Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: MaSonZ on October 18, 2011, 12:41:31 PM
-
birthday is cpmong up and i plan on spoiling myself alittle. ive seen a lot of rigs with Ssd's for the os. my question is would it be of benefit to put my os on one as opposed to my hdd? also, any suggestions if it wpuld be of benefit.
-
birthday is cpmong up and i plan on spoiling myself alittle. ive seen a lot of rigs with Ssd's for the os. my question is would it be of benefit to put my os on one as opposed to my hdd? also, any suggestions if it wpuld be of benefit.
Positives = Faster boot time, faster load time, no stutters while loading textures, etc.
Negatives = A technology still in its infancy.. on maybe not an infant anymore but maybe a toddler, when it crashes you lose EVERYTHING, SSD's gradually get slower as you use them - even though they are better than they were this is still a factor, sometimes firmware updates blank out the drive (although I've heard they are better with this too), special settings have to be made in order to take full advantage of one.. especially if you're running XP or Vista.
For me? Still not worth it. It doesn't bother me to have to wait 90 seconds or so to boot windows and 5 seconds or so to load a program. I'm not completely sold that the extra performance of an SSD is worth the hassle. Perhaps in another couple of years I'll change my mind when the technology becomes more mature and less expensive.
-
Unless you have money to burn, don't buy the SSD just yet. Until the newer operating systems can limit the amount of writes on the drive (not to mention until AH allows you to designate a different folder for films, screen shots, etc) they are going to have a limited life cycle.
You're better off with a Raptor, but those things also fail more than Tyrannis on the forums. Well, maybe not that much. :devil
-
it all depends on what you want out of your PC, performance wise.....
I debated long and hard whether to remain using the regular platter type Hard Drives to upgrading to the supposedly faster Western Digital Velociraptor 10,000 RPM Hard Drives to upgrading to a decent sized SSD ( 64 GB , 80 GB, 120 GB , 128 GB range )
I decided to go with a particular manufacturer of SSD because the life span was spec'ed for min. of 5 Years.............. so my options and choices weighed out that it was worth the extreme increase in performance that I could be using for a basically guaranteed 5 years service life on the SSD
I had originally decided to bite the bullet and bought the 450 GB WD Velociraptor 6.0 GB/s SATA III , which performed damn near identical/equal to my hitachi 1 TB 7,200 RPM & hitachi 1.5 TB 7,200 RPM drive ..............which both of the hitachi's cost less together than the WD Velociraptor.......
well, I then bought a 128 GB SSD 6.0 GB/s SATA III and it costs $5 less than that same WD Velociraptor....... but the performance is breathtaking
some SSD's firmware / drivers have had severe setbacks and plagued with problems, but their are a few out there that are damn near problem free and very stable
Delirium brings up a valid point, and it plagued me on my first time around......... I film almost every flight, and films will eat up a Hard Drive's storage space very quickly.....
I seriously hope HTC ( Aces high ) will eventually give us an option of saving our films to our own desired folder / drive! instead of the automatic films saved to films sub directory like it currently is....
all though, Aces High was like click the Icon , blink your eye, you are logged in....... no hesitation in going from clicking on n Arena to being in the Tower
no hesitation from pressing the PC Power Button to typing in your password to log on to your desktop ( If You Use a Password to log in )........ I like to see what is loading and I do not use the startup logo screen, I want to quickly scan everything from controllers initializing to memory quick test to IRQ settings, etc.... so I had to initiate a 10 second pause in my boot up sequence in my BIOS........... without it I was instantly looking at my desktop login screen
Graphics programs loaded at the bat of an eye..... AutoCad loaded like I was clicking notepad instead.........
an SSD is just another PC component.......... like a PSU or a GPU or your Memory ( hell an SSD is Memory to be honest........ it is Flash Memory DIMMs stacked on to a controller card then inclosed in a case for the SATA type SSD's anyways..... some of the PCIe type SSD's are open/uncovered controller cards with Memory DIMM's on them............ just like a video card
some people buy very cheap $30 dollar PSU's ( Power Supplys ) ........... while some people will buy good quality $199.00 PSU's.... <----- same scenario can be applied towards video cards,, sound cards, hard drives, PC Cases..... Monitors, Joysticks/Game Controllers, Keyboards, Mouses, System Memory, Motherboards......... etc.......
I look at SSD's like I look at any other Computer Component these days....... after experiencing the exceptional performance increaseover the old regular HD's
sorry........ I went on a rant there ......... hope some of this makes sense
TC
-
Delirium brings up a valid point, and it plagued me on my first time around......... I film almost every flight, and films will eat up a Hard Drive's storage space very quickly.....
I seriously hope HTC ( Aces high ) will eventually give us an option of saving our films to our own desired folder / drive! instead of the automatic films saved to films sub directory like it currently is....
Way ahead of you, brother, note the date when I asked for this wish.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,274478.0.html
-
SSD's are UBER and I'm a Fanboi so I'll defend them to my death! :rock
Oh there's no doubt that an SSD brings a level of speed unheard of as compared to a normal HDD but the true question is.. just how useful IS this performance? If I had to choose between the speed of a SSD or the storage space of a HDD for the same amount of money I'd have to admit that I'd rather have the storage. Why? Because aside from shaving 60-80 seconds off of my boot time and 4-5 seconds off of loading programs there really is no performance benefit to be had from an SSD that I would be able to take advantage of.
Now in your case you use autocad which does do a lot of disk writes so I'd imagine it would boost your performance by quite a bit *BUT* I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of home computer users wouldn't even know how to touch that software let alone use it for any kind of productivity.
In my case (and probably many people here) the most processor intensive programs I run is Aces High and Flight Simulator X - and in that case installing an SSD would be for the most part a waste of money, unless having a (traditionally) unreliable and possibly problematic drive is worth booting to windows 60 seconds faster. I definitely won't see any performance increase in aces high - other than loading faster. Heck I usually use that time to recycle some beverages anyway!
I think the SSD craze right now is more about placebo effect than anything. They see windows boot faster and as a result think their computer is faster all around but this isn't really the case. I've seen people sink thousands of dollars on SSD arrays only to brag about how much better their FPS is in WoW, then a few months later they complain because they lost everything to a crash...
By the way that quote was just me being funny. I really didn't think your post was all that fanboyish..
-
In windows 7 you can create a symlink that will link any folder you wish to any location you desire. I.e. another drive for example. That way AH thinks it's saving everything to a default location but actually the data goes to an another drive.
-
Took Microsoft long enough to implement symbolic links as that tech has been around since 1979. What is the user interface to it?
My home computer boots to the desktop in 5 to 6 seconds. I really do not see the need for an SSD, for me. Even when I working on a large video project, I never notice any type of stalls or lags.
Storage is more important for me as some of these newer HD video projects are consuming 400GBs of space for a few hours worth of video, before transcoding.
-
Took Microsoft long enough to implement symbolic links as that tech has been around since 1979. What is the user interface to it?
My home computer boots to the desktop in 5 to 6 seconds. I really do not see the need for an SSD, for me. Even when I working on a large video project, I never notice any type of stalls or lags.
Storage is more important for me as some of these newer HD video projects are consuming 400GBs of space for a few hours worth of video, before transcoding.
Example (you need admin privileges to do this, open command prompt 'as administrator'):
To create a symbolic link named MyDocs from the root directory to the \Users\User1\Documents directory, type:
mklink /D \MyDocs \Users\User1\Documents
Borrowed shamelessly from: http://www.windows7home.net/how-to-create-symbolic-link-in-windows-7/
Here's an interesting new product: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1744/1/ OCZ Revodrive hybrid which uses revodrive SSD as a cache + 1Tb spinner hd.
-
Took Microsoft long enough to implement symbolic links as that tech has been around since 1979. What is the user interface to it?
My home computer boots to the desktop in 5 to 6 seconds. I really do not see the need for an SSD, for me. Even when I working on a large video project, I never notice any type of stalls or lags.
Storage is more important for me as some of these newer HD video projects are consuming 400GBs of space for a few hours worth of video, before transcoding.
damn......I thought mine was fast :O
I have my OS on a 7,200 HDD... I picked up a 10,000 RPM Velociraptor and have just AH on that drive, pretty happy with this old system....but damn...5-6 seconds and your at desk top....I would like to see that setup.
-
Its Windows XP ink. No way to make Windows 7 boot that fast. I have 4 500GB Seagate NS model type drives. No arrays, just straight up disks.
I have never timed how long it takes to get Aces High up and running, but I know it is only a couple of seconds, or so.
It is a long laundry list of things to do to consistently get that type of performance.
Nothing really special about the hardware, but the tweaking I do to ensure everything is on a synchronized clock. Intel chipsets like 64Mhz boundaries. Just FYI.
-
Its Windows XP ink. No way to make Windows 7 boot that fast. I have 4 500GB Seagate NS model type drives. No arrays, just straight up disks.
I have never timed how long it takes to get Aces High up and running, but I know it is only a couple of seconds, or so.
It is a long laundry list of things to do to consistently get that type of performance.
Nothing really special about the hardware, but the tweaking I do to ensure everything is on a synchronized clock. Intel chipsets like 64Mhz boundaries. Just FYI.
im running xp myself....
2 TB of storage...haha...I remember my first comp I traded for some tattoo work, just for AH.....got it around 04, it was a 10 gig system, and man I thought that was huge :rofl
where are we gonna be in 10 years :O
-
My first hard drive was a Shugart 8" hard drive which stored a whopping 8MB of data. It served as a not-so-portable space heater as well.
I had 4 of those before the first 5 1/4" full height 5MB drives came out. I waited until the 5 1/4" full height drives hit 30MB and with a SCSI interface before I got rid of the space heaters.
-
:rofl
your :old:
:D
-
:rofl
your :old:
:D
If you are just figuring that out,....then you are sloooooowwwwwww. :)
-
going from 10 MB HDs to 20 MB HDs back on our 8088s and 286s, we thought we were on top of cloud nine............... was like jumping from a 300 baud rate to 900 or 1200 baud modem
then I got me a 486 25 MHz DX man that was a blistering fast PC, running Fox Pro became so much easier er um well excel came along........
MrRipley, the link you provided above regarding making files save to a folder of choice, looks so similar to like allowing access to a server ( or specific drives/folders on a server )
yet I am still reluctant to store any files or even programs in the Users area or program files area nor do I use those "libraries" in Windows 7, I install or save everything to its on folder on the C:\ root drive or on my storage drive or on the different drives on the home server.......
using librarys or using the Users documents / downloads / music / video / pictures , you find yourself with junk all over the place and multiple links going to the same single file..... caan really trash a persons registry in my personal opinion....
TC
-
If you are just figuring that out,....then you are sloooooowwwwwww. :)
:rofl
touche
-
going from 10 MB HDs to 20 MB HDs back on our 8088s and 286s, we thought we were on top of cloud nine............... was like jumping from a 300 baud rate to 900 or 1200 baud modem
then I got me a 486 25 MHz DX man that was a blistering fast PC, running Fox Pro became so much easier er um well excel came along........
MrRipley, the link you provided above regarding making files save to a folder of choice, looks so similar to like allowing access to a server ( or specific drives/folders on a server )
yet I am still reluctant to store any files or even programs in the Users area or program files area nor do I use those "libraries" in Windows 7, I install or save everything to its on folder on the C:\ root drive or on my storage drive or on the different drives on the home server.......
using librarys or using the Users documents / downloads / music / video / pictures , you find yourself with junk all over the place and multiple links going to the same single file..... caan really trash a persons registry in my personal opinion....
TC
I think you're not familiar with the concept of symlinks.
-
I think you're not familiar with the concept of symlinks.
you would be correct, I am however starting to read up on the concept since your post regarding it yesterday
-
I just timed my computer this morning.. from power on to an open browser window was just under 45 seconds. This includes typing my password in real quick. Not too shabby for windows 7!
My first PC was a PS/2 that I bought used for $150. I didn't even have a hard drive!
My first hard drive was a 20MB drive for that PS/2.
The first computer I built myself was a 386. I remember buying a 380MB hard drive for it for $180 on clearance at Best Buy and that was the deal of the century! Back then less than $1/MB was unheard of!
-
I certainly would like to know what to do to get windows up in seconds. Does the counting start from pressing the button? Personal experience tells me that XP normally takes about a minute to the welcome screen, after that the it depends on automatically starting programs how long it takes to be able to use the computer. An average to get the processor idle is about 2 minutes.
I've tried Soluto (http://www.soluto.com/) to find out how long each program takes at startup, but it didn't give any solutions to shorten the time from pressing the button to desktop. I have about 30 processes running in the background, including antivirus, skype, messenger, java updater etc, many of which I shutdown before playing AH.
-
My time was from the moment the boot process started. From computer power on, to the desktop, is 7-8 seconds and ready to use (idle CPU). My work computer is slower and takes about 14 to 18 seconds to be ready.
I do not bother listing what I do to my computers to them to perform like that as most of it is highly specific to the application at hand, from the hardware to the software.
-
I've been an avid reader of just about everything I can find about SSDs. I was so looking forward to avoiding the I/O bottleneck. Sadly, I must agree with the consensus here that SSD is a technology that is not ready for prime time. As recently as August, the Anandtech web site featured the following as the very first line of a roundup on Sandforce SSDs, "It's a depressing time to be covering the consumer SSD market. Although performance is higher than it has ever been, we're still seeing far too many compatibility and reliability issues from all of the major players."
More detail here. (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4604/the-sandforce-roundup-corsair-patriot-ocz-owc-memoright-ssds-compared)
birthday is cpmong up and i plan on spoiling myself alittle. ive seen a lot of rigs with Ssd's for the os. my question is would it be of benefit to put my os on one as opposed to my hdd? also, any suggestions if it wpuld be of benefit.
-
I myself made it a specific point to stay away from any SSD's that utilized Sandforce, for the very reasons you listed Bino "reliability &compatibility issues"
when rev 009 firmware update came out for my Crucial M4 SSD's....... it improved their performance to where the Crucial M4's just as fast as the "major Players" that use Sandforce drivers ( it was a bit slower in some areas before Rev 009 was introduced, when using rev001 &/or rev002 )
but the reliability & compatibility issues are minor............... nowhere near like what the Sandforce driven SSD's have experienced from day 1......
like you, Bino,
I too have been an avid reader / researching SSD's.............. to where I just basically read about the technology and read articles when they first hit the scene, but over the last 6 to 7 months I have really dug into everything I could find on them, once I made the decision that I wanted to give them a go and see how they performed..... I then nade a post in this forum asking others thoughts...... like 7 months ago regarding using an OCZ 6.0 GB/s SATA III SSD or opting for the PCIe SSD controller card ( OCZ RevoDrive X2 ??? I think it was )......... that was when I decided to not use any SSD that used Sandforce, because of the bad reviews and news articles........
after reading many different articles / reviews on SSDs & SSD Technology, I decided to go ahead and purchase/use the Crucial M4 series,
here is one of several Review Articles for the Crucial M4 series:
this below linked review is 13 pages long
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=720&Itemid=60
one of the things I really like about the Crucial M4s is the reliability of
MTBF = 1.2 Million Hours
Drive Endurance = 72 TB of data = 40 GBs a day for 5 years )
I am sure I do not really need these SSD's at this day in time, and I thought for a long time before even coming close to deciding about purchasing one
I positively sure could have used/ utilized them more so back when I was heavy into design work and calculating, energy audits , etc........ even more so using one in my work laptop the battery power it would save along with nomoving parts for heat build up would count for alot on top of the SSD performance increase.......
in which you shouldn't look at the bandwidth as much as you should look at the IOPS, the IOPS is what will help with uing applications....... the bandwidth is more for how fast an app opens / starts up....
TC
-
I too have started researching SSD drives so I'm reading threads about them here and elsewhere. One thing I just saw was that OCZ is ditching Sandforce for a controller card built by a company they bought a while back, in their future products. The first of which is due November 1st.
Anandtech story with this info: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4995/oczs-octane-ssd-indilinx-everest-up-to-1tb-in-a-consumer-drive
-
I have an OCZ Revo x2 100GB through a PCIe x16 slot, and I boot in about 18 seconds (after POST, which is somewhat slow on my PC and the BIOS has no option for quick boot) to being able to use the desktop.
But, keep in mind that 18 seconds is with some services still running, a few Win7 gadgets running, and I use this as a personal computer not just a "how fast can I tweak it" computer. The services/startup-aps are a balance between speed and preference. I could probably get it down to much less in safe mode, for example.
-
I have an OCZ Revo x2 100GB through a PCIe x16 slot...
Nice! Those OCZ PCI-E drives look *very* tempting! >drool<
Have you run into any compatibility "gotchas", or bugs in the firmware?
-
Not a single one....
Only issue is that I could only afford the 100GB size, and that was WITH tax refund applied to the build :)
EVGA FTW3 132-GT-E768-KR
i7 960 LGA 1366 3.6GHz (stock, so far not overclocked at all)
3 sticks of 2GB Corsair tri-channel ram from a tri-chan package
XFX AMD HD6970 2GB
OCZ Revo x2 PCIe x16 slot SSD (100GB)
backup 1TB Samsung 7200rpm (storage and most games)
NZXT HALE90-750-M 750W modular PSU
NZXT Phantom (Red) with extra fans added to fill out the slots built in for cooling.
Win7 x64, it goes without saying :)
-
Nice! Those OCZ PCI-E drives look *very* tempting! >drool<
Have you run into any compatibility "gotchas", or bugs in the firmware?
Check the hybrid model I linked, it will use the 100gb revodrive as cache and store the data to a 1Tb harddrive. This means that your most commonly used data will be loaded from the 100gb cache for speed and media files etc. junk that is mostly stored, stays in the hdd. But it's totally transparent to you, you don't have to do anything yourself.
-
stay away from sandforce and look at a crucial m4 id i do buy one. tech teacher gave me a copy of Acronis to make an image of my machine. cani make an image of a sssd and save it to my hd uncase of crash so i dont lose everything on it and still usecmy machine? all i would haveon the ssd would be win7. also, pci-e or 6gb/s ssd? if those hybrids are brand new idk if i wanna risk myoney on them
-
Nice! Those OCZ PCI-E drives look *very* tempting! >drool<
Have you run into any compatibility "gotchas", or bugs in the firmware?
There is a setting in the device manager for disk drives that has to be set or you get slow downs at boot and shut down. Took forever to figure that one out. But once I did the little monster screamed.
-
I got some money, and reading this topic thought buying an ssd is a good idea. Looked up for a webshop, the cheapest 64gb ssd was 150 bucks... :eek: maybe sometime later : )
-
There is a setting in the device manager for disk drives that has to be set or you get slow downs at boot and shut down. Took forever to figure that one out. But once I did the little monster screamed.
Oh? And what would that be?
I've not had issues like that. My shutdown is very fast. My bootup still very fast, but my POST takes a number of seconds (sadly, I don't have a BIOS allowing for speedy boots, but so be it!).
Just curious if I missed something...
-
I have been on this for a year now, W-7 on a bootable Intel SSD for just game and tracker unit, all other norm comp stuff is on a bootable W-7 WD,300gb Velaporaptor, I have updated firmware,(it does make a differance with performance) with this setup, only thing scary is loseing skin's and stick set-up. if you film alot, you have to move them to keep free space, but no problems. i love it!
Misfire out,