Which SSD for laptop

[kefan77]

hi,

I'm planning to buy a SSD for my laptop.

At the moment I'm deciding between:


Crucial C300 128 GB for ca. 224 EUR

or

OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB for ca. 203 EUR


from the reviews I read, it seems like C300 is tiny bit faster, got bit higher capacity, but Vertex is cheaper.

Also read about Vertex being faulty quite often. Any true?


which one would you choose? or any other (capacity 120-128gb, brand, similar specs and price)


thanks

 

[RetiredChief]

For a starter, Does your laptop have SATA III (6) which is need to take full advantages of the C300.

Votex-2 and GSKill Phoenix Pro are very close in performance, Both use the SF-1200 Sandforce controller. Not seen to much on faulty units for either. I opted for the Gskill (Had a real good price when I bought it.

Don't sweat 10%->20% differences in 'Published" sequencial read/writes as this is the least important Preformance parameter. Pay attention to the 4K random read/writes - Gskill mpublishes the benchmarks for its SSDs (As said - Vortex should be Very close).

Here is a link on performance of the C300 for both SATA II and SATA III, also shows comparision with other SSDs (including the Vortex-2)
http/www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300

One final note - It appears to get the "published" performance with the SF-1200 you need to use the Lates Intel RST drivers, Version 9 ( there is a beta version 10 out and should be available in the short term. For the Pheonix Pro, a New fireware is in the works.

 

[kefan77]

For a starter, Does your laptop have SATA III (6) which is need to take full advantages of the C300.

Votex-2 and GSKill Phoenix Pro are very close in performance, Both use the SF-1200 Sandforce controller. Not seen to much on faulty units for either. I opted for the Gskill (Had a real good price when I bought it.

Don't sweat 10%->20% differences in 'Published" sequencial read/writes as this is the least important Preformance parameter. Pay attention to the 4K random read/writes - Gskill mpublishes the benchmarks for its SSDs (As said - Vortex should be Very close).

Here is a link on performance of the C300 for both SATA II and SATA III, also shows comparision with other SSDs (including the Vortex-2)
http/www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300

One final note - It appears to get the "published" performance with the SF-1200 you need to use the Lates Intel RST drivers, Version 9 ( there is a beta version 10 out and should be available in the short term. For the Pheonix Pro, a New fireware is in the works.

thanks for reply, got Intel GM965 so I believe it is SATA 2, right?

now I have found Vertex 2 for 190, so it seems like that's the buy , but there's only one thing that puts me off a little bit.

after some more reviews, they mentioned 2 things: slow read speeds [90-95] and really slower performance [-30%] when drive is close to full.

isn't it better to invest 30 EUR more and buy C300 ?

 

[toolinthemist]

i have a 60gb vertex in my desktop and i think its great. i haven't had any issues with it. I can't say how it performs near max capacity since i'm pretty strict in what i install on it.
oh, and the c300 may claim 128gb but it will be less. the reason the vertex on states 120 is because part of the memory is reserved for later use so as to extend the life of the drive.

 

[RetiredChief]

Both c300 and Vertex-2 have 128 Gigs. Avail to user: C300 = 119.8 Gigs, Vertex-2 = 111.8

As too performance, in real life you propable will not see much diff (Depends somewhat on usage). The C300 is faster on reads while the vertes is faster on writes (Looking at the link I posted - ignored performance on Sata III as you are going with SATA II.

The read speeds that you quoted (90->95) ???? Are these random 4 K, or sequencial and from what benchmark. Word of caution on benchmarks for the SF-1200 controller. It appears some use compressed data and SF-1200 does not do to good. Real word, the data is not often compressed, at least that's my understanding. Also for the SF1200 if the test was run using uSoft default AHCI driver, again here to get the stated performance need the latest Intel RST driver (ver 9).

One big advantage with the C300 is that at a later date you could move it to SATA III and get a performance boost.

As to a decrease in performance as the data stored on the SSD gets close to filling it up, I think you will find that true for all of them. with a 120 gig drive, I would limit fill to 95 Gigs. I have a 80 gig in one laptop and a 128 gig in second laptop. For the laptops, I have a large thumb drive (64 gig, One of the faster ones and external HDD (can connect to esata, or to USB3 (have a USB 3 expresscard) to off load my data.