SSD for an older computer?

[beginner99]

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)

This is rubbish.

For what 90% of people do his CPU more than good enough. Personally I would say if it flash would not suck so much and Atoms had proper HD acceleration they would be enough for most people.

I just had to play around with my parents now laptop, meaning brand new Windows install. I can't stand computers with HDDs anymore. they drive me crazy...

For general use, SSD will be OPs best upgrade. probably the best he ever made considering it's only 1 component. of course there will be no benefit for gaming or say video encoding. But the computer just feels it is doing what your telling it do do without constant delays...

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Just get a Samsung or Intel SSD - they come with toolbox software which can perform a manual TRIM. You can schedule a Manual TRIM to happen once a week with the Intel SSD toolbox, and I do this for several Windows XP machines, which also don't support native TRIM. I wouldn't bother messing around with a PCI-e controller card.

+1 for that... :thumbsup:

That's what I'm doing on my XPBOX, actually...

This is rubbish.

For what 90% of people do his CPU more than good enough. Personally I would say if it flash would not suck so much and Atoms had proper HD acceleration they would be enough for most people.

I just had to play around with my parents now laptop, meaning brand new Windows install. I can't stand computers with HDDs anymore. they drive me crazy...

For general use, SSD will be OPs best upgrade. probably the best he ever made considering it's only 1 component. of course there will be no benefit for gaming or say video encoding. But the computer just feels it is doing what your telling it do do without constant delays...

You'd be surprised how many ordinary (e.g. non-enthusiasts) who are perfectly happy with a Brazos+SSD combo...

 

[taltamir]

I'm curious about all of these comparisons between an SSD and HDD that were "amazing results". Were all of these examples imaged from what was on the HDD at the point in time that it was slow? I highly doubt it.

It doesn't need to be imaged from a "slow" system to be amazing results. Some of us have installed windows dozens of times and know the speed of a clean system.

A good SSD is ~2x faster sequential and ~100x faster random access.
On some usage scenarios it isn't all that faster (2x), on others it is very very much noticeable (100x is amazing). On many its somewhere between the two.

 

[yefi]

ichy, taltamir is never wrong and never admits it when he is.

So you're going to apologize in front of everybody now huh? That's right, on your knees, do it properly...

 

[beginner99]

You'd be surprised how many ordinary (e.g. non-enthusiasts) who are perfectly happy with a Brazos+SSD combo...

thats pretty much what I wrote isn't it?

 

[serpretetsky]

whoah.... this thread fooled me. For those of you that are deciding to join just now:
This was a necrobump on page 2.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

thats pretty much what I wrote isn't it?

Yep... :thumbsup:

Was more of a general observation.

whoah.... this thread fooled me. For those of you that are deciding to join just now:
This was a necrobump on page 2.

Depends on your definition:

I will use this thread to ask the same question about upgrading my really old PC with SSD.

 

[pandemonium]

It doesn't need to be imaged from a "slow" system to be amazing results. Some of us have installed windows dozens of times and know the speed of a clean system.

A good SSD is ~2x faster sequential and ~100x faster random access.
On some usage scenarios it isn't all that faster (2x), on others it is very very much noticeable (100x is amazing). On many its somewhere between the two.

I have both SSD and HDD. I was advocating the fact that an SSD isn't necessarily going to be the biggest performance boost one can make with other legacy hardware.

Though it may seem like it in this thread, not the entire world is out to get you, taltamir.

 

[taltamir]

I have both SSD and HDD. I was advocating the fact that an SSD isn't necessarily going to be the biggest performance boost one can make with other legacy hardware.

Thanks for clarifying.
I agree that while SSD is an awesome improvement on some really really old system it might actually be better to upgrade other parts first.

Though it may seem like it in this thread, not the entire world is out to get you, taltamir.

And after I invested all that XP into improved paranoia 5

 

[bigrash]

I don't think it's worth it in my opinion.

 

[sm625]

It is definitely worth it to get an SSD. But there is a caviat. New SSDs seem to have a price wall that is just purely ridiculous. You have to pay $60+ just to upgrade an old machine to an SSD, even if that old machine is hooked to a NAS and is only using 13GB on its local HDD! I say wtf put down the crack pipe! Unfortunately there is no reasonable market for 20-30GB budget SSDs. There is intel and ebay however. Intel SSDs are very reliable and trustworthy. I've bought several from ebay, as low as $32.50 shipped for the 40GB X25-V version! Cant go wrong there. Even a X25-V runs great, but you really want to score an 80GB X25-M. But I would not go on newegg and shell out $70 frickin dollars for the cheapest quality SSD on there, that's just nuts. And dont forget there are also lots of the 32GB SLC versions floating around. These are very fast and are priced low because alot of people simply dont know what they've got.

 

[OddRamos]

Thank you all for your input and opinions.

I’ve decided not to use PCIe to SATA3 controller card and plug an SSD directly to my motherboard’s SATA1 connector without the support of AHCI, NCQ and TRIM.

I’ll be running windows XP, so probably an SSD with capacity around 60 GB would be enough.

Since there will be no AHCI support, I think, an SSD should have a good garbage collection system and ability to run TRIM command manually using included software like toolbox etc.

Do you know some SSD models that operate well on really old machines based on users experience?

What particular SSD model that would run well using SATA1 without AHCI support on windows XP would you recommend?

 

[compcons]

I upgraded a netbook that was on a shelf because it was too slow according to my daughter. I had a corsair SSD collecting dust and put it in with Ubuntu. It was actually quite fast. I decided to dual boot winxp and Ubuntu and now both OSes are very usable. It doesn't make the CPU better, but from a day to day usage, I would contend that an SSD makes a bigger difference in those older systems. CPUs are so overpowered for most task (excluding gaming, graphics, etc) that the resource is idle quite often. You may consider looking at your resource monitoring before saying a particular component is constrained.

EH

 

[tweakboy]

Heck ya get the SSD. It will make your system super fast, and you wont be thinking upgrade anytime soon.

It will bring to life your 5 year pc,, everything boom,,,,,, instant ,, 15 sec boot up, etc,,gl

 

[bigi]

no.
Get a new mobo ram and CPU first.

This is so wrong at so many levels that I must say that people never cease to amaze me with their ignorance.

With an older system such as OP's the SSD will bring the most significant performance as long as RAM size is sufficient.

 

[taltamir]

This is so wrong at so many levels that I must say that people never cease to amaze me with their ignorance.

With an older system such as OP's the SSD will bring the most significant performance as long as RAM size is sufficient.

its always hilarious to be called ignorant when you are right.

 

[Brunnis]

I just recently did an upgrade like this. My work laptop is a Lenovo R500 with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo. It previously had a 320GB 7200RPM Seagate drive with Windows 7 on it. The machine felt really sluggish, even with no antivirus, malware or other crap on it. Since I had a Samsung 830 128GB laying around, I decided to put it in. Man, what a difference it made! The computer performs very quickly and consistently, even when doing lots of things at the same time.

The CPU performance is obviously not very good, but for what I'm currently using the machine for, I'm mostly IO bound anyway. Since CPU and IO performance is disconnected to such a degree, it's not really possible to say that upgrading to an SSD on an old machine is pointless. Right now, I'd prefer this machine with an SSD over one with a faster CPU and an HDD.

Ohh, and obviously, the difference between a laptop HDD and an SSD is larger than between a desktop HDD and an SSD. The HDD's are still both orders of magnitude slower than the SSD, though, so I think my case applies quite well anyway.

 

[Eug]

^^^ Yep.

I just put an uber slow SSD (by modern standards) in my MacBook 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (2008) with GMA X3100 graphics.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=34875418#post34875418

This thing absolutely flies now.

I haven't bothered for my desktops though. I can't for the iMac, and the Windows 7 desktop with 7200 rpm desktop hard drive is OK. Not as fast as SSD, but not as painful as a 5400 rpm laptop drive.

 

[taq8ojh]

no.
Get a new mobo ram and CPU first.

This is as far from reality as can be.
SSD is hands down THE best performance booster you can get for ANY PC that has classic hard disk, period. You can have 5GHz 3770K and asstriolabytes of memory, and it would still crawl like a snail.

Besides, you didn't even read his post.

 

[bigi]

its always hilarious to be called ignorant when you are right.

Lol, read the posts below - Please. You are not only ignorant but an idiot too.
Stop touching the keyboard, your post number is fine.