Upgrade soon, but what?

[35g700]

This Christmas I am looking to give my rig a little upgrade but I'm not sure what I should upgrade, I've brought it down to either more RAM, or a SSD, I've got some questions about SSD's and I'll need some parts suggested because I have no clue whats good now an either of the two markets.

Currently I've got 4GB of RAM which nowadays is considered the bare minimum. If I were to upgrade I'd want to get 4x4GB, so 16GB of RAM. My current RAM is DDR3-1600 but it does not run at 1600 due to the fact that my CPU isn't clocked high enough, so would it be better to just get 1333 RAM instead?

Now, the big thing that everyone seems to be getting now is a SSD. I'd like to get one but I've got some questions.

1) Do they still have that issue where they can only read/write a certain number of times before they go bad?
2) Can I put certain steam games that I play a lot such as Skyrim on my SSD and leave other games that I don't play as much such as L4D on my regular drive, and can I do the same with Origin and put BF3 on my SSD and leave Crysis 2 on my main drive?
3) I have 2 SATA III ports on my mainboard, would it be worth getting two SSD's and putting them in RAID 0?


Thanks for the help

 

[Fat.Clown]

A SSD will make the most noticeable impact from your day to day operations.

#1
SSD NANDs still have limited writes. and considering that as an issue really isn't fair. hard drives wear out eventually too.

#2
Yes, you just have to change the directory you install your games/programs to during initial installation.
I am unsure about origins though, as I do not use their service.

#3
I am not certain what applications can take advantage of SATA III SSDs in raid 0 at this point. However, I do know as of today, RAID 0 SSDs cannot utilize the trim function (keeps your SSD speedy). and would have to rely on garbage collection.
is it worth it? that's for you to decide.

 

[Trotter]

Origin is an all or nothing affair AFAIK. But I have noticed that I spawn in a few seconds faster than most in BF3 and I think it is because of my SSD.

 

[Night Fox]

You can split up your games. There's no option to do this directly through Steam or Origin, but you can do it: a Directory junction

Install steam and the game you want to move to the other drive on the SSD
Open the command prompt
Right click the game directory FOLDER (doesn't work with files), cut it, and paste it to a directory on the other drive
type: mklink /j "C:\directory\in\steam\or\origin\where\the\folder\was" "F:\directory\of\the\game"

This puts a symbolic link in the appropriate steam or origin folder that points to the folder in the other drive (no, creating a shortcut through Windows's right-click menu does not do the same thing and does not work). This does not work for Valve games on steam, as their primary files are directly in the game folder, and not in a folder of their own.

 

[35g700]

Well I guess I'll be getting a SSD. My budget is around $100 for one, do you guys have any suggestions?

 

[Talyor]

Newegg.com - OCZ Solid 3 SLD3-25SAT3-60G 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC

 

[35g700]

Would it be worth it to pay the extra $10 for the OCZ agility drive?

 

[Night Fox]

Yes...and you should go for the OCZ Vertex if you can...

 

[Talyor]

the ssd i posted and the one 35g are the same and the one i posted is 89.99 and mib 79.99

 

[DEATHRUNE]

why would you ever need, 16gb of ram?

get the ssd, you only need 4gb

Personally I'm getting the vertex 3 60gb