If I was to put all 3 in ya PC such that i could choose which one the box booted from via the BIOS, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Of course I am not talking about timing 1 TB copy / pastes or video editing movie length videos w/ premiere. But in every day PC usage for 98% of us, its not something you would notice if someone snuck in at night and swapped ya SSDs. We have done blind comparisons twice for 6 week durations, whereby 5 users were unaware whether they were booting / using HD, SSD or SSD on a desktop equipped with 2 SSDs / SSHDs and 1 HD. It was repeated w/ laptops using SSD + HD versus SSHD alone. Each user spent at least 5 days with each storage unit. Users were told that we were monitoring suspected performance impacts from Windows updates and to report any observed changes. On 1 occasion 1 user said boot time **seemed** (he was using HD that day) slower. Measured boot times were:
Seagate 7200 rpm HD = 21.2 secs
Seagate 7200 rpm SSHD = 16.5 secs
Samsing Evo SSD = 15.6 secs
I'm not saying that there aren't performance differences. It's just that in the normal course of doing what one does every day, most folks don't notice. For example, I sit down at my desk press power on, while it's booting, I am listening to voice mails on my office phone. So does it really matter how long it takes to boot If the user is not available to make a keystroke till long after it's done booting ? The user, not the storage system is the biggest PC bottleneck. Yes, you can link to "opening Chrome w/ 100 tabs" or other storage subsystem intensive tasks but the reality is, most don't do such tasks frequently. For those that do, then it will have a positive ROI.
Now that being said, being a geek and I like to buy fast stuff and the cost isn't really a concern (within reason), but for folks w/ budget restrictions, ya really have to weigh the "real benefit" with the "user bottleneck" versus the perceived benefit. Take an office suite scripted benchmark and the SSD will crush a HD ... but have users input each keystroke in that script on a typical file of the type they use every day, no ROI there. On a new box, for someone w/ budget limitations, I'm more likely to recommend throwing an extra $200 inn to a GFX card than an SSD.
Gamers are likely to be most interested but fitting gaming libraries in an affordable space is challenging. In the game I play most often, storage doesn't enter the equation as the server handshaking is the bottleneck. But even here, if my SSD is getting me say 10 seconds, it isn't really changing my life in any way. I'm not going to reach another save point or complete an additional quest. So if it fits ya budget, of course why not ?... but if budget limited and other upgrade options are potentially on the table, then maybe other factors have to be weighed.
Have $1000 for an upgrade ? I like option 2
Option 1 = $550 1080 + $450 SSD
Option 2 = $750 1080 Ti + $250 SSD
