5 ms·

Since when is $200 an outrageous amount of money for a seriously significant performance increase?

by ctide 15y ago

shin_lao 15y ago
It's more than $ 200. It's more around $ 300 per computer and in a laptop it's an incredible amount of money ($800+ if I'm correct) if you have a Sony or an Apple one. Additionally the performance increase is important, but doesn't matter for everything network related. In other words I'd say it's almost worth what you pay for it.
- ctide 15y ago
  I installed one in my Macbook Pro a few weeks ago for ~$300, but bought the 120 GB SSD vs. 80 GB. Considering I'm only using 60GB of it, I certainly could have bought the 80 GB and had everything shipped for right around $200. It's easily the most noticeable upgrade I've ever done.
- rodh257 15y ago
  A vertex 2 is around $200 from what I can see: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227551&cm_re=vertex_2-_-20-227-551-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227... If you buy a sony or apple laptop, replace the drive yourself. I just bought a 13" MBP and bought a $25 caddy to put my Vertex 2 in the DVD bay. That way I have Windows 7 booting from that SSD, OSX on the normal HDD with extra storage available there. Of course you could just replace the HDD with an SSD and not void your warranty.
  - shin_lao 15y ago
    Wouldn't that void the warranty?
    - rodh257 15y ago
      replacing the HDD with an SSD doesn't void the warranty, however replacing the DVD drive with one (like I did) does.
- silencio 15y ago
  It is $200 or so for a decent 2.5" 128gb SSD that you can install into a laptop or a desktop (see http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008120%204802&IsNodeId=1&name=Top%20Sellers http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&#3...). The only real problem with that solution is that 128gb isn't enough for some people, but it is not difficult to offload the data to another storage device, either internally or externally. I've been keeping under 128gb on my main laptops (MacBook Pro and Air) for a year and a half now (when I first switched over to using SSDs) without a problem.
- catch23 15y ago
  Actually it's around $200 for a 100gig drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227529 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227... But you can always have more than 1 hard drive. Buy a 500gig one for all your large file content and use the smaller one for the OS. Pretty much all SSDs come in laptop drive format so I don't know where this $800 number is coming from. They might have been $800 last year, but transistor prices drop pretty fast. I have 2 drives in my macbook pro -- 120gig vertex 2 ssd, and a 500gig samsung "old style" hard drive.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
acqq 15y ago
Since when it's a "serious" performance increase when "it boots faster"? Or if the first grep after the boot is faster (others must be fast since the file cache kicks in for every next one, unless you have, say, 128 MB RAM). Really not worth to mention.
- rodh257 15y ago
  Applications start faster, loading any files from disk start faster. It depends on your usage scenario, but for .NET development in Windows I can vouch for it's value. $200 for an SSD is a far better use of money for the average programmer than say the upgrade from I5 to I7 on a 13" MBP. There are many parts of your computer which you'd spend $200 on that get you less of a general every day performance boost than a SSD.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > It depends on your usage scenario, but for .NET development in Windows I can vouch for it's value. The reality is that it significantly increases performances for all workloads but streaming videos (huge sequential reads). Most of computer usage is random access to small files, and that's a field where SSDs utterly annihilate rotating platters (not that rotas have any advantage but storage capacity, mind you, SSDs are also superior in seq read and write, but on random we're talking 2MB/s on 4k random write for a VelociRaptor to >200MB/s for a Vertex 3; 0.68MB 4k random read for a VR to >90MB for a Vertex 3, for sequential performances the difference will be a factor of 2 or 3 tops between a VR and a top-of-the-line SSD) The difference is, of course, even more impressive for laptop drives: most laptops don't house 10k, 10W monsters like the VRs
- mpakes 15y ago
  Spoken like someone who has never used a machine with an SSD. My SSD is by far the best performance investment I've made in recent years. A fast CPU is worthless if you're burning 30% of your cycles waiting for the HDD to deliver your data. Relying on file cache is not good enough.
  - 15y ago

Since when is $200 an outrageous amount of money for a seriously significant performance increase?

by ctide 15y ago

Since when is $200 an outrageous amount of money for a seriously significant performance increase?

It's more than $ 200. It's more around $ 300 per computer and in a laptop it's an incredible amount of money ($800+ if I'm correct) if you have a Sony or an Apple one. Additionally the performance increase is important, but doesn't matter for everything network related. In other words I'd say it's almost worth what you pay for it.

ctide 15y ago
I installed one in my Macbook Pro a few weeks ago for ~$300, but bought the 120 GB SSD vs. 80 GB. Considering I'm only using 60GB of it, I certainly could have bought the 80 GB and had everything shipped for right around $200. It's easily the most noticeable upgrade I've ever done.
rodh257 15y ago
A vertex 2 is around $200 from what I can see: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227551&cm_re=vertex_2-_-20-227-551-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227... If you buy a sony or apple laptop, replace the drive yourself. I just bought a 13" MBP and bought a $25 caddy to put my Vertex 2 in the DVD bay. That way I have Windows 7 booting from that SSD, OSX on the normal HDD with extra storage available there. Of course you could just replace the HDD with an SSD and not void your warranty.
- shin_lao 15y ago
  Wouldn't that void the warranty?
  - rodh257 15y ago
    replacing the HDD with an SSD doesn't void the warranty, however replacing the DVD drive with one (like I did) does.
silencio 15y ago
It is $200 or so for a decent 2.5" 128gb SSD that you can install into a laptop or a desktop (see http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008120%204802&IsNodeId=1&name=Top%20Sellers http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&#3...). The only real problem with that solution is that 128gb isn't enough for some people, but it is not difficult to offload the data to another storage device, either internally or externally. I've been keeping under 128gb on my main laptops (MacBook Pro and Air) for a year and a half now (when I first switched over to using SSDs) without a problem.
catch23 15y ago
Actually it's around $200 for a 100gig drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227529 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227... But you can always have more than 1 hard drive. Buy a 500gig one for all your large file content and use the smaller one for the OS. Pretty much all SSDs come in laptop drive format so I don't know where this $800 number is coming from. They might have been $800 last year, but transistor prices drop pretty fast. I have 2 drives in my macbook pro -- 120gig vertex 2 ssd, and a 500gig samsung "old style" hard drive.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

acqq 15y ago

Since when it's a "serious" performance increase when "it boots faster"? Or if the first grep after the boot is faster (others must be fast since the file cache kicks in for every next one, unless you have, say, 128 MB RAM). Really not worth to mention.

rodh257 15y ago
Applications start faster, loading any files from disk start faster. It depends on your usage scenario, but for .NET development in Windows I can vouch for it's value. $200 for an SSD is a far better use of money for the average programmer than say the upgrade from I5 to I7 on a 13" MBP. There are many parts of your computer which you'd spend $200 on that get you less of a general every day performance boost than a SSD.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > It depends on your usage scenario, but for .NET development in Windows I can vouch for it's value. The reality is that it significantly increases performances for all workloads but streaming videos (huge sequential reads). Most of computer usage is random access to small files, and that's a field where SSDs utterly annihilate rotating platters (not that rotas have any advantage but storage capacity, mind you, SSDs are also superior in seq read and write, but on random we're talking 2MB/s on 4k random write for a VelociRaptor to >200MB/s for a Vertex 3; 0.68MB 4k random read for a VR to >90MB for a Vertex 3, for sequential performances the difference will be a factor of 2 or 3 tops between a VR and a top-of-the-line SSD) The difference is, of course, even more impressive for laptop drives: most laptops don't house 10k, 10W monsters like the VRs
mpakes 15y ago
Spoken like someone who has never used a machine with an SSD. My SSD is by far the best performance investment I've made in recent years. A fast CPU is worthless if you're burning 30% of your cycles waiting for the HDD to deliver your data. Relying on file cache is not good enough.
- 15y ago