Maximum PC

Looking for a SSD between the size of 240 - 256 GB. Sata interface 3.

Top performance drives: (in no particular order)
Intel 520 series 240GB] $237
Vertex 4 256GB $200 (my personal preference)
Samsung 830 256GB $196
Neuron GTX 240GB$250
Hyper X 3K 240GB $210

Budget level performance drives:
Agility 4 256GB $170 - before $20 mail-in-rebate (best of this bunch IMO & after the MIR, one heck of a deal)
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB $170
Vertex 3 240GB $170 - before $20 mail-in-rebate

I am stealing your list chaosdm. My favorite on that list is the Samsung 830. Super reliable, super fast, and is always on sale or comes with a 50$ game or something.

The list doesnt include the Crucial M4 @ $200 which should also be considered. It has lost its luster with the recent price drops of a lot of the higher end SSDs, but is still a nice deal.

Excellent list, but don't forget the Agility 3. It may be a generation older, but it's faster than the Agility 4. I put one in my laptop and boot up is 15 seconds!

I've bought 3 (1x120, 2x240) and they've all worked perfectly.

Hope this helps.

Plextor!

I dunno if the M3 is being replaced by the M5 series, but the price for the 256 GB drive is $215 on the Egg.

Thanks everybody for the replies and help Think I'm going with the vortex 4..

Can't go wrong with any of the good ones. Well, actually you can cuz there's always a stinker even in the best of the best

BOOT times are tied to far too many things other than the drive itself. I can press the start button on my MSI P67/Vertex4 build then click restart on my Asus H61/Mushkin Chronos and have the little guy beat the simple POST+BOOT the larger brother does by an easy 5 seconds; while it does a shutdown, reset, POST, and BOOT. The little guy is just staggering and is just like it's coming out of sleep. The cleanliness of a BIOS is what I mostly blame, but will in fact be different from build to build.

Not arguing, just clarifying some thoughts others should know about. Just going SSD is a huge step, and they're really dirt cheap.

Very true, the system I built for my mom boots into windows in 24 seconds on an Agility 3 drive. My system boots into Windows in 37 seconds on Vertex 4 drive. Does that mean the Agility 3 is faster??? NO. My system takes 24 seconds between boot & the time windows starts to load, while my moms system takes just 6 seconds. A simple system with a UEFI BIOS & no RAID makes a huge difference.

24 seconds? That's it? Try 16 seconds . This is my laptop, and about half of that is just POST. It's also gimped because the SSD is rated for 500MB/s, but the laptop has a SATAII connector.

Now if only I could tweak my BIOS so that I could get it down to laptop POST speeds...

Samsung just announced the 840 and 840 Pro. I would wait to see prices on these and how they affect the 830s. The 840 Pro looks like it will be the top dog for 240-256 GB SSDs and is what I would be purchasing if I was in the market for a new one.

$279 & $309 for the 256GB drives if my source is correct, though I'm hopeing that the pricing I'm seeing in some of these reviews is correct...

Well, if you really want those IOPS.

The 830 series has been getting its prices slashed anyway. When I bought it to replace my Vertex 2 in June, it was $150. I bought another one at the beginning of the month to upgrade my laptop for $99.