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Your SSD - was it worth it?

M

moral-hazard

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 27, 2009
197
3
I'm wondering, among the SSD owners, whether or not the cost was worth it. I spoke to a friend who has a 60GB vertex and he seems to say that it is 100%. I think in my case it almost might not be though - I'm a software developer, so most of my work is not graphics-intensive. I do like my computer to be fast though, and have noticed the MBP lagging behind a little on occasion. As for the capacity issue, I don't care TOO much - 60+GB would be fine. The laptop is more or less used for work and school, and I have gigabit ethernet all over so if I need to stream HD movies at home it's not a big deal at all.

I've been debating buying one of the low-end SSD's (MLC, either intel, ocz vertex, or corsair), for around $200. The hard drives I was looking at were in the $90 range (probably 500GB caviar blue), so $200 isn't totally unreasonable if I go the SSD route.

Here's the drives I was looking at:


These seem to be the better quality models available at the $200 price point, with *decent* capacity and from what I hear they have good controllers, no stuttering issues, etc.
 
The Intel is getting very popular now. I believe there was a recent update on it relating to cost and power.

I don't own one myself, as I need Large storage space (320GB Drive is sufficient for me), and I don't see the point in paying so much on a 256GB SSD, not worth it to me.

What you will mainly see is applications opening faster, faster boot times. Thats about it as far as I know.

There are alot of people whom use SSD's on here, so I hope you get many replies.
:apple:
 
my intel ssd is amazing,

loads virtual machines up and i can use the os smooth as silk without a hitch,


by far the best upgrade ever.....
 
I'm very happy with my Vertex. The only downside I can think of is that using computers with HDs gets really annoying after getting used to the SSD.
 
I can imagine it being incredibly useful. Unfortunately I need large amounts of HD space and obviously an SSD of adequate size would cost an incredible sum of money. As it is, I'm not sure the boost in performance is justifiable.

However, as the technology matures and they become more of a mass market product, the prices and capacities will obviously decrease and increase respectively and then it will be more justifiable.
 
Thanks for the notes -

I will be using more virtual machines during the year. I maintain VM's for ubuntu, XP, and may possible do others like win 7 as the year goes on.

I do alot of web development, and testing on safari, firefox, and IE is important, so VM's are a must for me.

I'm still on the fence, but it looks like SSD's may be taking some major price cuts soon (since intel is releasing new stuff which is faster/mroe affordable). Maybe at that point Ill get one of the somewhat older ones.

Till then I may grab a WD Blue 500. Then once I get the SSD i can use that in an opti-Bay for storage. I already have an external DVD drive.
 
Vertex is sensational.

Once you got SSD, you simply can't go back to a regular HD ever again.

It's the single best upgrade I've ever done to any computer I've ever owned.
 
turbineseaplane said:
Once you got SSD, you simply can't go back to a regular HD ever again.

It's the single best upgrade I've ever done to any computer I've ever owned.
Click to expand...

Amen. I'm getting my new 13 MBP on Friday, and I've already ordered one of the new Intel X-25's just so I can swap it out ASAP, I can't stand to use computers with crappy mechanical harddrives in them anymore!

Andrew
 
My virtual machines run so much better on the SSD...and overall system performance is amazing!
 
At this point with my MB Air I can't see me opening it and installing an SSD ... unless someone I know wants to do it for me. But day by day the SSD becomes more and more appealing to me.
I'd say they're slowly becoming more worth it.
 
I replaced my 160GB (12MB cache) 7200rpm HDD by a OCZ Summit 120 GB (120MB cache with Samsung controller) SSD. Totally happy. As others have said, there is no upgrade to match a good SSD. Programs open almost instantaneously, there is no noise from the storage media, and the system fans almost never come on, creating a totally silent computing environment.:):D
 
What difference does a SSD do for your MBP?

I ran X-Bench on a MBP 13 2.53 & 4 GB RAM before and after installing the new Intel X-25M G2.

With the stock HD (5400 rpm) it got a x-bench score of 138.84.
Intel X-25M G2 upped it to 216.74.

Now that doesn´t tell the whole truth, cause what´s important is real life experience.

It boots in 15 seconds. Apps launch in less than a second for most. Word takes a whole 2 seconds to launch.

The machine is cool, very quiet. And the battery improves by about 25 minutes.

This is the biggest upgrade I have ever done on a machine. Intel X-25 M G2 comes highly recommened.
 
norsemen said:
This is the biggest upgrade I have ever done on a machine. Intel X-25 M G2 comes highly recommened.
Click to expand...

The Intel seems like its worth it - it's the "gold standard" of SSDs from what I hear, and is not *terribly* overpriced anymore. Newegg doesn't have the G2 in stock right now, but it looks like the 80GB is only $229. If I was already spending $205+ for the other ones, I would think the Intel is worth it - it has more capacity than the others I was looking at, and it sounds like the technology is top notch.
 
moral-hazard said:
If I was already spending $205+ for the other ones, I would think the Intel is worth it - it has more capacity than the others I was looking at, and it sounds like the technology is top notch.
Click to expand...
There are many excellent SSD's available, not just from Intel, and they come in a wide variety of sizes - some bigger than Intel options. For all the comparative numbers, if the SSD transforms the computer to a silent, instantaneous rocket, what difference does it make which SSD you use, other than the specific size and price? From a HDD to most SDD's there is a tremendous difference in everything you do on a computer. It is very doubtful whether you will notice such a difference amongst modern SSD's. That doesn't mean there are not measurable and, in to some people, in some operations, differences that could be noticed, just as there are for HDD's. But this awesome genre is not just Intel.
 
Yes its worth it. The boot to ready times are rediculous fast. Apps load fully mid bounce now instead of 2-3. was moving some files around put my old drive back in to get some stuff off it and couldnt believe how much slower it was.
 
antskip said:
There are many excellent SSD's available, not just from Intel, and they come in a wide variety of sizes - some bigger than Intel options. For all the comparative numbers, if the SSD transforms the computer to a silent, instantaneous rocket, what difference does it make which SSD you use, other than the specific size and price? From a HDD to most SDD's there is a tremendous difference in everything you do on a computer. It is very doubtful whether you will notice such a difference amongst modern SSD's. That doesn't mean there are not measurable and, in to some people, in some operations, differences that could be noticed, just as there are for HDD's. But this awesome genre is not just Intel.
Click to expand...

I was referring to the three that I picked out - the OCZ vertex, the corsair extreme, and the intel. Yes i'm sure theyre all fast, but it sounds like the intel is a better deal among those three drives. Theyre all within $20-30 of each other but the intel offers 80GB whereas the other two i looked at were 60 and 64.
 
moral-hazard said:
I was referring to the three that I picked out - the OCZ vertex, the corsair extreme, and the intel. Yes i'm sure theyre all fast, but it sounds like the intel is a better deal among those three drives. Theyre all within $20-30 of each other but the intel offers 80GB whereas the other two i looked at were 60 and 64.
Click to expand...

The same Intel 80GB was $369 two weeks ago. The 160GB was $600+.
 
The intel price must've just been lowered, I got the Gskill Falcon 64gb for $200, its a bit cheaper, but the write times are superior to the intel's, and I get about 230mb/s read and it's advertised at 250 wich is great. (since you dont really get the full read times that's advertised)
 
I have the apple OEM ssd, ordered on a new MBP.
It is so fast, and it is supposed to be one of the slower ssds!
i can highly recc this upgrade, but i also must say that the prices will plummet over the next year i believe
 
bry223 said:
The intel price must've just been lowered, I got the Gskill Falcon 64gb for $200, its a bit cheaper, but the write times are superior to the intel's, and I get about 230mb/s read and it's advertised at 250 wich is great. (since you dont really get the full read times that's advertised)
Click to expand...

All well and done, but in real life sequential read/write speed are not as important as random read/write speed.

There are four basic pillars to SSD performance that I like to look at: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. A good SSD must be strong in all four categories, but some are more noticeable than others. Random read and write speed, particularly of small files (e.g. 4KB) are normally what make our desktop hard drives feel so slow. These random operations are everything from file and table updates to search queries and loading applications; they aren't random over the entire space of the disk but they are random enough to bring conventional hard drives to their knees.

Sequential read/write speed is what you encounter when copying large files. How quickly you can move a Blu-ray image around is determined by these values. I've run all four tests on these drives using IOMeter. I also test all SSDs in a completely used scenario where each LBA/page has been touched, at some point, with valid data. Brand new, out of the box, performance will be greater but not over the life of the drive. If you want to know more about why this is and how I test, I suggest consulting The SSD Anthology.
Click to expand...

And the X25-M G2's true strength: random write performance. Once again, Intel are faster than the X25-E and nearly 40% faster than the X25-M G1. None of the Indilinx or Samsung drives can touch Intel here.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3607&p=4
 
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