SSD vs RAM

eddiew · 23 Feb 2011 at 09:21

Hi guys,

Hoping you can help me decide on this dilemma! I'm a fairly heavy Photoshop/graphics package user, and even 8GB of memory is becoming quite a squeeze sometimes (add WoW and a browser with a dozen tabs, and I'm seeing upwards of 7 gigs in use!)

Seeing as memory prices are relatively low, I'm thinking of switching up to 4x4GB (probably some Ripjaws) - but I'm also tempted by a ~120GB SSD

But I don't want to pay for both so I need to choose

Really what I'm after is some info on whether:

a) swapping to an SSD is significantly faster than to HDD (i.e. I won't get hiccups during drive access)
b) Photoshop is going to wreck an SSD if used as scratch (swap space) due to the large number of rewrites

...I could also consider just buying 2x4 RAM for a total of 12GB, and getting a smaller SSD purely for scratch (not even putting the OS on it) if a balance of both approaches seems sensible.

Thoughts and info appreciated!
TIA

brendan · 23 Feb 2011 at 09:59

Using an ssd as scratch is probably a bad idea. You want to use it for OS and install photoshop on it, leaving scratch for a traditional HDD.

I would go for a small SSD, a good one either from intel (I'm biased because I have many of these and never had a problem hence seeing all the SSD problems around i'm inclined to say they are very good quality albeit slower in write) or a newer stat 6gb sandforce based one. the access times will be much much faster. You'll probably notice the difference a lot more than ram (since you allready have 8GB) especially if you load your images from it.

I'm not sure what you do exactly, but on a workstation with 16GB of ram, I never managed to get Premiere or corel draw to use much more than 8GB.

Ch3m1c4L · 23 Feb 2011 at 11:07

combination would be good, but dont use the ssd for scratch. You could also not run wow, 12 tabs and photoshop all at the same time? Also, check your board supports 4gb sticks as if its an older one it may well not (mine doesnt and it makes me /cry )

eddiew · 23 Feb 2011 at 12:18

brendan said:
Using an ssd as scratch is probably a bad idea. You want to use it for OS and install photoshop on it, leaving scratch for a traditional HDD.

I'm not sure what you do exactly, but on a workstation with 16GB of ram, I never managed to get Premiere or corel draw to use much more than 8GB.

Don't really care about the OS drive, silly as it sounds. I hibernate a lot, which saves a lot of time between pressing the power button and being ready to use. Actual file opening time isn't too bad either - it's more that when memory use is getting high, I tend to get hiccups and stutters and occasional 30 second pauses while the HDD chunters to itself. Checking task manager at this point often shows PS using 3-4 gig of real memory, and the same of virtual

It doesn't help that I tend to work at or above 3000x2000 with dozens of layers. Could probably find ways to work more efficiently, but sometimes it's nicer just to chuck some hardware at the problem

I might limit myself to a hop to 12GB for now though, and see if I really need that extra £80, or whether it could go towards something else

Ch3m1c4L said:
You could also not run wow, 12 tabs and photoshop all at the same time? Also, check your board supports 4gb sticks as if its an older one it may well not (mine doesnt and it makes me /cry )

But I LIKE running far too many things at once. Much more fun to buy more kit than change a bad habit

Checked the memory capacity (good tip!) and my board lists 16GB max, so I'm content with that. For now

Ch3m1c4L · 23 Feb 2011 at 13:14

yea, i like to run lots of things at once too. but for my uses 8gb is fine. Only really memory intensive program I run is AutoCAD now, and that tends to be on my laptop at the office anyway lol.

mikey1090 · 23 Feb 2011 at 13:16

Ch3m1c4L said:
combination would be good, but dont use the ssd for scratch. You could also not run wow, 12 tabs and photoshop all at the same time? Also, check your board supports 4gb sticks as if its an older one it may well not (mine doesnt and it makes me /cry )

Getting an SSD soon and was planning on running photoshop off it. What is scratch exactly?

Should we install photoshop itself on the SSD for fast opening, yet save our PSDs onto a traditional HDD?

Chiribo · 23 Feb 2011 at 13:17

I can't say I understand as to why people are against using the SSD as a scratch drive. Just because it goes against the convention of using it as an OS drive?

Using SSD as scratch seems like a reasonable thing to do. The fast R/W of the SSD is great when you're going to have data go to and fro the disk constantly.

More RAM for PS would seemingly be a better alternative if you can get it to simply dump stuff in there rather than the disk.

eddiew · 23 Feb 2011 at 13:25

Chiribo said:
I can't say I understand as to why people are against using the SSD as a scratch drive. Just because it goes against the convention of using it as an OS drive?

My worry would be that the large number of writes generated would knacker the drive in a short space of time :/

Chiribo · 23 Feb 2011 at 18:50

If the space of time really is short, it'd be under warranty. Otherwise nothing lasts forever, happy as we may be that some mechanical drives last 10+ years, that have practically next to no use.

Phil2008 · 23 Feb 2011 at 20:07

The writes dont bugger the ssd, but if theres a lot of writing going on it will cause the ssd go into protective mode and slow the write speed down

eddiew · 24 Feb 2011 at 10:37

Well I cracked and ordered an additional 2x4GB of RAM cos it's only £79

Depending on how that goes, I may go for the same again, or an SSD, not really sure.

Phil2008 said:
The writes dont bugger the ssd, but if theres a lot of writing going on it will cause the ssd go into protective mode and slow the write speed down

I had no idea there was such a thing! See this is why I ask people who know before I chuck money on stuff ^^

Broken Hope · 24 Feb 2011 at 10:50

eddiew said:
My worry would be that the large number of writes generated would knacker the drive in a short space of time :/

No chance, in fact I have never once seen a single post on any forum of someone who's used up all the writes on an SSD, even the first ones that came out years ago.

People honestly need to stop worrying about SSDs lifespan like they are delicate little flowers, you have much more chance of a controller failure than a NAND failure with SSDs

brakeinup · 24 Feb 2011 at 11:41

You may as well use the SSD for the advantages it offers. Everything wears out eventually.
I use CS4 and use the SSD (C: drive) as a scratch for PS and Bridge. Just remember to purge your caches on a regular basis. I will admit this is for light use. However, my wife is a heavy PS user and has the same setup. She has been running this for over a year with no issues.

Tythus · 24 Feb 2011 at 12:07

brakeinup said:
You may as well use the SSD for the advantages it offers. Everything wears out eventually.
I use CS4 and use the SSD (C: drive) as a scratch for PS and Bridge. Just remember to purge your caches on a regular basis. I will admit this is for light use. However, my wife is a heavy PS user and has the same setup. She has been running this for over a year with no issues.

just make sure you have a long warranty on it

Fourstar · 24 Feb 2011 at 12:24

Phil2008 said:
The writes dont bugger the ssd, but if theres a lot of writing going on it will cause the ssd go into protective mode and slow the write speed down

At least with Sandforce controllers this is marketing spin on a hardware limitation more than it is a drive conservation feature.

Data on an SSD is essentially immutable. Once written to (quick) it can not be updated and must be erased (a slow process) before being used again. Deleting data simply marks its location as 'dirty' and updating copies it to a new location and deletes the old. Some indeterminate time in the future these 'dirty' blocks will be erased and returned to the pool of 'clean' blocks ready for reuse.

When a drive is heavily written to for an extended period you may exhaust the supply of 'clean' bocks ready for use. At this point the drive becomes bottlenecked by the block recycling engine's performance.

More on this over at Anandtech where they demonstrate the Vertex 3/ Sandforce 2500 has resolved the problem.

eddiew · 24 Feb 2011 at 13:27

brakeinup said:
...
I will admit this is for light use. However, my wife is a heavy PS user and has the same setup. She has been running this for over a year with no issues.

That's nice to hear - think I will investigate a little 40-60 gig drive for scratch purposes then. Maybe see if I can fit my WoW directory on it too

Fourstar said:
...
When a drive is heavily written to for an extended period you may exhaust the supply of 'clean' bocks ready for use. At this point the drive becomes bottlenecked by the block recycling engine's performance.
...

That's interesting info, cheers!

Chiribo · 24 Feb 2011 at 15:59

Thanks for pointing that out Fourstar. I thought it sounded like tosh. Credit where credit is due though, the marketing chaps

Phil2008 · 24 Feb 2011 at 21:29

Broken Hope said:
No chance, in fact I have never once seen a single post on any forum of someone who's used up all the writes on an SSD, even the first ones that came out years ago.

People honestly need to stop worrying about SSDs lifespan like they are delicate little flowers, you have much more chance of a controller failure than a NAND failure with SSDs

Im not saying that all the writes gets used up, but if theres a lot of writing going on, it slows up the write speed. I dont know why the OCZ ssds do this, I guess it prolongs the ssd life. But I would perfer it to always run at full write speed no matter how much gets written and a shorter life span, than a longer life span and wrorrying about slowing up the ssd due to a lot of writing and then having to secure erase the ssd(format) to get the write speed up to full speed again.

I made my ssd go in to protective mode by doing benchmarking.

Normal speed

Protective mode

Phil2008 · 24 Feb 2011 at 21:37

But as ppl keep saying, If you use the ssd as normal without benchmarking, you will be fine. Plus benchmarking prog writes like 10-20gb to the ssd at once.

Just benchmark once, to check the ssd is working as it should be and then just use the ssd as you would use a hdd, but without the defragging.

Ch3m1c4L · 25 Feb 2011 at 13:51

only benching progs like as ssd write a lot of uncompressed data, atto doesnt.

A scratch disc will write a lot surely?