The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Why You Absolutely Need an SSD
Compared to mechanical hard drives, SSDs continue to be a disruptive technology. These days it’s difficult to convince folks to spend more money, but I can’t stress the difference in user experience between a mechanical HDD and a good SSD. In every major article I’ve written about SSDs I’ve provided at least one benchmark that sums up exactly why you’d want an SSD over even a RAID array of HDDs. Today’s article is no different.
The Fresh Test, as I like to call it, involves booting up your PC and timing how long it takes to run a handful of applications. I always mix up the applications and this time I’m actually going with a lighter lineup: World of Warcraft, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Firefox 3.5.1.
Other than those three applications, the system was a clean install - I didn’t even have any anti-virus running. This is easily the best case scenario for a hard drive and on the world’s fastest desktop hard drive, a Western Digital VelociRaptor, the whole process took 31 seconds.
And on Intel’s X25-M SSD? Just 6.6 seconds.
A difference of 24 seconds hardly seems like much, until you actually think about it in terms of PC response time. We expect our computers to react immediately to input; even waiting 6.6 seconds is an eternity. Waiting 31 seconds is agony in the PC world. Worst of all? This is on a Core i7 system. To have the world’s fastest CPU and to have to wait half a minute for a couple of apps to launch is just wrong.
A Personal Anecdote on SSDs
I’m writing this page of the article on the 15-inch MacBook Pro I reviewed a couple of months ago. I’ve kept the machine stock but I’ve used it quite a bit since that review thanks to its awesome battery life. Of course, by “stock” I mean that I have yet to install an SSD.
Using the notebook is honestly disappointing. I always think something is wrong with the machine when I go to fire up Adium, Safari, Mail and Pages all at the same time to get to work. The applications take what feels like an eternity to start. While they are all launching the individual apps are generally unresponsive, even if they’ve loaded completely and I’m waiting on others. It’s just an overall miserable experience by comparison.
It’s shocking to think that until last year, this is how all of my computer usage transpired. Everything took ages to launch and become useful, particularly the first time you boot up your PC. It was that more than anything else that drove me to put my PCs to sleep rather than shut them down. It was also the pain of starting applications from scratch and OS X’s ability to get in/out of sleep quickly that made me happier using OS X than XP and later Vista.
It’s particularly interesting when you think of the ramifications of this. It’s the poor random read/write performance of the hard disk that makes some aspects of PC usage so painful. It’s the multi-minute boot times that make users more frustrated with their PCs. While the hard disk helped the PC succeed, it’s the very device that’s killing the PC in today’s instant-on, consumer electronics driven world. I challenge OEMs to stop viewing SSDs as a luxury item and to bite the bullet. Absorb the cost, work with Intel and Indilinx vendors to lower prices, offer bundles, do whatever it takes but get these drives into your systems.
I don’t know how else to say this: it’s an order of magnitude faster than a hard drive. It’s the difference between a hang glider and the space shuttle; both will fly, it’s just that one takes you to space. And I don’t care that you can buy a super fast or high flying hang glider either.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I believe OCZ cut prices to distributors that day, but the retail prices will take time to fall. Once you see X25-M G2s in stock then I'd expect to see the Indilinx drives fall in price. Resellers won't give you a break unless they have to :)Take care,
Anand
bobjones32 - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Another great AnandTech article, thanks for the read.Just a head's-up on the 80GB X-25m Gen2 - A day before Newegg finally had them on sale, they bumped their price listing from $230 to $250. They sold at $250 for about 2 hours last Friday, went back out of stock until next week, and bumped the price again from $250 to $280.
So....plain supply vs. demand is driving the price of the G2 roughly $50 higher than it was listed at a week ago. I have a feeling that if you wait a week or two, or shop around a bit, you'll easily find them selling elsewhere for the $230 price they were originally going for.
AbRASiON - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Correct, Newegg has gouged the 80gb from 229 to 279 and the 160gb from 449 to 499 :(Stan Zaske - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Absolutely first rate article Anand and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Get some rest dude! LOLJaramin - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I'm wondering, if I were to use a low capacity SSD to install my OS on, but install my programs to a HDD for space reasons, just how much would that spoil the SSD advantage? All OS reads an writes would still be on the SSD, and the paging file would also be there. I'm very curious about the amount of degradation one would see relative to different use routines and apps.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Putting all of your apps (especially frequently used ones) off of your SSD would defeat the purpose of an SSD. You'd be missing out on the ultra-fast app launch times.Pick a good SSD and you won't have to worry too much about performance degradation. As long as you don't stick it into a database server :)
Take care,
Anand
swedishchef - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
What if you just put your photoshop cache on a pair of Velociraptors? Would it be the same loss of benefit?I have the same question regarding uncompressed HD video work, where I need write speeds well over the Intel x25-m ( over 240Mb/s). My assumption would be that I could enjoy the fast IO and App. launch of an SSD and increase CPU performance with the SSD while keeping the files on a fast external or internal raid configuration.
Thank you again for a a brilliant Article Anand.
I have been waiting for it for a long time. Yours are the only calm words out on the net.
Grateful Geek /Also professional image creator.
creathir - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Great article Anand. I've been waiting for it...My only thoughts are, why can't Intel get their act together with the sequential business? Why can the others handle it, but they can't? To have such an awesome piece of hardware have such a nasty blemish is strange to me, especially on a Gen-2 product.
I suppose there is some technical reason as to why, but it needs to be addressed.
- Creathir
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
If Intel would only let me do a deep dive on their controller I'd be able to tell you :) There's more I'd like to say but I can't yet unfortunately.Take care,
Anand
shotage - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Awesome article!I'm intrigued with the cap on the sequential reads that Intel has on the G2 drives as well. I always thought it was strange to see even on their first gen stuff.
I'm assuming that this cap might be in place to somehow ensure the excellent performance they are giving with random read/writes. All until TRIM finally shows up and you'll have to write up another full on review (which I eagerly await!).
I can't wait to see what 2010 brings to the table. What with the next version of SATA and TRIM just over the horizon, I could finally get the kind of performance out of my PC that I want!!