OK so i ahve this friend who told me about SSDs and now alot of you guys are swearing by them.

SHow me some benchmarks where the only thing that changes is the drive and shows the %increase in performance.

DO this and I will agree an SSD is worth the money.

I honestly do not think SSDs will have much affect on gaming at all. I can see it being usefull as a C: drive to run the Os on and using standard drives for all other things programes, games ect.

It is my practice to run my OS on a drive or partions seperate from allllll my other software. This way if i do an OS reload I don't have to reload all my other junk as well.

Most review sites have just stopped comparing SSD's to normal hard drives - as the performance numbers are skewed so far in favor of the SSD's, that normal hard drives are orders of magnitude slower and usually just end up blips on the graphs.

Here is a more recent review. The drive in this review is an OCZ Vertex 3 Pro - a very good drive, and still relatively top of the line as far as SSD's go, despite being a year old now.

~Most~ of the comparison drives are other SSD's. They have a couple of traditional options in there comparisons: A Western Digital Raptor (10,000 rpm drive, one of the fastest consumer SATA hard drives available), and a Seagate Momentus XT (A hybrid drive that has a ~4G SSD built in to use as cache).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4186/ocz-vertex-3-preview-the-first-client-focused-sf2200/1

Check out the performance graphs. In almost every graph, the two regular hard drives are last. Not only are they last, they are usually on the order of 100 time slower. In the PCVantage tests, which is probably a more well-rounded test than just Random/Sequential Read/Write, the traditional hard drives still came in last, trailing even the worst SSD's that are several years old now by 50%, and the more modern SSDs by near half the speed.

Your hard drive is the second slowest part of your computer (I consider the network/internet the only thing slower). Doubling the speed of this one component does have a dramatic impact on it's overall performance, because this is the part that everything else is sitting around waiting on.

All of the AnandTech tests were run on the same computer/OS/Software, just the hard drive changed

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/6

That's synethetics, but it's older, slower SSDs, too.  The WD VelociRaptor is a 10k RPM hard drive, and the fastest consumer hard drive on the market.  The Seagate Momentus 5400.6 is a typical laptop hard drive.  Everything else is an SSD.  The Intel, Crucial, and SandForce SSDs are representative of today's budget SSDs.

But wait, you wanted gaming, right?  How about Rift?  Is that enough of a game for you?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-rift-ssd,3062-12.html

A 240 GB OCZ Vertex 3 decreases zoning times in Rift by 79% as compared to a 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Green.  That's actually on the high side of what you'd expect from real-life performance.  But cutting loading times by 1/2 or 2/3 in MMORPGs is pretty common.

What's much harder to measure is all of the brief delays, where a hard drive might make you wait 1/2 of a second, and an SSD only makes you wait 1/5 or 1/10 of a second.  Use both for a while and you can feel the difference.  Kind of like if you play a game for a while with a 200 ms ping time, and then play for a while with a 50 ms ping time, you can feel the difference.  But if the game doesn't have a ping meter built in, it's hard to measure that difference with a stopwatch.  The reason loading times are a popular real-world measurement is not that they're the most important, but rather, that they're the easiest to measure.

There are some games where an SSD will eliminate hitching.  But how are you going to measure that?  If the game completely stops rendering for 1/2 of a second once every 20 seconds, it's glaringly obvious and a huge problem.  But if you only go by average frame rates, it might be the difference between 39 fps and 40 fps and seem like a rounding error.

Now if by "performance" you mean FPS - then your right, an SSD won't do anything for FPS.

But I rather think there is more to play a game than ~just~ FPS. You can have great FPS, but if your ping is 999, your going to be screaming at the computer. That's how I feel on a computer without an SSD anymore, when it takes 4 minutes and 23 seconds to boot up (no joke, just was on a laptop today at work that did this), or every time you go to a different map in your game it takes 60 seconds to load up.

SSDs decrease any loading time a lot, but they rarely affect the FPS of the game... Only place I noticed any improvement in game was in EQ2, to be more specific in Neriak where my game stopped stuttering.

In games like DDO , AoC and GW with a lot of loading a SSD is a great thing to have. In zonless games they don´t offer much at all once you actually are in the game.

I don´t think there is any good benchmarks comparing modern SSDs and harddrives since it is like comparing cars and lawnmovers but here is a bunch of SSD benchmarks:  http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ssd-charts-2011/benchmarks,129.html

Here is the same tests for regular harddrives, you have to compare them yourself: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2012/benchmarks,134.html

The real time consumer is BTW when you read from a SSD, writing is slower but still faster than a regular drive.

boot time - 7200 rpm 500 gig laptop drive, 57 seconds to login screen

boot time - intel 320 series ssd, 17 seconds to login screen

yes i have windows and my loading intensive games on the same drive, but i havent had to re-os since i got the ssd, and when i os'ed it it took 5 minutes (copy regular drive to ssd with included cloning software) and i keep a backup of whats on my ssd with this same intel clone program.  so should something go wrong, i can simply clone the backup over and bam im golden.

loading times on all mmo's or other loading intensive games and apps, are off the chart faster on ssd's.  i paid a hair under 2$ a gig for a 120 gig intel, and regret nothing.  i still have a terrabyte of 7200 rpm for 100 bucks for bulk storage, but the ssd speed on my loading intensive games, no question about it, so worth having the ssd.

in a few years once platter drives are gone and everything is ssd people will wonder how anyone ever lived with useing shit like 5400 rpm drives, they wasted over half their lives waiting on loading!

there are plenty of sites that benchmark ssd's, here is one http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/65. Just gotta know where to look.

p.s. Graphics cards are your friend if your worried about frame rates. You can benchmark that too and see how yours rates, I use Furmark.

Nothying said here so far has me convinced that an SSD should be part of a standard PC YET. The faster access times in my opinion will not make a noticable diff in my gaming exp. No game accessses the hard drive enough to make this cost justifiable. The way I understand games to work is this, games in general load most of what they need to ram and the processor accesses what it needs from ram. It's my understanding if you want better performance in a game get the processor whith largest cache memory you can afford. Then get a motherborad that useses the fasted  RAM available. 

But for general gaming and SSD is not going to enhance the game exp enough for you to notice. Sure it may load faster, You my load an instance faster but who gives a rats ass about a few mili seconds.

Again the only real use i can see for and SSd would be as a drive to hose your OS on. Maybe you could multitask alot more. After all the OS is what handles all the stuff going to and from the procvessor and it does a hell of alot more than the game you may run right.

Me i'm not concerned with my game load times. I can understand that some people can be obsesive about waiting a min for a game to load I understand but SSDs do not increase general game performance at all as far as I have read or seen so far.

You don't need a ssd in a standard pc. It is just nice to say you have one and nice to know it isn't gonna break down anytime soon.

Originally posted by drbaltazar
And if you plan to buy one .use the window phone microsd cardselection strategy to buy you ssd .cant recall the term ms use but what ms chose is the proper way to get the best ssd.(but in my book get 8 gb of ram and disable paging dile or limit it to 250 mb ( yes that is the minimum i suggest for reason too long to explain here.but the info is on the web

What? Why not just check out the 3 that does best in benchtests, check a little about them on the net to see that none of them fail open and get the cheapest of them? I rather get informed and buy the best stuff in my price limit then ask MS to make the choice for me.

Are you suggesting him to make a ram drive or what BTW? That do help performance but I wouldn+´t call it beginner friendly, and you can use both that and a SSD with good resaults.

Originally posted by Fuggly

You don't need a ssd in a standard pc. It is just nice to say you have one and nice to know it isn't gonna break down anytime soon.

Not really, for that getting 4 small drives and raid them in raid 5 is better since it more or less guarantee you not losing data in case of a problem, any kind of technology can fail even an SSD. It is however really unlikely that 2 drives fail at the same time so raid is so secure you can get for a affordable price.

You get an SSD because it is really fast, uses less electricity, don´t generate any heat and is completly soundless, not because security. It is really great in a laptop. :)

Raid is always an option since 4 raided regular discs at least is a lot faster than a single one but SSDs are faster yet.

They certainly are useful but at the moment I'm fine with waiting a bit longer. They still aren't worth the money to me just yet. 

Originally posted by Jimmy562

They certainly are useful but at the moment I'm fine with waiting a bit longer. They still aren't worth the money to me just yet. 

Well, that is something everyone must judge for themselves. It depends on your budget, your spare time and what you do with your computer.

If you just surf the web and maybe play some games that doesn´t load that much it rarely is worth the cash, but for a hardcore gamer with a good budget it is a great invention that will save you time sitting and waiting for nothing.

For someone working with graphics or coding it is almost a must.

So from what everyone is saying and what I have researched on my own we all agree:

1)  SSD are supper fast

2) Decrease program load times(to be expected)

3) Will increwase game performance only if you are playing a game with alot of ZONE LOADS

      I.E. Ever Quest, Mass Affect 1-2-3, Ever Quest 2

4) WIll not increase game performance in game with a seemless world.

5) Computers only notice an increase in performance when they are "ACTIVELY" accessing the hard drive. which in most games these days is seldom to never short of instance loading or initial loading of game.

So it is my premise that an SSD in my opinion would be best used as OS platform to enhance OS performance and for that you would not at this time need anything more than 100gig and that is being generous.

Originally posted by Palladin

So from what everyone is saying and what I have researched on my own we all agree:

1)  SSD are supper fast

2) Decrease program load times(to be expected)

3) Will increwase game performance only if you are playing a game with alot of ZONE LOADS

      I.E. Ever Quest, Mass Affect 1-2-3, Ever Quest 2

4) WIll not increase game performance in game with a seemless world.

5) Computers only notice an increase in performance when they are "ACTIVELY" accessing the hard drive. which in most games these days is seldom to never short of instance loading or initial loading of game.

So it is my premise that an SSD in my opinion would be best used as OS platform to enhance OS performance and for that you would not at this time need anything more than 100meg and that is being generous.

1. & 2. Yeah

3. Rarely with FPS but it will cut the loading time a lot whenever you zone.

4. Nope

5. Duh, a fast HD only helps when you load from it,.

I recommend to have the OS and the games you play a lot on the SSD. 80-120 Gig is the right size. You meant 100 Gig, not meg, right? 100 meg isn´t enough to install Windows 95 on.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Jimmy562

They certainly are useful but at the moment I'm fine with waiting a bit longer. They still aren't worth the money to me just yet. 

Well, that is something everyone must judge for themselves. It depends on your budget, your spare time and what you do with your computer.

If you just surf the web and maybe play some games that doesn´t load that much it rarely is worth the cash, but for a hardcore gamer with a good budget it is a great invention that will save you time sitting and waiting for nothing.

For someone working with graphics or coding it is almost a must.

I do play a lot. I am fine with waiting a bit and even if I could fit it into my budget I wouldn't. Anyone that thinks about getting one just really needs to ask themselves "Do I really need it?".

As a gamer its not something you desperatly need, just something that can help if you are getting frustrated by load times. (I do not, they aren't that long at all). 

For graphics and coding however yes, you'll need one.

Originally posted by Jimmy562

I do play a lot. I am fine with waiting a bit and even if I could fit it into my budget I wouldn't. Anyone that thinks about getting one just really needs to ask themselves "Do I really need it?".

As a gamer its not something you desperatly need, just something that can help if you are getting frustrated by load times. (I do not, they aren't that long at all). 

For graphics and coding however yes, you'll need one.

I am not so sure you would say the same thing if you actually played a few hours on a computer with SSD.

I just built a rig for a buddy with huge budget and he didn´t even know what a SSD was but he called me the next day and said it was the most wonderful thing he seen since 3DFX Vodoo 2 card.

After you tried one old harddrives kinda feels like surfing porn on an old 28.8 modem. ;)

It is funny how you many things you don´t know you need until you tried them...

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Jimmy562

I do play a lot. I am fine with waiting a bit and even if I could fit it into my budget I wouldn't. Anyone that thinks about getting one just really needs to ask themselves "Do I really need it?".

As a gamer its not something you desperatly need, just something that can help if you are getting frustrated by load times. (I do not, they aren't that long at all). 

For graphics and coding however yes, you'll need one.

I am not so sure you would say the same thing if you actually played a few hours on a computer with SSD.

I just built a rig for a buddy with huge budget and he didn´t even know what a SSD was but he called me the next day and said it was the most wonderful thing he seen since 3DFX Vodoo 2 card.

After you tried one old harddrives kinda feels like surfing porn on an old 28.8 modem. ;)

It is funny how you many things you don´t know you need until you tried them...

I've played games with long load times and very fast ones. I.e. PS3 and PC games (The same game on both) and I hardly think twice about the loading even though my PC loads the game often 2x faster. Just doesn't bother me at all :)