplante]

I looked for articles on this, but couldn't find a guide. I have a reasonable rig that I use for general surfing, some office work and light gaming. (Driving Sim, GTR), I'll prolly get BF3 and play solo rather than get mutilated by the masses...)

I'm wondering how much a smaller SSD would help if I loaded my OS (Win7 64 Pro) and key apps onto it.

My understanding is app start times for key apps installed on the SSD would reduce to near zero, and access times on parts of BF3 (or MW2) would be much better. I'm thinking the driving sim would load faster, but not benefit once I'm on a given track driving.

I use my computer at home in the evenings 3 or so eves a week. I have young kids and end up with them til 8:30, then doing light surfing in the Living Room with my wife for a bit. So the desktop doesn't get tons of use, but when it does, i like it to be reasonably snappy. I have read a little about SSD degradation, but i don't think it's relevant in my instance given my light usage profile and intended OS and core app usage.

I'm wondering if there are other benefits I'm missing. Alternative would be to drop $50-100 into another 8G of RAM to take my box to 12G.

Have I caught the general benefits?

Thanks

 

[superccs]

Running the OS and core apps off of a SSD is one thinng, actually installing games to the SSD is another.

Whats the average game install size right now...? Whats it probably going to balloon to next week...?

With a 64gb SSD you will have ~20Gbs of windows and such leaving you with ~40Gbs of space. If you use all of those Gbs it will run slow (write overhead). So you have effectively ~15-20Gbs of space to use. If that drive costs around $120 then those Gbs will cost you ~$60.

Recently I tried to install age of conan on my SSD and my PC literally laughed out loud at me. Turns out, in my experience, that games load and play well if run from a very fast 1tB 7200rpm drive (western digital black or Samsung F3). Running games off the SSD is not worth it (to me at least). For me, a 60Gb SSD and a 1TB Samsung F3 works very nicely.

 

[Ancalagon44]

What do you guys think about having a 60GB SSD for Windows and virtual memory, 240GB SSD for games, and a 1TB WD Caviar Black for storage?

 

[zCypher]

I have the 60GB Vertex2. The usable space after format is 51GB and after installing Windows, Office 2010 and a couple small apps (no games, steam on a separate disk) -- I have 25GB free.

I wouldn't recommend a 60GB drive if you have the intention of installing anything but the core OS and a few apps.

I did have Steam installed on the SSD at one time, and to be honest with you it didn't make much difference for some reason. It was definitely faster but not much. The WD Black I have it on right now I would say offers at least 90% of the perceivable load times for Steam/CSS compared to my SSD.

Windows and apps is another story though, the boot time and cold start times for FF, MSN etc are insanely fast on the SSD in comparison to the Black.

Not sure why Steam would still be relatively slow on SSD to be honest.

Since the cost per GB is still astronomically high for SSD in comparison to HDD, i'd say keep all the games on the HDD unless the loading times are a really big concern for you. In that case, test drive 1 or 2 of your favorite titles on the SSD and see how much of a difference you get.