We’re seeing SSDs popping up more and more, in plain drive form or included with high-performance laptops. There’s lots of news to sift through and it’s easy to get lost and wonder “Are any of these stupid things different from each other apart from capacity?” And the short answer is… yeah. But imagine I’m saying that while looking skeptical and making a “ehh” motion with my hand.
The benefits of SSD over HDD are certainly well-known, but between SSDs the differences are still microscopic when compared with the former. Unless you’re planning on getting one of these insane >$1000 PCI-mounted arrays, you’re getting a lot of sameness between drives. Doubtless some manufacturers will start making real advancements that put them ahead of the pack, but as it stands it seems that no one drive (or type of SSD drive) is king of the hill. Check out this solid state roundup over at Hot Hardware, where they do in fact find one better than the others (no spoilers), but all recommendations with drives like this come with a lot of qualifications.
I can’t wait to get my first SSD and load up some games on it, but I think I’ll wait another six months or a year.