In the market for SSD.

[kapu]

Im in the market for 256GB SSD since they drooped significantly last week.

I would like to here some comments on my choiceness.

CRUCIAL M4 256GB - 275 EUR
OCZ SSD Agility3 240GB - 232 EUR

Any other worthy drives you could recommend me for similar price ?

My bigest concern is my SATA-2 Port, how much i will lose performance wise?
I will probably upgrade mobo this year later on ( near december maybe ).


Also, please tell me if it's really worth ? I mean how much for a reliability ?
What are the odds i will run in to a trouble with these ?

Last thing , how can i move my whole system to SSD ? Registry and settings. (Soo i dont have to install all programs again)

Thanks for help.

[MfA]

by those options M4 wins hands down.. in addition to that you should consider Plextor M3/P, Corsair P256 Pro.. get which one is cheaper, M4 should be cheaper but it's a bit slower than latters.. yet you wont notice difference unless you bench all day lol

You wont notice Sata2/3 difference for daily usage as well..

[kapu]

OCZ Agility 3 is quite cheap , difference is not that small.

[MfA]

well but it's sandforce..

[kapu]

Whats wrong with sandforce ?
How much better M4 controller is ?

[Anarion]

Samsung 830, Crucial M4.

Agility 3 uses asynchronous NAND -> ditch it.

/thread

[kapu]

Can i possibly go wrong with Crucial M4 ? Its bit more expensive . Is it worth to spend extra 50 EUR ?

Also write speeds seems to be much slower than sandforce based drives ?

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by kapu

Can i possibly go wrong with Crucial M4 ? Its bit more expensive . Is it worth to spend extra 50 EUR ?

Also write speeds seems to be much slower than sandforce based drives ?

It's much better option than that Agility 3.

[scheherazade]

M4 is a read oriented drive.
Very good max read speeds, 'ok' max write speeds.

M3/Performance Pro are basically the same drive (M3/PPro/M4 have same controller, w/ different software and nand), but a tad slower reading [than the M4] and a lot faster writing [than the M4].

830 is a good drive.

Agility 3 was once upon a time problematic.
With recent firmware, much of that is no longer an issue.
Synchronous/Asynchronous nand won't matter in day to day usage. It's worth a little bit in benchmarking.




The important thing is this :
Day-to-day usage does not involve the drives's maximum linear speed.
It's simply not an issue.
Forget the "wow 500mb/s linear" stuff.
Look for benchmarks of 4k speeds, anywhere from qd0 to qd32.
That's what matters.

Unless you spend all day copying around large files... in which case you should look at the linear speeds.

Here are some SSD and HDD charts of 4k speeds.
(I posted this in another thread, so you may have seen it.)
It's the speed reading and writing tiny things from all over the place that will let you multitask quickly, and load a bunch of different files quickly.

(Just examples, so you know what "kind" of speeds we're talking about... nothing close to 500mb/s for any ssd, then or now.)
http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revi...SSD_4KRead.jpg
http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revi...SD_4KWrite.jpg
http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revi...lDiskMark5.png
http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revi...lDiskMark6.png

-scheherazade

[fry178]

I ve been switching ssd's a lot lately, and compared to ocz/corsair/patriot and other brands, the M4 is just better in real life conditions.

before, i bought my ssd's based (on those) benchmarks (its a good base to start comparing), but even that the M4 is listed as being slower (at least for write), running it in my computer the M4 performs alot better in overall/write speed than the others i had (BM numbers claiming to be faster).

in general, i would recommend the crucial (marvel based ssd) over any SF-based ssd right now, because of BSOD issues (which i dont have with the M4).
(and i didnt change motherboard and/or chipset/sata/ahci driver, so it was def. related to the ssd's.)

booting windows from ssd vs. hdd and you will never go back (even with sata2) ...

moving the existing sys from the hdd to ssd doesnt make sense for multiple reasons (alignment/performance etc.), so a new install would be better and give you some speed back (windows).

as long as you dont "fill up" the ssd with GB of data every day, it will last 5-10y compared to the 5y of hdds.
install 7 and important progs on it, the games and data (movies etc.) can go on the hdd youre using for windows right now...

[kapu]

I bought Crucial M4 256GB for around 300$. Based on comments from users that have it for more than year .- Not the reviews as they weren't soo favorable for Crucial M4.

I will be using it for games and system. Movies will go on my old 1 TB Samsung.

How much data i can write (should?) to make it run at ~full speed for 5 years ?

Also i read some tests and people claim that there is not much difference in real life SATA2 vs SATA3 , biggest difference are big files ( which is not that important i guess ? ). I play to upgrade mobo later this year , or begining of next but till then SATA2 must be enough.

Thanks for comments. I will post my impressions once i start using it .

[scheherazade]

Originally Posted by kapu

I bought Crucial M4 256GB for around 300$. Based on comments from users that have it for more than year .- Not the reviews as they weren't soo favorable for Crucial M4.

I will be using it for games and system. Movies will go on my old 1 TB Samsung.

How much data i can write (should?) to make it run at ~full speed for 5 years ?

Also i read some tests and people claim that there is not much difference in real life SATA2 vs SATA3 , biggest difference are big files ( which is not that important i guess ? ). I play to upgrade mobo later this year , or begining of next but till then SATA2 must be enough.

Thanks for comments. I will post my impressions once i start using it .

FYI : Grab the latest firmware. There was an update in recent weeks.

-scheherazade

[Agent-A01]

Skip the crucial m4. Nothing wrong with sandforce nowadays nor is the agility 3 a bad ssd like someone said. Right now there is a Mushkin chronos or something of the like VERY cheap but very fast. I would get one of those

[fry178]

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

Skip the crucial m4. Nothing wrong with sandforce nowadays nor is the agility 3 a bad ssd like someone said. Right now there is a Mushkin chronos or something of the like VERY cheap but very fast. I would get one of those

might wanna check with other forums to see about that.. i had BSODs as soon as TRIM started (MS sata-driver; SF1200/2200). had different brand/model (on 2 different boards). after switching to the M4 with marvel controller, no probs at all (same image of OS; so it WAS the SF..).

[Agent-A01]

Cool story bro, i have 4 sandforce drives all in raid 0, two of them being agility 3s. Zero problems, very fast 1200mb sequential read.2 pairs of raid 0, not all in raid 0 together.

[Sash]

Originally Posted by MfA

well but it's sandforce..

people should really live in the present and not in the past, i got a HyperX 120 GB SSD and it uses sandforce 2281, yes that bugged controller, but that was 6 months ago, i can tell you that with the latest firmware from Kingston, I have NO bsod for 1 week of usage, hell i spent one hour just putting my PC to sleep and waking it up just for fun to see if a bsod appears, and no problem for one entire hour, (ok exaggerating one hour but i spent quite a while just repeatedly putting it to sleep and waking it up).

sandforce is one of the best ssd controller nowadays, it is used by Intel themselves on one of the best SSD on the market, Series 520 and new Series 330, if freaking Intel uses Sandforce and the users themselves say that it's one of the most reliable SSD out there, then that says a lot. There is almost no competition, well i heard of some new controller, forgot the name, let's see how that goes.

[thatguy91]

What about the OCZ vertex 4 with the 1.40 (or newer) firmware)?

[deltatux]

Personally, my Mushkin Chronos 120 GB SATA III SSD is pretty good. Sure it's asynchronous NAND and it's not the best NAND in the first place but I see a huge speed boost over my HDD regardless.

You can try this:
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe MKNSSDCR240GB-DX 240 GB SATA III SSD
http://www.mushkin.com/Digital-Stora...R240GB-DX.aspx

It's $211.99 in Canada, or around EUR162.

The Chronos Deluxe uses a better type of NAND compared to the standard Chronos that I have.

deltatux

[kapu]

I already got M4 256GB . Here is my AS SDD score on SATA-2.


Looks fine compared to Guru review. Reads are more gimped by SATA2 than Writes, wonder why ?

As for impresion, damn this thing is fast, i click on Opera with 30 tabs and it just starts instatly. Awesome