MacBook Pro + Vertex 3= All in real time!

[LaZeRz]

Well, my teacher said it was one of the best performance parts he has ever bought.

 

[Eudaimonium]

Ofcourse he's not going to say "Well it's not what I expected".

As I said, hard drive is the least of your performance bottlenecks. If you're playing a game, it's GPU speed that matters, along with CPU and RAM as secondary,
If you're doing 3D modeling or rendering, or video encoding, it's CPU speed that matters.

Let's use a new analogy, KTP crystal didn't work.

If your laser is not powerful enough, you do not replace it's batteries with higher-discharge rate lithium polymer cylindrical cells. If you need to replace batteries, you need high capacity, not discharge rate. If you need more performance, you replace diode or lens.

But ofcourse, if somebody does buy a high end component that's not needed, last thing that person wants to hear is "You should've bought this or that instead, look at how much good would it do and for less money".

 

[Guyfromhe]

SSD is the best upgrade you could do now a days...
What you do is you put your OS and important software on the SSD and everything else on spinning media.

It took me over a year to get my 40 GB SSD to the point where I needed an upgrade... I just bought a 120 which will probably last me forever... I'm using like 30 GB on it and probably won't grow much... When I need more storage I add normal HDDs. I never put anything on my OS drive..


EDIT: where it really shines is software load times... OS boots in 5-10 seconds, Photoshop loads in 2 and Video editor loads in like 5... takes about 100 times as long on rotating media.

 

[rangedunits]

Buy new chipset that come next month, put ssd 40gb as cache, voilla your 1tb hdd is as fast as an ssd.

 

[Guyfromhe]

Buy new chipset that come next month, put ssd 40gb as cache, voilla your 1tb hdd is as fast as an ssd.

Not if you have to seek on that 1tb hdd for anything...

It's also not likely to help out games (other than initial load time and maybe between maps and stuff when stuff is being loaded from HDD to RAM) It won't make it run any better under normal running conditions.. You will however notice a HUGE difference in load times.

EDIT: Basically all the time you sit there listening to your HDD crunch away will be gone... You honestly won't understand unless you get one (I used to be a non believer)... Their also SILENT... You can spin down your rotating media and your computer shuts up if you leave it on.
I know several people who have upgraded and no one has said "meh this isn't a big deal, I want my old HDD back" or "I am sorry I spent the extra money on a SSD"

 

[ReaperZ]

i have to agree that an SSD is an ultimate upgrade to a good performance machine. i put one into my old machine, AMD x4 6000+ / 4gb ddr2-800 ram, and the difference is totally mindblowing. as mentioned windows boot times (very important to me as i do a lot of environment testing)

the extra access speed helps me a LOT for running multiple VM's (virtual machines), i upgraded my PC to an i7 2600k / 16gb ram.. and side by side next to my friends machine of equivalent specs, the solid state drive allows me to multitask a LOT better. access times are phenomenally faster.

another real world example, my father is a real estate agent. he often uses large images (10mb+) and has thousands of them. i upgraded him to an SSD recently on an older machine (AMD 920) and the ability to scroll entirely seamlessly in front of clients in a huge plus to him.

if one can afford it, and justify the space loss .. then i think SSD is a great upgrade.

HOWEVER, for a gaming machine .. i think that money is better spent on a GPU.

 

[SpyderFire]

How did you pull out more than 250gb out if a sata II port non raid? Those numbers are wrong. The drive itself works at those rated speeds but only in a sata3 port.

 

[Guyfromhe]

How did you pull out more than 250gb out if a sata II port non raid? Those numbers are wrong. The drive itself works at those rated speeds but only in a sata3 port.

Hrm yeah SATA 2 is only 3.0 mbit... so 375 MB / sec absolute max... I dunno why/how maybe he's running SATA 3? Anyway I honestly couldn't give 2 shits about performance testing what really matters is how fast it actually runs and I can vouch for that.

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Yes 44s, It's macOs Lion. My PC with Windows 7 100-150s with 1TB HDD.:undecided:

Personally my computer boots in exactly 60 seconds, that's including the time it takes me to type in a password. Of course I very rarely turn it off and mostly put it to sleep. From sleep it's on in ~5 seconds.

i have to agree that an SSD is an ultimate upgrade to a good performance machine.

If you have money to blow... sure... but for most high end systems an SSD is really not needed imho. The only time where an SSD truly shines is at boot, and opening large programs/files. After that ram/cpu make much more of a difference. Having built nearly identical systems for both myself and a friend - his with a vertex 2 - I really didn't see enough of a difference to justify plugging one into my own build.

I agree with you 100% about gpu... money much better spent that way.

Btw, eytyxhs were those sequential read/write speeds or random?

 

[Guyfromhe]

Btw, eytyxhs were those sequential read/write speeds or random?

That only matters for you suckers with spinning media... that's what makes SSDs so much better... Random reads and writes are just as fast as sequential ones.

Every need has it's hardware... I open and close PS and my video editor and other large programs quite often and I don't like to wait for them for me an SSD is a great investment. I rarely play games.. I have a cheap $60 video card, if I played games I would have a fancy video card what I have suits my needs just fine.

Anyway you can get a SSD for a OS drive for like $80 now a days it's not a major investment.

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

I rarely close any programs...

You're right though, it's not nearly as expensive as it used to be.

That only matters for you suckers with spinning media... that's what makes SSDs so much better... Random reads and writes are just as fast as sequential ones.

Every need has it's hardware... I open and close PS and my video editor and other large programs quite often and I don't like to wait for them for me an SSD is a great investment. I rarely play games.. I have a cheap $60 video card, if I played games I would have a fancy video card what I have suits my needs just fine.

Anyway you can get a SSD for a OS drive for like $80 now a days it's not a major investment.

 

[Guyfromhe]

I rarely close any programs...

You're right though, it's not nearly as expensive as it used to be.

I think I paid $150 for my first Intel value line 40 GB SSD... My Vertex 3 I think was like $250 or something... I upgraded because I did have a few games on my SSD (as they were programs) and my Windows folder had expanded to like 25 gigs and decided if I was going to reinstall I may as well upgrade to a bigger drive.. I honestly could probably still be using my 40 GB right now... Speaking of that I need to find somewhere to put it in use for...

Also saves you from having to defragment... I think that's some of the reason spinning drive machines slow down as time goes on... I noticed the "Windows" effect on my SSD to but it did not see to happen as fast or as bad.


I completely agree though that if you're buying a gaming PC and the extra $100 or whatever would allow for a better video card go for it, if you can spare it I would throw an SSD in for good measure...

One more benefit of SSDs since they have no moving parts they are BY FAR less likely to fail.

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

One more benefit of SSDs since they have no moving parts they are BY FAR less likely to fail.

Would need to research that... have heard too many stories and read too many reviews on ssd drives arriving DOA. I suppose that's not quite the same as having a drive fail... but it's still rather annoying imho.

 

[Guyfromhe]

Would need to research that... have heard too many stories and read too many reviews on ssd drives arriving DOA. I suppose that's not quite the same as having a drive fail... but it's still rather annoying imho.

I've been through at least 10 of them with no issues... I have heard of pretty much any piece of electronics arriving DOA.. Hardly the same as when it fails months or years after it starts storing your previous data.

They don't use as much power as spinning drives, they don't generate as much heat as spinning drives, they make less noise, etc. etc.

EDIT: and yes the price / GB is high but they are coming down... I remember when I paid $500 for a CD burner... now their like $15... My 120 GB drives were $300 and I thought that was CHEAP... Give it a few years their gaining speed now it will only get cheaper soon they will be the norm... I think spinning media is getting near it's EOL.

 

[icecruncher]

Mac's generally boot in about a minute. Less for higher end machines.

I currently have three macs running, a mini (wifes), a Macbook Pro and my MacPro 3,1.

I installed two 40gb SSD's in a Raid 0 config with a DX4 into the MacPro. My MacPro has two unused ports directly off the motherboard. 1.5 SATA instead of 3 or 6 but still 1.5 Sata for each of the SSD's

I got the SSD's from Other World Computing for about $90 each and that 80GB serves as my boot drive and major application partition. It is much faster than before. I have 20GB of RAM and 3.5TB of storage otherwise so there are no bottlenecks. I can reach almost 500 MB/s with Speedtools Quickbench. Not bad for an four year old mac pro.

They are well worth the money for a boot drive or a Photoshop scratch drive. Boot time on the MacPro went from 35 to 20 sec. Loading and switching to a new (unloaded) app is quicker than I can move the mouse.

BTW I have a Mac Version Radeon 5770 which helped the system a little, but not nearly what the SSD drives did.

Below is with two brand new Seagate 1.5tb drives in a RAID 0 - then with the two SSD drives that are the boot drive 80 gig. This is from when I first installed them. All connections were 1.5 sata. BTW the new MacBook Pro's have 6 gig SATA. Also tests in the first post were based on large, multi-meg file transfers which is a little misleading, real world but still way fast.

QuickBench(TM) 4.0 Test Results
©2000-2007 Intech Software Corp.
Test file created on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 5:47:28 PM
Test Volume Name: Raid
Test Volume Type: MacOS Extended
Test Volume Size: 2.728 Terabytes
Test Volume Free Space: 1.848 Terabytes
Allow Disk Cache Effects: Disabled
All reads and writes performed sychronously

Standard Test Results:
Test Cycles: 1

Transfer Size Sequential Read Sequential Write Random Read Random Write

4 KBytes 30.716 MB/Sec 24.823 MB/Sec 0.642 MB/Sec 1.693 MB/Sec
8 KBytes 53.098 MB/Sec 48.048 MB/Sec 1.342 MB/Sec 2.612 MB/Sec
16 KBytes 93.036 MB/Sec 78.243 MB/Sec 2.546 MB/Sec 4.343 MB/Sec
32 KBytes 131.438 MB/Sec 113.878 MB/Sec 5.947 MB/Sec 10.236 MB/Sec
64 KBytes 166.880 MB/Sec 155.089 MB/Sec 9.636 MB/Sec 18.370 MB/Sec
128 KBytes 221.634 MB/Sec 209.470 MB/Sec 19.256 MB/Sec 27.309 MB/Sec
256 KBytes 196.229 MB/Sec 216.986 MB/Sec 34.765 MB/Sec 71.941 MB/Sec
512 KBytes 199.920 MB/Sec 200.054 MB/Sec 55.576 MB/Sec 111.567 MB/Sec
1024 KBytes 199.346 MB/Sec 199.387 MB/Sec 89.807 MB/Sec 162.474 MB/Sec

Standard Ave 143.588 MB/Sec 138.442 MB/Sec 24.391 MB/Sec 45.616 MB/Sec

QuickBench(TM) 4.0 Test Results
©2000-2007 Intech Software Corp.
Test file created on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 5:48:05 PM
Test Volume Name: FastIce
Test Volume Type: MacOS Extended
Test Volume Size: 73.899 Gigabytes
Test Volume Free Space: 64.861 Gigabytes
Allow Disk Cache Effects: Disabled
All reads and writes performed sychronously

Standard Test Results:
Test Cycles: 1

Transfer Size Sequential Read Sequential Write Random Read Random Write

4 KBytes 33.011 MB/Sec 38.488 MB/Sec 26.340 MB/Sec 38.202 MB/Sec
8 KBytes 58.944 MB/Sec 67.333 MB/Sec 48.446 MB/Sec 66.676 MB/Sec
16 KBytes 97.801 MB/Sec 113.341 MB/Sec 80.781 MB/Sec 112.039 MB/Sec
32 KBytes 140.082 MB/Sec 158.850 MB/Sec 126.294 MB/Sec 157.234 MB/Sec
64 KBytes 203.662 MB/Sec 220.768 MB/Sec 187.710 MB/Sec 196.612 MB/Sec
128 KBytes 280.998 MB/Sec 291.003 MB/Sec 265.705 MB/Sec 292.124 MB/Sec
256 KBytes 402.678 MB/Sec 414.081 MB/Sec 374.420 MB/Sec 413.839 MB/Sec
512 KBytes 444.030 MB/Sec 438.832 MB/Sec 426.730 MB/Sec 439.242 MB/Sec
1024 KBytes 456.748 MB/Sec 454.796 MB/Sec 449.234 MB/Sec 427.969 MB/Sec

Standard Ave 235.328 MB/Sec 244.166 MB/Sec 220.629 MB/Sec 238.215 MB/Sec

 

[Seoul_lasers]

44 seconds, are you kidding me? What kind of operating system is that?! Where'd you pull that info?

My PC back home boots up from dead start to desktop ready in like 20 seconds.

I don't need it to boot faster. If you cannot wait 15 seconds for your computer to finish booting, then here's my advice - go out and get sh*t done so you have the god damn time to sit at the computer.

New =/= better.

I have seen 1 minute with Win7.