Six-Drive SATA III SSD Round-Up Shows Big Gains 129
MojoKid writes "Solid state drives have gone from essentially non-existent on the desktop to the preferred storage medium of enthusiasts and workstation professionals in less than three years. Three of the drives featured in this six-drive SATA III SSD round-up consistently offered 'best-of-class' performance throughout testing, with speeds in excess of 500MB/s for read and write throughput. OCZ's Vertex 3 Max IOPS, Corsair's Force GT, and the Patriot Wildfire all feature the same SandForce SF-2281 controller and synchronous NAND flash memory. These drives offered the highest transfer rates in the majority of tests, though performance does drop off as the data gets more incompressible."
However, something important to keep in mind (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, all SSDs are basically "fast enough" for desktop usage. You notice a major difference between an SSD and a HDD. You don't notice much, if any, difference between a lower and higher end SSD on the desktop.
The same is not true on servers, of course, the heavier random load makes IOPs a big deal in various servers (databases particularly).
While I'm certainly not saying don't get one, I'm saying don't dump your SATA II SSD if you have one for these, and don't pass up a SATA II SSD if it is on sale.
Re:However, something important to keep in mind (Score:2, Insightful)
Surprise. The 11 MPG improvement switching from the SUV to sedan saves you 3.1 gallons per 100 miles driven, while the 25 MPG improvement switching from sedan to hybrid only saves you 2 gallons
But (gah!) you're just making the same error you're complaining about - looking at absolute changes rather than relative ones! Switching to the hybrid does save you more gas, when considered as a percentage of how much gas you were using before.
Maybe I'm just strange, but I've never considered such figures in the terms you're going on about, so it just looks like a strawman argument to me.
Besides, all that number waffle is entirely academic, since no-one ever faces the choice of (Switching from A to B) OR (Switching from B to C) - they face the choice of (Switching from A to (B OR C))
Re:However, something important to keep in mind (Score:4, Insightful)
You notice a major difference between an SSD and a HDD.
I completely agreed. Most report total drive failure in 6-18 months with SSD drives with absolutely no warning of impending catastrophic failure. So ask yourself, are you ready for complete data loss every 6-18 month, while paying an extreme premium for the privileged? Most recommend NOT using these as your primary device, but rather use a smart caching device, which uses these devices as an accelerator while still using the HDD as your primary, dramatically more reliable, long term storage medium. Of course, in either case, a sane, complimentary backup strategy should employed.