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SSD general ?, and SSD in a 2008 2.8 8-core?

S

snouter

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 26, 2009
767
0
1. Can someone who has an SSD describe what it's like? Reading about it, it seems like booting and opening apps and opening files is very fast, and writes are fast, but can get a little choppy or something?

I'd probably get the Intel X-25 which I read is the superior SSD at the moment for apps and OS.

I assume if I bump the spin-down time on the 1TB hard drive to like 1 hour or something, it would stay fairly responsive during use? Seems kind of dumb to have 1 rocket fast HD that's always waiting for the other one to wake up?

2. Any issues putting one of these in a 2008 2.8 8-core? These things work just like regular HDs? Plug them in, format them, install OS?

3. Lastly, agree or disagree... SSD made a solid improvement in overall system response time on a lot of tasks?
 
1. It's blazingly fast for all the things you mentioned. The choppiness refers to older, slow SSD drives. If you get an Intel X25-M, Intel X25-E, or OCZ Vertex there won't be any stuttering issues.

I do not have any of my drives spin down.

2. Yes. Keep in mind they're 2.5" not 3.5" drives so you'll need a way to mount them. There are lots of options out there. I used the MaxUpgrades.com sled.

3. Once you install one, performance is like night and day. Can you mac boot to the desktop in 8 seconds, or open Photoshop in 1 bounce? Mine can.
 
I've only used a Mac w/ SSD, and the thing I've noticed is the computer never lags behind or stutters (unless it's hardware related). When using Vista on my dell programs take forever to load, and there are always random delays. This just doesn't happen with SSD's. Everything is smooth and quick and is a very noticeable difference.

It really is the best upgrade you can make.
 
I can see the same people vouch for it.

It is really one of the best upgrades you can do to enhance your system.

They "work" just like any other harddrive, just plug it in and format.
 
VirtualRain said:
Here's an interesting article published today...
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16979

Further justification to stick with Intel who seems to consistently rise above the others.
Click to expand...

That may well be premature: the problems seems to be related to the OS used. Who knows (Barefeats is testing that Vertex SSD right now) how it will work on the Mac OS?

I hope that when Rob-Art (from Barefeats) publishes his results, he'll make this fresh/used distinction.

Loa
 
Loa said:
That may well be premature: the problems seems to be related to the OS used. Who knows (Barefeats is testing that Vertex SSD right now) how it will work on the Mac OS?

I hope that when Rob-Art (from Barefeats) publishes his results, he'll make this fresh/used distinction.
Click to expand...

I think the authors indicated that the issues had nothing to do with the OS or file system and it makes sense... the issues they are exploring are well below the OS level.

At this point, I don't think OSX has any advantages over NTFS when it comes to SSD's and it may very well fall behind if Win7 implements Trim as rumored. Hopefully Apple will implement Trim in Snow Leopard.

Finally, I don't know why BareFeats has such a revered reputation by some folks around here but his "reviews" seem amateur, lacking in depth and analysis, and devoid of explanations for the results. Especially compared to the likes of Anand, Ars, and even The Tech Report which has been instrumental in uncovering some significant issues with SSD's.
 
Out with the old in with the new...

I've just bought the Corsair 128GB SSD after reading about its fairly modest performance I'm just waiting on my IcyDock chassis so i can fit it.

Currently running one of the older 74GB Raptors I'll let you know how noticeable the speed difference is when i get it up and running :)
 
SSD is like night and day, especially on older machines. Its expensive but well worth the money.

Just steer clear of any SSDs with Jmicron's JMF602 Controller.
 
Hello,

Barefeats has published its test results with a few SSDs in single or raid configurations.

http://barefeats.com/hard118.html

Interesting note: he specifies that even after the disk is "full" or "used", the random reads and writes are no slower than when the disk is "fresh".

Conflicting results means we need more info on that "used" speed. I'm inclined to trust techreport's tests more, but then again, why didn't Barefeat notice any slowdowns after he filled the drives?
 
Thanks for the link...

This is an example of what I was talking about above... a very bizarre result (when you compare 1 Vertex vs. 3 and not a single word about it?! :rolleyes:)

h118_drr.gif


There is some kind of problem here that justifies further investigation in my opinion. Disktester?

He also seems to be happy that the Vertex has high sustained writes when every other review site is more focused on random writes which is more representative of real-world use.

It's worth pointing out (even though he didn't) that in general, SSD's in RAID0 seem to scale very well with the number of disks in the array except for the bizarre Disktester results.

No slow-down with full drives? Very Bizarre! Disktester seems to indicate some problem... Is that the slow-down effect with one or more of the drives?

No mention of the stripe size used. It would have been nice to see some analysis of stripe size impact on performance.

For me it raises more questions than it answers.
 
I had an earlier SSD and it would not allow my mac pro to sleep (if computer slept with SSD then it would hang on wakup).

I am wondering if OCZ has this problem fixed. I am concerned that in their forums there is a whole 14 page thread with people having the same problem.

Did barefeats look at this issue?
 
aibo said:
Can you mac boot to the desktop in 8 seconds, or open Photoshop in 1 bounce? Mine can.
Click to expand...

3 bounces on PS initial start, 1 bounce after that. So... yes, I can open photoshop in 1 bounce. :) I'll time it on the next cold boot to desktop.

I would love an SSD though, but for now I'll be happy with my RAID0 F1 drives speeding along.
 
I'm not running one in my Mac Pro (yet), but I have an OCZ Vertex 120gb drive in my PC laptop.

With the latest firmware (1.3) and Windows 7 64-bit it screams.. The laptop boots in about 20 seconds and everything runs quickly. Win7 RC1 includes TRIM, but even if it didn't, there is a TRIM utility that you can run that does the same in a few minutes to keep performance up. My drive is about 50% full...

--Daniel
 
aibo said:
Can you mac boot to the desktop in 8 seconds, or open Photoshop in 1 bounce? Mine can.
Click to expand...

I missed that question. Here's my answer: we have Macs and don't need to reboot often. I usually go for weeks without a reboot, and most of the times it's because software updates force me to...

And as most people know, if you really use photoshop, you'll use it for hours. 3 or 4 hours + 1 second, or 3-4 hours + 10 seconds = no difference.

Loa
 
Loa said:
I missed that question. Here's my answer: we have Macs and don't need to reboot often. I usually go for weeks without a reboot, and most of the times it's because software updates force me to...

And as most people know, if you really use photoshop, you'll use it for hours. 3 or 4 hours + 1 second, or 3-4 hours + 10 seconds = no difference.

Loa
Click to expand...

Agreed -- my own mac pro runs 24/7 and i'm a graphic designer by trade, so photoshop is open for extended periods. I was merely giving him a performance perspective since he asked what having a SSD was like.
 
aibo said:
I was merely giving him a performance perspective since he asked what having a SSD was like.
Click to expand...

I agree that it's impressive, and boot times + app launch times are the #1 and #2 things given as examples for SSD performance.

Sad thing is that for most Mac users they're meaningless. Macs are stable (so no need for reboots), and "second launches" of our apps are very fast in any case.

I'm very interested in SSDs, but right now their advantages don't seem all that significant. (Add to that their few problems!) And those few remaining advantages don't hold up to the huge Price/GB difference...

Loa
 
Loa said:
I agree that it's impressive, and boot times + app launch times are the #1 and #2 things given as examples for SSD performance.

Sad thing is that for most Mac users they're meaningless. Macs are stable (so no need for reboots), and "second launches" of our apps are very fast in any case.

I'm very interested in SSDs, but right now their advantages don't seem all that significant. (Add to that their few problems!) And those few remaining advantages don't hold up to the huge Price/GB difference...

Loa
Click to expand...

It's easy to spot folks that haven't witnessed SSD's first hand. :p:D

Honestly, the difference with SSD's is amazing. Storage impacts a lot of activities... if all you do is surf the net, it will still help when caching web content. If you thought wake from sleep was fast before... wait until you try it from SSD! If you do anything pro related, (video, audio, images) you will want all your content on SSD's... you get spoiled by instantaneous response to everything. Even installing an app and especially a downloaded update is so freakin fast it's hard to compare. :D

Stop talking yourself out of it and get one! If you really are a hard-core doubter, get one from a vendor that has a reasonable return policy... but you won't be sending it back! :p

Numerous people have said it in numerous threads... it is the single biggest improvement you can make to your system performance... BAR NONE!!!
 
Wow! All this hype for SSD... "It's the best upgrade bla bla bla..."

I call complete and utter bull-crap! :D

Firstly the best upgrade would be faster procs. Then next would come more RAM 16 or 32 GB, then next would be a 4-drive RAID which with the right drives kicks SSD's butt every way, sideways, and twice on sundays AND costs about the same AND delivers 4TB, 6TB or 8TBs depending on the drive capacities. I get near SSD speeds out of a 3-Drive RAID0 using GREEN Drives for crying out loud. :p

It sounds to me like someone is in love with and hypnotized by SSD tech and it's associated marketing hype.


☯
 
I call your BS. You clearly know nothing of what you are talking about and have never actually used an SSD.

95% of SSD performance difference comes from the 0.01ms seek latency time, not the MB/s throughput. You can get 100+MB/s through your RAID, but you'll still have 7+ms (700x an SSD) latency time no matter how many drives you use.
 
300D said:
I call your BS. You clearly know nothing of what you are talking about and have never actually used an SSD.

95% of SSD performance difference comes from the 0.01ms seek latency time, not the MB/s throughput. You can get 100+MB/s through your RAID, but you'll still have 7+ms (700x an SSD) latency time no matter how many drives you use.
Click to expand...

And let's see how that affects EXACTLY...

7ms is seven THOUSANDTHS of a second or 0.007 seconds.

Lets say I had some project I needed to load that contained 900 files and required the drive to seek 1000 times (with 10% file segmentation). Let's say that on a normal consumer grade desktop drive that the project takes 2 min to load. That would actually be pretty fast for most apps that have 900 file projects. So:
  • 2min. on a single drive.
  • 1min. 10sec. on my green 3-drive RAID
  • 1min. 3sec. on an SSD.
Simple math really. Comparing 0ms seeks to 7ms seeks you need 1000 seeks to save a measly 7 seconds. And that's not even considering that "7ms" is AVERAGE seek time and usually application data and project files are closely grouped making typical read seeks more like 1 or 2 ms.

Nope... Numbers don't lie. SSD is a terrible upgrade option compared to RAID, RAM, or CPU. It's relatively about the same speed as RAID0, costs 50 or 60 times more, is 1/100 the size, and ends up having a terrible UBE rating. What's good about that?


☕
 
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