Intel® Smart Response Technology

SSD Speed with HDD Capacity
Intel® Smart Response Technology boosts overall system performance. It uses an installed fast SSD (min 18.6GB available capacity required) as a cache for frequently accessed data. Key benefits include reduced load and wait times, and lower power consumption through the elimination of unnecessary hard drive spin. This technology combines SSD performance with hard drive capacity, operating up to 6X faster than a hard drive-only system

http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V_LK/

Anyone tried this? Does it make a notable difference? Any advice?

Thank you,

I found the existence of this feature using google. I also found GOG using google so dont worry about it. I was looking for the opinion and experience of other fellow gamers because obviously technical geeks from review site will give me good numbers to compare but I am more interested on stories of people who tried the feature vs installing programs directly on the SSD.

thanks

You might want to try the forums on geek sites. One site specialising in SSD's is The SSD Review (link to forum).

I haven't tried caching (and don't have an Intel PC). I have an SSD, but using it mainly for the OS. If you have a big enough SSD I assume it will always win.

My plan was to purchase a 120gb, use 64gb as SRT cache and use the rest to install the OS, Photoshop/Illustrator and my top 5 games. Still reading everything I can find on the subject before investing money. Thoughts and opinions are really split on the subject.

My advice is that Steam makes it a fucking pain in the ass to move games around (I think maybe the new, beta client has fixed this), just buy as big of an SSD as you want, 250 GB-ish or so, that should be plenty of room for brand new games, older games won't require so much performance, so simply install them on your big HDD.

I'd consider 56GB as too tight for OS + apps, but SRT seems to work well with smaller cache sizes, so 32GB will probably work almost as well as 64GB, and IMO will be a better division of space.

As for Steam, it allows you to create Steam libraries on more than one drive and to choose into which one you want each game installed, so it should work well with this scenario. (I'm not using a beta. It's a pretty new feature; I'm not sure when it was first made available.)

You two: you will regret buying such a small drive. I'm really not kidding, it sucks. Yes the drives are fast, but once you get one you'll want to put everything on it. You'll be oh-so-happy and fill up every MB of space, then one of your games will need to patch, and it'll be one of those fucking moronic PC type patches that needs 2-3GB of space. You'll cuss, complain and do it anyway, but you'll get fucking tired of it.

I still have a 80GB SSD and that mofo is a lot smaller than it seems.

I think that SRT should solve that to a large extent. When you get near SSD speed even for your HDD I'm sure that the desire to put everything on the SSD is lessened.

Frankly for me any SSD under 512GB will require compromises, and that's simply not practical to buy.