Thinking of going this direction on next build for primary OS and programs drive...

If you were going to use an Intel X25 SSD as a stand alone drive for the operating system, would you run that off the motherboard? If your other drives were on a controller card, would that be a good set up? Would that mean that you could run the SSD using NCQ, to maximise its potential, because the cards are controlled separately? Would the fact that the paging file be on the SSD mean issues with constant writing and degradation of performance as you pointed out Nick? Can you move the paging file off the SSD in that case? And what is the difference between the Intel extreme and mainstream SSD's ( apart from cost? ) As you can see, I dont feel I have the full picture yet of the various pros and cons surrounding the usage of the various drive options.

Everything I'm reading says that the issue of SSD write endurance is largely a thing of the past, and not a factor with the new drives. With 6 GB of RAM in most new i7 systems, I doubt the paging file is going to be getting much of a workout, anyway. And it's always possible to put the paging file on a HDD if it's a worry.The E series SSDs use single layer cell versus the multi-layer cell technology in the M series. SLC is way faster, especially on write (by a factor of ~2.5x on the X25s).RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

I had 10krpm Raptor with OS and FSX. Now I moved OS (Vista 32bit) to fast SSD (175MBps by producer, 140MBps measured). FSX works almost the same (small increase in loading times and less blurries). I think it is a good choice for OS, but not the best for FSX (large SSD is still expensive)

I know they are getting better with the write operation situation.. especially Intel Right now if someone has the money to pony up and play I dont see any reason why not.. but what I also do not see is the value/cost to the FSX application and what the user is after.Bottom line is the drive does remove the overhead.. a key area anyone with CS experience knows is one of the last bottlenecks on a system, but the cost to use it and the result, and this is just my opinion, is definitely waaaaaay out of line. AHCI is really a benefit to the new Intel SSD but it will kill a mechanical drives raw performance in a single user system for the type of file reads a MSFS user requires. In that, the SSD needs to have its own controller so the SATA drives can live free of the SSD and both can be configured (and no Mark.. the 3ware card you ordered does not support SSD.. at least not yet)and Bob is very correct.. a page file will never be accessed on a system for real time program reads with 4GB+ installed. Moving the page file is also a MYTH. It had merit in 1998-2000 when system memory amounts were 1GB and under., and it also has merit in a network server whereby the sys admin has ascertained the access and I/O for their network. A game system today, a user has to be DENSE or VERY DENSE to not increase their PM to 4GB (or more as i7 needs) to overcome the demand instead of running a poor game application from the HDD instead of PM

I know they are getting better with the write operation situation.. especially Intel Right now if someone has the money to pony up and play I dont see any reason why not.. but what I also do not see is the value/cost to the FSX application and what the user is after.Bottom line is the drive does remove the overhead.. a key area anyone with CS experience knows is one of the last bottlenecks on a system, but the cost to use it and the result, and this is just my opinion, is definitely waaaaaay out of line. AHCI is really a benefit to the new Intel SSD but it will kill a mechanical drives raw performance in a single user system for the type of file reads a MSFS user requires. In that, the SSD needs to have its own controller so the SATA drives can live free of the SSD and both can be configured (and no Mark.. the 3ware card you ordered does not support SSD.. at least not yet)and Bob is very correct.. a page file will never be accessed on a system for real time program reads with 4GB+ installed. Moving the page file is also a MYTH. It had merit in 1998-2000 when system memory amounts were 1GB and under., and it also has merit in a network server whereby the sys admin has ascertained the access and I/O for their network. A game system today, a user has to be DENSE or VERY DENSE to not increase their PM to 4GB (or more as i7 needs) to overcome the demand instead of running a poor game application from the HDD instead of PM

I ran across an update to one of the articles I read that retracted the reviewer's comments about write endurance in the specific case of MLC drives...seems that the high-end SLC drives are OK to take millions of writes per cell before write endurance is a factor, but there's much less endurance (~50,000 writes) on the cheaper MLC drives. So apps that do a lot of writing are maybe not so good an idea on an MLC-based SSD just yet.Moving the page file to increase speed is definitely not a winning strategy--as Nick points out you can buy 4+ gigs of cheap physical memory and never need to hit the page file. But putting the pagefile onto a platter-based disk to avoid page file thrashing on the SSD may make sense still if you're using an MLC-based SSD for the operating system.RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO