I was considering SSDs when I rebuilt my gaming PC early last year, but they seemed way too untested at the time. I'd get them now, and enough RAM that you can disable any paging. I have an SLI setup and it's awesome 
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June 17, 2010 6:57 p.m. GameboyRMH SuperDork
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June 25, 2010 8:53 a.m. Scott Lear Production Editor
Okay, I've got the SSD running as hoped, and it is nothing short of phenomenal. I did a clean install of Win7 on the SSD, but my Users folder with images, music, videos etc. lives on my spinner, as do most larger programs (games, including a rather large Steam apps folder).
My spinner is a Western Digital Black, not the fastest in the world but not the slowest, either. It's a slug compared to the SSD.
Windows loads in less than 1/3 the time; it was quicker still when the Users folder was hosted on the SSD (maybe 1/8th?). I figure I'll rotate apps onto the SSD when I'm using them frequently: for example, I've been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 quite a bit, so I copied that Steam folder onto the SSD and used the mklink feature in Win7 to point Steam from the old hard-drive location to the SSD. Map load times in the area of 2-3 seconds (versus maybe 15-20).
It's so fast that at first you think something's wrong. I'm blown away. Pricey, but highly recommended.
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June 25, 2010 12:04 p.m. Duke SuperDork
BoxheadTim wrote:
Back when I started working as a professional programmer, PCs tended to have a 'turbo' button...
I'm old enough to remember those, but I was never dumb enough to understand them. I mean seriously, who ever would think to themselves "Hmmm, I'd like my computer to run slower today, so I think I'll turn this here little turbo button off."
It's not like you get better electron mileage if you stay out of boost, or something.
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June 25, 2010 1:30 p.m. BoxheadTim Dork
No, but some games became unplayable if you didn't turn it off...
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June 25, 2010 1:45 p.m. donalson SuperDork
Duke wrote:
BoxheadTim wrote:
Back when I started working as a professional programmer, PCs tended to have a 'turbo' button...
I'm old enough to remember those, but I was never dumb enough to understand them. I mean seriously, who ever would think to themselves "Hmmm, I'd like my computer to run slower today, so I think I'll turn this here little turbo button off."
It's not like you get better electron mileage if you stay out of boost, or something.
I don't know if there was a REAL reason for them... but I know that I played a few old DOS games that if you played it on turbo it was like playing a movie in fastforward... prob just because of how much of a difference they where making at the time and how the games where programed... but I used it from time to time
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June 25, 2010 4:36 p.m. HiTempguy HalfDork
donalson wrote:
Duke wrote:
BoxheadTim wrote:
Back when I started working as a professional programmer, PCs tended to have a 'turbo' button...
I'm old enough to remember those, but I was never dumb enough to understand them. I mean seriously, who ever would think to themselves "Hmmm, I'd like my computer to run slower today, so I think I'll turn this here little turbo button off."
It's not like you get better electron mileage if you stay out of boost, or something.
I don't know if there was a REAL reason for them... but I know that I played a few old DOS games that if you played it on turbo it was like playing a movie in fastforward... prob just because of how much of a difference they where making at the time and how the games where programed... but I used it from time to time
While I'm not too up and up on computer things (I like to build them and play with software), depending on how it overclocked the computer (if a PCI card was being used for graphics), it would also overclock the PCI bus. This may be simplified/stupid, but I've done it before while playing newer games (but not too new). From what I understand, the PCI bus would literally be sending information at a faster rate, and hence it would be displayed faster on your monitor.
