First SSD (yes it took me this long) but what one?

[computer/noob]

I know that a lot of these get put up but i dont really know what to look for in an SSD. You can read the information that the manufacturuers give you but that is not always correct.

Im after a 60GB SSD; just for Windows, steam and a few things i use often, and wanted to know what people recommended.

Ive looked at the:

Corsair Force 3

Kingston V+200

Corsair Force GT

Immediately from them i would say the Force GT, but for now i only have SATA 2 and not sure whether it will work ok but i do know it wont perform anywhere near its full potential.

I would like to have a SATA 3 ready drive as i plan on upgrading to Ivy Bridge, What would your recommendations be?

 

[AMDFTW]

ide go for the GT aswell mate

 

[yassarikhan786]

GT out of the three. The Force 3 is a very good drive as well.

 

[SieB]

I'd get the V+200 it's the newest SSD out of the lot and has the most recent Sandforce driver.

 

[computer/noob]

so its now between the GT and V+200.

How much of a difference, and what difference, would the newer drivers do in the kingston over the GTs?

 

[SieB]

 The newer the sandforce driver = the more reliable and less likely it is to mess up. 

 

[computer/noob]

ok...thanks, spose the newer driver is better than higher speeds

next week sometime ill be ordering it probably, ill have to get some SSD benching stuff and post what speeds i get on SATA 2 at the moment

 

[SieB]

There isn't much speed difference between them, tbh you wouldn't notice the difference apart from on benchmarks. Getting the latest sandforce driver is the best thing to do when it comes to sandforce SSDs though.

 

[FTR.4500MHz]

Or a Corsair Performance Pro ??? (Marvell Controller)

 

[BKCXb]

I'm in the same boat Sata2 , but plan to upgrade later.

I was deciding between a force3 and a gt but hated the color of the gt, so settled on getting the force 3, but they had a recalled batch of them so I waited.

by the time the new ones were out the prices had droped and kingston released a hyper X than samsung droped the 830 series.

every time I looked for reviews on new drives newer and better ones came out. I drove myself mad comparing specs for a few MB here and there and a point or 2 in each different benchmark.

I waited months until I went to buy a new graphics card at the store and saw the prices slam down on an Intel 320 120 gig(from $220 to $169, final price FREE!) so I decided what the hell give it a shot, you can always use it as a cahe drive later.

Got it home cloned widows 7 install from my 2 WD Raptor 74 gigs in RAID 0, no problem.

What I learned?

- I shouldn't have wasted so much time on worring about which SSD and just got any one of them sooner.(cause it won't be my last one I ever own)

- Reading the specs and real word preformance is totally different!

- Wasn't expecting much from this low spec drive, but boot time dropped from the coupe minute plus range to the 30 second range. +1 for the low grade SSD

- gamming load times only seemed sligtly faster, was expecting more. tie

- single and multi program loading seems instantly usable. +1 for the low grade SSD

- benckmarks OMG! a cheap little low spec SATA 2 drive crushes a $600 pair of mighty WD Raptors in RAID0

+1 for the low grade SSD

- power,noise, and heat? Raptors need cooling cause they are warm, the pair of them waking up from sleep sounded like 2 bench grinders spooling up! the 320? about a 30watt drop in power, totally silent, room temp. +3 for the low grade SSD

- installing progrms? SSD specs say it should be about a third slower than the raptors but it somehow makes up for it with only slightly longer write times. 2/3 point for the low grade SSD, 1/3 point for the HD's consistant read/write performance(even though its overall slower)

 

[WC_EEND]

I'd recommend either getting the Crucial M4 or the Samsung 830 series. both are blazingly fast and use better quality NAND than the corsair SSDs. I've also had a few issues with the Corsair Force 3 SSD (to be fair, they were fixed by the most recent firmware update) and recently switched to a 256GB Crucial M4. The Force 3 drive is currently used as my drive used for HWBOT benching, so I don't corrupt my day to day OS if something goes pear-shaped.

 

[computer/noob]

Havent looked at this thread for a while but glad i have looked again

Looking at the Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 i think the Samsung as it is cleaner looking and i had a quick look at a review and the samsung beat the M4 in most of the tests. But as i am currently looking at the Kingston V+200 which has similar specs would it be worth the extra money (altho it isnt much) for the Samsung?

 

[tharionos]

i got a force 3 series GT and i love it

 

[GuyIncognito]

Here are some reliability stats:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/3

I'm not surprised OCZ is the worst.