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I give up! No SSD for me...
- Thread starter dilgit
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I've played a couple of days with the 27" iMac on the standard 1TB Caviar Black and it wasn't too bad at all.
I then installed a Vertex 3 SSD and it was like I switched to a new computer. Someone mentioned load time ... well apps open like they were minimised, Photoshop CS4 opens in 2-3 seconds and the whole system boots in 7-8 seconds counting from the "tadaaa". It reads and writes 500MB/s which is about more than 4 times the speed of the empty Caviar Black. Access time is 50-100 quicker to and noise + heat are zero.
I'm pretty sure no one will notice the CPU speed difference between various models but with the SSD, like it has been said, the difference is more than significant ... system responsiveness improvement is massive.
I would say is well worth the wait.
I then installed a Vertex 3 SSD and it was like I switched to a new computer. Someone mentioned load time ... well apps open like they were minimised, Photoshop CS4 opens in 2-3 seconds and the whole system boots in 7-8 seconds counting from the "tadaaa". It reads and writes 500MB/s which is about more than 4 times the speed of the empty Caviar Black. Access time is 50-100 quicker to and noise + heat are zero.
I'm pretty sure no one will notice the CPU speed difference between various models but with the SSD, like it has been said, the difference is more than significant ... system responsiveness improvement is massive.
I would say is well worth the wait.
Totally true.
But heres where that price vs performance falls apart.
As long as you have enough ram, even working with 500 meg Photoshop files -- the "speed" of Photoshop isnt increased with a SSD. If you had minimal ram you could use a SSD as a scratch disc (say if you were using a MB Air with its 4 gig ram limit) which would be plenty quick. But you arent.
I just googled and found this right on the Adobe site: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404439.html#main_Solid state disks
Solid-state disks
Installing Photoshop on a solid-state disk (SSD) allows Photoshop to launch fast, probably in less than a second. But that speedier startup is the only time savings you experience, because thats the only time when a lot of data is read from the SSD.
To gain the greatest benefit from an SSD, use it as the scratch disk. Using it as a scratch disk gives you significant performance improvements if you have images that dont fit entirely in RAM. For example, swapping tiles between RAM and an SSD is much faster than swapping between RAM and a hard disk.
If your SSD doesnt have much free space (that is, in case the scratch file ever grows bigger than will fit on the SSD), you can add a secondary or tertiary hard disk (after the SSD).
Also, SSDs vary widely in performance, much more so than hard disks. Using an earlier, slower drive results in little improvement over a hard disk.
Note: Adding RAM to improve performance is more cost effective than purchasing an SSD. If money is no object, you're maxed out on installed RAM for your computer, you run Photoshop CS5 as a 64-bit application, and you still need to improve performance, then consider using a solid-state disk as your scratch disk.
And thats why Im missing the hype over a SSD for 98% of users. Unless you are exceeding the ram in your Mac doing ginormus PSD files and need a SSD as a scratch disk, then you dont really "need" one. Or maybe if you are encoding/transcoding hours of video on a daily basis.
The best way to see that $600 in action is to shutdown, restart and have it open all you apps at login -- do that 5 or 6 times a day so you can "feel" like the $600 was worth it. Of course, like most normal users -- I only reboot every 3-4 months, so the speed of the SSD is lost.
Im going to quote something else from another forum I visit occasionally as well:
SSDs mostly help out in three cases
1) Programs load faster and Windows starts a little faster. Loading large programs like Photoshop or video processors would be improved
2) Enterprise environments with enormous amounts of random reads, like Web servers or databases that mostly service inquiries.
3) If you have a bucket of money and nothing better to do with it, buy one (or more) big enough for your photoshop images and video files. Increase the speed of editing and transcoding.
But if everything is loading fast enough for you, and you are using high-memory-consumption tools like Photoshop and video encoding, consider getting more memory instead.
There is another advantage, which is not mentioned very often an that is during multitasking when multiple programs need simultaneous access to the hard drive. The access time on the SSDs is incredible short compared to a mechanical disk and this impacts the overall experience since there is no lag at anything.
Try opening pages while the hard drive is copying some files and you have some video rendering in the background. Because of the huge access time, the hdd (10-15ms) will simple cripple under heavy load whereas the SSD will keep on going undisturbed (0.1 - 0.3ms).
The access time is the reason programs like Final Cut Pro or Photoshop use multiple scratch disks, to try and compensate for the huge delays caused the HDD having to reposition the heads every time it needs to read read small chunks of data scattered all over the disk. It is the same reason hard drives need to be defragmented.
To better illustrate, if you open PS alone it may take 10-15 seconds. If you open PS while some files are copying in background it could take 30 seconds. If there is some rendering going on in the background it could take even more. And of course is not only valid for Photoshop. If you need to open 2 applications at the same time and you clicked on both at the same time, it will only take them longer. On an SSD it will open in 3-4 seconds regardless. As a extreme example, I tried opening all the programs in application folder (select all > Open) and it took about 15-20 seconds on the Vertex 3. It took a lot more to close them that's for sure.
SSDs do make sens and you won't find many users who have actually tried it and returned to mechanical drives.
Try opening pages while the hard drive is copying some files and you have some video rendering in the background. Because of the huge access time, the hdd (10-15ms) will simple cripple under heavy load whereas the SSD will keep on going undisturbed (0.1 - 0.3ms).
The access time is the reason programs like Final Cut Pro or Photoshop use multiple scratch disks, to try and compensate for the huge delays caused the HDD having to reposition the heads every time it needs to read read small chunks of data scattered all over the disk. It is the same reason hard drives need to be defragmented.
To better illustrate, if you open PS alone it may take 10-15 seconds. If you open PS while some files are copying in background it could take 30 seconds. If there is some rendering going on in the background it could take even more. And of course is not only valid for Photoshop. If you need to open 2 applications at the same time and you clicked on both at the same time, it will only take them longer. On an SSD it will open in 3-4 seconds regardless. As a extreme example, I tried opening all the programs in application folder (select all > Open) and it took about 15-20 seconds on the Vertex 3. It took a lot more to close them that's for sure.
SSDs do make sens and you won't find many users who have actually tried it and returned to mechanical drives.
again -- totally agree with that as well.
clearly you are not an 'average' user.
for an average user, they will never, ever, ever notice that.
And assuming you are like me as well, I never restart my applications, and I would never need to open them *all* at the same time.
the example you give is a great testament to how fast SSDs are, but dont apply to 98% of users.
clearly you are not an 'average' user.
for an average user, they will never, ever, ever notice that.
And assuming you are like me as well, I never restart my applications, and I would never need to open them *all* at the same time.
the example you give is a great testament to how fast SSDs are, but dont apply to 98% of users.
Yeah SSD is cool, it´s fast .. it eliminates HDD bottleneck and make your PC works in optimum performance.
Today´s processor is fast enough to surpass HDD loading time, while back in 2000´s even PATA HDD was blazing fast, processors can´t catch up with that. Not the case today.
But really, I want SSD within reason too, I don´t want to dip another $600 for SSD, like I said many times .. it´s not the price (apple put the right price for SSD, unlike their RAM or HDD upgrades), problem is the option. I want 128Gb for $200 just like
did to MacBook Pro. Even MBP get upgrades till 512Gb !! Now you money burner out there can´t get that for your iMac, not from right?
This is getting on my nerve .. I don´t have the guts to rip apart the iMac to install my own SSD, not that I can´t .. but I wouldn´t do it, not by my own hands unless I won $10000 lottery .. I better buy third party 128Gb SSD and bribe someone in AASP to do it for me, is that possible?
Today´s processor is fast enough to surpass HDD loading time, while back in 2000´s even PATA HDD was blazing fast, processors can´t catch up with that. Not the case today.
But really, I want SSD within reason too, I don´t want to dip another $600 for SSD, like I said many times .. it´s not the price (apple put the right price for SSD, unlike their RAM or HDD upgrades), problem is the option. I want 128Gb for $200 just like
did to MacBook Pro. Even MBP get upgrades till 512Gb !! Now you money burner out there can´t get that for your iMac, not from right?This is getting on my nerve .. I don´t have the guts to rip apart the iMac to install my own SSD, not that I can´t .. but I wouldn´t do it, not by my own hands unless I won $10000 lottery .. I better buy third party 128Gb SSD and bribe someone in AASP to do it for me, is that possible?