SSD Upgrade

Alkers

Just had the main HDD WDRaptor fail on me in my main PC so I'm thinking about replacing it with an SSD.
PC is pretty old now at this stage - DFI Lanparty NF4-SLI-DR with an AMD 64 X2 4200+ CPU and 2gb RAM. I'm thinking the SSD will still be a noticeable upgrade in performance or will it be wasted on my pc? What would be the bottleneck? I'm thinking this drive:
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=46113&lb
64GB should be fine, the raptor was 72GB and was only 1/2 full.
Thoughts?

kfish2oo2

You'll certainly notice a substantial decrease of loading times (booting Windows, opening programs etc) but actual in program performance probably won't be significantly improved. The CPU and RAM still do most of the grunt work.

As far as bottlenecking goes, this is something I'm curious about myself.

Tea_Bag

depends on what you do with the PC tbh. an SSD will make things smoother and stuff, but not much else. its is very nice though. bottlenecks will probably be SATA 2 ports and your CPU. AMD cpus are very cheap at the moment, Id consider upgrading that moreso than the SSD if you're gaming. a cheap Samsung F3 500gb will be fast enough that you wouldn't notice any real performance loss over your raptor.

on my mobile so can't help you much, but look up the specs of the motherboard and see what CPUs it can take?

Monotype

It's an Nforce4 board. 939.

Main restriction is SATA 2 but also what operating system have will you be using? You really need Windows 7 to get the best out of the SSD (unless you're using linux).

Alkers

Yeah its a socket 939 board so I'd need a new board and CPU if I were to upgrade.
Thing is my drive has failed so I need to buy a replacement drive regardless, just trying to decide whether SSD is worth it? I already have a large HDD for all my data, the SSD or HDD will only be for the OS + programmes. Maybe a better option would be new HDD, CPU and board but money is tight and I don't game any more at all.
I'm still running XP also but I really can't afford more than maybe €150 total for upgrades + Win 7...

Monotype

You could just get a new HDD like the samsung F3. These drives are nearly as fast as the old raptors. Or two of them in RAID 0. Save up your money for the next big upgrade.

Alkers

It's only coming in at €90 for the SSD (60GB) so it's not breaking the bank too much.

Monotype

Is that at amazon?

It sounds like you have your heart set on it. You can always take it to a new system. It does require a bit of extra work with XP including installation and tweaking, and you might face performance degradation. Make sure that you follow the guides online about it. If you plan on keeping your system for a while, you could get a SATA II drive and save a few €uro.

If you're a student or have kids, you can get Windows 7 Pro for €45 from software4students.ie

Big Lar

Simona1986 wrote: »

It's only coming in at €90 for the SSD (60GB) so it's not breaking the bank too much.

Would 60Gb be a not tight ? I just put an os and 2 games on an ssd yesterday and there is almost 40GB gone already.

Dreddybajs

Big Lar wrote: »

Would 60Gb be a not tight ? I just put an os and 2 games on an ssd yesterday and there is almost 40GB gone already.

I'm on 64gb and it's grand, you just have to not have a load of games installed at once. Alternatively, put most of your games on a regular hard drive - most of them don't get much benefit really from what I've seen.

myrscossie

That SSD is €117,03 inc delivery @ hardwareversand

its €92.46 inc delivery @ dabs

bit cheaper again on amazon £76.48 = €87.61 inc Super Saver Delivery