Can Chrome usage benifit from SSD over HDD?

[omega3]

SSD's give faster startup of your programs, however once you open let's say Chrome, will you notice any advantage during usage of your browser with SSD over HDD or is it just that it starts it up a bit faster but nothing more? I use lots of tabs, but i think that's all related to RAM and CPU not which harddrive, correct?

 

[Cerb]

It helps, but is not night and day difference.

 

[Berryracer]

it would help as the 4K speeds of an SSD are 30 times faster than those of an HDD and usually when browsing you are dealing with small 4K files/images so everything would be blistering fast and would load in a second, no lag

 

[Insert_Nickname]

SSD's give faster startup of your programs, however once you open let's say Chrome, will you notice any advantage during usage of your browser with SSD over HDD or is it just that it starts it up a bit faster but nothing more? I use lots of tabs, but i think that's all related to RAM and CPU not which harddrive, correct?

It will help in the way that you're not limited by HDD I/O at least. I can only recommend you try an SSD, it really works wonders for the overall "feel" of your system. Once you go SSD, you don't go back...

That goes double, or even triple, for the 2.5" 5400RPM laptop variety HDD.

 

[Cerb]

it would help as the 4K speeds of an SSD are 30 times faster than those of an HDD and usually when browsing you are dealing with small 4K files/images so everything would be blistering fast and would load in a second, no lag

But, most of it is in RAM, and the writes are coalesced and buffered. With a sizable session, it makes a huge difference when restoring a session after reboot, but not so much with the browser staying running for a long time.

That said, if this is part of specifying a new PC, try to squeeze an SSD in, anyway. Fast .NET updates, CHKDSK runs, sfc runs, malware scans, metadata loading from big folders, and on and on and on will make it worth it overall, at the going rate of 2-2.5GB/$.

 

[razel]

Even on a half decent laptop (i5 Ivy, 8GB RAM, HDD) with 20 tabs open, the only time things slow down is a misbehaving website with bad javascript ad code that keeps the CPU busy. I notice this most when (ahem) quiet nighttime web surfing... Lots of scandalous ads on different tabs, keeping the WiFi bandwidth maxed out streaming video after video. RAM is fine, web, video surfing performance is still good until a bad ad begins spinning the CPU fan high then things slow down. CPU usage per tab is relatively low, but it can add up.

 

[omega3]

But, most of it is in RAM, and the writes are coalesced and buffered. With a sizable session, it makes a huge difference when restoring a session after reboot, but not so much with the browser staying running for a long time.

That said, if this is part of specifying a new PC, try to squeeze an SSD in, anyway. Fast .NET updates, CHKDSK runs, sfc runs, malware scans, metadata loading from big folders, and on and on and on will make it worth it overall, at the going rate of 2-2.5GB/$.

you mentioned malware scans.. does an SSD make for example Norton 360 lighter on the system or is that more of a RAM/CPU thing?

The reason I asked about Chrome/browsers is that i read somewhere that browsers write or read alot of small files to disk when working, in which case SSD would help obviously, but i don't understand what small files chrome would be writing or reading to disk constantly.

 

[Cerb]

I try to avoid Norton whenever possible, so can't say one way or the other for it.

When you get new data for a site, or it updates cookies, whether it writes a lone file for each (like IE), or saves to a more efficient DB (like FF or Chrome), it has to commit it to disk within some deadline.

If it has to write 500 bytes of new data, like a new CSS file, or whatever else, there's 4K to write. Likewise, if it needs to read that cached data back, it has to read that 4K. It can be made more efficient with shared DBs, than flat files, but the end result is the same. If it's not in RAM, yet, it has to go to the disk to get it.

You can see some of this, though not directly the disk activity part*, live. Open the developer tools, and go to the network tab. Experiment with cache on and off. Check the file sizes.

* That can be done, too, but you'll need a different set of tools, and figuring out WTH is going on is more involved.

 

[omega3]

I try to avoid Norton whenever possible, so can't say one way or the other for it.

When you get new data for a site, or it updates cookies, whether it writes a lone file for each (like IE), or saves to a more efficient DB (like FF or Chrome), it has to commit it to disk within some deadline.

If it has to write 500 bytes of new data, like a new CSS file, or whatever else, there's 4K to write. Likewise, if it needs to read that cached data back, it has to read that 4K. It can be made more efficient with shared DBs, than flat files, but the end result is the same. If it's not in RAM, yet, it has to go to the disk to get it.

You can see some of this, though not directly the disk activity part*, live. Open the developer tools, and go to the network tab. Experiment with cache on and off. Check the file sizes.

* That can be done, too, but you'll need a different set of tools, and figuring out WTH is going on is more involved.

With cookies on disk i understand, but when you browse to a site, isn't that loaded into memory so that harddisk isn't involved?

 

[Cerb]

With cookies on disk i understand, but when you browse to a site, isn't that loaded into memory so that harddisk isn't involved?

Yes, but look at all the little PNGs, JPGs, GIFs, tony pages in iframes, shared javascript files, CSS files...

Seriously, open dev tools, browse in that tab, and look. It works about the same in FF and Chrome, and requires no added software. Tons and tons and tons of small files.

If another page uses the same file, it will look to see if it has it, and use that one instead, leading to reading from disk, if you don't have another page open using that file (or have done so recently). Make it 10, and you might have 10 IOs just for that page.

Since most of it will be in memory, at any given time, once the initial session loading is done, the effect is minor, since you basically only wait on those occasions where the data is not in RAM, already.