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[RC23]

Glynor emphasizes often to choose SSD size as big as possible. One explanation is the increasing write and read speed with increase of SSD size. We talk about 270 respectively 200MB/s for read and write with an Intel 320. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4318/intel-roadmap-ivy-bridge-panther-point-ssds/3

The first SSD benefit we are attaining at OS start. Programs starts significant quicker.

An usual system partition with Win 7 and programs comprises up to 30GB if you donīt use store intensive games. In addition of 20% buffer you need a SSD with 36GB. If you buy a 64GB SSD means this a buffer of 12GB (= 48-36GB). o.k. actual it is favorable to go with a 128GB SSD. This boosts the buffer up to 72GB for new software and new tasks.

Which new tasks could this be? Ripping a Blu-ray and converting? The actual way goes to storage an iso because HDD storage costs relative little. The read/write speed of HDDs are standing at 90 respectively 110MB/s.

The slowest partner forces the resulting speed.

How can a vey quick SSD play off its speed advantage?

[Jaguu]

To play out the full speed advantage of an SSD, you need 1. a Sata 3 controller, 2. run the system in AHCI mode.

My newest OCZ Vertex 3 reads at a speed of 420 Mb/s and writes at 405 Mb/s with Sata 3. With Sata 2 it only reads at a speed of 240 Mb/s and writes at 220 Mb/s, which is still much, much faster than any conventional hard drive. Windows 7 boots in a 12 seconds. MC17 starts in 1 second.

In a company where I am responsible for the IT infrastructure all PC's have a 64Gb SSD for Windows and Programs. So far there has never been any space problem. Of course, they use their PC's for work and not for gaming. All user data are on the server.

[glynor]

The sweet spot for performance/cost right now is the ~256GB drives.  The ~512GB drives perform still better, but (except for the Crucial M4 right now) they're still priced at a substantial premium, and the performance benefits drop off after 256GB-ish.  The controllers are just optimized for that size this generation.

The biggest benefit in daily use from an SSD is the random access time improvements.  Sequential reads and writes are what old spinning disks do best, so comparing sequential (peak) read/write speeds doesn't paint the full picture of performance.

When a SSD helps is when the system is doing many dissimilar things on disk at once.  Spinning disks spend most of their time seeking and waiting for the platter to come round.  SSDs can access any "sector" on the disk equally in speed, in any order.  That's the difference that matters most, and that's why the startup performance is the easiest to see.  But all multitasking and disk intensive operations are dramatically improved as well.

Since jumping on the bandwagon, I can say firmly that I agree.  An SSD is the single most important upgrade you can get for your computer.  The benefits you'll see would almost certainly outweigh any other component you can improve.

But, yes, if you can afford it, go for a 240-256GB drive.  If not, then a ~128 will do much better than the little single-channel 64s.  The only way I'd use a 64GB drive anymore would be as a Smart Response cache.