Windows 7: SSD Opinions Wanted

That they are.....I'm glad to see OCZ come out swinging with that high-end SSD.

Just got a Samsung 840 Pro to replace my Crucial m4. Pretty nice SSD. I have found crucial firmware has been a bit problematic - nothing serious, just performance wise. I think right now the Samsung are the most solid and understand Plextor have a good rep with teir firmware. Those two were my sshort list and I choose Samsung because it had somewhat better overall performance in reviews.

I couldn't bring myself to consider an OCZ after the fiasco they had with the Vertex 3.

Here is a set of various benchmark comparisons between the Samsung 840 Pro and the OCZ vector.
The Samsung 840 Pro leads the vector in most benchmarks. You can plug other SSDs in for comparison too:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/665?vs=730

Truth be told, you could swap the Samsung 840 Pro, Plextor M5 Pro, Corsair Neutron GTX, OCZ Vector, or any other premium SSD out with another and probably not notice any difference. Those scores do make the 840 Pro look really good, but those of us that have been in the SSD market for awhile know what scores actually mean something in real world, everyday application.....and you could get 100 drives that will do the same in those situations.

The real game changer is going from a HDD to an SSD, there is very little gained after that. I would certainly consider an OCZ Vector, new management, new philosophy, new SSD controller and look at what they delivered. Any company can have problems.....my most recent build saw TWO Intel 520 SSD's in a row go bad in a day or two each (which I blame on the Sandforce controller) and they were suppose to be rock solid! I went with Intel originally for this build because of how my first SSD, the Intel X25-M, performed. Not the same experience at all. Returned the 2nd Intel SSD, bought a Samsung 830 and have had zero problems since.

The premium SSD's will always be what everything else is compared to. Right now, the premium SSD's are the ones I listed at the start of this post, and there probably isn't a nickel of real world difference between them.

The ones you listed are not the premium. They are Samsung and Plextor. I can tell you I have a m4 and 840 and the m4 is not leading in any way, has issues, and its sequential write is significantly slower than the 840 or plextor. Here is a comparison between the Samsung and Crucial m4. This shows you that the year old m4 is no longer premium and is trounced by the 840 Pro.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/665?vs=355

Three things you should consider, performance, cost and reputation (reliability and durability). In the comparison I linked between the OCZ and Samsung, the Samsung clearly performs better. They also have a better reputation and cost less by $20. So that is a no brainer to me.

Why would you dismiss performance. Certainly if you move from a HDD to an SSD you will be all starry eyed, but after you have used SSDs for a while you will care about performance just as you would hard drives. So why not start out with one that has the best performance given other factors? You may have one for a long time.

Is this to me?

BTW, to the OP, I assume that this is for a desktop. But if it is a laptop you may want to look at power onsumtion as well, and the Samsung, I believe, hads the lowest at 0.15W.

Good luck.

The premium drives I referred to were the drives listed at the beginning of that particular post. Those ARE the premium mainstream drives available currently. I have and always will recommend Samsung SSD's because they got it right. They make every component in their SSD's and are probably the most reliable out there. I also know that others who haven't had my particular experience with Samsung may be open to other drives for whatever reason, that is why I listed several SSD's. The reason I told him to get the M4 was if price was a concern because honestly, 95% of people couldn't tell the difference between a computer with a Samsung 840 Pro and a Crucial M4. Benchmarks are just for bragging rights for the most part, and there isn't much difference in the speeds of the tests that ACTUALLY make a difference in real world performance. Windows can only boot up so fast, and programs can only launch so fast.......unfortunately. I will agree, in fact I said it in my first post, if the OP can afford it, go with the Samsung over the Crucial M4 because it IS the fastest out there.

i have a 128gb SLC sandforce SSD which is probably faster than even the 840 pro 256gb version, but each one costs 250 =/

high QD read/writes samsung 840 pro wins but then again window is mostly about low QD from 1 to 4 ish, some 8 rarely 16.. with two in raid0 eliminates low QD1 poor performance for most SSD and gives good results.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of Random 4k R/W do you get with that setup? From most of the results I've personally seen, Raid0 doesn't do much for Random 4k R/W.

4k read doesnt improve much, but 4k write burst up a lot with intel RST driver. also raid0 QD1 sequential read/write is more than 2x performance, same with access time drastically reduced.

depending on what software/benchmark run to test 4k QD1 performance. theres AD SSD, HDT and CDM. with CDM I get 4k read 40 MB/s incompressible and 45 MB/s for compressible files cause S301 SLC is sandforce drive, raid 0 brings it to 45-50.

heres samsung 840 pro 128gb in raid 0 review Samsung 840 Pro 128GB RAID 0 TRIM SSD Review, real good drives but it needs some Trim/GC improvement for consistency where as vector, S301 and neutron have almost no problem in this area.

S301 SLC 128gb in raid 0 review MyDigitalSSD SuperSSpeed S301 128GB SLC Chris Ramseyer Edition RAID 0 SSD Review if you look down bottom for CDM chart compressible files, it rocks in 4k read, 4k write loses to sammy's for sure though.

both are monster drives