SSD for an older computer?

[ichy]

Is it worth getting a solid state hard drive for a computer thats's four or five years old? I built my current computer (Intel E6750 based) in late 2007, and aside from some extra RAM and a new video card I haven't made any significant upgrades. Nothing is coming out in the near future that would cause me to build an all new computer, so I'm wondering if it's worth dropping money on a SSD to run Windows off of. Can I expect to see a real performance boost?

 

[taltamir]

no.
Get a new mobo ram and CPU first.

 

[philipma1957]

yeah I would consider buying a better cpu. the i7 2600k is 199 at micro center if you can make the drive to one it is a good cpu at a good price.


http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-2-Duo-E6750-Performance-Preview/?page=2 your cpu can get to about 4ghz on an oc. but only 2 ores


the 2600k can do 4.5 on 4 cores easy you can also find a good mobo for it for about 100 bucks

 

[dawza]

I disagree-- depending on your usage, an SSD can be a modest to a significant upgrade. I've performed this type of upgrade on multiple machines over the years and guarantee that even moderate tasks (Office programs) will be notably more responsive. And, there's no reason you can't migrate your existing SSD if and when you perform a platform upgrade.

I've compared HDD vs. SSD performance on systems ranging from an Atom netbook to a Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, and i5-- notebook and desktop. These are all systems I use on a daily basis, and they all started off HDD-based. If you don't feel the need to upgrade your CPU/MB/RAM, and your workflow is not significantly CPU bound, I see no reason to let your other components dictate whether or not you should move to an SSD. You will absolutely feel a difference. Will you be bottlenecked by your CPU? Probably-- but if a lowly 1.66 GHz Core Duo system can take advantage of an SSD...

 

[Old Hippie]

I say "Go For It"!

An upgrade is an upgrade is an upgrade and you will notice the difference.

 

[postmortemIA]

go for it, I have E6700 and computer got new life with SSD.

 

[taltamir]

I disagree-- depending on your usage, an SSD can be a modest to a significant upgrade.

This is not in question. The question is whether or not his money is better spent otherwise.

Yes an SSD will boost his performance but a CPU upgrade is what he really needs.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I've used an SSD on my ancient P3 rig and it felt very good. E6750 is still a good processor, capable of many things, imo.

There's no point to upgrade your processor unless you really need more power. These things obsolete way too fast anyways.

 

[dawza]

This is not in question. The question is whether or not his money is better spent otherwise.

Yes an SSD will boost his performance but a CPU upgrade is what he really needs.

But how exactly do you (or anyone other than the OP) know whether he needs a CPU upgrade? The original question was whether it would be worth it to get an SSD for an older system. I think it's worth it-- you may not. If he's only playing older games and doing light Office work/surfing, it's a safe bet that he will realize more benefit from an SSD than a new CPU. He can always re-use an SSD in a new platform when he upgrades and enjoy the increased performance in the interim.

$100-150 for a 80-120 GB Intel G2/G3 + time needed to clone/reinstall the OS and programs. Coming from an HDD, a notable improvement in responsiveness is essentially guaranteed. CPU now becomes the likely bottleneck. If OP wants to take it to the next level, he can do so. If not, he can still enjoy the performance benefits of an SSD.

$250-300 for a CPU/MB/RAM upgrade (I'm assuming no one is suggesting that the OP get a faster/quad C2D CPU only). Coming from an older C2D, overall performance/responsiveness will be improved. HDD becomes the likely bottleneck. OP can still upgrade to an SSD, but the initial monetary output will be higher.

It's a toss-up between these two scenarios without additional information. However, the OP states that he has no intention to upgrade his CPU/MB-- which I infer from his statement about not wanting to build a new computer. But, he does want to improve performance. Based on this, I conclude that an SSD is a worthwhile upgrade. I back this up with personal experience over the last few years, across several systems with even older CPUs than his, as well as more modern CPUs.

 

[exdeath]

Even a 1GHz CPU spends 90% of its time sleeping and waiting on disk interrupts ...

 

[ichy]

Yes an SSD will boost his performance but a CPU upgrade is what he really needs.

I don't need a CPU upgrade. It's fast enough to run Windows and whatever games/apps I play.

 

[Eug]

I upgraded both my 13" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz and my Pentium SU4100 dual-core 1.3 GHz Windows 7 laptop.

Both had 5400 rpm drives, and both were upgraded to V+100 SSDs.

The MacBook Pro went from OK to very fast.
The Windows laptop went from slow to OK. Just OK because things still feel CPU limited.

OTOH, my iMac Core i7 already feels decent with a modern 7200 rpm 3.5" drive. Adding an SSD would make it feel faster, but it's not as critical an upgrade IMO.

 

[CrimsonWolf]

Yeah, go for it. I put an SSD in a computer with an Athlon 64 X2 of similar vintage and it was a great upgrade for the machine.

That E6750 still has plenty on muscle for basic tasks and older games. As you've already picked up on, a new CPU/mobo/memory would be a waste of money for just a general performance boost on the computer until you have a program that really needs it.

 

[Coup27]

Yes. And if you buy a quality modern drive like a Samsung 830, in a years time (example) you can migrate that over to a new rig and it'll still hold it's own against other 6Gbps drives.

 

[thelastjuju]

If you find an e6750 is fast enough for everything you do, then an SSD drive is probably not necessary.. but obviously everyone at this memory/storage section is going to push SSD on you.

I also totally don't buy this idea that today's SSD drives are some sort of investment that you will have forever.. this is brand new technology, nowhere near being taken full advantage of, and even on Anandtech's front page, they discuss the current formats limitations and potential changes to the SSD market:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5743/intels-ssd-910-400800gb-mlchet-pcie-shipping-in-1h-2012

 

[taltamir]

But how exactly do you (or anyone other than the OP) know whether he needs a CPU upgrade?

because he told us what model CPU he has.

Based on it I can tell that it is more useful to upgrade his CPU then to an SSD.
Regardless of what usage scenario he has.

If it was a borderline case I would have instead asked him what his exact usage scenarios are before making a suggestion.
And he asked "Should I upgrade" aka "use your knowledge and expertise to tell me what to do" not "please educate me so I can make an informed decision" (because if he wanted that he doesn't need us, he can just read up on it himself on anandtechs main site)

 

[dawza]

If you find an e6750 is fast enough for everything you do, then an SSD drive is probably not necessary.. but obviously everyone at this memory/storage section is going to push SSD on you.

I also totally don't buy this idea that today's SSD drives are some sort of investment that you will have forever.. this is brand new technology, nowhere near being taken full advantage of, and even on Anandtech's front page, they discuss the current formats limitations and potential changes to the SSD market:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5743/intels-ssd-910-400800gb-mlchet-pcie-shipping-in-1h-2012

That's OK. You don't have to buy the idea that ANY piece of hardware is a forever investment. No one is asking you to. Relax and let me tell you a story about my i5 notebook that came with a 7.2K RPM HDD. Every morning, I would come to work, dock my notebook in, boot up, and log on. Like most people, I would first open Outlook. This would take anywhere from 15-30 seconds to actually launch and sync with the Exchange server. This was annoying. Searching also took a few seconds longer than I wished it did. For months, I dreaded the morning drudgery of waiting for up to 30 seconds just to open my email. Even worse was trying to launch a VM that had been shut down completely. That took up to a minute or more.

Then, I was allowed to upgrade to a G2 Intel SSD. The very next time I docked, logged in, and opened up Outlook, I couldn't believe that I was actually online and connected to Exchange. It literally took three seconds. VMs loaded up from complete power-down to full-on within 10 seconds. The world was right again. Note that I've been using SSDs for years, so I have high expectations to begin with.

It might not seem like much, but these little things that interrupt your workflow cost the company money. They made back the initial minor cost of the SSD within two days due to increased productivity, and it's all gravy from there. When this SSD dies, the machine will be obsolete, and we'll replace the whole thing as part of the normal ~5-year cycle. If we have laser-guided, unicorn dust-coated,nanorobot quantum friggin dot storage by then, so much the better. I'll gladly say goodbye to SSDs in favor of this newfangled technology, just as I'm glad to say goodbye to HDDs in favor of SSDs right now.

 

[dawza]

because he told us what model CPU he has.

Based on it I can tell that it is more useful to upgrade his CPU then to an SSD.
Regardless of what usage scenario he has.

If it was a borderline case I would have instead asked him what his exact usage scenarios are before making a suggestion.
And he asked "Should I upgrade" aka "use your knowledge and expertise to tell me what to do" not "please educate me so I can make an informed decision" (because if he wanted that he doesn't need us, he can just read up on it himself on anandtechs main site)

I'm inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt when they ask a question and take it as an opportunity to inform, rather than dictate without providing evidence as to why.

In any event, the OP has spoken, and I fear that continuing our personal discourse (which is liable to rapidly degrade into a pointless e-peen semantics battle) in a public forum benefits no one.

 

[jaydee]

I put a cheap 32GB SSD into a P4 with SATA 1 two years ago. Made a huge difference as I did nothing too cpu intensive with that machine (office apps, internet, old games like AOE II). I say do it.

 

[thelastjuju]

That's OK. You don't have to buy the idea that ANY piece of hardware is a forever investment. No one is asking you to. Relax and let me tell you a story about my i5 notebook that came with a 7.2K RPM HDD. Every morning, I would come to work, dock my notebook in, boot up, and log on. Like most people, I would first open Outlook. This would take anywhere from 15-30 seconds to actually launch and sync with the Exchange server. This was annoying. Searching also took a few seconds longer than I wished it did. For months, I dreaded the morning drudgery of waiting for up to 30 seconds just to open my email. Even worse was trying to launch a VM that had been shut down completely. That took up to a minute or more.

Then, I was allowed to upgrade to a G2 Intel SSD. The very next time I docked, logged in, and opened up Outlook, I couldn't believe that I was actually online and connected to Exchange. It literally took three seconds. VMs loaded up from complete power-down to full-on within 10 seconds. The world was right again. Note that I've been using SSDs for years, so I have high expectations to begin with.

It might not seem like much, but these little things that interrupt your workflow cost the company money. They made back the initial minor cost of the SSD within two days due to increased productivity, and it's all gravy from there. When this SSD dies, the machine will be obsolete, and we'll replace the whole thing as part of the normal ~5-year cycle. If we have laser-guided, unicorn dust-coated,nanorobot quantum friggin dot storage by then, so much the better. I'll gladly say goodbye to SSDs in favor of this newfangled technology, just as I'm glad to say goodbye to HDDs in favor of SSDs right now.

Obviously your setup was riddled with malware, bloatware, and viruses or something.

Outlook, as with every other ridiculously lightweight application in the MS Office suite loads in less than half a second for me.. and I'm on an office rig I built myself for less than $200, with an old IDE hard drive pulled from a 7 year old dell. But then again, its also running Windows XP SP2 so it can be compatible with legacy software.

When I initially loaded SP3 (not yet realizing it would render the software I needed incompatible) the computer took longer to boot up, took a good 20 second delay before you can use the computer, and all applications loaded slower. When I redid the install to windows xp SP2, everything became zippier and instantly responsive and usable immediately after logging in.

But all I was really saying is that SSD technology is still very new.. and that the entire format might switch to pci-express to get around the current bandwidth limitations.. so its not something to be futureproofing with too much confidence.

 

[dawza]

My rig was a fresh enterprise image. This was a strict A/B test. So obviously, no, it was not riddled with any of those things you mentioned.

Your workflow may not take advantage of an SSD. That's fine for you. Mine does. That's fine for me. Somehow, others, including Anand, seem to be in the pro-SSD camp. I use and buy SSDs for what they can do for me right now. If something better comes along in the future, I'll adapt accordingly.

I have no use for XP as a host OS, and it's not an option in my company. I do use XP mode for testing/legacy programs, and it runs wonderfully on my SSD.

 

[Topweasel]

My rig was a fresh enterprise image. This was a strict A/B test. So obviously, no, it was not riddled with any of those things you mentioned.

Your workflow may not take advantage of an SSD. That's fine for you. Mine does. That's fine for me. Somehow, others, including Anand, seem to be in the pro-SSD camp. I use and buy SSDs for what they can do for me right now. If something better comes along in the future, I'll adapt accordingly.

I have no use for XP as a host OS, and it's not an option in my company. I do use XP mode for testing/legacy programs, and it runs wonderfully on my SSD.

He is right. I am using Outlook 2010 on a Win 7 machine at work with a standard 7200RPM hard drive. It starts up in 2-3 seconds. So either its pre-cached (superfetched) on mine in which you should probably get more ram, or yours is running something that is cause Outlook to get tied up. We used to use an email archive option that added 30-40 seconds to start and sometimes upwards of ten minutes to closing, but even with XP and Office 2003 when we stopped using that, startup and shutdown of outlook took mere seconds, no matter the size of the mailbox.

 

[kbp]

I would say go for it. You will notice an improvement and probably never regret it.
The "boot times" alone will make you never want to go back. AND in one or two years you can migrate it into your new system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think it's probably worth it. Make sure that you get a modern SSD though. Even consider a 6Gbit/sec SSD instead of a SATA2 / 3Gbit/sec SSD, just so you can use it when you upgrade your hardware.

I'm running an OCZ 30GB Agility, which is an Indilinx Barefoot controller. It's kind of slow. (After using it for 5 months, WEI gives it a 5.9, which is the same as a 7200 RPM HD.)

A friend's machine, with the same SSD and also Win7 64-bit, gives it a 6.9. His hasn't been used much.

Anyways, get one that is faster than the one I choose, and you should be happy with it. It's a somewhat worthwhile upgrade. (I might have been more positive about my purchase, had I done some more homework on which SSD to choose. I purchased primarily due to cost reasons.)

 

[Towermax]

Worth it in my opinion. I put a 64GB SSD in my socket 939 dual-core Athlon system. It made a big difference in performance and I ended up keeping the system for another 18 months before replacing it.