Folding@Home news 20-27th January

[miniyazz]

I just bought a couple of the X25-Ms for my desktop and laptop. It's the sort of speed you don't notice until you take it away, though.. anyway it's certainly fast, Word 2007 takes under a second to load, for example (first time opened since reinstalling Windows, so no prefetch either!)

 

[SiriusB]

I don't think I could settle for anything under 120GB for an SSD, even if it is just for the OS. Windows 7 alone can start pushing 20GB just after a few months of use. And since I will be spending £arm or £leg for one, I would want to have enough room to stick my most used applications on there. The odd game would be nice too.

I will see how much my spec comes to when I get it all together... I might not notice the extra cost so much when it hiding among other stuff that is gonna be 200-300 quid!

I am still debating what GPU to get. Big part of me wants the best my budget can accomodate, and since I am not a fanboy, it doesn't matter to me if it is ATI or NVIDIA... though I wont lie, a small part of me would like to fold on it

Anyways, this discussion is a little bit of a tangent from the thread so I will leave it there!

 

[miniyazz]

I am still debating what GPU to get. Big part of me wants the best my budget can accomodate, and since I am not a fanboy, it doesn't matter to me if it is ATI or NVIDIA... though I wont lie, a small part of me would like to fold on it

IMO, at the moment you get more for your money games-wise from ATI but, obviously, more folding power from NVIDIA. That could change with Fermi (pushing down last-gen NVIDIA prices).

 

[shadowscotland]

Got two samsung 32gb slc's this christmas - the quiet is great - the speed is ok but they are not in RAID yet

If it's under £2 a GB you are going well - intel still is the best (makes great boot drives due to random read/writes)
But programs/data are better on a Indilinx based drive. V high write speeds

 

[Marine Iguana]

I am hoping to get a bit more speed out of my system i will be placing the order for my water cooling gear on Monday and probably destroying my system on Wednesday

So i might see if i can overclock a little bit more not that 4.1Ghz is slow

 

[Stan_Lite]

That could change with Fermi (pushing down last-gen NVIDIA prices).

That would be fine if you could find any last gen Nvidia cards. The high end cards have been rare as hen's teeth lately.

 

[miniyazz]

That would be fine if you could find any last gen Nvidia cards. The high end cards have been rare as hen's teeth lately.

Hmm, I'm more talking about the second-hand market, I didn't know the situation was so dire with buying new! That is, no doubt, contributing to high second-hand costs.

 

[SiriusB]

Got two samsung 32gb slc's this christmas - the quiet is great - the speed is ok but they are not in RAID yet

If it's under £2 a GB you are going well - intel still is the best (makes great boot drives due to random read/writes)
But programs/data are better on a Indilinx based drive. V high write speeds

Well, since 100% of what people do on a computer is run programs and access data, I don't see the point in the Intel ones :/. By that logic youd have killer boot speed then get not so great performance [relatively] for the 3 weeks you use your computer inbetween reboots

I would probably use an Indilinx since the payoff has to be better overall, surely?

 

[miniyazz]

Well, since 100% of what people do on a computer is run programs and access data, I don't see the point in the Intel ones :/. By that logic youd have killer boot speed then get not so great performance [relatively] for the 3 weeks you use your computer inbetween reboots

I would probably use an Indilinx since the payoff has to be better overall, surely?

I think it's a bit of an oversimplification. While the Intel's will certainly be better at boot times due to higher I/O operations per second, consider for a moment how often a program will be writing a sufficiently large file that a 70MB/s write speed will noticeable slow it down. For most programs, I would argue that the Intels would beat out the Indilinx drives; I'd also argue the difference isn't large enough to worry about.

Where the Indilinx drives shine over the Intels is when copying truly large files to them, such as in video editing and anything else that saves large files. The Intels have the edge for pretty much everything else, but again, it's not really worth worrying about. I only went Intel because they offered better price/GB over the Indilinx.. and my boot drive happened to be 80GB, so I knew everything would fit on with some to spare

Plus, I'm unlikely ever to be worrying about large file write speeds when the size of the drive is only 80GB; make it 1-2TB and then I'd care!

 

[theheyes]

The problem with SSDs at the moment is the prices aren't exactly great, and when I stick my head in the hard drive forum it puts me off even more with firmware updates and TRIM support discussions flying about everywhere - I can't be doing with it.

So for that reason I'm waiting - and for quite a while I guess - but if I had to buy right now I'd go with the Intel drive.

 

[miniyazz]

The problem with SSDs at the moment is the prices aren't exactly great, and when I stick my head in the hard drive forum it puts me off even more with firmware updates and TRIM support discussions flying about everywhere - I can't be doing with it.

So for that reason I'm waiting - and for quite a while I guess - but if I had to buy right now I'd go with the Intel drive.

Everyone there gets far too worked up about all those FW updates etc. It's just not important unless you want to benchmark and enlarge your e-peen.
Agreed on the prices, it's this damned NAND flash shortage or something IIRC.

 

[SiriusB]

Plus with Windows 7 TRIM support is built in, you don't have to worry about it. I believe Windows 7 also turns off the background defrag processes too. Although realistically you will be on a new drive before defrags wore out your current SSD.

 

[miniyazz]

Plus with Windows 7 TRIM support is built in, you don't have to worry about it. I believe Windows 7 also turns off the background defrag processes too. Although realistically you will be on a new drive before defrags wore out your current SSD.

Defrag would also reduce SSD performance significantly, if it managed to circumvent the wear-levelling. But yes, Win7 takes care of everything.
I think Intel reckons you can get away with writing 100GB every day for 5 years, so longevity is hardly an issue

 

[shadowscotland]

intels wear leveling is 5-80x better than the compertition.
if you don't have a intel or a SLC drive it is an issue
But then 2 years is a long time in performance hardware - just look at where raptors were two years ago.

 

[SiriusB]

That's my point. The majority of people mad enough to buy an SSD are people mad enough to buy another bigger, faster, shinier SSD 6 months down the line!

I think 1 year is the longest I have gone without adding something new to my PC, be it a new CPU or more storage. The only people likely to worry about longevity are the average PC users, and let's face it, they wont be buying an SSD.

I will likely take a look at the Intels, as they're always raving about them up there in HDDs. Just got paid today, so once it has gone through I will start speccing up!

 

[Marine Iguana]

Mmm SSD can't wait to get one i am slowly running out of space here got about 50Gb out of all my HDD (2.5Gb worth) and the slowness of them is killing me

Also the stats are down

 

[Biffa]

Would it be fair to say also, that regardless of whether you buy an Intel, Indilinx-based, or Kingston SSD drive its still going to be X times faster/quieter/etc than SATA?

 

[shadowscotland]

X times faster/quieter/lower power that a v-raptor

 

[KE1HA]

They make the same amount of nosie as your system RAM does

I've read allot articles from Hard-Core gamers about disk drives, and in some circles the serious gamers sill prefer IDE over SATA even, I dont really get that one though.

Performance wise, I've not seen anything that will top 15K SCSI drives yet, but with the advancement in SATA2/3 controllers & drives, SATA is making a seriuous run at SCSI.

I dont think I would put one of these SSD's in a serious workstation or gaming rig, for many reasons, performance being only one, however, in a Laptop, Embedded Solution, or even a PXE boot situatoin, I think they make the most sense.

If Read / Write speed performance is what your after, then the SSD's aren't quite there yet, but they will be in the not to distant future.

The performace gained v.s. the cost to get it jsut isn't there IMHO.


Here's some V-Raptor v.s. SSD comparisons:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_vs_Raptor/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_Raptor.html


.

 

[miniyazz]

Would it be fair to say also, that regardless of whether you buy an Intel, Indilinx-based, or Kingston SSD drive its still going to be X times faster/quieter/etc than SATA?

They make the same amount of nosie as your system RAM does

I've read allot articles from Hard-Core gamers about disk drives, and in some circles the serious gamers sill prefer IDE over SATA even, I dont really get that one though.

Performance wise, I've not seen anything that will top 15K SCSI drives yet, but with the advancement in SATA2/3 controllers & drives, SATA is making a seriuous run at SCSI.

I dont think I would put one of these SSD's in a serious workstation or gaming rig, for many reasons, performance being only one, however, in a Laptop, Embedded Solution, or even a PXE boot situatoin, I think they make the most sense.

If Read / Write speed performance is what your after, then the SSD's aren't quite there yet, but they will be in the not to distant future.

The performace gained v.s. the cost to get it jsut isn't there IMHO.


Here's some V-Raptor v.s. SSD comparisons:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_vs_Raptor/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_Raptor.html


.

I'm getting confused now, is everyone muddling up transfer protocols and storage types?

@Biffa, SSDs use SATA.. they are going to be X times faster/quieter/etc than traditional hard drives (as shadowscotland pointed out), although the value of X obviously depends on what hard drive you are comparing it to and what workload (reading lots of small files giving SSDs >100x performance boost over traditional HDDs vs writing large files giving ~2x performance over HDDs in the best case).

@KE1HA, I believe the reason "gamers" prefer IDE over SATA is more to do with overclocking than anything else. The IDE protocol is less likely to throw a hissy fit when seriously overclocking your CPU (FSB through the roof). Ordinarily, SATA is better in every other respect - smaller cables = more airflow, newer drives + ↑ transfer speeds = quieter and faster, etc - but when doing truly silly overclocks I believe it's less stable.

SCSI 15krpm drives are already significantly outperformed by SSDs on all workloads (especially web server style workloads). Even the fastest SCSI transfer protocol is equalled by SATA 6gbps. And the fast rotational speeds only improve the seek times - down to 1-2 ms in some cases - which is why they are traditionally used as high-performance drives. SSDs are far superior in this area, by a factor of 10. Transfer speeds are relatively low, because the disks used have lower data density than mainstream hard drives - even one of today's 7200rpm drives with 500GB platters will have transfer speeds greater than most if not all 15krpm drives.

Any of that make sense?

You're right in saying the cost/performance isn't there yet, though.