Questions about i7 platform

[Boz]

On the topic of SSD, they are ok, but the performance of the drives degrade over time. So the question comes, are the SSD drives really all that much better than say 2-3 regular SATA II drives in RAID 0 in terms of price/performance, for me at the moment I would say no.

I completely agree. To me personally I just couldn't justify gettings SSDs at $300+ for my OS/app drive because I've read reviews from people who bought it (a lot of them) that performance increase is really not as much as it states theoretically. This concerns me since I'll be shelling out $300-$600 for a 128-256gb SSD and I'll get minor improvement. If that's the case then I'd really wait until large SSD drives are at some normal prices and then get it. For now I'm fine with Raided Velociraptors or even regular WD Black or Seagate Baracudas with 32mb cache and which are in essence where good price/performance peripherals.

The real differences IMO are all about the OS to begin with. i7 with regular fast drives will still be very fast and for the $300-$600 additional budget I can put in pocket and upgrade with even faster i7 later which would be more beneficial anyways.

I'm glad SSDs are starting to go mainstream but it's still not there yet.

[Vice]

I got 3x320GB Seagates in RAID 0 on the built in Intel Matrix RAID controller on the X58 boards and I get 300MB/ps read and 240MB/ps write - Quite impressive. Total drive cost is only ?120 for 3 of those drives and it gives me 960GB of storage. I only use this volume for loading Games and Applications and as a Scratch drive for Media applications. I store my personal files on other Disks.