Which SSD for my Desktop PC ?

[sinetheo]

You won't notice much of a difference compared to first upgrading from a mechanical disk unless you are a database developer. For the record my system includes

1. a dual Sansdisk raid 0 of their medium grade ssds

2. A Samsung pro 840 raid 0 for my vms and star wars the old republic :-)

 

1st off my Windows 7 box had just 1 sansdisk Ultra I ssd. Windows 7 booted in 19 seconds. With a raid 0 with an ultra II it booted in 18 seconds :-)

 

My point is IOPS bring speed and cpu vs pure bandwidth unless you load major ######. SWTOR I did see some improvements with a Samsung raid 0 vs a single Sandisk but only a few 15 out of a 1 minute load.

 

So I ask what do you plan to do? How important is your data?

 

If you are looking for faster game loading and booting you will be disappointed as the one you have will be about the same level performance. If you run VMs or are a database administrator or run a server you will see an ok difference between a newer in raid. If you run 2 server virtual machines and 6 guests and using 16 gigs of ram for IT work and certifications and simulations you will surely get a nice great boost as this is what I do with VMware Workstation and why I went with nice disks in raid 0. 850 pros are none for stability of data for stuff like this where you are billed by the hour or value your data.

 

If you want a free speed boast on your aging system you can try setting them to raid 0 if your bios has Intel RST raid in EFI. If it is from 2009 it may not. My 2014 i7 does and I have all 4 drives set in 2 raids 0s for a speed boast and it makes things simplier to have 2 volumes instead of 4 drive letters.

 

I reread your posts. If you run lots of VM's I would certainly go for the pros for the critical data and raid 0 your older disks for the OS. If your board is too old for this you can get a startech controller for $50 at any Microcenter or Tiger direct. This if you are on a tight budget will bring more life without an upgrade if you plan to run virtual machines. You will lose your data and need to re-image is the downside.

[notyours]

One of the major plus's for the 850 pro series is they all have the Samsung controller and larger onboard cache.  If I recall right - The 850 evo in 1tb size uses the same controller, but cache maybe not as large. The smaller evo's use outsourced controllers.

[yxz]

One of the major plus's for the 850 pro series is they all have the Samsung controller and larger onboard cache.  If I recall right - The 850 evo in 1tb size uses the same controller, but cache maybe not as large. The smaller evo's use outsourced controllers.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review

In addition to the NAND, the 850 EVO sees an evolution in the controller. The 120GB, 250GB and 500GB models now come with a newer generation MGX controller, although unfortunately I have very few details as Samsung couldn't get me the information about the new controller ahead of the embargo lift. I've heard the MGX is a dual core design, whereas the MEX in the 1TB model (and 840 EVO & 850 Pro) features three ARM Cortex R4 cores. The reason behind the change is increased power efficiency and supposedly the third core isn't needed with the smaller capacities as there are less pages/blocks to track and thus NAND management requires less processing power. I'm guessing that the MGX is also manufactured with a smaller process node and the two cores run at a higher clock speed, but for now I don't have any concrete information backing that up.

[PaulATMOS]

only a dedicated RAID card would be true raid, as it has it's own CPU for RAID processing; everything else is fake RAID, whether being software or not doesn't matter since it consumes CPUs cycles for the RAID.

Yes, that's correct. I've still achieved 2x read/write speeds using on-board Intel RAID 0 without taking any noticeable hit to CPU performance. No one should assume on-board Intel RAID is junk or not worthy, because for consumer use it works well.

Of course, for enterprise servers, a dedicated card is the preferred scenario.

[techbeck]

SSDs are nice.  Can setup a system in less than half the time with other HDs.  But until the bigger SSD drives are at a cheaper price, I will stick to what I have for now.  I like having a 1tb drive...I dont like having to pay 300+ for a 1tb SSD.

 

With that said, my 1tb 5400rpm drive died in the laptop I had.  I could have opted for a much lower capacity SSD, or another 5400 1tb HD.  However, I opted for a hybrid drive. Was a good middle and was only a little over 100 bucks for a 1tb.  Ive heard people state that SSHDs are stupid....to each their own. 

[sinetheo]

freqnasty, on 31 Jan 2015 - 23:02, said:

Yes, that's correct. I've still achieved 2x read/write speeds using on-board Intel RAID 0 without taking any noticeable hit to CPU performance. No one should assume on-board Intel RAID is junk or not worthy, because for consumer use it works well.

Of course, for enterprise servers, a dedicated card is the preferred scenario.

 

My coworkers laughed at me when I said my Intel does raid 10. They were calling me an idiot and then did a betting pool within a month all my data would be gone and how I needed a $600 card for REAL RAID?? Really?

 

I think because raid cards were soo expensive a long time ago they think the same is true today as that is what they known since 1998. Chips today are over 500 times faster than 2005 and over 10,000 times faster than 1990 when these controllers were all the raid with large amounts of ram cache.

 

Yes it is possible today to build a raid for cheap but they remember when going $1000 was the norm so it is a strange concept today.

[Praetor]

Yes, that's correct. I've still achieved 2x read/write speeds using on-board Intel RAID 0 without taking any noticeable hit to CPU performance. No one should assume on-board Intel RAID is junk or not worthy, because for consumer use it works well.

Of course, for enterprise servers, a dedicated card is the preferred scenario.

 

I've been using fake RAID in a DAW since 2010 and it's running great, much better then only a single drive; of course a dedicated card would produce better results, but i was budget restrained back then.

 

oh and right now a PERC card is pretty cheap, specially a used one on ebay.

[Inertia]

Then on my motherboards RAID (see original post) why is RAID 0 throughput less than single drives ?

 

I call BS on double read / write with on board (software) RAID.  you don't even double with dedicated RAID. its never as simple as Drive 1 performance + Drive 2 performance = RAID 0 array performance.  If it was, and it was possible with onboard RAID, I would buy 4 x 256gb 850 EVo's instead.

You won't notice much of a difference compared to first upgrading from a mechanical disk unless you are a database developer. For the record my system includes

Of course not, its just that I am running out of space, so figured I may as well go for better performance while i Increase capacity.