Corsair SSD in Real World Applications

That's a nice time saver. I wonder if the difference is as dramatic in usage once the system is booted up?
 
It would be nice to see this on a clean windows installation. Obviously that installation has some serious serious bloat for it to take that long.
 
If they mirrored the HDD over to the SSD, wouldn't there be issues with the data being arranged (for a lack of a better word) in a way that isnt optimised for the SSD's tech? Remember seeing some bench's showing that it's better by far to start fresh on a SD than mirroring everything over.
 
i have a laptop with 4gb of ram, core 2 duo, a 7200 rpm hard drive, with windows 7 ultimate and it does not seem to take that long for windows to load. i have seen an sdd in a similar system, while its fast i don't see any performance over cost benefit compared to a normal hard drive. Unless [H] does it, i'm not totally convinced its that big of a difference on identical systems either.
 
I use OCZ Vertex 60GB for almost 1 year and difference compared to normal HDD is HUGE.

 
don't know what kind of crap were on those laptops... but mine loads windows faster , with 4 gigs of ram and the core i3, (so an almost identical machine), with a 5400 rpm hard drive then the one with an SSD, so id say that the best upgrade for your laptop, is cleaning it.. and not having 6 programs load at start up;)...
 
Meh. I'm impressed with the speed, but I'm not impressed with how this was presented. A good SSD will destroy traditional hard drives in all areas, namely small reads/writes and random access as you would encounter in normal system usage. There's no seek time, and that's one of the reasons why SSDs own. This example is just a lot of sequential reading which only gives a small view of the big picture.

Highlighting and demonstrating SSD vs HDD performance across many use conditions (and over time) really sets the two types of drives apart, and that was what convinced me of the potential power of SSDs. This video simplifies those differences too much, similar to an Apple ad. Hopefully the [H] can really break this down and give us some real-world performance numbers that continue past boot. I'd also like to see how these drives handle degradation and the means Corsair counters such problems via TRIM, wear leveling, etc.
 
Wow how much crap was loaded onto those? Both my laptop and desktop boot in less than 1 min using 7200 HDD's and Vista 64 Ult, and about 1/3rd of that is from my grub settings. I couldnt imagine waiting 3+ min for my computer to boot
 
aireyc said:
Meh. I'm impressed with the speed, but I'm not impressed with how this was presented. A good SSD will destroy traditional hard drives in all areas, namely small reads/writes and random access as you would encounter in normal system usage. There's no seek time, and that's one of the reasons why SSDs own. This example is just a lot of sequential reading which only gives a small view of the big picture.

Highlighting and demonstrating SSD vs HDD performance across many use conditions (and over time) really sets the two types of drives apart, and that was what convinced me of the potential power of SSDs. This video simplifies those differences too much, similar to an Apple ad. Hopefully the [H] can really break this down and give us some real-world performance numbers that continue past boot. I'd also like to see how these drives handle degradation and the means Corsair counters such problems via TRIM, wear leveling, etc.
Click to expand...

Pretty much my thoughts. Real World Applications, sure, but not the way they would be used in the real world...
 
They should do a time lapse of a start to finish of Windows 7 installation, then have the programs launch test after wards.
 
No test is perfect and don't forget that a huge majority of the world is not as enlightened as most [H] readers. Many of them will leave all the OEM bloatware running. But, anyone that has run a HD and an SSD in the same laptop can tell you that the difference is huge regardless of how trimmed or bloated the startup menu is. I have a pretty old Compaq notebook that is amazing with only 2GB of RAM and an SSD.

Take the video for what it is. No one is trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes here. The performance speaks for itself. Kyle is not going to post anything that is misleading to his readers.
 
Some day when im significantly less broke i wanna buy some corsair SSDs for my Asus W90...the only gripe i could ever have about that machine is the slow ass hdd speeds
 
Yeah, all that crap bloatware on those laptops. It's stupid.

my i7 920 @ 3.9ghz with 6gigs ram and dual X-25 80 G2's in raid-0 takes like 15 seconds?

brb, I'm gonna go time it.
 
We chose to do the test this way because it's very hard to use video to capture the responsiveness you feel after upgrading to an SSD. When reboots take seconds instead of minutes, and opening an app you accidentally closed is no longer a frustration, it's amazing.

But getting that on video is not very easy.

So I loaded the system with a few apps (AVG anti-virus, Spybot Search & Destroy, chat apps) and had them loaded at startup. I was trying to mirror the typical system after 6-8 months of solid use (with various apps installed).

If we could give everybody in the world a free "test-drive" with an SSD, I can almost guarantee nobody would want to switch back.

This video was the best way we could find to illustrate how two identical systems could differ in performance.

It may not increase your framerates in Bad Company 2, but it will get you in and out of Bad Company 2 faster and make launching apps a lot less of a chore.

A co-worker said it best: After using an SSD, going back to a hard drive makes it feel like the computer is reluctant to do what I want it to.
 
The SSD setup seems a bit slow. My raptor boots quicker than that. Way quicker.
 
I've posted here about a result with an 80gb X25-M I put in my bosses Dell laptop, a 2.0ghz C2D, 2gb RAM, WinXP setup. With a 7200rpm drive it took 2:10 to boot up and sync with the MyDocs folder on our server. With the SSD just mirrored over it took 0:54 to do the same.
 
I know Corsair is trying to sell their product. But is Windows 7 really this bloated? I know they added some user applications. But my main rig, Vista 64-bit takes maybe under one minute from cold boot to OS with a messenger application running. With my Vista 64-bit laptop it is around a minute or a minute and a half.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Yeah, all that crap bloatware on those laptops. It's stupid.

my i7 920 @ 3.9ghz with 6gigs ram and dual X-25 80 G2's in raid-0 takes like 15 seconds?

brb, I'm gonna go time it.
Click to expand...

What OS are you using? I assume Windows 7?
 
Redbeard said:
We chose to do the test this way because it's very hard to use video to capture the responsiveness you feel after upgrading to an SSD. When reboots take seconds instead of minutes, and opening an app you accidentally closed is no longer a frustration, it's amazing.

But getting that on video is not very easy.

So I loaded the system with a few apps (AVG anti-virus, Spybot Search & Destroy, chat apps) and had them loaded at startup. I was trying to mirror the typical system after 6-8 months of solid use (with various apps installed).

If we could give everybody in the world a free "test-drive" with an SSD, I can almost guarantee nobody would want to switch back.

This video was the best way we could find to illustrate how two identical systems could differ in performance.

It may not increase your framerates in Bad Company 2, but it will get you in and out of Bad Company 2 faster and make launching apps a lot less of a chore.

A co-worker said it best: After using an SSD, going back to a hard drive makes it feel like the computer is reluctant to do what I want it to.
Click to expand...

The only thing I wouldn't agree with would be having Acrobat and browsers loading up at startup. I sincerely can't think of anyone who would have either of those set up to start once Windows loads or why they would want it to. (This is despite me opening up a browser first thing anyway once I'm at the desktop)

I would like to think that the setup you have in the video is nearly par for the course for an average user, perhaps even certain power users who get lazy about their PC's efficiency/performance, minus the PDF application and browsers loading at startup. I myself run Avira as well as Spybot and a couple other things, as well as a few messengers at startup, so for me this would come close to typical usage, though I use Foxit instead of Acrobat Reader for PDF's. Regardless, I think it is reflective of a typical user's system. More importantly, if/when SSDs are the norm in laptop drives, this could still be reflective of a typical user's setup on an SSD. The hardware may get faster and the OS might become more efficient, but people in general will still dump random crap onto their computers, as well as at startup. I would say that this is probably the closest representation I've seen to an average user's setup I've seen to date.
 
Mr Mean said:
I know Corsair is trying to sell their product. But is Windows 7 really this bloated? I know they added some user applications. But my main rig, Vista 64-bit takes maybe under one minute from cold boot to OS with a messenger application running. With my Vista 64-bit laptop it is around a minute or a minute and a half.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that the systems are pre-configured machines from what appears to be Dell by the logo. Most OEMs will have their fair share of proprietary bloatware unless you either built it yourself, managed to get it with no OS installed, or wiped the storage drive clean with a clean install of Windows. This setup is to reflect typical home users, not [H] home users with enough sense and savvy to remove all the crap.
 
I think what a lot of people here are missing is the fact that it's not just a boot to desktop, they've opened a bunch of programs that would make booting VERY slow for many laptops on start up.

Sure, your computer might take way less time to boot, but I guarantee if you set it so that all of those programs started up on boot you would be seeing similar times.
 
trying to open 6 things simultaneously on a regular hdd is gonna be slow as hell.

I don't have too much crap on my win7 startup, and it loads in 30 seconds. So i wouldn't know.

does windows try to open startup progs simultaneously? or sequentially?

I would think sequentially would yield better performance and have less disk thrashing.


right now, ssd cost is too high for the few seconds or minutes you'll save each day. Windows prefetch already makes my most-used programs open fast enough after cold boot.

since people multitask these days, you can do other things while waiting for your pc to bootup...... like take a piss or make something to drink.

you work around the hdd limitations and make yourself more efficient
 
inotocracy said:
The SSD setup seems a bit slow. My raptor boots quicker than that. Way quicker.
Click to expand...

Your raptor is not booting on a bloatware laden laptop either...

Trust me, SSD is amazing compared to ANY harddrive setup the same way. Heck, even a single SSD will be multitudes faster than even a fast raid mechanical HD setup. I've seen it first hand.
 
Seeing some of your times, it seems that I have some cleaning to do... only at 1:07 for my boot times.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
The only thing I wouldn't agree with would be having Acrobat and browsers loading up at startup. I sincerely can't think of anyone who would have either of those set up to start once Windows loads or why they would want it to. (This is despite me opening up a browser first thing anyway once I'm at the desktop)
Click to expand...

Except that wouldn't be much of a test. Windows boot time is largely irrelevant. You only boot once a day, if that. How quickly it can launch programs, on the other hand, is hugely important. And that is what Corsair's test really showed, just how fast an SSD can launch programs. Putting them in the startup is a good way to eliminate the user input in launching them. And like you said, nobody starts Windows and just stairs at the desktop. Granted, they usually aren't starting Adobe Reader, but the rest is fairly standard immediate-run stuff. IM, web browser, and music - that is pretty much what I start when I first boot up.
 
Mike Clements said:
No test is perfect and don't forget that a huge majority of the world is not as enlightened as most [H] readers. Many of them will leave all the OEM bloatware running. But, anyone that has run a HD and an SSD in the same laptop can tell you that the difference is huge regardless of how trimmed or bloated the startup menu is. I have a pretty old Compaq notebook that is amazing with only 2GB of RAM and an SSD.

Take the video for what it is. No one is trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes here. The performance speaks for itself. Kyle is not going to post anything that is misleading to his readers.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone was claiming the video was misleading. I personally didn't feel it really demonstrated the full benefits of an SSD. I could boot the same machine twice and get wildly different boot times. I would rather see individual programs launched side by side. No, the rest of the world is not as enlightened as [H] readers, but were the ones you need to market to, because most of the rest of the world doesn't know what an SSD is. ;)
 
They worked this like a graph. They used larger programs to stretch the startup time for both systems (which I would say is pretty atypical) so they get a bigger "it was this much faster" number. Still, it was pretty impressive if you're interested in worst case boot scenarios.
 
I only trust [H] team, Anand, and Tom's reviews. Until one of these guys shows me something to justify the cost I am not concerned about using an old HDD in my rig.
 
I would think that anyone smart enough to consider an SSD at this point wouldnt be loading so much crap at the same time on a boot up. I dont know about other people, but personally my boot is as minimal as possible. Real test would be loading up a photoshop while copying a bunch of files/ searching for a specific file on a system disk etc.
 
It looks like a good test and a fair representation of real-world benefits. If only they made the damn things cheaper. I'm a broke college student and can't afford any right now. Damn shame too. The hardware nuts at PHCC would go apeshiat if I had a few of these bad boys to show off.

/hint hint ;)
 
If I would have known how much of an improvement my X-25m would give me, I would have paid $500 for it.

My i7 / SSD combo is awesome. I start my computer and as soon as I see the desktop I start Chrome, Steam, Zune, and Vent manually, while Curse, Giganews Accelerator, Microsoft Security Essentials, Xonar control panel, and two Razer control panels, start automatically in the background. You'd never know the system was loading, it's just BAM, BAM, BAM! (a la Emeril)
 
What were those laptops Pentium M's??

Almost a waste to put an SSD in them.

Still the cost/performance ratio is still too far apart. I'll put up with slower load times for more space at a much cheaper price any day. Besides once you've loaded your app into memory HDD speed becomes meaningless such as in a lot of games. If it still hits the DVD (some do for DRM) that's the slowest read on the system.

I'd like an SSD but I think it's still in the realm of a luxury upgrade.
 
While I can't pretend to know all the ends and outs of representing a product in a video, I would at least expect to see high end enthusiast products ran in a fashion / manner that other computer enthusiasts could directly relate to.

NONE of us would allow a laptop or computer for that matter to load that slow with all that crap-ware.

Maybe it's better to show the larger audience ( joe public ) this difference, than to the enthusiast where the loading difference might have been smaller had both laptops not had the bloatware.

Your video, your rules.
 
MaddogJew said:
It looks like a good test and a fair representation of real-world benefits. If only they made the damn things cheaper. I'm a broke college student and can't afford any right now.
Click to expand...

I am in the same boat and agree 100%
 
Not really impressed to be quite honest. It seemed like they intentionally loaded a ton of bloat to exaggerate the differences. I don't really buy the "Thats how laptops come!" since I've never seen a laptop that came stock with like 15 tray icons. Plus a lot of that crap he had open isn't part of your typical retail bloat.

Even putting all that aside, I boot my computer once a week at most. What will an SSD do for me in day to day operation vs say a top end 7200rpm drive?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top