Help from someone who knows there SSD's

[Red_xi]

Hey guys,

Okay, I'm a novice when it comes to all the bloody ssd's that are available. I'll be buying all the parts for my rig in the next three weeks. Problem I am faced with is the ssd. I initially had the corsair Force GT on my list. I now see they have the Force GS. What confuses me more, is they now have released a Neutron GTX line.

Now can someone put in layman's terms, exactly what the difference be, between the Force GS 180GB and the Neutron GTX 120GB is, that makes the Neutron GTX the superior model?

As far as I can see from their website, the Force GS 180GB has a 200MB sequential write advantage and also has an extra 10k IOPS when coming to the max random 4k write.

The only benefit of the Neutron GTX 120GB is that it has a 5 year warranty compared to the Force GS's 3 year warranty. Other than that, I can't work out why the Neutron GTX is supposed to be better.

Any light you can shed for my noobish mind would be appreciated!

[xeromist]

The neutron is the new a_link controller so it costs more. Supposedly much better in terms of iops (operations/second) but all of the numbers they advertise are based on synthetic benchmarks. Day-to-day performance you will find just about any modern SSD to be fast if you are coming from spinning drives. You will likely be happiest with a cheaper controller but bigger capacity (bang for the buck). Make sure you have enough space for how you use your system and make sure the drive has a good reputation.

For older drives I would try to find something with synchronous nand if you can. It's more expensive but it performs more consistently. The newer drives with toggle nand are supposed to be as good as synchronous but I haven't tried to cut through the marketing fluff to see how it really works. My gut tells me this is a gimmick to ape the performance of synch without the cost but it might be as good.

[HiVizMan]

The controller.

The older one are all Sandforce controllers the newer Link A Media (LAMD) 6Gbps controller.

I can not comment on the new controller as it is still to soon to make any judgement. I personally use the Samsun 830 SSD's due to their outstanding reliability of the controller. Not as quick in benchmarks as some of the others, but never lost one yet. I can not say the same of Sandforce SSD controllers.

I suspect you would be happy with either to be quite honest. If I was looking for a bargain now is a very good time to be buying SSD's as the Sandforce controller ones are being sold at bargain prices.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Hi there! 🙂

Basically all NAND is not created equal. The quality and type (SLC, MLC, SYNCH, ASYNCH etc. etc.) of the NAND chips is the determining factor in price......of course the old addage "you get what you pay for" is doubly true in the SSD market. The write amplification of different NAND means a lot in how long it is going to last etc.

Get an SSD that is going to have plenty of spare room on it after you put your OS and a few of your most used programs on it. 240 GB is a good size. The numbers game is just that, a game. If you take a handful of recent gen drives you wouldn't be able to tell which one was which in normal use and you wouldn't be able to tell them from a handful of last gen drives either.

[Red_xi]

Thanks for the replies chaps, clears it up for me!

Think I'm going to stick with the Neutron GTX. Only thing that will be on this drive is the OS, Solidworks 2012,Keyshot and Photoshop CS6. The ability to handle incompressible data makes this drive a sure addition for me.

Thanks again 🙂