Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: PeterAit on August 14, 2009, 12:12:04 pm
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Can someone give me an idea of the speed advantage of using SSD over a regular disk? I'm less interested in lab specs and more in things like how much faster will Windows boot, Photoshop load, etc.
Also, are all SSD pretty much equivalent when it comes to speed?
Thanks,
Peter
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Can someone give me an idea of the speed advantage of using SSD over a regular disk? I'm less interested in lab specs and more in things like how much faster will Windows boot, Photoshop load, etc.
Also, are all SSD pretty much equivalent when it comes to speed?
Thanks,
Peter
Problem is the answer to your second question is a resounding "No!" So about all you can say outside of lab specs is generally speaking a single SSD is going to be faster than a single SATA2 spinner. But as to how much faster it all would depend on exactly which two drives you are comparing -- then add RAID 0 or striping configurations and it gets even more foggy...
A few things are certain: SSD prices are falling while capacities and performance are increasing. So the cost per gig could easily drop another 25 to 30% between now and January, and in the better performing drives. So if you're not in a hurry it may be prudent to wait a few more months...
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Lab specs aside, running an SSD vs. a standard HDD is like night and day.
Cold boot in under 30 seconds to the desktop. Some users have said they get about 15 second boot times.
Photoshop loads in 2 seconds.
Large files load insanely fast. I opened a 346MB TIFF in CS4 in 2.5 seconds.
LR loads in about 4 seconds.
File transfers are very quick. Here's a shot of an 8GB transfer completing in less than a minute.
[attachment=16001:Tivo_tra...er_speed.JPG]
As Jack said there is a fair amount of variability at the moment. I did two solid weeks of research before making a decision on which SSDs to get. Some of the best info was from Anandtech and Tom's Hardware.
A couple of good rules of thumb with SSDs: Intel, Samsung, and Indilinx -based drives are better than JMicron-based drives. Always go for the current generation as a lot changes very quickly in SSDs. Drives with cache are usually better performing than drives with DRAM. SLC drives are longer-lived, but not necessarily better performing than MLC drirves (this used to be the case, but now varies).
Good luck. Once you go SSD there is no going back!
David
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Lab specs aside, running an SSD vs. a standard HDD is like night and day.
Cold boot in under 30 seconds to the desktop. Some users have said they get about 15 second boot times.
Photoshop loads in 2 seconds.
Large files load insanely fast. I opened a 346MB TIFF in CS4 in 2.5 seconds.
LR loads in about 4 seconds.
File transfers are very quick. Here's a shot of an 8GB transfer completing in less than a minute.
[attachment=16001:Tivo_tra...er_speed.JPG]
As Jack said there is a fair amount of variability at the moment. I did two solid weeks of research before making a decision on which SSDs to get. Some of the best info was from Anandtech and Tom's Hardware.
A couple of good rules of thumb with SSDs: Intel, Samsung, and Indilinx -based drives are better than JMicron-based drives. Always go for the current generation as a lot changes very quickly in SSDs. Drives with cache are usually better performing than drives with DRAM. SLC drives are longer-lived, but not necessarily better performing than MLC drirves (this used to be the case, but now varies).
Good luck. Once you go SSD there is no going back!
David
I'm dying to jump in and get one but the latest intel drive is only 160Gb which is really small, if only it was 320.....
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Problem is the answer to your second question is a resounding "No!" So about all you can say outside of lab specs is generally speaking a single SSD is going to be faster than a single SATA2 spinner. But as to how much faster it all would depend on exactly which two drives you are comparing -- then add RAID 0 or striping configurations and it gets even more foggy...
A few things are certain: SSD prices are falling while capacities and performance are increasing. So the cost per gig could easily drop another 25 to 30% between now and January, and in the better performing drives. So if you're not in a hurry it may be prudent to wait a few more months...
Would have to disagree with you here, Jack. LLoyd Chambers seems to think that SS Drive prices will increase rather than decrease. Just last week we saw the Samsung 256gb SSD jump at dell.com from $479 to $789! I think Lloyd may be on to something here. I ordered my Crucial 256 gb SSD from OWC two days ago for $599 as I'd hate to see OWC do (with the Crucial SSD) what Dell did with the Samsung. The Crucial 256 gb SSD is roughly identical to the Samsung with both read and write speeds and $599 for the Crucial (to me, at least) sounds better than $789 for the Samsung.
At this point in time it's a crapshoot... but one that slightly favors buying now, if you look at the Dell scenario.
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Would have to disagree with you here, Jack. LLoyd Chambers seems to think that SS Drive prices will increase rather than decrease. Just last week we saw the Samsung 256gb SSD jump at dell.com from $479 to $789! I think Lloyd may be on to something here. I ordered my Crucial 256 gb SSD from OWC two days ago for $599 as I'd hate to see OWC do (with the Crucial SSD) what Dell did with the Samsung. The Crucial 256 gb SSD is roughly identical to the Samsung with both read and write speeds and $599 for the Crucial (to me, at least) sounds better than $789 for the Samsung.
At this point in time it's a crapshoot... but one that slightly favors buying now, if you look at the Dell scenario.
SSD (and HDD) drive prices will go down in the medium-long term, period. There is of course short-term price increases due to supply/demand shocks, but you will get lower per gig prices by waiting longer rather than buying now. The wait time has to be weighed against actually reaping the benefits of such a drive, of course.
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I just added two generation 1 Intel X25-m 80GB SSD's to my overclocked pc. It had been running XP on C:, XP swap on D:, and PS swap on E:.
I replaced C: with one SSD, and added an F: drive, which has XP swap, PS swap, Bridge cache, and ACR cache.
Timings you might care about:
Boot went from 2:24 to 1:08 (virus, firewall, and Speedfan -used to- take awhile to finish loading). As often noted, you can immediately start opening other programs, without having to wait for Windows to finish loading.
Converting and opening, to PS, ten 11MP raw files with lens corrections, USM, and other tweaks went from :36 to :33.
Starting Bridge went from :09 to :02.
But by far the biggest change is that programs and windows just SNAP open, as if they had already been running. Even surfing has sites opening in 1/4 the time. Installing programs is lightning-fast.
There's great info at anandtech.com, PC Perspective storage forum, and OCZ Technology forum. Use Anand's SSD tests to decide which brand and model to buy.
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Thot this was interesting ...
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16171 (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16171)
Not sure how it will impact image processing.
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I'm using a 64GB SSD in my Lenovo x200 Tablet (and then a portable HDD for large storage). It is faster, definitely. How much faster, no idea. some of the pictures painted here seem a bit too rosy for me (30 second, or 15 second boot time.... no idea how you got that - mine is a minute or two). I'm happy with it, but not sure that it is the be all and end all. A fast SATA is still pretty good, IMO.