Well, he's not entirely right. "Overpriced" is in the eye of the beerholder. It's like saying a HD5870 is overpriced compared to a 9600GT - yes, the top performance costs top coin.

Reliability is a red hering in his argument, they are much less likely to fail than a mechanical drive, and if Patriot is willing to give me 10 years warranty, I want to see where he can get that on a classical HD.

It's true that they are not speeding up games, but they speed up the whole experience of sitting in front of the computer.

Like I said, you don't want to chop the GFX or CPU just so you can afford an SSD, but if you can afford the CPU and GFX you want, AND have money left, I'd rather spend it on a SSD than on a second card for SLI/CF or on water cooling.

Amen. SSD's will be the future for storage. No "mechanics" and no heat. It's kinda like buying the very first design model of a new car though; you just don't know what the overall reliability is and the cost just isn't there yet.

What surprises me is that the product hasn't been driven by the laptop mfgs. Heat and space is a MAJOR issue in those cramped quarters.

It has. Apple's MacBook Air and the Lenovo T3000 competitior were the first consumer/business computers to come with SSD.

Problem is that laptop sales are steadily rising for private users as well, with a trend to the laptop as "only computer" and these private customers want enough HD space for their movies and digital pictures.

Until SSDs drop in price, they are just not going to go mainstream. With 1Tb hard drives going for around 80 bucks, SSDs just can't compete. I suspect greed has a lot to do with it.

Well, I guess the SSD is just for the OS and games and the like, but 1TB HDDs will be for storage of movies, pictures, and what-not.

Unless you have more RAM than the OS can make use of then setting up a VRD is counter productive.

XP32 can access 3.5 +/- of 4GB installed

XP64 can access 128Gb.

I haven't looked into V64 or W7_64.

The primary limiting factors to a "good" VRD are OS and ram support on the board. With something like SuperSpeeds Ramdisk, which I use, the OS is not much of a problem. XP32 "will" have access to all 4GB+ of ram by using RD as an interface. So you can eak-out all of the unmanaged ram for use.

With XP64 its even better with more managed ram support, up to 128GB. The RD software is, in this case, the VRD "drive" and ALL of a program and v-card memory is accessed directly in ram, not between the ram and...whatever.

The major limiting factor to a real killer VRD is board support of ram, the availabe size and type of single ram modules and there cost.

ECS has a couple of boards that support 32GB of ram. ECS is not known for high quality or features, IMO, but with with my X6800 proc, I run at 3.45 on air with multiplier only and FSB at stock 1067, so ECS would not be a problem to use. The caps on the board are not great; they'd have to be replaced. The cost of a "cheap" 8GB module is around +/- $600 and upwards of a $1000 for one with really good specs. So that investment is VERY expensive, at least for me.

The ability to "dump" a complete 20-25GB program into a VRD and run it with full v-card memory access is very appealing. I've done it with up to 4GB program and the performance and efficiency is really something.

I hope DDR2 ram pricing is driven WAY DOWN when DDR3 really takes off. If it does, I'll probably be running an ECS with 32GB and W7Pro in the future, IF DDR2 decent modules are still avialable.

I'll still be running Autocad, Solidworks and other programs off of my hd direct; but VRD will be for flight sims. They'll really "fly" then.

plug_nickel (Al)

Unlikely, if anything (as is happening now), the cost of DDR2 will just continue to rise since it is not being produced in the same quantities any more because fabs are turning to DDR3... less supply = higher cost.

Oh man, a "realist".

Bah, humbug!...lol

Yeah, I know economics.

Running a fully accessible 4Gb VRD right now is just freaking awesome though. The ability to be able to "drop" FS9, FSX, BHnH, any GR version, Open Falcon, FF5, or several racing sims and run them in ram is worth the wait and see.

I may be 58-1/2 and a Constitutional Conservative, but I still believe in Santa and he uses a RayNav 300 GPS system in his sled: I saw it!

plug_nickel (Al)

I have 8 GB in my system. My decision was based on price. I paid less then $100.00 after rebates for the 8 GB