My Computer's Faster Than Your Computer

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.slate.com/id/2266726/

Interesting article promoting the idea of buying towards the high-end of the curve.

Would be interesting to see a follow-up article, if he could get someone he knows to overclock his rig to 4.0Ghz.

 

[muskie32]

That was interesting

 

[Markfw]

All I got from this was "buy an SSD". I think we all know thats the way to go.

 

[crucibelle]

Well written and entertaining. Thanks for the link, VirtualLarry.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I know well what it's like to have 200 tabs open, I used to "mega-browse" like that. I've since adjusted my browsing habits, since I couldn't really adjust the performance of the computer to compensate. (Damn Mozilla memory leaks!).

It was really bad on a 1GB machine running XP, once the browser started taking up 1GB of RAM all by itself, causing the machine to thrash the pagefile, browsing got exponentially slower.

On my machines with 4GB of RAM, it wouldn't thrash, but Firefox would crash once it hit 2GB of VM used.

I plan on picking up some of these soon: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211485

 

[Cogman]

Interesting, though some of his opinions are.. skewed. Such as "The intel 930 is about 3x faster than my old C2D". That and the "SSDs are much faster than hard drives" Well, they do have almost non-existent seek times, but their data transfer speeds (last I checked) were roughly the same as a normal hard drive.

Either way, he probably saw the biggest benefit from getting more ram. No doubt half the effects that he was touting would have been accomplished by simply upgrading his ram (and possibly getting a new video card.)

I never really understood the "I have 11billion tabs open for 8 days!" thing. The most I can ever muster is about 4, and generally they are very specific.

 

[jvroig]

I never really understood the "I have 11billion tabs open for 8 days!" thing. The most I can ever muster is about 4, and generally they are very specific

Depends on use, which is highly personal and also may be "seasonal". I now only have 11 tabs at startup, a few just local (intranet resources like company email). While I was more active with research, I had much more because I needed lots of references to confirm or dispute or make sense of my findings, and tabs needed to "persist" so that the flow of data (analysis, investigation) doesn't get cut off from one session to another, especially because when one reference cites 5 other important references, and each of those has 3-5 good references as well, it becomes impossible to linearly go through all of them at one session, and you need a way to make sure the browser "saves state" so that at the end of the day, you close it and the next day you can pick up much faster than when you left off. This is also the primary reason why it is not unreasonable to see people engrossed in study or research to have multiple tabs in multiple instances of the browser - each instance is a logical group of tabs for a certain branch of research, which adds yet another layer of organization into reference materials. It all adds up in the end when your productivity is retained despite being knee-deep in reference materials.

Well, they do have almost non-existent seek times, but their data transfer speeds (last I checked) were roughly the same as a normal hard drive.

That's because maximum data transfer speed is rarely what makes the system "slow" or "fast". In the context he presented, SSDs are certainly much faster, which is also reflected in real-world use. I doubt there is any reasonable use case beyond "transferring files all day long to different disks" that will invalidate the general statement "SSDs are much faster than harddrives". It is not worth picking on him for.

However, the other statement you quoted is very well justified. I do not feel he has justified it enough with his described use case - unless the issue is not just main memory / storage related (which is solved by more RAM and fast SSD), but also processor-related, if most of his tabs have some sort of flash ads, in which case it may swamp a core2duo but can be handled by the i7 without breaking a sweat. What makes me not believe that to be the case is his claim that his CPU utilization is ~10% now - that kind of load, transferred to a C2D, would nowhere be enough to create a CPU-bottleneck situation.

Either way, he probably saw the biggest benefit from getting more ram. No doubt half the effects that he was touting would have been accomplished by simply upgrading his ram (and possibly getting a new video card.)

The effects of SSD are well-documented from almost every review site in the planet, the reliable ones and even the non-reliable ones, so downplaying the SSD performance benefit seems a bit coming from left field. It is almost as close to "universal tech truth" as we can get. Upgrading from an HDD to an SSD is the single best upgrade you can do that will result in the most noticeable performance gains, from boot up to shut down.

 

[hofan41]

Unfortunately nobody has yet to tell him that his bottleneck when opening 200 browser tabs is more than likely his RAM and his computing experience could be improved by getting 12gb or 8gb of it as opposed to swapping in and out with the SSD.

 

[Idontcare]

I never really understood the "I have 11billion tabs open for 8 days!" thing. The most I can ever muster is about 4, and generally they are very specific.

As he references the use of it, I do the same thing, which is to say that while I am researching a subject matter and drilling down through the content presented in hyperlink "A" I am also opening its associated hyperlinks in new tabs supressed to the background to be reviewed and digested later on.

Try digesting the contents of this link for example without being tempted to click any of its embedded links mid-thought to help "fill out" your comprehension of the primary material.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I guess my browsing habits are fairly reserved compared to many out there. I think I've managed about 10 tabs at one time before, but most of the time I'll have 1-4 open, and anything else gets read immediately and dismissed or bookmarked for later. I also go through my bookmarks every month or two and delete anything I no longer need.

Aside from gaming, I'd be perfectly happy on the E6600 (2.4GHz Conroe) / 2GB DDR2 machine I built in 2006, but with a SSD thrown in. Hell, I did great with my UL30A - SU7300 / 4GB DDR3.

 

[Termie]

Interesting, though some of his opinions are.. skewed. Such as "The intel 930 is about 3x faster than my old C2D". That and the "SSDs are much faster than hard drives" Well, they do have almost non-existent seek times, but their data transfer speeds (last I checked) were roughly the same as a normal hard drive.

Either way, he probably saw the biggest benefit from getting more ram. No doubt half the effects that he was touting would have been accomplished by simply upgrading his ram (and possibly getting a new video card.)

I never really understood the "I have 11billion tabs open for 8 days!" thing. The most I can ever muster is about 4, and generally they are very specific.

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.

 

[crucibelle]

As he references the use of it, I do the same thing, which is to say that while I am researching a subject matter and drilling down through the content presented in hyperlink "A" I am also opening its associated hyperlinks in new tabs supressed to the background to be reviewed and digested later on.

Try digesting the contents of this link for example without being tempted to click any of its embedded links mid-thought to help "fill out" your comprehension of the primary material.

I usually have a ton of tabs open, too, and Wikipedia is one of the main sites I do it on. You are right, it is hard not to go clicking on all the embedded links. It's also a huge time-waster. I can spend hours jumping from one topic to another on Wikipedia.. lol.

My computer, which is quite old ( x2 3800+ and 2 GB ram) bogs down pretty badly with all the (FF) tabs I have open.

 

[BD231]

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

 

[Cogman]

As he references the use of it, I do the same thing, which is to say that while I am researching a subject matter and drilling down through the content presented in hyperlink "A" I am also opening its associated hyperlinks in new tabs supressed to the background to be reviewed and digested later on.

Try digesting the contents of this link for example without being tempted to click any of its embedded links mid-thought to help "fill out" your comprehension of the primary material.

I guess we just have different usage habits. I usually do a depth first search while it sounds like you do a breadth first search.

See, I'll read the page until I find a concept that I don't understand, click on that link, read up, and then hit the back button. My surfing habits dictate the heavy usage of back-buttoning, but have a lower memory usage. I helps that I personally have a pretty decent memory so I remember most stuff that I read pretty much anywhere at any time.

 

[fffblackmage]

I just randomly opened 4 windows, each with a ton of tabs, in FX and duplicated most of the windows and tabs in Chrome. Chrome actually used nearly 700MB of ram... while FX used almost 300MB. I still have 2GB of total ram free....

Surprisingly, opening so many tabs at the same time actually caused quite a bit of cpu activity. I would have though FX/Chrome would have sat there waiting while data poured through my slow internet connection.

 

[Cogman]

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

This is my biggest problem with them. I don't see them as a big enough performance increase to justify the cost (I don't own one). I've seen windows boot up and start an application, and honestly, with superfetch, the applications I run start up at the same speed. The only place it will really benefit is unused applications, applications that use several small files, and OS boot speed.

Of course, I don't have one, so I haven't been "revolutionized" yet. Its just when people say "ignore the numbers" it starts to sound more like a placebo to me. (I still want one, I just can't justify the cost yet. I'll wait until the capacity increase and price decreases. in other words, I'll probably get one when a 250gb SSD is roughly $100.

 

[Cogman]

I just randomly opened 4 windows, each with a ton of tabs, in FX and duplicated most of the windows and tabs in Chrome. Chrome actually used nearly 700MB of ram... while FX used almost 300MB. I still have 2GB of total ram free....

Surprisingly, opening so many tabs at the same time actually caused quite a bit of cpu activity. I would have though FX/Chrome would have sat there waiting while data poured through my slow internet connection.

Chrome is interesting because, unlike firefox, it spawns a new process for each tab (that is why you are able to do things like split a tab out of a window and combine them into a new window). This costs a little more memory per tab and a little more processing power per tab. However, it does much better at multi-threading as a result. It is kind of interesting that they chose starting new processes vs starting a new thread. Threads are cheaper to do, the only thing they would have lost was the ability to split the tab from the window.

 

[guskline]

Great article. Have been building my own for a LONG time.

 

[nyker96]

I agree with the guy in article, my system now is bottlenecked by HD performance, the cpu x4 620 is hardly stressed 99% of the time. but when two program hits the same HD, everything just stops. I think my biggest upgrade will be a SSD, but need to wait for the price to soften a bit on them to take this plunge.

 

[Habeed]

Chrome is interesting because, unlike firefox, it spawns a new process for each tab (that is why you are able to do things like split a tab out of a window and combine them into a new window). This costs a little more memory per tab and a little more processing power per tab. However, it does much better at multi-threading as a result. It is kind of interesting that they chose starting new processes vs starting a new thread. Threads are cheaper to do, the only thing they would have lost was the ability to split the tab from the window.

The reason they start new processes is to compartmentalize the browser. A crash in one process is not supposed to crash all of chrome. There's limits to this protection, though, and I have had chrome 6 crash entirely several times before.

 

[Habeed]

Of course, I don't have one, so I haven't been "revolutionized" yet. Its just when people say "ignore the numbers" it starts to sound more like a placebo to me. (I still want one, I just can't justify the cost yet. I'll wait until the capacity increase and price decreases. in other words, I'll probably get one when a 250gb SSD is roughly $100.

It's not a placebo at all. It's objective and quantifiable. Most productivity apps such as web browsers, word processors, etc load INSTANTLY the moment you click on them. The moment windows is done checking hardware and loads the desktop all of the taskbar icons (and the programs they represent) show up in a couple seconds. And the hourglass goes away : windows is fully booted in 5-10 seconds following the hardware checks.

And it doesn't matter if the program was run before or cached in ram or not, the speedup is still there.

You don't need a 250gb SSD : you just need enough room to store windows and most of your programs (and the swap file of course). 60-100 gigs is about the right size for that. You can leave the games you play less often on the mechanical drive.

The reason they say to "ignore the numbers" is because the numbers are wrong. Capacity doesn't need to be comparable to a hard drive : you will still need a hard drive even if you have an SSD. Speed numbers are wrong because speed numbers normally quoted are sequential reads and writes. On a modern machine, you almost never do this. Extracting rar files and moving large files between disks is one of the few times you ever do.

Instead, there's lots and lots and lots of small reads and writes of files scattered all over your hard disk during usage of a modern system. This includes software installs, loading a program, loading your work, tons of stuff. And SSDs are FAST at this : it depends on the measurement, but it's commonly a speedup of more than 10 times.

 

[VirtualLarry]

well, i did it, i ordered the adata 64gb ssd. i'll let you all know how much faster win7 is in a couple of weeks.

 

[Termie]

The reason they say to "ignore the numbers" is because the numbers are wrong. Capacity doesn't need to be comparable to a hard drive : you will still need a hard drive even if you have an SSD. Speed numbers are wrong because speed numbers normally quoted are sequential reads and writes. On a modern machine, you almost never do this. Extracting rar files and moving large files between disks is one of the few times you ever do.

Instead, there's lots and lots and lots of small reads and writes of files scattered all over your hard disk during usage of a modern system. This includes software installs, loading a program, loading your work, tons of stuff. And SSDs are FAST at this : it depends on the measurement, but it's commonly a speedup of more than 10 times.

True that...although I'd add that the numbers aren't exactly wrong...it's more that people look at the wrong numbers. The sequential numbers are "only" 2x faster, but the small file numbers are way, way faster (perhaps 10x, as suggested above).

well, i did it, i ordered the adata 64gb ssd. i'll let you all know how much faster win7 is in a couple of weeks.

You should be impressed.

 

[Habeed]

True that...although I'd add that the numbers aren't exactly wrong...it's more that people look at the wrong numbers. The sequential numbers are "only" 2x faster, but the small file numbers are way, way faster (perhaps 10x, as suggested above).

Yeah, that's what I meant. What I meant was : there are 3 main numbers that are most obvious to look at regarding a hard disk. Those are price, capacity, and read/write speeds (which are always quoted as sequential numbers)

None of those are relevant to why an SSD is worth the money. Just looking at those numbers, it would appear that SSDs are worthless. Must be a pretty strong placebo effect for them to be flying off the shelves at newegg so fast that often newegg is out of stock of the more popular models.

 

[Vic Vega]

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.