Re: SSD's Downside to picking up a larger one and keeping OS and FSX . . .

[tutmeister 710]

Yes, SATA revision 3 boasts 6 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s or Gb/s, not GB/s - my bad from earlier posts), resulting in access speeds approaching double that of 3Gb/s SATA drives. What you need to ensure is any potential candidate to be your motherboard, or mainboard, has a native 6Gb/s SATA controller. You'll have to research that yourself, but I can tell you that my motherboard works well enough, an ASUS P8Z68 V-Pro. Any SATA III drive will work great, I prefer OCZ's pickings, as they have been continuously ranked high with benchmarks by MaximumPC magazine, while their price isn't much different than the competition.

[Noel 4,501]

Yes, SATA revision 3 boasts 6 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s or Gb/s, not GB/s - my bad from earlier posts), resulting in access speeds approaching double that of 3Gb/s SATA drives. What you need to ensure is any potential candidate to be your motherboard, or mainboard, has a native 6Gb/s SATA controller. You'll have to research that yourself, but I can tell you that my motherboard works well enough, an ASUS P8Z68 V-Pro. Any SATA III drive will work great, I prefer OCZ's pickings, as they have been continuously ranked high with benchmarks by MaximumPC magazine, while their price isn't much different than the competition.

Thank you Paul I will look into those features. I am contemplating waiting til Ivy Bridge and PCIe 3 graphics cards so will need to see what mainboards on those parts. I have no clue on memory yet. I don't do upgrades very often so am inclined to buy top end parts each time now rather than bother w/ incremental upgrades. So highest end memory that works and a good SSD. Haven't seen the definitive testing on the idea of two SSD's versus one SATA III SSD. I can't imagine there will be bandwidth issues, and methinks an SSD can read any parts of the drive at any time provided the bandwidth isn't saturated, which I think won't be the case w/ these drives. Right now I'm using a 7200rpm for my OS, and a 10K drive for FSX. I have to think requests sent to an SSD would be responded to synchronously if FSX demanded it. If something beyond theory, or even a better theory comes along, I'm game to consider two SSD's, but as I say, I'd be happiest w/ one if there is no significant diff between the two approaches.

[scott967 62]

Right now I am running at 100Gb for Win 7 + FSX on an OCZ Vertex III 120. I have my AI aircraft on HD though. If I get much fuller I might get another 60 and put some scenery on there. I figure time is on my side cost/performance wise. This is probably my last Sandforce controller SSD though.scott s..

[Noel 4,501]

Right now I am running at 100Gb for Win 7 + FSX on an OCZ Vertex III 120. I have my AI aircraft on HD though. If I get much fuller I might get another 60 and put some scenery on there. I figure time is on my side cost/performance wise. This is probably my last Sandforce controller SSD though.scott s..

Scott, why last Sandforce controller SSD? I don't know anything about these things so any help is appreciated. Again, money is no object! Just get me the very best of the very best!

[scott967 62]

Scott, why last Sandforce controller SSD? I don't know anything about these things so any help is appreciated. Again, money is no object! Just get me the very best of the very best!

Sandforce has had some QA problems with their firmware. Though they were just bought by LSI Logic, so maybe in the future things will change. At any rate, my OCZ Vertex III will BSOD windows about twice a week. After which the system can't see the SSD until you power-cycle. OCZ has released a series of firmware updates trying to fix. The current one is 2.15 and seems to have worked for some but I'm not sure it fixes all problems. Thing is the recommended method is to flash the new firmware, then do a secure erase of the drive, then clear motherboard CMOS, then reboot and then setup your BIOS again. You might need to change hot swap settings in BIOS, TRIM settings in Win7, etc if that doesn't work.scott s..

[Noel 4,501]

Ugg! I don't think I want to play with something that is that on the edge of failure. Are there other SSD's/controllers that are rock solid and can do 6Gbps