SSD write speeds

[perdomot]

I got my rig set up with two hdds, velociraptor for the c drive and a 1 TB WD caviar for storing all files. In most reviews of ssds, the write speeds vary tremendously from the read speeds and I was wondering if write speeds really affect the performance of rig if you set it up like I have mine. Once you install the OS and programs, shouldn't the write speed of the storage drive be the important factor when doing things like encoding video? Does the write speed of the ssd matter during the encoding process?

 

[Blain]

yes

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: perdomot
Does the write speed of the ssd matter during the encoding process?

It can matter but only if your cpu's are encoding more data per second than the underlying media is capable of writing.

With Intel X-25M SSD's having write bandwidth around 75MB/s this will become the bottleneck if your encoding output is more than 75MB/s. If your encoding output is less than 75MB/s then the SSD will not be the rate limiting factor in your encoding times.

My encoding jobs take about an 25minutes to encode about 2GB of video...that comes out to be an encoding output rate of around 1.4MB/s...I'm not harddrive bandwidth limited in the slightest. Even when ripping DVD's my bottleneck is the DVD reader speed, not my harddrive write speed.

About the only time a 70MB/s write speed becomes a practical bottleneck is if you are copying GB sized files to the SSD.

 

[aken909]

As a SSD owner (Patriot Warp) I can say for a fact that yes it does.

For me if I was downloading a file and trying to do basically anything else my computer would pause stall and skip.

My SSD was made with a JMicron controller with a tiny buffer. Before you buy any SSD I would do a lot of research.

But personally if I was going to spend 300+ for an SSD I would probably just add another Velociraptor and do a raid 0 stripe.

There are good SSD's but they are mostly expensive, and cheap ones tend to be just that. Though I guess some of the newer and cheaper ones are doing pretty good.

I personally am going to wait for the SSD market to mature a bit, give it a year or two and SSD's will be larger cheaper and much higher quality over all.

Basically, before you go into SSD make sure you do a lot of research, or you may end up with a $300 paperweight like me. heh

 

[perdomot]

I can understand why writing files TO the ssd would involve its write speed but if you plan to write to a storage drive and are only using the programs on the ssd to do the encoding, why would the write speeds of the ssd matter?

 

[jkresh]

if you are writing to the storage drive then your ssd write speed won't matter, ssd write speed would only be an issue if you are actually writing to it (and if you are that worried about it ocz's vertex has very good write speeds (though its random read/write are behind intel by a bit)

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: aken909
As a SSD owner (Patriot Warp) I can say for a fact that yes it does.

For me if I was downloading a file and trying to do basically anything else my computer would pause stall and skip.

My SSD was made with a JMicron controller with a tiny buffer. Before you buy any SSD I would do a lot of research.

But personally if I was going to spend 300+ for an SSD I would probably just add another Velociraptor and do a raid 0 stripe.

There are good SSD's but they are mostly expensive, and cheap ones tend to be just that. Though I guess some of the newer and cheaper ones are doing pretty good.

I personally am going to wait for the SSD market to mature a bit, give it a year or two and SSD's will be larger cheaper and much higher quality over all.

Basically, before you go into SSD make sure you do a lot of research, or you may end up with a $300 paperweight like me. heh

That's a problem having to do with the controller in your SSD, has nothing to do with sustained write speed. The problem with your SSD is that the sustained write speed goes to crap whenever the controller gets hit with a lot of small file writes, which downloading a file off the internet is going to do.

If you had a vertex or intel SSD your experience would be entirely different.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: aken909
As a SSD owner (Patriot Warp) I can say for a fact that yes it does.

For me if I was downloading a file and trying to do basically anything else my computer would pause stall and skip.

My SSD was made with a JMicron controller with a tiny buffer. Before you buy any SSD I would do a lot of research.

But personally if I was going to spend 300+ for an SSD I would probably just add another Velociraptor and do a raid 0 stripe.

There are good SSD's but they are mostly expensive, and cheap ones tend to be just that. Though I guess some of the newer and cheaper ones are doing pretty good.

I personally am going to wait for the SSD market to mature a bit, give it a year or two and SSD's will be larger cheaper and much higher quality over all.

Basically, before you go into SSD make sure you do a lot of research, or you may end up with a $300 paperweight like me. heh

That's a problem having to do with the controller in your SSD, has nothing to do with sustained write speed. The problem with your SSD is that the sustained write speed goes to crap whenever the controller gets hit with a lot of small file writes, which downloading a file off the internet is going to do.

If you had a vertex or intel SSD your experience would be entirely different.

True. Love my intel SSD (even with my SATA-1 speed cap)

 

[Emulex]

yeah make sure you got NCQ. having a quad core cpu and no ncq can really stink. I do not think the jmicron or samsung had it.