My Computer's Faster Than Your Computer

[ehume]

Jerry Pournelle is one of the wisest men I know, and he has been messing with what were then called 'microcomputers' since the 1970's, starting with S100 machines. One of his computers is in the Smithsonian. If Jerry works with tens of tabs open in Firefox, there must be a benefit to doing so. I only have a few open because I like to let them load while I'm interacting with something else.

The point: we all use these tools differently. IMO it is a fundamental characteristic of humans to change our circumstances to allow us to move forward, rather than accept our circumstances as they are and perhaps not evolve. The diversity of options available to us allows each of us to work to our best advantage.

As for quads and ssd's: you don't know what you are missing until you've sat down to work on a machine with both. It's kind of like going from dial-up to a true highspeed Internet connection.

 

[taltamir]

Im looking at the Intel/Corsair/OCZ range which if I got an SSD thats what I'd rather get.

Steam 75gb + WoW 25gb + SC2 8.5gb which is about 110gb right there. That doesnt include some of the random games I have which I didnt buy through Steam. Add on Windows install which mean I would at least need 160gb. My C drive is currently at 400gb/640gb.

1. not all games benefit from an SSD, some benefit tremendously, some don't.
2. you don't need to have every single steam game you own installed at the same time, do you?

what I do is simply uninstall (or install to HDD) games I don't play often, those I am currently playing all the time go on the SSD.

 

[maniac5999]

How big is a bare Win7 x64 install? I thought it was under 10GB. Currently I think I'd want to have Windows (10GB?), Civ5 (8GB) SC2(12GB) and probably even WoW (25GB!!!) on my boot drive. I think that'd put me at about 55gb, but I'm worried that with bloat and whatnot I might be better served with a 90GB than a 64GB drive. (and possibly waiting until the new SandForce and Intel drives come out in a few months)

 

[yhelothar]

My usage is similar to his, perhaps even more since I alt tab out of starcraft II, and I usually have photoshop open with a couple of high resolution photos with several history states open. All that's needed to keep everything running smoothly is RAM. He didn't need to buy a new computer every two years, he just needed to periodically upgrade his RAM, perhaps throw a SSD in the mix, but that's only for initial load times.

I'm running a 5yr old laptop with a 1.5GHz Pentium-M and it runs about as quick as my 3.4GHz Core2Quad for most things when the ram threshold has not been exceeded.

 

[Makaveli]

Still, any decent capacity SSD will cost you about the same as an i7 gaming rig.

i'm on a 160GB G2 intel SSD that I paid $450 for in Dec 2009, where can I build a complete i7 right for that price?

 

[Makaveli]

SSDs still have quite a way to go before I drop the cash for one. The idea of the drive degrading over time is the major turnoff for me. When I read about people essentially bricking their drives after 30 days of moderate to heavy it really discourages me.

You need to wake up this is 2010.

Its called Trim.

And the morons you speak of clearly don't understand the best usage pattern of an SSD.

If its too hard to figure out that its best benefit is for Random access and seek times, and not to be downloading all your porn on and constantly writing then stick to an HD.


And leave the SSD purchases for us that understand the benefits one can provide.

 

[ShawnD1]

i'm on a 160GB G2 intel SSD that I paid $450 for in Dec 2009, where can I build a complete i7 right for that price?

I think the means the price difference. 500GB high speed regular drive is like $60 or whatever I said earlier, so that's $300-400 difference. An i7 system is $400 more than a good system.

 

[tommo123]

i want one, for a boot drive, but waiting for the next gen of the things. if only to push down the current prices a bit.

really annoys me that in spite of 8GB ram, that windows doesn't cache everything i use regularly and still hits the damn page file.

 

[StrangerGuy]

You need to wake up this is 2010.

Its called Trim.

And the morons you speak of clearly don't understand the best usage pattern of an SSD.

If its too hard to figure out that its best benefit is for Random access and seek times, and not to be downloading all your porn on and constantly writing then stick to an HD.


And leave the SSD purchases for us that understand the benefits one can provide.

The moment somebody complains about SSD reliability it's evidence they don't understand SSDs at all.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

We assume perfect wear leveling which means we need to fill the disk 2 million times to get to the write endurance limit.

"2 million (write endurance) x 64G (capacity) divided by 80M bytes / sec gives the endurance limited life in seconds.

That's a meaningless number - which needs to be divided by seconds in an hour, hours in a day etc etc to give...

The end result is 51 years!"

I doubt anyone will keep using any SSD for 10 years before obsolescence let alone 51.

 

[ShawnD1]

The moment somebody complains about SSD reliability it's evidence they don't understand SSDs at all.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

We assume perfect wear leveling which means we need to fill the disk 2 million times to get to the write endurance limit.

But it's not perfect. When I had Vista installed on a 30gb SSD with some programs like autocad and ms office, it's about 90% filled. That means the swap file is thrashing around the same bits all day. It can't access the other bits because that would mean erasing my windows installation or my program files. 3gb to thrash instead of 64 would be 2.55 years of constant writing.

Depending on what you're doing, you might actually hit that limit. The more filled the hard drive, the faster you hit it.

 

[Idontcare]

But it's not perfect. When I had Vista installed on a 30gb SSD with some programs like autocad and ms office, it's about 90% filled. That means the swap file is thrashing around the same bits all day. It can't access the other bits because that would mean erasing my windows installation or my program files. 3gb to thrash instead of 64 would be 2.55 years of constant writing.

Depending on what you're doing, you might actually hit that limit. The more filled the hard drive, the faster you hit it.

Try doing the same thing with a 30GB mechanical drive...it won't be around too long either and your performance will degrade.

 

[atran5e]

Mine 🙂

 

[ShawnD1]

Try doing the same thing with a 30GB mechanical drive...it won't be around too long either and your performance will degrade.

Here's a mechanical drive I still use.

49980 hours powered / 24 hours / 365 days = 5.7 years of operation

 

[swerus]

I agree that the memory probably helped with his 200 tabs, although like everyone else, I don't understand why he could possibly need that many tabs open. Is he so ADHD that he never finishes reading a web page?

That being said, I'll repeat what he stated correctly...SSDs are revolutionary. Don't just go by the numbers. If you haven't used one, you don't know what you're missing. Heck, I just installed one in my mom's computer, and she's amazed at how different her Core i7 machine (that had been running a "fast" WD Black drive) now feels. And I'm about to install one in my HTPC machine. Why? Because I just can't bear to use it for the simplest tasks when my desktop's SSD makes it feel a million times faster. I scored a small but fast SSD for $100 (OCZ Agility 2 60GB), and I know it will do just the trick. No need to buy huge SSDs - just putting your OS and programs on there is enough.

Or could he not just bookmark it and come back when he wanted to read it? As everyone said more ram, new video card, and an ssd would have accomplished the same as $1200 worth of gear to browse the web.

 

[Habeed]

SSDs still have quite a way to go before I drop the cash for one. The idea of the drive degrading over time is the major turnoff for me. When I read about people essentially bricking their drives after 30 days of moderate to heavy it really discourages me.

That doesn't happen very often with the better brands. I know the Intel SSDs have a good track record for long term use. The same with the degradation : I just benched my ssd after several months of heavy use, got a score of 406 compared to a peak score of 416 when I installed the drive. (using AS SSD benchmark)

TRIM and other tricks specific to an SSD keep the degradation to a minimum.

Also, even a "degraded" SSD is still several times faster than a mechanical hard drive.