General questions about SSD performance...

[ckett]

Hello,

I am still on the fence as to whether an SSD is the right choice for me and my computer usage.

Do all of you who are using SSDs see a huge performance difference in terms of GUI response and feel of Windows 7? Or does this have more to do with the graphics card?

I tend to only work one or two programs at a time, so opening lots of programs at once isn't how I would use my computer for regular use.

I see many videos about boot up time, and opening lots of programs at once ( crazy tets on Youtube ) but no real practical usage data.

Maybe going with a Western Digital Black (7200RPM) or Velociraptor (10,000RPM) drive is a better economical choice without losing much performance gain compared to an SSD under regular use.

What are your experiences?

 

[koda_]

I'm kinda in the same position, and was wondering about this too.

If I got a SSD, it would probably only be a very small one (due to cost) and only for Windows 7... games and programs would still have to go onto a bigger, slower drive. So would this affect general usage, or would it only affect boot times? The time it takes to boot up is virtually irrelevant for me, because I pretty much leave my computer on 24/7... so, perhaps, it wouldn't even make a difference?

 

[darkhunter139]

For me it has speed my computer up a ton. Web browsing, photoshop, boot times, and everything is just way snappier. I noticed a huge improvement over my old 500 gb Seagate hard drive.

 

[Damar]

You will notice a huge improvement in boot times and overall responsiveness.

Photoshop loads up almost instantly when I click the icon for it, even with tons of filters installed.

The only thing that will slow you down some, is if you mix an SSD with normal HD's in the same machine and store Library data on those HD's. When the OS goes to pull the Library data off the HD it will slow down and you'll notice it, only because the rest of the time the OS is so fast.

If I didn't need about 2TB of storage for image files in Photoshop, I'd toss my HD's for all SSD's if I could afford it right now.

Here's the benches from my old WD Raptor and the Intel X25 Gen 2 I'm running now, and my machine isn't exactly a new top of the line one. The SSD will blow away the Raptor drives in normal usage, especially in small file access. (Note the jump in 4k Writes).

 

[Ryom]

The SSD will crush a platter anytime there is load on the disk and you need to hit it. One of the issues with platters is the annoying delays you get when the disk is busy with something else. When the disk is pretty much idle you won't notice it as much. So if all you do is run one app at a time and nothing in the background it probably won't be earth shattering. If you have some kind of indexing, scanning, loading or whatever that hits the disk while you work, you'll notice it remains responsive the entire time.

 

[CyberJunk]

i have win7, photoshop elements 8 bundle with premiere , all my drivers, Dragon Age

and i have have about 35GB free out of 80GB on my G2 X-25m

 

[rush24t3]

I'll never go back to a mechanical drive for OS and apps after getting my Intel SSD. Besides the benchmarks and raw numbers, the FEEL of the computer is totally different.

Photoshop is the slowest loading app for me (P8700, 4 GB RAM), and it loads in just over 1 second.

 

[ckett]

Cool!

I think I will stick with the G2 then. Just having early technology adoption jidders. Learning about TRIM, partition alignment, ect is enough to stress most newcomers.

 

[Adidas4275]

i just got my HP DM3T notebook, which i got a intel X25-M G1 160 for $100 as an upgrade ($300-$200 coupon) I know i am missing the ability to support trim but I can say that everything is much faster...


I would go as far as to say that a SSD is more important to overall speed of the OS than a faster CPU. Given that you have a new tech non-celeron or sempron CPU. and 2GB of RAM or more.


but on my desktop the Vraptor holds its own, expecially given the price of 300gb Vraptors on ebay

 

[zentech]

thanks for the thread gang! i was wondering about the same issues. (not a gamer at this point, windows 7 use, and need largeTB HD'S to store data on.)
looks like my move is to wait for the prices to come down some in the new year/late spring and make a move on something in the 160GB range.

 

[XS Janus]

If you can hold of for a few more days I'll post my results.
I compared 500GB 7200.12, VR150GB, RAID0 with VR and Intel 80GB G2 SSD.
I did real life test. some file copy times, app installs and some game loading times.

I'll say this much... 7200.12 drive is dog slow in these scenarios even compared to a single VR.
You'll see

 

[ckett]

XS Janus

Would be very interested to hear your results in terms of overall general usage. I was kind of on the fence between a Velociraptor or the Intel G2 SSD.

 

[XS Janus]

One word for now... Don't be!

 

[InvisiBill]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=2

I also remember my first SSD. It was a 1.8” PATA drive made by Samsung for the MacBook Air. It was lent to me by a vendor so I could compare its performance to the stock 1.8” mechanical HDD in the Air.

The benchmarks for that drive didn’t really impress. Most application tests got a little slower and transfer speeds weren’t really any better. Application launch times and battery life both improved, the former by a significant amount. But the drive was expensive; $1000 from Apple and that’s if you bought it with the MacBook Air. Buying it from a vendor would set you back even more. It benchmarked faster than hard drive, but the numbers didn’t justify the cost. I pulled the drive out and sent it back after I was done with the review.

The next time I turned on my MacBook Air I thought it was broken. It took an eternity to boot and everything took forever to launch. Even though the benchmarks showed the SSD shaving off a few seconds of application launch time here and there, in the real world, it was noticeable. The rule of thumb is that it takes about a 10% difference in performance for a user to notice. The application tests didn’t show a 10% difference in performance, but the application launch tests, those were showing 50% gains. It still wasn’t worth $1000, but it was worth a lot more than I originally thought.

It was the MacBook Air experience that made me understand one important point about SSDs: you don’t think they’re fast, until I take one away from you.

I haven't switched away from my new SSD to get the Anand experience, but everything seems to be snappier. It's hard to explain, but all those little delays (even under a second) are just gone. My PC's desktop looks like my real desktop - I put everything that I'm working on there, and it seems to stay there until I wipe it clean and start over. As soon as I logon, all my icons are just there. They don't even do that fraction-of-a-second wipe across the screen. They're just there. I have most of my apps on a separate drive by default and haven't done a whole lot of testing with the ones I do have on the SSD, but the OS itself just seems more instantaneous than it was, even on a short-stroked WD6401.

I too was worried how much of an upgrade the SSD would actually be. It really doesn't seem any faster unless I really stop and think about it. However, I have a feeling that just like Anand, it would seem much much slower if I switched back to the HDD. I say this because when I do stop and think about it, all those little delays that you believe are just part of using a computer all seem to be gone.

 

[XS Janus]

Here are some of my tests I did to prove to myself all this is worth investing into:
I know many willobject on the programs used, but sorry I had that available when I first started with the idea, and didn't have the nerves to redo setups again.
SSD in Vista was not in AHCI, and some oddball results in W7 might be contributed to x86 vs. x64.
Also all test were done a few times with hard reboots in between.
I'll try and explain the rest as the need arises.

App. install times:

App. loading times:

 

[ZzBloopzZ]

Here's the benches from my old WD Raptor and the Intel X25 Gen 2 I'm running now, and my machine isn't exactly a new top of the line one. The SSD will blow away the Raptor drives in normal usage, especially in small file access.

Which exact Raptor did you have? Raptors have been released since 2003, there are many different versions and revisions of those versions.

 

[InvisiBill]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=2


I haven't switched away from my new SSD to get the Anand experience, but everything seems to be snappier. It's hard to explain, but all those little delays (even under a second) are just gone. My PC's desktop looks like my real desktop - I put everything that I'm working on there, and it seems to stay there until I wipe it clean and start over. As soon as I logon, all my icons are just there. They don't even do that fraction-of-a-second wipe across the screen. They're just there. I have most of my apps on a separate drive by default and haven't done a whole lot of testing with the ones I do have on the SSD, but the OS itself just seems more instantaneous than it was, even on a short-stroked WD6401.

I too was worried how much of an upgrade the SSD would actually be. It really doesn't seem any faster unless I really stop and think about it. However, I have a feeling that just like Anand, it would seem much much slower if I switched back to the HDD. I say this because when I do stop and think about it, all those little delays that you believe are just part of using a computer all seem to be gone.

Just as an update, I moved Firefox and Thunderbird to my SSD. Previously, they were still on the HDD with just my profiles on the SSD. With the actual apps on the SSD too, it's even faster (duh). Even with all my mailboxes with tons of saved messages (I'm a packrat) or opening a saved browser session with lots of tabs, they just snap open.