Win7 64 swapfile on an SSD?

[SanDiegoPC]

I am using 64 bit windows on the system in my sig below. I am wondering if I were to get a small solid state drive, and use it for the Win7 swap file, would it speed me up at all?

I guess it boils down to how much Windows uses the swap file on a system with 8G of RAM. With the apps I usually have loaded, Windows rarely reports that it's using more than 3/4 of the physical RAM in the machine. I know that the swapfile is designed to be used when that physical RAM is full. I have it set to a static size, equal to the amount of RAM in the system.

But isn't the swapfile still in use, to a certain degree anyway? If so then it seems that having it on a small SSD would make sense. Or are you going to get more of a perf enhancement by using a flash drive in a USB2 port?

 

[Philippart]

i heard SSDs don't like many writes...

You don't need a special drive with 8gb, win7 won't speed up that way

 

[Hyperlite]

nah, you won't get any performance gain. you're better off installing windows and apps on an SSD, and keep data on a conventional drive.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I am using 64 bit windows on the system in my sig below. I am wondering if I were to get a small solid state drive, and use it for the Win7 swap file, would it speed me up at all?

It depends on how you use your computer.

Do you often run an application load that requires you to overcommit your physical memory? A page file on an SSD would be beneficial if you can't realistically increase your physical memory.

Do you just run games or other lightweight (memory-wise) applications? A page file on an SSD won't do anything for you.

I guess it boils down to how much Windows uses the swap file on a system with 8G of RAM. With the apps I usually have loaded, Windows rarely reports that it's using more than 3/4 of the physical RAM in the machine. I know that the swapfile is designed to be used when that physical RAM is full. I have it set to a static size, equal to the amount of RAM in the system.

But isn't the swapfile still in use, to a certain degree anyway? If so then it seems that having it on a small SSD would make sense. Or are you going to get more of a perf enhancement by using a flash drive in a USB2 port?

During normal use, Windows will copy memory pages to the page file, and then mark the memory page as "paged" (the exact term escapes me at the moment). The purpose of this behavior is so that if an application needs access to more physical memory than is free, Windows can immediately unload the memory pages that are also in the page file without having to wait for the memory to page out.

Long story short, although Windows "uses" the page file all the time, it's not using it in a way that will impact performance unless you're actually short on physical memory, which it doesn't sound like you are.

 

[Voo]

i heard SSDs don't like many writes...

If you're really able to get these ~10k write cycles out of MLC flash in a reasonable amount of time you aren't using the drive for desktop use


theevilsharpie outlined how it works.. I think the resource monitor of Vista/Win7 keeps track of the page faults so you can estimate how big the influence of the SSD would be.

 

[ShawnD1]

theevilsharpie outlined how it works.. I think the resource monitor of Vista/Win7 keeps track of the page faults so you can estimate how big the influence of the SSD would be.

Mine stays very close to 0 faults. Does that mean SSD wouldn't do much for me?

 

[deimos3428]

Ideallly, your computer should never use swap. If your computer does so the preferred solution is to install more RAM whenever practical. RAM is much faster (and cheaper).

 

[theevilsharpie]

Ideallly, your computer should never use swap. If your computer does so the preferred solution is to install more RAM whenever practical. RAM is much faster (and cheaper).

The OP states that he has 8GB of RAM. If his PC isn't already maxed out, upgrading would require purchasing expensive 4GB DIMMs. Using an SSD for a page file may be an acceptable tradeoff, especially considering the size of even a small SSD.

 

[nyker96]

maybe this topic is better answered by knowledgeable people in the storage section or operating systems.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

The OP states that he has 8GB of RAM. If his PC isn't already maxed out, upgrading would require purchasing expensive 4GB DIMMs. Using an SSD for a page file may be an acceptable tradeoff, especially considering the size of even a small SSD.

No, not maxed. It will take more RAM than I can afford to stuff into it. I'm just trying to do the final tweaks on the overclock that's all, and when I get the best possible perf out of this box it will be left alone for the next couple of years until I build another. My overclocked Q6600 was still running good but the reason for this build was that I had another use for a fast PC (operating my astronomical telescope and it's guiding software). So I sidestepped the P4 Quad6600 that was only about 20 months old, to the telescope. Hence I built this one for my office.

This computer is fast. But I figured I would max out it's performance while I was still in the tweak mode.

This computer processes my astronomical images that I acquire with a CCD camera and a couple of telescopes. What is involved in that is specialized software. Since a telescope never tracks the sky perfectly while you are imaging far away objects, the stars in a field of view move around a bit from one image to another.

Often, there are 50 to 100 images (sometimes 150) per object, with 5 minute subframe exposures. All of these images (they are 6MB each) are stacked with software that locks onto the position of the stars in each field of view, and puts the individual exposures on top of each other so they all line up. From there, it's off to Photoshop CS4 for final image processing.

But that stacking process is EXTREMELY CPU AND DRIVE INTENSIVE! CPU temps climb just as if I was running Prime 95 when I'm stacking a hundred shots of a field of view showing a thousand stars. The Photoshop deal is nothing for a computer like this one - it can do that stuff just about on the idle circuit.

But on a good night, I will take hundreds of images and oft times of several different objects. The whole next day is spent stacking and processing them. So this computer gets a lot of use between that and running my company. Anything I can do to make it run better will be done.

Until about 3 years or so when I get the urge to build another.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

By the way, if you are interested, my gallery of astro pictures is at www.pbase.com/sandiegopaul

There are about 100 images there in different categories.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I was going to say that you should just run two Gigabyte iRAMs in RAID0, but doing so can be a headache, and the dated SATA interface on the iRAM would limit you to 300 MB/s (150 per device) read/write which isn't much faster than some of the better SSDs out there. Also, you'd need two PCI slots, and many boards only feature one nowadays. You'd never have to worry about an iRAM wearing out on you though, which is still a concern for any flash-based SSD being used for swap.

 

[douglasb]

Why is this posted in the "CPU/Overclocking" forum?

 

[elconejito]

interesting software... (nice photos too)

So it sounds like the software grabs an image (drive), tags the stars (CPU), holds it (RAM), grabs another image (drive), tags the stars (CPU), holds it (RAM), etc, etc, etc? Is that how it works?

I don't think the bottleneck is the drive since reading off a series of images (even if it's hundreds) and loading them all into RAM would only take a few seconds at the most. At 6mb each, 100 images would only be 600mb. That F1 probably has a max read speed of around 100mb/s so in less than 10seconds it should load up all the files into RAM.

And if the CPU is maxxed out at 100% (or close to it) then getting a faster drive wouldn't help since the CPU can't handle any more info anyway.

On the other hand, if the software is writing a lot of data back to the drive, at the same time it is reading from the drive (maybe because it is not holding it all in RAM)... AND your CPU usage is way lower like 50% maybe... then the drive might be a bottleneck.

If it's the latter scenario, then you can probably fix it just by using a second normal drive (another F1, a WD Black, etc). Then setup the software to read from one drive and write/save to the other drive. I bet that would be a big boost at minimal cost. *IF* the drive is the bottleneck.

I think getting an SSD as the swap wouldn't be much help since it doesn't sound like the windows swap is being hit (since RAM is not full). You could put OS/apps/swap on the SSD and leave all data on the F1, but if the problem is many concurrent reads/writes on the same drive (F1) you'll be in the same boat but a few hundred dollars poorer. You could setup the SSD as the read/write drive (do all image processing there) and that would be better than what you've currently got... It might even be faster than having two separate drives (one read, one write), but it's a lot more expensive too.

So in summary (ha!) *IF* the bottleneck is the drive, then I'd suggest:
a) get a second normal HDD and read images from one, write/save images/data to the other
-OR-
b) get an SSD and use it to read and write.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

interesting software... (nice photos too)

So it sounds like the software grabs an image (drive), tags the stars (CPU), holds it (RAM), grabs another image (drive), tags the stars (CPU), holds it (RAM), etc, etc, etc? Is that how it works?

Basically, yea that's it. On a field of view where there are thousands of stars, the process takes a lot longer than if for instance, I'm imaging a larger object like a planet where it will just train on a single item in the field.

I don't think the bottleneck is the drive since reading off a series of images (even if it's hundreds) and loading them all into RAM would only take a few seconds at the most. At 6mb each, 100 images would only be 600mb. That F1 probably has a max read speed of around 100mb/s so in less than 10seconds it should load up all the files into RAM.

Yea I tend to agree with that. I am going to be getting a larger CCD camera with a file size of 12-15MB depending on how it's used. But your basic premise above still holds water.

One thing for sure is this machine DOES certainly process this type of project a lot faster than the Q6600 ever did, even though it was overclocked too. I have several different types/brands of stacking software but only one of them is 'multi-core friendly.' And even that program, called Maxim DL, only really shows a small to fair amount of use across the cores if I watch with the task manager. I can't wait until the scientific community gets off their butts and starts creating quality multicore friendly software that is 64 bit too. Then it just wouldn't matter HOW big the files were or how many there were.

It is kinda fun to watch it stack a hundred or so images, carefully lining up all of the stars in perfect order, then rendering a final result that can be ported to Photoshop. You see the computer run full-throttle for a bit, and the fans increase speed too. Then all of a sudden you see an image & the task manager shows the process stopping and the fans will slow down.

Kinda like me in my old Corvette when I see Highway Patrol in the way of my fun ....

 

[elconejito]

I have several different types/brands of stacking software but only one of them is 'multi-core friendly.' And even that program, called Maxim DL, only really shows a small to fair amount of use across the cores if I watch with the task manager.

OoOoOo.... it's only single-threaded? Well, that pretty much puts a crimper on everything right there. It's not like you could get another chip and OC to substantially higher than 3.8Ghz. The most you might hope for is maybe 4+, which won't be a huge difference. Not enough to justify cost anyway...

So is only one core loaded up in task manager?

Just a thought... does the software let you open more than one instance? So you could open 4 versions of it, and set CPU affinity to each of the cores.