SSD or better GPU? Then quick HDD question..

[Joeyboy]

Quick question folks. I'm pricing up a build, I'll post it when I'm ready to buy for a critique but it might be a couple of months depending on finances, clearly prices and products change all the time.

However this question will likely still stand...

Assuming I'm right at my budget, would it best to shell out £60ish on an SSD like the OCZ agility 3, or just go with a 1-2TB hard drive and put the £60 towards a better GPU? (computer would be for gaming)

Then for the Hard drive question. I notice some hard drives mention a 6GB/s rating, generally in the title name of the product, I also notice motherboards now generally mention whether or not they support this speed. Is this faster speed which they present as setting them apart from models which lack this a significant thing to consider when choosing a hard drive? I.e..pick one which has it.

cheers for any answers.

 

[PP Mguire]

GPU vs SSD depends entirely on your budget.

6gb/s on mechanical drives is a marketing ploy. You'll never exceed the bandwidth of SATA2. Just mentioning they support the latest bus. My SATA 2 drives run just as fast as my buddies SATA3 1TB.

 

[jomoreb]

Better GPU always

 

[PC_User]

Depends on the GPU your running now, without knowing the GPU you have now its hard to say, Do you have a sata II or sata III motherboard, Do you have plenty of Storage space, what are your plans for a SSD OS/ maybe a game or 2?

 

[Nukem]

What are the specs of the build you have? Is this an upgrade or a complete new build?

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Just saying, if you are planning on the 60 Gig OCG Agility 3, you will ALSO need ANOTHER drive to supplement it. See my signature. I have 2 of these drives, one in my laptop, one in my desktop. I am not at home right now, but with Windows 7 Ultimate on each of them, I think there is about 25 Gigs of free space on each. That will be GONE in no-time after games are installed. I have a 500 Gig drive on my desktop that I install software to, and a 2 TB drive that I store files on (music, documents, pictures, videos). Don't just get a 60 Gig drive and think you will be ok with that alone.

 

[PP Mguire]

I ran on just a 64GB SSD for quite a while. One thing I try to tell people is you only play one game at a time (usually), why install 4 games and hog space?

 

[Joeyboy]

Just saying, if you are planning on the 60 Gig OCG Agility 3, you will ALSO need ANOTHER drive to supplement it. See my signature. I have 2 of these drives, one in my laptop, one in my desktop. I am not at home right now, but with Windows 7 Ultimate on each of them, I think there is about 25 Gigs of free space on each. That will be GONE in no-time after games are installed. I have a 500 Gig drive on my desktop that I install software to, and a 2 TB drive that I store files on (music, documents, pictures, videos). Don't just get a 60 Gig drive and think you will be ok with that alone.

Oh gosh yeah I wasn't saying I'd have this SSD and no other hard drive, 60GB is nothing haha!

What I meant was I'd buy a 1-2TB hard drive, and it's whether or not the added speed of having the OS and a few programs on the SSD is worth it, or I also hear setting up the SSD as some sort of caching device? (I'm not sure what the term is, caching is probably wrong, just I read somewhere about separating off a certain amount to do something like that, sort of helping to increase loading times in general..).

Otherwise I'd get a better GPU.

So hypothetically if I built this thing tomorrow, I'd probably go with...

This hard drive: 2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 6GB/s Hard Drive - Aria PC

Then if I got the OCZ agility 3 60GB SSD, I'd get a 560ti as the graphics card.

If I didn't get an SSD, the £60ish would allow me to get a 570 or AMD wise (I'm not loyal to either brand) just about a HD6970 or 7870 depending who has a deal on.

 

[PC_User]

no real noticeable difference in gtx560ti gtx570 is about the same very small difference, IMO a SSD is one of the biggest noticeable improvements you can make in a system.

 

[PP Mguire]

no real noticeable difference in gtx560ti gtx570 is about the same very small difference, IMO a SSD is one of the biggest noticeable improvements you can make in a system.

Yea, no. Unless you mean 560 448 cores.