The current (gen 2) intel drives support TRIM. From what a I read, though, no hardware RAID supports TRIM yet. Plus there appears to be some issues with hardware RAID scaling properly with SSDs.. due to their insane number of I/O operations/sec, a lot of hardware RAID solutions can't actually support SSDs properly.

The idea with RAID is (for me) to stripe and get even more insane read/write speeds. But at 250MB/sec read and 100MB/sec write, I'm not sure if there's really a point anyway.

For the general world, TRIM is a feature to keep your SSD running at top speeds. Turns out a lot of the old gen drives would have deteriorating performance over time. The reason is that the MLC cells get partially used, causing write slowdowns. TRIM adds a way for the SSD to clean up the partially written cells, keeping performance maximized. TRIM is pretty much a requirement unless you want your SSD to run like ass after awhile.

Here's a wikipedia article on the subject in case my short summary is insufficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-cla ... 31770.html

New Core i5s tested. Dont worry Pev, they are downgrades from what you have now.

I also did some price checking on scan and newegg. The phenom 965 and core i5-750 they perform nearly the same and cost the same so either seems as a good choice, it comes down to personal preference.

I was thinking of getting 2 SSD like 60 gig, and RAID 0 them. The idea being that its cheaper. You can get 30 gigs for $139. But if they dont support trim and raid then that idea is shot to shit.

As much as I like the idea of expensive upgrades, what is the real gain from SSD drives vis-a-vis regular decent HD drives? I'm guessing it'll affect loading times, for one, but is the overall performance boost so significant?

Well according to the benchmarks we looked at earlier then if the load time is around 60 seconds on 7200rpm disc then ssd could do it about 20seconds faster. In addition, according to the benchmarks we discussed earlier, there can be a FPS gain up to 5fps around 1680x1050 resolution. At higher resolutions the gain seems to become marginal, either 1 or 2 fps. Anyway thats according to the anandtech benchmarks. There are probably other uses but from gaming standpoint well i'll leave it for everyone decide for themselves.

The main use is load times. You'll want it as your boot drive and it will significantly improve windows boot times. Also put your page file on there to improve any paging the O/S does. Finally, put any apps you load a lot, or that load slow (like games) on that drive so when you start them, they start up faster.

The result is a snappier experience. Most reviews I've read, both official and just people on the internet, say that replacing a system drive with an SSD is the best performance improvement you can make to a pc besides adding more RAM.

For some real numbers, here's a cool review of the Seagate Barracuda vs the Intel x25. The Barracuda pretty much represents the creme de la creme of the hdd world and x25m of the ssd (mlc) world.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storag ... 1-review/5

Summaries for the lazy:

copying 3 large files (total of 1.6GB)
Intel: 8.1sec
Barracuda: 21.9sec

copying 3 large files to the same drive (total of 1.6GB)
Intel: 11.5 sec
Barracuda: 19.2 sec

read 3 large files (1.6 GB)
Intel: 7.2sec
Barracuda: 13.2sec

boot time (Vista home premium 64 bit)
Intel: 33.8sec
Barracuda: 67.7sec

Crysis startup
Intel: 29.2sec
Barracuda: 38.2sec

Cutting O/S boot times in half is pretty badass no matter how you look at it.

Doubling the disc budget is pretty badass no matter how you look at it.

Sorry couldnt help myself

Even though Peltz is joking, it does seem a pretty steep price hike for a relatively minor inconvenience (loading times, page-filing and boot times).

I'll stick with RAM and HD's for now, unless a good deal crosses my path. Damn European electronics prices too.

haha...sure, whatever. If you're being a tight ass (and you definitely are) be aware that prices are falling quickly. Also, I may be looking at a $540. 160GB drive... but if you wanted a drive just for your O/S and page file, you could go for say a 32GB transcend SSD for a mere $135. That's plenty of room to make your O/S significantly faster, though you'd still need a secondary drive for everything else.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820208445

Anyway, I'm looking at dropping a pretty big wad of cash on a new pc anyway, so putting some of that into an SSD makes sense. For people where price is of the greatest importance, stick to the cheaper stuff for now. And when I load into games 5x faster than you, you'll know why.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/kingston- ... 32577.html

This might be something for you Satis. A 80$ 30gb SSD boot drive. Kingston claims that the V series SSD has..



Theres also a similiar product from Intel..

yea, I think I saw that. The Kingston looks interesting to me. The Intel is, imo, over-priced. Since I plan on rebuilding this machine into a new box, I may do that with the boot drive for it. that'll let me keep my raid 0 storage drive but kick up boot times and the O/S.

So Pev, hows the reputation of this http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/default.aspx company in UK.

Some person At toms comment section claims it has the best prices in UK. Whats your take on this?