I can vouch for the SSD as well.

In my experience, before the SSD, load times were tedious, I had stuttering from the game(s) accessing the HD during gameplay, and I always had to disk-defrag when I would install/uninstall programs frequently.

After the SSD, Win7 boots within seconds, never have to disk-defrag, Everything including games loads faster, Starwars: The Old Republic has seen the biggest difference, with A-10C a close second (in loading times), stuttering from accessing the old HD during gameplay is completely gone. No more models without textures for a split second. (the first explosion in A-10C would sometimes cause a brief stutter for me in the past)

Anyway, I'm just one person so listen to everyone's opinion on here, but I highly recommend upgrading.

Well, I just plopped down $520 USD for a new EVGA 580 video card. I'm not ready to rebuild my system with an SSD at this point, although my A-10C mission building is pretty tedious with the load/unload times.

The old 480 card will go to computer #2 to replace the older EVGA 295 card in it. Then I will have a spare...

WC

My 120GB SATA3 SSD is coming (probably tomorrow).

Its an experiment (bought at Shell Shocker sale price) so I can know "first hand" how well SSD works for applications and games.

I assume it may help "smooth out" some FPS hesitations that come during texture loads (as some here have said). Otherwise, I only expect it to decrease load and save times a bit. It will be interesting to see if SSD wows me more than I expect.

Dollar for dollar, I think it's the best upgrade you can make. I couldn't use a windows system without one now, at the very least as a boot drive.

Thought I'd put that prediction in before we hear back from Allen

Yes, the guy at EVGA said the same, makes sense. I have EVGA MBs and vid cards in both puters. But it is a strong consideration since I've started building missions.

Let us know, Allen.

WC

I know I'm "late to the party". Many of you already have SSD for more than a year now. For those, "latecomers" like me:

The SSD is installed running Windows 8. Installation was easy -- came with a 3.5" adapter and I had one SATA3 port "open" for use with the SSD (have 5 hard drives using the other 5 SATA3 ports). Windows 8 installed noticeably faster on the SSD versus on a hard drive -- still took a while.

I'll have to use it more before I confidently report. Since I may take too long for some folks, here's a first impression.

This SSD is nominally a 500MB/s speed drive. When moving files beteween SSD and a hard drive, things are held up by the hard drive and I've been getting top speeds around 75MB/s -- at times its less than 1MB/s (when handling lots of little files). BTW, I notice when making huge file transfers, Windows 8 opens a little real-time graph that both plots and "reads-out" the transfer speed as it changes. Again, its the slow hard drive that keeps speed low, I imagine.

All in all, the SSD does seem much faster for "disk" access. Still there are other aspects of applications that take time. So, applications don't seem "shockingly" faster, yet (haven't tried everything -- and I have a feeling two, as yet untried, apps are going to show a big improvement during what can be long disk access portions).

Windows does boot faster. Still takes a while because BIOS takes a while -- BIOS 30 seconds then Windows 8 takes under 5 seconds. That Windows 8 time is MUCH faster than my Windows 7 setup on a hard drive (but I don't have everything installed in Windows 8 yet).

Good sized applications open in 2 seconds -- noticeably faster than hard drive.

Starting Skyrim is a bit faster, but still takes time -- when using Steam in the "online" mode, Steam takes "forever" with or without SSD -- Steam sucks. Skyrim now loads a new fast-travel area and runs smoothly in a fraction of a second -- normally took a noticeable amount of seconds for movement to smooth out. Otherwise, Skyrim was smooth (Eyefinity with CrossFire disabled) -- so no change during normal game play.

Still have to move flight sims to SSD. Also have to get more Apps on the SSD.

So far, working as expected. I can see the difference. As some have said, its one of the few things left to do that makes a visible improvement in how the computer runs (most hardware changes make a "measurable improvement" that's "invisible to the eye"). Faster is better -- I'm not getting rid of it Still, not so much faster (the way I use a computer) that I'd tell everyone to buy one -- unless they've got everything else up to date and want to spend more money on something that will make a "visible" improvement at least some of the time (for example, better an SSD than an Expensive case, or high-end optical drive, or expensive high-end overclockable memory, or $300 MB, or 1200W PSU Gold, etc). Of course, some folks can afford the best of everything -- they should seriously consider adding an SSD to their system.

That's the first impression (that may change as I get more time on the SSD). For a gamer, the real test will be smoothing out those FPS hesitations in the few games that have hesitations -- already some progress along those lines in Skyrim.

P.S.

A small SSD won't do it -- at least in my case. I need a rock-bottom minimum of 120GB (what I bought). With only 120GB, I'll be moving games on and off the SSD -- because my desired minimum C: drive installation is over 200GB. All things considered, the technically correct SSD size (for me) is about 500GB. A 500GB SSD is totally out of the ballpark price wise for me (the performance improvement would not be worth it, to me).

Of course, as a gamer, one possibility is to NOT use it as a C: drive -- just a games drive.

So, my SSD is not ideal for me because of the limited capacity. But, I knew that going in. On the other hand, its a worthwhile (to me) experiment.

Not sure trying Windows 8 consumer preview and a new SSD at the same time helps for an exact comparison scenario. It's likely the generic beta Microsoft SATA3 driver, plus the lack of ACHI won't help your speed. A few games don't work as yet, so just something to consider.

Also, if you do start to move games between drives the google the util 'Steam mover' - it works well for any link/move and not just Steam.

Thanks Allen, good analysis.

My new vid card will be here tomorrow.

WC