Does anyone think Superfetch is necessary on SSD drives?

[Doom Machine]

ordered a samsung 64gig SLC ssd. naturally, i'm trying to cut back on non necessities to save space for my games plus i used Vlite and no system restore which helped alot.

anyway, with the speed of SSD, does superfetch even have any benefit?
even with my velociraptor now, i dont usually notice much if any difference, i know it helps but ssd should be fast enough for SF to not make a difference or no?

also, just so i know for sure..defragmenting is pointless on ssd right?

 

[bsobel]

Defrag is pointless, superfetch should still be on (then again so should system restore )

 

[magreen]

A fast SSD might get you 150 MB/s read speeds. A really really expensive one might get you 250 MB/s (are there any out that can go this fast yet?)

Your memory has read bandwidth on the order of ~5000 MB/s. That's more than 10x as fast.

So Superfetch should still be a help. SSDs are an improvement but they're still nowhere close to removing the hdd bottleneck.

 

[nerp]

Memory is always faster than disk i/o whether it's SSD or not. Leave superfetch. You gain nothing by disabling it.

 

[Roguestar]

Superfetch works over a longer period of time, it's not something you can turn on and off and notice a difference immediately. Superfetch is pretty handy once it has spent a while profiling your use; most of the stuff I do on my laptop Vista can pre-empt, like when I log in it loads up IRC and Opera for me in the background in anticipation of my inevitable launch of those programs. It's a nice thing to have and helps things run more smoothly over time.

 

[bsobel]

Rereading this I think he might have Readyboost and Superfetch confused, its correct that Readyboost wont be usefull if you already have an SSD.

 

[Roguestar]

You may well be right. I don't bother with Readyboost personally seeing as I have 4GB of RAM. No need for what is essentially a slightly-faster page file if you've got RAM to spare.

 

[plion]

Roguestar how do you know what superfetch is loading the background? In the task manager?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
You may well be right. I don't bother with Readyboost personally seeing as I have 4GB of RAM. No need for what is essentially a slightly-faster page file if you've got RAM to spare.

I still do as its used for returning from hibernation as well (and 4gb drives are so cheap now)

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: plion
Roguestar how do you know what superfetch is loading the background? In the task manager?

There's no way for it to explicity show you what is being profiled or loaded, it's all done behind the scenes.

 

[Doom Machine]

ok, well i saw a youtube video of someone showing off opening various apps comparing SSD and HDD...now with the SSD they were pretty much instantaneous. i have yet to see superfetch make any of my apps quite that quick with my velociraptor, so thats why i thought Superfetch wouldnt do much. if i can benchmark it somehow i'll update how it goes. but SF doesnt usually use up much space at all anyway

i know readyboost wont do me any good, i got 4 gigs
i never use System Restore...i have Acronis true image and make backups manually. not sure if i want to keep indexing cause i hate using kb to find files when i can use a mouse and icons
i plan to use my Velociraptor in 2 partitions with one for images and other for whatever doesnt fit on the SSD

typically, my install of vista using vlite and no restore, small page file..etc, its never larger than 10 gigs, so a good 54 gigs for games is more than plenty and is why i went with the more expensive SLC ssd rather than the 128gig MLC for half the cost.
pricey i know but even my Velociraptor bottlenecks dreamscene and objectdock making them stutter when the drive is accessing so figured i only live once

 

[plion]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
like when I log in it loads up IRC and Opera for me in the background in anticipation of my inevitable launch of those programs.

ok roguestar then please explain the quote, how do you know irc and opera load up in the background? Are you just guessing or looking somewhere?

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: plion

Originally posted by: Roguestar
like when I log in it loads up IRC and Opera for me in the background in anticipation of my inevitable launch of those programs.

ok roguestar then please explain the quote, how do you know irc and opera load up in the background? Are you just guessing or looking somewhere?

Well the fact that they load instantly on clicking their icons as opposed to taking a small load-up time like on XP or on a public computer in the university labs is a dead giveaway.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: plion

Originally posted by: Roguestar
like when I log in it loads up IRC and Opera for me in the background in anticipation of my inevitable launch of those programs.

ok roguestar then please explain the quote, how do you know irc and opera load up in the background? Are you just guessing or looking somewhere?

You can check the prefetch folder, it will give you a good idea Superfetch is going to load (you can also look at the resource monitor)

 

[Doom Machine]

but if SSD loads apps instantly cause its so fast....how can superfetch help? i mean from the vids, its way faster than superfetched with hdd could ever be. i understand ram being faster and sounds good in theory but skeptical of its practice in real world use.

my prefetch is 684mb's and growing. 64 gigs isnt much and that space could be used for games or something if its use is negligable.

 

[0roo0roo]

ssd is slower than ram.
thats why it helps.

 

[Doom Machine]

Just got it, Instruction manual states that for best performance:
Turn off Superfetch
Do not use AHCI but IDE or Raid instead.
and of course..do not defragment.

lol

gues you guys were wrong huh

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: Doom Machine
Just got it, Instruction manual states that for best performance:
Turn off Superfetch
Do not use AHCI but IDE or Raid instead.
and of course..do not defragment.

lol

gues you guys were wrong huh

Not really. Memory is still faster than SSD. I've seen instruction manuals that tell you to power cycle the monitor when rebooting the computer as well as manuals that say you have to do a full format before using a HD even though quickformat works perfectly fine.

 

[duragezic]

Why don't you do some tests for us? Do a couple of simple load times and whatnot with SF disabled, then enable it and come back say a month later and do the same tests, then report the results in a thread!

I think why some people said to leave it on is one in theory it should still help considering how much faster RAM still is than SSD, and second is that there should be no harm in having it on. So that's what I would do.

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: duragezic
Why don't you do some tests for us? Do a couple of simple load times and whatnot with SF disabled, then enable it and come back say a month later and do the same tests, then report the results in a thread!

I think why some people said to leave it on is one in theory it should still help considering how much faster RAM still is than SSD, and second is that there should be no harm in having it on. So that's what I would do.

It would be cool if he did that. One thing he must do is wait a few days between turning superfetch off and on to gauge the difference. Superfetch needs time to optimize.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: duragezic
Why don't you do some tests for us? Do a couple of simple load times and whatnot with SF disabled, then enable it and come back say a month later and do the same tests, then report the results in a thread!

I think why some people said to leave it on is one in theory it should still help considering how much faster RAM still is than SSD, and second is that there should be no harm in having it on. So that's what I would do.

It would be cool if he did that. One thing he must do is wait a few days between turning superfetch off and on to gauge the difference. Superfetch needs time to optimize.

Yes, I think that's what duragezic meant. I bolded the relevant part.

 

[nerp]

Speedreading + wine + obama speeches = glazing over key points on occasion. Please forgive me.

 

[Doom Machine]

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: duragezic
Why don't you do some tests for us? Do a couple of simple load times and whatnot with SF disabled, then enable it and come back say a month later and do the same tests, then report the results in a thread!

I think why some people said to leave it on is one in theory it should still help considering how much faster RAM still is than SSD, and second is that there should be no harm in having it on. So that's what I would do.

It would be cool if he did that. One thing he must do is wait a few days between turning superfetch off and on to gauge the difference. Superfetch needs time to optimize.

but as i was saying SD makes apps appear instantanious. so theres no way to test SF. its like instant vs instant.

recently read that MS is doing tests for Windows 7 to see wether or not to have SF turned off by default for those with SD drives.

 

[0roo0roo]

and well, not all ssd are that fast, esp budget ones. look at benchmarks.
intel ssd is curent ssd king.

 

[postmortemIA]

superfetch will eventually take forever to load all your stuff in RAM, as it has tendency to load in RAM anything and everything you have ever used. Since there's no way to tweak it, there's no way of telling it to not load gigabytes of stuff into RAM as soon as it is launched (which is as soon as you boot up), so how is that going to help you if SSD has to handle multiple requests? You'd have to compete with it every time for the SSD access.