Is Speed Improvement with SSD Significant in Normal Computing Use?

[Voo]

Where is the most improvement noticed; seek time? I just don't' want to be let down after experiencing 15K scsi drives; the impression over regular 7200 rpm drives was probably what most desktop users feel today about their SSDs: can any 15k scsi drive to SSD drive people chime in on this for me and share their experience. Thanks

Well we're still talking about ~4ms random access time vs. .1ms which is a good bit lower

 

[lsquare]

I had a 150GB Velociraptor before moving to an Intel 40GB SSD last week. I don't think the speed improvement is significant, but it's definitely noticeable. The big thing that you'll probably notice is the reduction in noise as the SSD is silent!

 

[lsquare]

You may want to wait for intel's 22nm ssds.

Agreed and that's why I went with the Intel 40GB SSD for the moment. Later in the year, I intend to buy at least an 80GB SSD for both my desktop and laptop while selling the 40GB SSD that I have now or move it to a server that I intend to build. I can't justify paying more than $200 for an Intel 80GB SSD at the moment.

 

[boomhower]

I just got my 60GB Vertex installed yesterday and I couldn't be happier. Granted I wasn't exactly using a blazing fast drive before. But the boot times with an instantly usable desktop is awesome. Apps open amazingly quick. By far the best $150 I have every put into a computer.

 

[taltamir]

My system has an i7 860 with a WD Velociraptor. I am considering the purchase of an Intel X25 -M to replace the Velociraptor. I know that the SSD will do much better with benchmarking and shave a few seconds off the boot time. Will I notice much difference with app's, especially games?

boot time is completely irrelevant... like 64bit people are hanging on to a useless unrelated aspect and then using it as a strawman against the technology.

64bit is vastly faster, up to 5x than 32bit... the fact it can handle more than 4GB than ancillary, heck so can a 32bit OS if it has PAE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension) which will take effort to design and can cause blue screens if any of your drivers is not compatible, but exist for certain windows enterprise version and for linux

As for SSD... boot time can go perform lewd acts on itself and die in a ditch.
first of all, your boot time will not get THAT much better. 90% of it is mobo and AHCI and all that initializing itself.
what changes though is the speed of the machine... programs open blazingly fast, stuff install in moments (ex: windows updates now show a downloading bar, get to 100%, then flicker for a fraction of a second and say done... installing windows took 1/3rd the time, install office takes a fraction of the time, etc)... you can use it when doing certain intensive tasks (ex: when remuxing video i use it as the target drive and its more than twice as fast... my source is a fileserver, and when done i copy the remuxed version into the file server... but i need a target disk, and for that its faster than my mechanical disk).

Finally... I can install games to it and they install a lot faster and load a lot faster. SSD made neverwinter nights 2 playable (make sure your saves are also on that drive... you will have to keep your documents in a custom directory on your secondary spindle drive, but put the "my documents" folder in the same drive as the SSD, because most games dump their saves in "my documents" folder.)

anyways, every you do is faster, even just opening an internet browser.

 

[skid00skid00]

Does it make a difference in speed to install the os on a small ssd and programs on a larger ssd? Or just load everything on a huge ssd and have some fun?

I can't tell you the difference, but I'm running two Intel 80GB Gen 1's, one for OS/pgms, the other for OS and Photoshop swap.

I seem to see much better performance, in comparison to what posters with just one drive say ("it doesn't seem faster than a Raptor!", etc).

It makes sense to me that using two MB channels would help...?!

 

[adeepercut2k]

I can't tell you the difference, but I'm running two Intel 80GB Gen 1's, one for OS/pgms, the other for OS and Photoshop swap.

I seem to see much better performance, in comparison to what posters with just one drive say ("it doesn't seem faster than a Raptor!", etc).

It makes sense to me that using two MB channels would help...?!

Thanks. I've been short stroking my old raptor and installing win7 on it and installing programs on a separate drive. I've noticed faster performance in loading and running games. I assume just moving to 1 ssd would be a night and day difference in performance, but I can't afford a full size ssd. I might pick up a 40GB ssd and run win7 and limit my installed programs for now.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

When do the 22nm SSDs come out?

 

[Hacp]

When do the 22nm SSDs come out?

3-4th quarter this year.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

And what does it mean when they come out? Larger capacity for the same price?

 

[lsquare]

3-4th quarter this year.

I think Anand said Q4 of this year in one of his SSD articles.

 

[lsquare]

And what does it mean when they come out? Larger capacity for the same price?

Hard to say at this point, but it's almost certain that you'll get more capacity for less money. I doubt that means on a per GB basis it'll be as cheap as HDD. We're still not there yet and we probably won't for at least a year or two. NAND manufacturing is increasing and with the scale of economy, prices will continue to go down.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Do you think 22nm release will try to coincide with the release of ONFI 3.0 & EZNAND ?

 

[lsquare]

Do you think 22nm release will try to coincide with the release of ONFI 3.0 & EZNAND ?

I don't know man. At the end of the day you really have two choices. Either buy an SSD now or wait. Most of us are working with information that's posted on the internet. I doubt anyone here can concretely say when these things will materialize.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Do you think 22nm release will try to coincide with the release of ONFI 3.0 & EZNAND ?

It won't matter if the flash is ONFI 3.0 if the controller's don't take advantage of ONFI 3.0. All the controllers now are ONFI 1.0 except for the new Sandforce and the Crucial drive (they use ONFI 2.1), despite using ONFI 2 flash memory.

Keep in mind that all SSDs have multiple channels, so even if stuff within the next 2 years is ONFI 2.1, it'll be pretty damn fast. ONFI 2.1 is 200MB/s, many drives have 10 channels, so that's already way more bandwidth than SATA will provide.

Don't obsess over ONFI standards, focus on the controllers and cost.

It would make sense for 22nm flash to be ONFI 3.0 though.

 

[Hacp]

And what does it mean when they come out? Larger capacity for the same price?

Right now, analysts estimate that it costs intel around 93 cents per gb to make the ram. I think micron said it'll cost 50 cents per gb after the switch. So expect double the capacity at the same price.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Right now, analysts estimate that it costs intel around 93 cents per gb to make the ram. I think micron said it'll cost 50 cents per gb after the switch. So expect double the capacity at the same price.

I honestly hope so, but computer components rarely reflect the manufacturing costs, at least initially.

Along with this 22nm flash will be a whole host of controllers that bring new speed. I'm sure Intel will not shy away from charging more because of that speed improvement.

Look at how much Gen 2 Intel drives cost compared to Gen 1 when they first launched even though Intel went from 50nm to 34nm flash.

 

[taltamir]

the 22nm flash from intel is slated to start mass production at the end of Q2 this year.
However, the intel controller for it (and thus, the drives) will only be available Q3 or Q4. Since its a brand new controller, you can expect said controller to support ONFI3

22nm flash means less than half the cost of production. Or rather, the cost of production of an individual "die" will be cut in half. However to give high end capacities requires stacking many dies, (as high as 16), and the cost of stacking any more then 4 die are very high. As a result the cost to produce the lowest capacity drives will fall in half, while the cost of the highest capacity ones will drop by more.

However, do keep in mind that it is intel that developed it... the G2 had the exact same cost reduction for intel, but the price went down only 30%... and the G2 at least has some solid competition... The new drives from intel should be the best performing too so expect cost to decrease very little if at all. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if intel started out simply by selling their G3 MLC drives as the new X25-Es

 

[Hacp]

I honestly hope so, but computer components rarely reflect the manufacturing costs, at least initially.

Along with this 22nm flash will be a whole host of controllers that bring new speed. I'm sure Intel will not shy away from charging more because of that speed improvement.

Look at how much Gen 2 Intel drives cost compared to Gen 1 when they first launched even though Intel went from 50nm to 34nm flash.

Keep in mind that it is in Intel's best interest to sell as many drives as possible. More GB per dollar=more sales=more profits.

 

[pjkenned]

Where is the most improvement noticed; seek time? I just don't' want to be let down after experiencing 15K scsi drives; the impression over regular 7200 rpm drives was probably what most desktop users feel today about their SSDs: can any 15k scsi drive to SSD drive people chime in on this for me and share their experience. Thanks

So intitially I went from an 8x 15k 2.5" Savvio 15k.1 setup in raid 5 on an Adaptec 5805 to a single Vertex. I jotted down my thoughts just after switching: http://www.servethehome.com/ocz-vertex-v-sas-15k-rpm-raid-5/

At the time, I also had a 3x 300GB 15k Raid 5 as a slower, second-tier storage (before the 7200 rpm SATA tier): http://www.servethehome.com/3x-seagate-atlas-15k5-raid-5-adaptec-3085/

Now: I have 2x 120GB Vertex drives in raid 0: http://www.servethehome.com/ocz-vertex-120gb-updated-raid-0-benchmarks-intel-rst/

The different kind of fast would be accurate from that Savvio setup to the Vertex setup. The new Raid 0 vertex setup would probably be alltogether better, but coming from a single SSD, there really isn't any noticible performance with Raid 0. (Yes, I keep all files on a backed-up Raid 6 server so I'm not concerned about raid 0 with nightly backups as I don't install programs that often).

Also, I bought a Vertex LE 100GB and returned it after a few days. I couldn't tell a real-world performance benefit over the original Vertex and it has a huge price premium. Given, benchmarks are great and all, but I don't benchmark for a living. X25-M v. Indilinx drives, really not a huge difference either, at least compared to 7200rpm drive to either SSD.

Just some thoughts.

 

[taltamir]

Keep in mind that it is in Intel's best interest to sell as many drives as possible. More GB per dollar=more sales=more profits.

this is just plain wrong.
Intel is currently selling every drive almost as soon as the make them. In fact, demand has been so high that prices have gone UP rather then down due to lack of supplies.

now, when the world's initial binge on quality SSDs is satiated and the majority of enthusiasts have one, sales will slow down and prices will come down. That is because at that point intel would be able to make more sales by lowering prices.

if intel has exactly 1000 drives a day to sell, pricing them as high as possible while still selling all 1000 drives will maximize profit. only pricing it so high that results in unsold units is detrimental (and even then, only if price x units sold is less than cheaper price x 1000)

 

[EarthwormJim]

Keep in mind that it is in Intel's best interest to sell as many drives as possible. More GB per dollar=more sales=more profits.

The market is clearly willing to pay the current prices for SSDs. Prices have basically stagnated over the past year and in some cases have gone up.

It's in Intel's interest to make a profit, not just to sell as many drives as they can.

 

[Hacp]

this is just plain wrong.
Intel is currently selling every drive almost as soon as the make them. In fact, demand has been so high that prices have gone UP rather then down due to lack of supplies.

now, when the world's initial binge on quality SSDs is satiated and the majority of enthusiasts have one, sales will slow down and prices will come down. That is because at that point intel would be able to make more sales by lowering prices.

if intel has exactly 1000 drives a day to sell, pricing them as high as possible while still selling all 1000 drives will maximize profit. only pricing it so high that results in unsold units is detrimental (and even then, only if price x units sold is less than cheaper price x 1000)

Of course prices have been stagnant. Thats why they've dipped to 205 bucks the last few weeks.

 

[Hacp]

The market is clearly willing to pay the current prices for SSDs. Prices have basically stagnated over the past year and in some cases have gone up.

It's in Intel's interest to make a profit, not just to sell as many drives as they can.

Sigh, what would Intel rather have? An SSD in every enthusiast's computer for a profit of 100 dollars per drive or an ssd in every desktop and notebook computer ever made for 20 dollars profit per drive? A majority of computers have Intel processors in them. Now imagine Intel selling an SSD with each processor.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Video editing with 700MB/s reads is amazing!

That is the worst thing I could of read as I am building an AVCHD NLE machine hehe

Thanks for sharing your experience pjkenned