Help me upgrade my set up!

[Twizted_3kgt]

No. HDDs don't even fill the bandwidth cap of SATA 1 which is 150MB/s. The SATA 3 bus support is just fancy marketing.

As I explained before, the no seek time or access time from the SSD along with the raw file transfer speed is what helps in loading times and general computing speed. I still feel an SSD and 660ti would be your best bet.

Gotcha, I didn't quite get all that HDD info you gave me the first time around.

I will definitely be considering a SSD. I have a friend who got me into building PC's many moons ago and he was kicking me in the pants about not getting one.

I was going to mention the 660ti. Is it worth the $60-70 savings to go with it over the 670?

 

[PP Mguire]

Gotcha, I didn't quite get all that HDD info you gave me the first time around.

I will definitely be considering a SSD. I have a friend who got me into building PC's many moons ago and he was kicking me in the pants about not getting one.

I was going to mention the 660ti. Is it worth the $60-70 savings to go with it over the 670?

I'll try to simplify it a bit more so you can understand.

A HDD can't get any faster than what they are now without raising the spin cycle (Velociraptor) but even then a HDD will never have the quickness of an SSD.
Transfer speeds completely aside (the sequential read/write numbers you see) a HDD can only access a file on a platter so fast. Average latency is about 4.16ms on all common 7200RPM drives. An SSD is pretty much instantaneous. Reason being, a HDD has to move the head over to the platter to read a file. After that comes seek time. How long it takes the drive to find the file on the platter. From what I'm to understand this can be different between drives due to the nature of having higher capacity single platters, perpendicular writing, ect ect. It's still the act of finding said file on the platter whereas the SSD knows instantly where it is to access it. The biggest break through between the two is simply no moving parts. We all know how fast RAM is, and an SSD is based loosely on this technology which in the end makes raw transfer speed 5-10x faster than a standard drive.
Most want to compensate in transfer speed with a RAID 0 setup, but RAID doesn't change latency and seek times. In this aspect a HDD will never be as fast as an SSD because they physically can't change those problems. In the end, it's latency and seek time being non-existent in an SSD which makes it so much quicker, and why Windows/general computing is much snappier.

To the cards. Lets turn it around, is it worth the extra for the performance? Yes.

 

[Twizted_3kgt]

I'll try to simplify it a bit more so you can understand.

A HDD can't get any faster than what they are now without raising the spin cycle (Velociraptor) but even then a HDD will never have the quickness of an SSD.
Transfer speeds completely aside (the sequential read/write numbers you see) a HDD can only access a file on a platter so fast. Average latency is about 4.16ms on all common 7200RPM drives. An SSD is pretty much instantaneous. Reason being, a HDD has to move the head over to the platter to read a file. After that comes seek time. How long it takes the drive to find the file on the platter. From what I'm to understand this can be different between drives due to the nature of having higher capacity single platters, perpendicular writing, ect ect. It's still the act of finding said file on the platter whereas the SSD knows instantly where it is to access it. The biggest break through between the two is simply no moving parts. We all know how fast RAM is, and an SSD is based loosely on this technology which in the end makes raw transfer speed 5-10x faster than a standard drive.
Most want to compensate in transfer speed with a RAID 0 setup, but RAID doesn't change latency and seek times. In this aspect a HDD will never be as fast as an SSD because they physically can't change those problems. In the end, it's latency and seek time being non-existent in an SSD which makes it so much quicker, and why Windows/general computing is much snappier.

To the cards. Lets turn it around, is it worth the extra for the performance? Yes.

Wow, I completely understand now. Thanks!

As for the cards, now that you have me looking at benchmarks: For 660ti money, I could have a 7950, which is very comparable to the 670, and also said to be a good overclocker. Looks like the general consensus is if you're into overclocking, go with the 7950. If you don't want to overclock, go with the 670. Any thoughts on that?

 

[PP Mguire]

The 660ti is the direct competitor to the 7950 actually. The general consensus is get AMD only if you have to, due to their latency issues and seriously terrible drivers.

All of the above cards are good overclockers. Especially if you get one of the 600 series cards with an aftermarket cooling solution (like the eVGA Signature or Asus DirectCU2).

 

[Skorpian]

If he likes to have everything at max including AA then I wouldn't advise him to get the 660 Ti, it has bandwith issues and high levels of AA put the card on its knees according to graphs. The HD Radeon 7950 is a great overclocker indeed but overclocking is what can be called a " sillicon lottery ", a guy can get a great overclocking chip on low volts while the other one can get a card that can't overclock well even on crazily high volts.
Also, " seriously terrible drivers " is sort of fanboyism, no offense. If their drivers were seriously that horrible we'd be seeing more complaints.

 

[PP Mguire]

If he likes to have everything at max including AA then I wouldn't advise him to get the 660 Ti, it has bandwith issues and high levels of AA put the card on its knees according to graphs. The HD Radeon 7950 is a great overclocker indeed but overclocking is what can be called a " sillicon lottery ", a guy can get a great overclocking chip on low volts while the other one can get a card that can't overclock well even on crazily high volts.
Also, " seriously terrible drivers " is sort of fanboyism, no offense. If their drivers were seriously that horrible we'd be seeing more complaints.

There are complaints everywhere, including testimonies even here about how much better the "swap" to Nvidia is. I've had a card from every single generation from ATI/AMD since the AiW 7200GPU and the latest I've played with is the 7870. I currently own a 5850 and it is in use. No fanboyism, it's true. After the latency discovery AMD finally decided to get off their ass and start fixing their software but too little too late.

I doubt seriously it has issues with high amounts of AA. I only have 1.5GB of VRAM and a 384bit wide bus with a max bandwidth of 192GB/s while the 660ti has 2GB of VRAM on a 192bit wide bus with a max bandwidth of 144GB/s. Really isn't that big of a difference considering the GPU itself on the 660ti is actually more powerful than the 580 stock to stock. If I have no problems, I doubt it does.

I mean, I can start dropping graphs from TPU (a site I know uses AA in their benchmarking) but I think that isn't necessary. In terms of competition the direct competitor to the 7950 IS in fact that 660ti and dollar to dollar the 660ti is the better option as a package. The only advantage the 7950 has is the 3GB VRAM for anybody who decides to do Eyefinity. But on a smaller single card that is kind of retarded.

 

[Yevrag35]

There are complaints everywhere, including testimonies even here about how much better the "swap" to Nvidia is.

+1,000,000

He convinced me about a month ago to ditch a second 6950 in favor of a GTX680. Night and day difference.

 

[Twizted_3kgt]

Ok so I picked up an Intel 520 series 180GB SSD. I noticed almost NO change whatsoever in loading times. Windows I can see is slightly snapier, but not "worth the money faster". I mean, the difference is slight. I'd rather have the 2 TB than this SSD at this point.

Any reason it's not as fast as everyone made it out to be?

 

[PP Mguire]

Did you do a fresh install? Is the bios set to AHCI?

Ask anyone here. Use it for a month then switch to a HDD. You'll wish you still had the SSD. 100% guarantee you anybody here with an SSD will agree. The differences are subtle enough to not notice right away besides on certain things but huge enough that when you revert you go "Damn". One of the biggest difference you'll notice are the responsiveness of your PC and loading times in games that matter. Windows boot up doesn't matter much. I boot up in 25.6 seconds from power on to desktop with a password.

 

[Twizted_3kgt]

Did you do a fresh install? Is the bios set to AHCI?

No I cloned. I'll have to check the BIOS.

Does a fresh install make a HUGE difference? If it isn't earthshaking, I don't want to waste the time I'll spend doing it as well as re-downloading 150GB of games.