Are SSDs the new RAM for boosting system performance?

RAM was once the king of the system performance boost. Now, there's a new kid in town that's usurping the throne: SSDs.

SSDs are the new performance panacea. But, when SSDs first hit the scene a few years ago, we hated them. They were small--too small to be useful and too slow for anything but Netbooks. Technology took hold and now SSDs are our new heroes. They are the new RAM. Still a little pricey for widespread consumer use; servers, high-end laptops and ultrabooks come equipped with them. And, they're fast. They're cool. Sure, they're cool in the vernacular sense of the word but they're also cool in the Fahrenheit/Celsius sense too. No moving parts means cooler temps and cooler laps under them. My favorite thing to say about SSDs is that, "They toil not and neither do they spin."

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Are SSDs the new RAM for boosting system performance? | ZDNet

 

[DooRules]

Actually, access times are getting lower with the newer models.

 

[Corpsecrank]

It is funny when people think that an SSD only enhances boot times. I wish more people realized boot time was such an individual and personalized beast. It will vary from board to board and it will vary further depending on what hardware is paired with each board and it goes on further up through the entire configuration. There is no way to actually improve boot times as a whole in the same sense that increasing performance in other areas can be handled.

So far we have built dozens of machines and upgraded dozens more with 128gb SSDs as the primary drive some with 1 or 2tb legacy drives for storage and some with 300gb raptors in the more aggressive systems. ALL of the SSDs have increased performance dramatically and ALL of those are still running reliably. Not all of the 1 and 2tb legacy drives have survived to the point and not all of the raptor drives made it either.

We paid less for the SSD drives than the raptors though just recently the raptors dropped in price a whole lot. We paid about the same price for the 2tb drives as we did the SSDs as well.

Conclusion? The price to buy a new SSD in the 128gb range is equivalent to the price for legacy drives in either performance or raw size category. The performance is much better than a legacy drive by a lot though making them equals depending on what exactly it is you want. You should have 2 drives installed these days one for the OS one for storage either internally or externally. As a primary drive the SSD is not only big enough but also perfectly affordable as an option at this point in time. The performance and reliability far beyond that of any legacy drive.

This is what I have seen first hand building systems on a regular basis.

 

[jbfoster]

I put a 128GB SSD in my desktop and a 64GB in my laptop. I seen a big difference in both systems.

 

[gazz9496]

and just picked up an ocz vertex 4 to replace a 64gb ssd i already had which has found a new home in my netbook...though doesn't really change it's performance sadly.

Of course it doesn't improve performance. the "real" benefit of an SSD is the ultra low random access times. This hasn't improved between new and old models of SSD. In benchmarks your overall throughput speed should increase a lot, but that doesn't usually amount to much from a tangible performance standpoint.

the performance i was talking about was on the netbook it had a spinner, not my main pc where i put the vertex 4.

the netbook does run better just not by much due to other hardware limitations.

 

[azasadny]

I like the fact that the SSD's are silent and don't generate any heat! I upgraded from a 150GB WD Raptor 10k boot drive that sounded like a plane taking off!