Storage Solutions Is it worth buying SSD NOW ???

[blr_p]

The SSD's are not about FPS in games, but loading times and access times.

I can see rich media editing making big use of this but the HDD sizes are too small for that right now.

I, for one, do. I also try to upgrade/ oc to get that extra bit of performance (I think many here do that). Since an upgrade of RAM/CPU/Mobo can't ever match the performance benefits of an SSD at the same price point, it's logical to go for an SSD.

Where you will see the difference besdies Bootups & app starts ?

The craving for that extra bit of perf has nothing to do with vfm or "logic" as you put it. I mean, who really needs a Quad core OCced to the limits?

I dunno i hope you can tell me. Cant future games make use of it, they always seem to become ever more demanding.

 

[Naga]

Diff is those graphics cards do matter but someone earlier said his FPS rate was no different with SSD.

What's the diff between 70 FPS and 130 FPS in actual terms?

 

[PhOeNiX]

What you are saying is absolutely true in the normal context. But as i said, do not think of this as a HDD upgrade. It's not meant for bulk storage. It's for cutting down on access times and improve reads and writes on the most accessed data of yours. But then again, it depends totally on the users needs.

OK i am out of here

 

[blr_p]

What's the diff between 70 FPS and 130 FPS in actual terms?

i dont play games, my point was if its a faster render you will see the difference during every second you play the game.

Not a one off start up or bootup.

An app with lots of thumbs, defnite improvement with SSD. big files being manipulated and having to refresh etc.

Working on a GB size tiff in PS, having the cache on a SSD could speed things up.

It's for cutting down on access times and improve reads and writes on the most accessed data of yours.

Exactly my point, this need manifests itself much more when its to do with data than in loading programs.

The argument is very simple..

time spent loading up os + programs vs time spent actually using the apps.

The latter dwarfs the former, increases in the latter pay off immediately, whilst in the the former its is slight.

 

[Naga]

Where you will see the difference besdies Bootups & app starts ?

This might a surprise you, but a lot of people upgrade cos their Vista/ 7 and apps are too slow to start up/ function. The amount of people who've commented how fast my rig is by just seeing the fast boot and fast loading of apps outnumber the ones who comment on my benchmark numbers.

I dunno i hope you can tell me. Cant future games make use of it, they always seem to become ever more demanding.

Future games might take advantage of faster clocked CPUs but present OS/ apps do take advantage of faster HDDs.
All that aside, I do get comments on spending too much for small benefits. Since you are saying the same, I do agree with you that ssds are not vfm. But 295s/ i7s/ 6GB DDR3s/ WC kits are in the same boat. It's a diff ballgame (read: market) altogether.

 

[blr_p]

This might a surprise you, but a lot of people upgrade cos their Vista/ 7 and apps are too slow to start up/ function. The amount of people who've commented how fast my rig is by just seeing the fast boot and fast loading of apps outnumber the ones who comment on my benchmark numbers.

Thats a surprise to me for a cpl of reasons
- i'm not on vista/7 and have not noticed app starts to be too much of a problem on previous win versions, or if they were usually find ways to cut down the bloat so they do start faster.
- i would assume you have as well as others pcs that in all likelihood exceed vista/win7 reqmts..

yet its still slow to start up without SSD ?

I'll have to take your word for it at this point. If you have to start a lot of apps all the time then it will make a difference sure. If i need to do this i just leave the apps open and switch to them but i guess that might not be possible all the time.

Future games might take advantage of faster clocked CPUs but present OS/ apps do take advantage of faster HDDs.

Might sure, just thinking the logical progression for CPU's to go multi-core and the temptation game developers would be to use them for a better user experience. All to say maybe that quad-core is not entirely a waste, its ideal for a server.

 

[Shripad]

As of now in simple words, SSDs are the thing we were missing since the invention of a PC.
I had chance to play with SSDfied notebook for just 1 day and next 2 days I was feeling lazy to operate my PC.

There is nothing other that the damn price that is standing in path of SSDs becoming a must buy with any computer.
The difference is phenomenal. Having tested what using SSD can feel like, I am slapping myself every day when primal part of my brain logs onto amazon to click on ADD TO CART button.

You simply cant grasp what difference a SSD makes to daily computing without actually using one. Its not about how many times you are going to launch FF, its every little thing you do with your PC. Launching media player, launching FF, just going to cp, opening saved FF browsing session, booting, rebooting, everything becomes super fast.

Its just because you havent seen SSD in action, that it becomes hard to imagine how much difference it really does make.

Forget about the damn games, I wont load any game on SSD, dont really care about game load times at this point. Its those things for which we are used to experiencing and tolerating few sec of pause / delay, those become so fast that it changes your perspective towards computing.

But still, I will advice people investing in SSDs in near future to hold onto your horses and grab the new ones which will be out soon enough.

 

[Naga]

yet its still slow to start up without SSD ?

It would be faster with a ssd :cool2:, is how I'd put it.

Btw, since I've never said that ssds are vfm, are you insisting that ssds do zilch for over all performance of a PC? Like PhOeNix said, SSDs are for ppl who have the money and the inclination to spend it on performance enhancing components. Do you or not agree:S?

Addendum: Are you on any Open Source OS (or Mac) or XP/98? If you're still on XP/98, we're ppl on different wavelengths discussing different sides of totally diff coins. Cutting edge versus established norms of functioning are totally diff worlds. The twain shall never meet :cool2:!

 

[scarecrow95]

well, the simple answer to the question is: no, not right now.

SSDs definitely are the future, but as Shripad says, even after experiencing the awesomeness of SSDs, he is still not fully inclined go out right now and buy one. Yes, it may make a huge difference, it is definitely a technology of the near future, but surely not feasible right now.

 

[blr_p]

You simply cant grasp what difference a SSD makes to daily computing without actually using one. Its not about how many times you are going to launch FF, its every little thing you do with your PC. Launching media player, launching FF, just going to cp, opening saved FF browsing session, booting, rebooting, everything becomes super fast.

What i was hoping to read ppl say was....

- SSD helps me work faster in my apps.
- SSD increases my experience while using my apps.

Would you be able to say that ?

Unless i misunderstood, all you said is apps start quick. I'll grant you it can become addictive.

I mentioned 2 types of apps earlier that would satisfy the above 2 questions,
- databases with lots of random access and BLOBS
- video editing or image editing with lots of data moving between each edit. Scratchpad on a SSD in PS, defnitely.

Its just because you havent seen SSD in action, that it becomes hard to imagine how much difference it really does make.

True, and i've not seen SSD in action, just went with what was posted for specs and the type of experiences ppl said todate. I do plan to get SSD for a HTPC in the future, lots of thumbs in use in a media mgr app will make the experience worth it.

Its those things for which we are used to experiencing and tolerating few sec of pause / delay, those become so fast that it changes your perspective towards computing.

Sure. I guess when its always been there it does not seem like a big thing, only after the experience otherwise does the tolerable become not so. But its a cognitve trick, did you work faster no. You got going faster. And each time you're on a machine sans SSD your gonna think somethings wrong. The difference is slight in comparison to your overall use but the effect is very pronounced.

Btw, since I've never said that ssds are vfm, are you insisting that ssds do zilch for over all performance of a PC? Like PhOeNix said, SSDs are for ppl who have the money and the inclination to spend it on performance enhancing components. Do you or not agree:S?

Only thinking it might be better to spend the money when the continuous experience benefits the most rather than only the discrete bursts.

Are you on any Open Source OS (or Mac) or XP/98? If you're still on XP/98, we're ppl on different wavelengths discussing different sides of totally diff coins. Cutting edge versus established norms of functioning are totally diff worlds. The twain shall never meet :cool2:!

I'm on w2k & XP.

Is there really that much of a difference between them & what you're on. Yes the OS is different. but thats not the point. What i mean is how you interact with the apps and whether you work better & faster on them using SSD.

I'm thinking here the apps you use pretty much determine whether the improvement is sginficant or not. The more time you spent on these apps is where the difference comes through.

The *nix OS fill the paging file to the max, they make much more use of it than the windows ones, i would grant in this instance there would be a general speedup in interacting with the apps on this platform.

 

[Udit]

I feel like buying a ssd everyday

but the ones I want are too costly

Newegg.com - OCZ Colossus Series OCZSSD2-1CLS500G 3.5" 500GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Solid State Disks

Newegg.com - OCZ Z-Drive m84 OCZSSDPCIE-ZDM84512G 512GB PCI-Express interface (x8) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Solid State Disks

Newegg.com - OCZ Colossus Series OCZSSD2-1CLS1T 3.5" 1TB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Solid State Disks

 

[Shripad]

Its not restricted to any particular app.

Whatever is on SSD becomes fast. And its this quick response and operation that becomes addictive. And it takes just minutes to get addicted to.

Does not matter if app / program you are loading is 7MB or 70MB, you feel the difference. It does not matter which app is moving how much data to feel the difference.

You feel the difference even in browser loading, in photoshop...... you name it, it makes a difference if its on SSD. The folder refresh, thumbnail refresh, video thumbnail refresh, everything is snappy.

HDD has to spin, seek and load here, it just happens. And mind you you feel the difference.

Also keep in mind that most of US run balanced power scheme or even those who use performance power scheme tend to put HDDs to sleep after say 20-30mins.

Then there is huge delay of 5-6 seconds until hdd wakes up and spins and you get going. This does not happen with SSD. Its the instant response thats the biggest appeal of SSDs in desktop use.

For Enterprise use, it makes much bigger difference, but its whole different story. But for personal PC use, the difference SSD makes is worth the money even at today's premium price.

 

[blr_p]

The point i forgot to bring up is how graphics heavy are your GUIs, do you run with max effects, then yes everything becomes that much more snappier.

And this is the thing, if you find those schemes too slow you turn down the effects.

Whats not clear to me is whether CPU+RAM+general plumbing matters here more than faster HDD or not ?

If its hitting the HDD cache then yes, the difference will be very apparent on SSD. Thing is if you have loads of RAM what need is there ever to go to cache ?

 

[Naga]

I do plan to get SSD for a HTPC in the future, lots of thumbs in use in a media mgr app will make the experience worth it.

I don't think an SSD is going to benefit much for thumbs as they're generated just the once but yes, it would benefit from the faster boot up. I hate the time my HTPC takes to load up (Vista with Media Portal as front end). But I would hate spending the present prices on an SSD on my HTPC considering I don't multi task or open new apps every now and then. That I do a lot on my main rig and work netbook . I've never considered an SSD for my HTPC but now that I think of it, the only gripe I have about my HTPC is the loading time. Maybe when prices drop...

I seriously think you should water down your aggressive attitude against SSDs for performance junkies until you try them out personally with an OS that can take advantage of the technological advances. Mind you, I'm not a blind "latest is best" n00b. I went to Vista only after SP1 and 7 cos it had the best of Vista with none of it's worst. You should try out 7. A month on it and I'll eat karelas (I hate them ) if you can go back to XP. Of course, I can't say the same for SSDs as they cost quite a bomb but I think you can still use the 7 RC for free. I can send you my legitimate RC keys ( I have 3 machines running on RC and my main rig on Ultimate [7 Launch Party ftw]) if you want to be legal.

 

[blr_p]

I don't think an SSD is going to benefit much for thumbs as they're generated just the once but yes, it would benefit from the faster boot up. I hate the time my HTPC takes to load up (Vista with Media Portal as front end). I've never considered an SSD for my HTPC but now that I think of it, the only gripe I have about my HTPC is the loading time.

Two things, the thumbs are built once yes, but when you scroll through them, the app needs to hit the thumbs cache and get those thumbs out. The bigger the display and the smaller the thumbs the more need to be pulled fast & the order in which those thumbs need to be sourced is dependent on how the view scheme is configured, for all intents & purposes its random as you can type any query and the app builds the scheme dynamically. Think of an album of tons of photos with thumbs, you scroll, however fast ,everything is just there instantly like magic. Now here's a very marked improvement in experience.

And yes the startup time here is crucial. You're used to having any consumer equipment turn on instantly, why not for an HTPC as well. Course we're not there yet even with SSD but every little bit counts

I seriously think you should water down your aggressive attitude against SSDs for performance junkies until you try them out personally with an OS that can take advantage of the technological advances.

Put it down to the empiricist vs rationalist thing

I can see the difference & feel it therefore its true vs on paper & using reason it seems less than hyped

Granted some things you just have to experience to ever know whether its real or not.

I went to Vista only after SP1 and 7 cos it had the best of Vista with none of it's worst. You should try out 7. A month on it and I'll eat karelas (I hate them ) if you can go back to XP. Of course, I can't say the same for SSDs as they cost quite a bomb but I think you can still use the 7 RC for free. I can send you my legitimate RC keys ( I have 3 machines running on RC and my main rig on Ultimate [7 Launch Party ftw]) if you want to be legal.

No need to eat karelas

I plan to move to win7 for exactly the same reason you mentioned as is why i skipped Vista. It will have to be 32 bit as the device driver situation does not seem to be too great for 64bit AFAIK.

On the *nix OS you will see more of a difference than with the win OS with SSD. I cant say how much just that it will be more.

Of course, I can't say the same for SSDs as they cost quite a bomb

Thing here is some are saying there will be better soon, if that means faster & cheaper then there's a good reason to wait. If the gap for the next generation is further off then its time to bite the bullet.

 

[Rockfella]

Anything is worthy for u to buy so go ahead!

 

[Gaurish]

IMO, It depends upon your usage and requirements. SSD would do wonders in Servers for various applications like Databases, hosting,Realtime apps etc. At this point of time, they more suited towards Commercial Applications. their price point is still out of reach for consumer market i.e to be used in our personnel machines

However, I am hopeful that we would see a shift from Magnetic storage technology from SSD. hdds could be thing of past, In year to come. just like tape drives.Now is time to wait and observe the flash based storage technology to get more mature

 

[vishalrao]

An update about my Crucial SSD model CT128M225:

Installed the newly-released 1916 firmware which does seem to help with the write slowness reported with the previous 1819 version.

This release has added "active GC" along with the existing TRIM which was added with 1819! This means it's great news for OS users with no TRIM support (like WinXP) and RAID0 users where TRIM does not work apparently and GC helps in this case.

So TRIM+GC should now be available for all IndiLinx based SSDs so it gives you more reasons to try SSDs now although you can still wait til end-2010 for faster (SATA 6 gbps anyone?) and cheaper models.

I tried running the wiper tool but it seems to work only on "C:" and not over the whole disk so I will wait for GC to kick in - I think I have to leave my PC idling for a few hours - again I hope it works over the whole disk and not just the C: partition and I'll post an updated benchmark screenshot perhaps tomorrow.

On a sad note, Linux distros seem to log errors in the kernel dmesg output and an Intel X25M "postville 80gb" user report no such issues. I'm hoping its an overall IndiLinx issue rather than just a Crucial issue or *shock* just an issue with my particular disk because it causes the occassional long freeze, hard hangs and also that partition ext4 journal corruption! I've posted on Ubuntu forums/bug tracker and also the Crucial forums and will update this thread when I have further info.

Windows 7 RC has been working smoothly since the start though, seeing the write speed boost with the new firmware.

Note that you should not rely too much on "old fashioned" HDD bench tools (HDTach, HDTune etc) rather use SSD-specific ones like Crystal DiskMark or my current favourite; AS SSD Benchmark.

 

[blr_p]

Note that you should not rely too much on "old fashioned" HDD bench tools (HDTach, HDTune etc) rather use SSD-specific ones like Crystal DiskMark or my current favourite

Did you find a big difference in the readings between the tools & HD tach?

 

[vishalrao]

Created a thread in the Linux section: http://www.techenclave.com/open-source-and-linux/the-ssds-with-linux-thread-157152.html

Did you find a big difference in the readings between the tools & HD tach?

Some of the tools, like ATTO always reported full speed 260 MBps read / 190 MBps write before and after the update which does not match with other users' experiences posted on the Crucial.com forums.

I've never tested write perf myself "manually" like copying large files and timing off wall clock.

HDTach/HDTune didn't seem to show too much difference with the update either, just the Crystal DiskMark and the other "AS SSD Benchmark" which was written specifically with SSDs in mind did show a speed bump with just the writes so I've started to trust them more.