Replying to The Great Processor Debate

Seeing as how the tech behind SSD is quite similar to thumb drives I have to say that I have a 1 gig thumb drive that I have had for MANY years and have used it a lot. I've transfered info to and from it more times then I can count, and then used it as the swap file when I got my first XP machine, and now I use it for my aging laptop with Win7 on it as a system boost drive. It's lasted for years with no failure, however I've had othe drives that quit working 6 months after I get them. In the end, as with old platter drives, it comes down to luck of the draw and manufacturers quality assurance. Given time, if there are problems with the tech, it will get worked out and they will get more reliable. As for the drives being reliable and trust worthy, there are companies that use SSD tech as their main drive system. As an example CCP, the company that makes and manages the EVE Online MMORPG game uses SSD server drives in the server cluster for their game. I seriously doubt that they would rely on the tech for their server clusters if it wasn't reliable and had low failure rates.

this is exactly why i do consider shifting to SSD (if it wasn't for the high price obstacle)... i've had a 4GB flash (not known brand, i got it cheap) for like 5 years now and have been using it almost every day and its still going hard

And we are familiar with using our current hard drives during five to ten years. Let's see if SSD users will be able to use their drives during ten years, with the full capacity available.

at the moment i think 10 years would be pushing it but hopefully in a couple or so of years from now better and more robust SSDs will be available to migrate our data to

mind you the idea of system on SSD means that Data are still being stored on HDD which means if SSD dies out Data most probably will not be lost

Seeing as how the tech behind SSD is quite similar to thumb drives I have to say that I have a 1 gig thumb drive that I have had for MANY years and have used it a lot. I've transfered info to and from it more times then I can count, and then used it as the swap file when I got my first XP machine, and now I use it for my aging laptop with Win7 on it as a system boost drive. It's lasted for years with no failure, however I've had othe drives that quit working 6 months after I get them. In the end, as with old platter drives, it comes down to luck of the draw and manufacturers quality assurance. Given time, if there are problems with the tech, it will get worked out and they will get more reliable. As for the drives being reliable and trust worthy, there are companies that use SSD tech as their main drive system. As an example CCP, the company that makes and manages the EVE Online MMORPG game uses SSD server drives in the server cluster for their game. I seriously doubt that they would rely on the tech for their server clusters if it wasn't reliable and had low failure rates.

And we are familiar with using our current hard drives during five to ten years. Let's see if SSD users will be able to use their drives during ten years, with the full capacity available.

The 500 000 hours have to be compared to the 10 000 read/write lifetime of the SSD disk.
So, the SSD disk will not die because of mechanical failure, it will die bye loss of read/write ability, 10000 times is nothing compared by the standard current disk which performe about 100 read/write operations per second.

you make it sound like SSD are quite bad... i have read a few threads about user feed backs on SSD so far and they seem to be quite happy with its performance and reliability so far - though its still early because SSD in the market hasn't matured enough to fully analyze its reliability in a real world scene

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/ssds-are-fast-but-do-they-last/3621

mechanical hard drives are usually advertised with less lifespan (~ 500,000 hours) than ssd (~ 2,000,000 hours), one of my friends bought an intel SLC SSD couple of years ago and he said the trick to keep the drive last longer is to make sure it doesn't go pass the ~55% usage mark...

The 500 000 hours have to be compared to the 10 000 read/write lifetime of the SSD disk.
So, the SSD disk will not die because of mechanical failure, it will die bye loss of read/write ability, 10000 times is nothing compared by the standard current disk which performe about 100 read/write operations per second.

I recently bought a new laptop with the following specs:

Model: Dell Inspiron 7520
Processor : 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM Processor 2.10 GHz
RAM: 8 Gigs DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon™ HD 7730M DDR3 2GB
Hard drive: 1 TB @ 5400 rpm

....

As you can see the system is pretty good and I am happy with the performance. But I was wondering, how much performance boost I can get if I replace the hard drive with a SSD. Or as @manuleka mentioned, use ssd as a system drive and the rotating disk hard drive for storage. Will the performance boost be reasonable and worth the price?

I have one additional question.

Will the performance boost seen by a system with faster processor and more ram (after shifting to a SSD from a typical hard drive) be equal to the performance boost seen by a system with slower processor and lesser ram.

Let me quantify the situation... will the perofrmance boost seen by a system with 3rd generation core i7 quad core processor and 8 Gigs of ram be equal to the performance boost seen by a system with 2nd generation core i3 processor with 4 GB of ram.?

wow nice laptop

performance boost worth the price? well there's a saying my friends use - once you go ssd there's no turning back, from my limited experience using my mates SSD systemed PC, Windows boots up a lot faster, application load times a hell lot quicker...

It all comes down to preference really, at the current price of SSD i would give it another year or so before i really consider getting one

In your case - i think an SSD would still be a boost but i can't really say as my friends PC runs on i3 which is slower than your laptop CPU... a bit of googling mite help out

I recently bought a new laptop with the following specs:

Model: Dell Inspiron 7520
Processor : 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM Processor 2.10 GHz
RAM: 8 Gigs DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon™ HD 7730M DDR3 2GB
Hard drive: 1 TB @ 5400 rpm

....

As you can see the system is pretty good and I am happy with the performance. But I was wondering, how much performance boost I can get if I replace the hard drive with a SSD. Or as @manuleka mentioned, use ssd as a system drive and the rotating disk hard drive for storage. Will the performance boost be reasonable and worth the price?

I have one additional question.

Will the performance boost seen by a system with faster processor and more ram (after shifting to a SSD from a typical hard drive) be equal to the performance boost seen by a system with slower processor and lesser ram.

Let me quantify the situation... will the perofrmance boost seen by a system with 3rd generation core i7 quad core processor and 8 Gigs of ram be equal to the performance boost seen by a system with 2nd generation core i3 processor with 4 GB of ram.?

What do you mean by "they seem to last OK" ? A standard magnetic disk last several years, sometimes about ten years. I'm not sure that an intensively write/erase SSD disk will last ten years, I expect that the usable stoarage will shrink to almost nothing after less than three years.
Hower, this is only a bet towards future, let's see how your friend's disks will behave during the next few years.

mechanical hard drives are usually advertised with less lifespan (~ 500,000 hours) than ssd (~ 2,000,000 hours), one of my friends bought an intel SLC SSD couple of years ago and he said the trick to keep the drive last longer is to make sure it doesn't go pass the ~55% usage mark...

mind you this is being used on a Home PC... i wouldn't think SSD would be ideal for a server/swap usage

but as more people start using SSD, the technology will only improve and get more robust...

If i had the extra $$$ i would invest in an SSD to boost my PC performance - most of my friends run this setup (SSD for system and HDD for data) and the performance boost is just amazing

so what's the average lifetime of an SSD? i have a lot of friends who uses SSD and they seem to last ok, well i haven't heard any of them saying that they have issues with their drives so far... all they say is the performance boost is quite noticeable compared to the plater drives

What do you mean by "they seem to last OK" ? A standard magnetic disk last several years, sometimes about ten years. I'm not sure that an intensively write/erase SSD disk will last ten years, I expect that the usable stoarage will shrink to almost nothing after less than three years.
Hower, this is only a bet towards future, let's see how your friend's disks will behave during the next few years.