OFF and SSD

[hood 2]

Is anybody running OFF on an SSD drive? If so is there any noticeable difference in how the Sim runs?

[MudWasp48 3]

Yeah, I am.

 

Can't comment on before and after with OFF as I hadn't found OFF then. I can comment on X-plane and FSX. Large reduction in load times, didn't notice any fps increase, but the both ran smoother and certain scenery areas that had given me micro stutters no longer did so.

[Panama Red 22]

What MudWasp48 said it true about any game.  SSDs does not speed anything up but the loading before or during the game.

[hood 2]

Thanks fellers.I guess I was just looking for something else to spend some money on.Yeah yeah I know.Just another loony.Cheers, hood.

[Tamper 9]

What MudWasp48 said it true about any game.  SSDs does not speed anything up but the loading before or during the game.

 

While I totally agree with MudWasp as you cited, the second part of what you said isn't exactly what he said.  You omitted his observation that the sim "...ran smoother and certain scenery areas that had given me micro stutters no longer did so."

 

He's right.  I've been using SSDs for running flight sims now for several years, and I've learned not to underestimate the importance of drive access times to 'loading'.

 

Yes, SSDs load much faster, no doubt.  But - just as MudWasp says - because of this, they also help with (if not completely eliminate) so-called 'stutters'.

 

SSDs will not (cannot) increase frame rates, per se.  That's a function of your graphics adapter.

 

SSDs definitely can, and will, improve the even distribution of frames over time, even where heavy texture loading is involved - a huge factor in stuttering that many observe.  For some reason, this delay in loading textures is commonly perceived as a problem with the graphics card.  Yet many have learned that a faster graphics card (and even the highest of frame rates) won't improve stutter due to slow loading of textures.

 

Smooth video is absolutely not a function of high frame rates.  I will take 35 FPS, evenly distributed, over 60 FPS with stutter any day - and so would anyone else in a truly "blind" test.

 

Many of us here have used SSDs and never looked back once.  Especially now that the prices are getting more reasonable.

[+Lothar of the Hill People 6]

OFFice preloads more assets into memory, reducing the amount of loading (particularly for sounds) needed in-flight. May be a noticeable difference for those without fancy SSDs.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Lothar of the Hill People

[Tamper 9]

I believe anything that can be 'pre-loaded' into memory will definitely help, since memory is many times faster than reading data from a hard drive.  However, we are still quite a way from having computers that support enough memory to load everything there up front.

 

Since "textures" (which may or may not be the proper term, technically) such as terrain and even sky or water can't be loaded entirely into memory, at some point there will come a need to read that data off the hard disk and load it into memory.  SSDs are simply a much faster way of doing this.

 

Spending money on faster CPUs and graphics cards is an understood and accepted part of making PCs perform at a level consistent with what these sims require, and there's no reason the single slowest part of a PC (the storage subsystem) should be any exception.  It's just that many still haven't quite accepted that storage performance is worth considering as a factor in gaming.  It is, and experiences like that reported by MudWasp are clear indicators of that fact.  People still relate smooth video performance to high frame rates, and the two are not the same.

 

It's funny, you can look at sigs for a lot of the sim forum members and see their setups have spared little expense on graphics cards, CPUs, RAM, motherboard, etc...the list goes on and on, then finally - if it's remembered at all - oh, yeah, I have a hard disk.  Look around, you'll see what I mean.  I noticed long ago that storage and power suppies are the two most often forgotten pieces of hardware.  And of the ones who do mention power supplies, they're almost always grossly over-rated.

 

BTW, SSDs are hardly what I'd call 'fancy'.  Although it's still happening slowly, they are becoming more accepted as the default storage media, particularly on laptops.  The cost has kept them out of desktops for a while, but prices are coming down; you see more and people with 'hybrid' systems like OS and/or games on a fast SSD, and other stuff on a conventional hard disk.  Some fairly big names (Intel, Asus) have introduced storage systems that include 'performance' technologies like SSD caching; hard disk manufacturers have developed hybrid drives that use both types of storage media...even Windows has support for solid-state media's differences.

 

What with smart phones, tablets, netbooks, laptops - I'd venture that there is more 'solid state' storage out there right now that there is platter-based.  MLC NAND may not always be the way it's done, but I will guarantee you that computing (in whatever form it takes) will eventually move completely away from conventional, platter-based storage, and the cost continues to come down.

 

Much as the topic of this thread seems to indicate, more people are considering solid-state storage than ever.  I would say that, in a system with an otherwise reasonably capable CPU and graphics adapter, an SSD can be a very good choice as a performance upgrade.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Tamper

[+Lothar of the Hill People 6]

Some good points, Tamper, but I'd suggest for many gamers additional RAM is a more cost-effective performance boost than a SSD. You'd be surprised at just how much can be preloaded into 16GB or more of memory, and modern Windows' SuperFetch uses all your spare RAM to smartly and efficiently do just that.

 

When I go through phases of actually flying OFF, usually for testing, the difference is quite striking. Once Windows figures out I'm launching OFF/CFS3 a lot, startup times begin drop dramatically and choppiness from texture-loading in-game disappears. Anyone else with modern Windows (not XP) and gobs of RAM notice this?

 

Since it happens all transparently in the background, you don't have to carefully manage what you install and run from the limited physical space of a SSD. The performance improvements from SuperFetch apply to whatever you run frequently or routinely, wherever it's installed. It's adaptiveness to your usage patters lets it do things like preload in the morning the work software you use in the day, then cache the games you play in the evening.

 

If you already have a lot of RAM and consistent usage patterns, you likely won't see much performance gain from a SSD unless you're working with and writing gigs dynamic data--statistical modeling or editing movies or building textures or capturing data from simulations or something. In other words, not playing games--most of which are and designed around the memory limitations of 32-bit consoles and end up reading a fixed set of textures and sounds.

[hood 2]

This is all most interesting.I have been considering an SSD drive to run my OS and if I get one of sufficient capacity I would also install OFF and later of course WOFF.Thank you Tamper and Lother for your very pertinent observations.

[Tamper 9]

I still hear plenty of people who have 8+ Gigs of RAM (on 64-bit OS, of course) complaining about stutters, yes.  Meanwhile, everyone I've heard from has indicated a substantial reduction if not complete elimination of stuttering when they finally moved to SSDs.  I can't say Windows SuperFetch doesn't help, maybe it does.  But it clearly doesn't help as much as fast storage.

 

All you need to do is go over to the "other" WW1 flight sims forum to see that plenty of folks with tons of memory on W7, and still have problems with stuttering.  Probably isn't as obvious by far in OFF because OFF doesn't place nearly the texture loading demands on a system as the other sim does.  (Of course, this is also a huge liability in the other sim - don't get me started...)

 

While adaptive algorithms can be very smart and useful, I don't have to carefully manage anything.  I made one decision, one time: To load any game that's going to need the fastest storage access possible to a sold state device.  Since I only play a handful of games, and no first-person shooters for a long time now, that pretty much means flight sims; OFF and the "other one."  Everything else - perhaps 5-6 games - is loaded on a conventional drive.

 

Even one of the 128G SSDs I use is enough to hold an OS and maybe a game or three, depending - and, as I said, they're getting cheaper every day,  All I had to do was know that some games are going to require better performance than others (for instance, I run Age of Empires off the conventional 500G HDD and it stutters tremendously when loading big things - which is fine because AoE isn't like a flight sim or a FPS).  But it proves the point, and it also shows that any caching going on just isn't keeping that huge texture load from causing my otherwise powerful machine to stutter (and I play AoE regularly enough it should've 'learned' by now).

 

There are 9 computers in my house (not counting the ones that aren't used routinely).  Of these, 4 have Windows 7/64.  Of those 4, only mine uses any sort of solid-state storage.  The others are fairly capable; two have similar graphics cards, and one is a fairly new 2600K with a 570GTX - exactly like mine, and 8G memory, like mine, overclocked - like mine.

 

I can tell you for sure that none of the other machines runs as smoothly in any game as mine does when I run it from the SSDs (I know, because I built and maintain them all).  They will all pause, even if ever-so-briefly, while certain things happen (maps changing views, or several high-poly a/c skins coming into view; that sort of thing).

 

My PC doesn't have to spend resources adapting to what I do; anything that loads from one of the sold-state drives is "Just. Plain. Faster."  And it's all just as fast, all the time - the benefits of SSDs include no 'latency' while platters spin, and near-zero random access times.  Nothing had to be learned, and the SSDs were as fast brand new as they are now.

 

Another thing about SuperFetch is that there are sources that say it's flawed; that it doesn't work as it's designed in some cases.  (Whether I agree with these claims is immaterial).

 

The thing is, if  'fancy' (to borrow your term) software tricks worked as well as high-performance hardware, no one would make or buy SSDs.  That 387 math coprocessor I bought back in the day, which made AutoCad run 100x better than the software emulator, would have served little purpose.

 

I also strongly doubt that using a caching algorithm to pre-load OFF has the same effect as loading textures as quickly as possible while it's running.  For one thing, it wouldn't know which map you're going to fly or what planes you're going to encounter, unless you flew the same mission just prior (and even then the chances that it's all cached are slim).  RAM is volatile; it "forgets" everything in this dynamic cache every time you restart your PC.  It can only predict what to load ahead of time if you are going to use the same textures every time - doubtful in a world like OFF.

 

By comparison, having a very fast, truly random access storage system means no matter what you encounter, no matter where you fly - it all loads at the same rate.  No matter what part of the game you're talking about, it's always there, equally and rapidly accessible when called.  An algorithm, no matter how good, cannot do that.  It's entire premise is based on prediction, and it's not always going to be right, nor will it always have a way of knowing what to predict.

 

One day, we may have machine with RAM drives that can actually load everything into memory (which is faster still than solid-state NAND),  The problem is it's volatile, so you'll wind up waiting at boot time (or at least run-time) for that initial loading of everything.

 

I personally believe SuperFetch and such caching mechanisms are useful and can improve PC performance.  But I do not believe that any of it can compete with the performance advantages of fast storage.

 

[hood 2]

Tamper, your reasoning is compelling.I can get a 250G Samsung or Crucial SSD for around AU$200  and that is the way I will go for my next purchase.Again, many thanks for yous advice.

[AROTH 0]

Please excuse my ignorant question here.

 

Is it possible to load just all of one's games and related items only (such as Trackir, etc) onto an SSD, and run your gaming programs from that SSD alone?
Or, Does the SSD have to become your main C drive with Windows and all the other junk on it also?

I guess that I am trying to understand exactly how this all works out.

[hood 2]

I'm afraid I won't be much use to you Aroth.My computer ignorance would be much greater than yours. However I would imagine you could load whatever you like on to your SSD drive.I'm sure one of the boys will give you a definitive answer.

Cheers

[Tamper 9]

AROTH:  Yes, you can load only games on an SSD, while booting the OS from a conventional, platter based drive.  I actually did that for a while until I saved enough to buy several solid state devices; now I boot from one SSD and load games to a different one (see sig below).

 

In fact, I don't even have TrackIR loaded to either SSD.  It's loaded on the 500G conventional hard disk I use, along with a few 'non-performance' games I play (Age of Empires 3, Company of Heroes...).  My layout is like this:

(2) 120G SSDs in a RAID0 array (acts as one drive that's theoretically twice as fast) for the OS (only)

 

(1) OCZ "RevoDrive" (has 2 SSD drives on it, in a RAID0 configuration, but is a PCIexpress add-in card, which eliminates the SATA drive interface bottleneck) which is used for the flightsims, as it is a very fast drive; fastest on my system.

 

(1) Western Digital conventional SATA-6G/s platter-based hard disk, 500G, for everything else: big stuff, stuff that doesn't require performance including several games, stuff I'm inclined to keep a lot of like photos, music, videos, etc.

 

I'll be the first to admit I've gone a bit nuts with the storage here, but it wasn't all done in that order, just using parts I collected/upgraded through along the way.  What appears a fairly common arrangement is 1 fast SSD (with performance games, and for some the OS) and one conventional drive (comparatively cheap, large storage).

 

Also, don't forget: several companies make 'hybrid' arrangements.  Both WD and Seagate I believe offer a form of SSD and conventional drive hybrids, and if you have a specifc motherboard, they support MSATA cache drives, sort of a little, bare SSD (see http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3892#sp)  The Intel Z68 chipset or a select few Asus boards will also support this sort of caching to any SSD.

 

In absolute fairness and accuacy, Lothar makes a point above; that is, once you start using multiple drives for different purposes/reasons, you do have to think about what you put where.  But, at least for me, it wasn't a hard decision and you pretty much only load stuff once, then you're done.  True, *my* specific arrangement of drives does require a little planning and also some maintenance, but I've seen almost no one else with such an arrangement, either.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Tamper

[+Lothar of the Hill People 6]

As I said, SSDs do have some nice features, but add more value in some situations than others. This is especially true in mobile and embedded machines where the heat and physical mechanisms of hard disks conflict with portability, rackability, and power needs, and in certain workstation applications that do a lot of random access of vast amounts of data.

 

But especially given their relative expense, most gamers can find a better bang for the buck to improve performance elsewhere, particularly with more random access memory. It's simple, really. In terms of speed, RAM > SSD > HDD. RAM is "higher performance hardware" than SSDs. If you have plenty of RAM, Windows can cache all the textures you'll need for any and every OFF mission, or whatever other game you're playing regularly. And it will run much quicker than off any SSD, even a pair of SSDs in RAID 0.

 

RAM is still more expensive than disk space per GB, but it doesn't have to store everything to improve perceived disk performance, just cache the programs or data that you're most likely to be using. The first time you run a game in a while you may have a little stutters while SuperFetch learns what it needs to prefetch, but if you play a game regularly it'll load more quickly and smoothly than any SSD system.

 

Of course, you still need to write to disk (the Amiga had a non-volatile RAD disk in memory that survived system reboots--so you could boot the OS right from it on subsequent reboots! This was when the Amiga could address up to 8MB of RAM while PCs struggled to get over 640kb and Macs were a monochrome joke). So as I said, doing a lot of random access writes is one area where SSDs can shine, depending on the size of files and the structure of the flash memory modules. But games don't generally write very much.

 

But here's the problem with SSDs, particularly in a mixed environment--a desktop gaming PC with other applications and storage on hard disk drives. You can only write to solid-state drives a certain number of times, which requires you to avoid all the modern software technology for optimizing data use in the traditional HDD  -> RAM pipeline.

 

1. Disable disk defragging in the system scheduler.

2. Disable SuperFetch in system services.

3. Disable prefetch in the system registry.

 

Certainly can't keep rearranging all the data on those limited-write SSDs! Thus in Windows you'll have to defrag your HDDs manually, which most people will forget to do (which is why it's an automatic background tool these days in the first place). That means your old-fashioned hard drives will most likely become fragmented and much slower reading and writing data. Or find other automatic degrag software to maintain the HDDs and ignore the SSDs.

 

Disable SuperFetch and its prefetching and now all that extra RAM is suddenly unused RAM. This is another reason reading now uncached data and applications off HDDs becomes slower when your system is catering to the SSD. And of course, reading data off the SSD, even in raid, is still slower than out of a cache in RAM. But any extra RAM you have is now completely useless.

 

In short: SSDs make loading uncached data and applications from the SSDs themselves faster, but can make everything else slower! For most desktop PC gamers, upgrading to 16GB or more RAM is both cheaper and gives a bigger all-around boost to performance. Once you cross the threshold from not enough RAM that you're having to use the slow hard disk as "virtual memory", to having enough RAM to use memory as a virtual disk--the difference in performance is dramatic. 8GB is generally not enough to get there.

 

SSDs do more to improve performance on low-RAM machines (Windows ReadyBoost lets you use plug in flash drives as virtual memory, still faster than HDD), but their benefits diminish and costs stand out in high-RAM multiple-hard-drive desktop computers. Much better bang for the buck to replace that single 5400RPM drive in your laptop with a SSD than add one in to a heterogeneous desktop environment that can benefit from more RAM.

 

That's my view of the issue, anyway.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Lothar of the Hill People

[almccoyjr 7]

Once again, a very enjoyable exchange from thoroughly knowledgeable people.

 

Kudos Tamper for you eliquently "trashing" the notion that higher fps leads to higher performance.

 

Lothar of the Hill People, wether you realize it or not, your OFFice mod is actually functioning, in a minimal way, as a ram drive.

 

And you both have laid out the importance of drive speed, density, placement, maintenace of drive sytems, and how the OS affects this operation.

 

On a side note, I personally would not have more than 12-16gb's of system ram in any pc unless you're going to run a ram drive.

 

plug_nickel

[Tamper 9]

Lothar, I dunno...we should probably ask those folks I mentioned who have 'gobs of RAM' running W7/64 why they continue to have stuttering...that's what they reported, and their systems would undoubtedly be running SuperFetch.  Shouldn't be a problem, according to your perspective - yet there they are.

 

(BTW, wouldn't this also mean that anyone who has 16G of RAM or more won't see any improvements at all from adding SSDs?  Dubious, in my mind.)

 

Or maybe let's ask the guys who have 16G+ RAM how they noticed a clear improvement with stuttering upon adding SSDs, when SuperFetch should have already made such an improvement unecessary, and difficult (if not impossible) to notice.  Yet reports of noticing a substantial improvement are fairly consistent.

 

We'll ask them why they wasted money, since the free technology (!) our trusted friends at Microsoft included with Windows (SuperFetch) made the purchase of an SSD unecessary, because they already had 16G or more of RAM.

 

We should also probably contact the SSD manufacturers and tell them to get out of that business quick, because once the general masses figure this 'SuperFetch" thing out as you have, no one's going to spend $200 for an insanely fast 250G drive, when adding $75 worth of memory can do the same thing just as well...

 

*ahem*

 

Our experiences differ, that's all.  It happens that the experiences I'm referring to are shared and corroborated by most anyone who actually owns SSDs.

 

And don't forget people with 16G or more of RAM, apparently already using SuperFetch caching, yet still having problems with stuttering...

 

...I say let folks look at the evidence, and draw conclusions for themselves.

 

I haven't relied on the OS' defrag in forever. There are much better tools that can be scheduled, and selectively defrag whichever disk(s) you specify (because, of course, we know better than defragging an SSD).

 

The write issues you mentioned are outdated. SSDs are progressively becoming more recognized/supported by the OS, where all the manual tuning isn't necessary.  For example, wear leveling was introduced in past generations of SSD firmware which helps keep the 'write wear' in check.  Windows 7 recognizes SSDs and handle them differently from conventional drives.  In a typical, single, non-RAID SSD setup, according to MS, "Typically, Windows 7 automatically disables these services for your SSD disk." (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2727880)  TRIM is also supported, and it's automatic (again, assuming W7 and single drive arrangements).

 

There are also more than a few sources that indicate no need for a lot of configuration changes when using SSDs in Windows 7:(http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2072259).  Basically make sure the drive's running in the Advance Host Controller Interface mode (AHCI) and the rest is a largely matter of preference (and nothing that will really destroy performance, depending on who you want to listen to).  Many sources recommend checking just to make sure Windows actually does what it should in terms of enabling/disabling the services etc above; some recommend aligning partitions.

 

Many of these 'manual' tweaks either aren't necessary anymore, or are essentially done once and that's it.  As I explained earlier, *my* arrangement does require some upkeep (still pretty limited, honestly, and mostly because RAID0 has no redundancy), but not many people are going to have all this in the first place. 

 

Yes, if you expect top performance from your setup, then you have to fiddle with some things - but that's hardly new, and hardly exclusive to solid state storage technology.

 

As a footnote, hello to Al (plug_nickel); always nice to have you in on these discussions.  I haven't seen you in forever!

[almccoyjr 7]

One day, we may have machine with RAM drives that can actually load everything into memory (which is faster still than solid-state NAND),  The problem is it's volatile, so you'll wind up waiting at boot time (or at least run-time) for that initial loading of everything.

 

 

I don't think we'll ever see a pc that loads everything at startup....not only time consuming but the software/hardware combo that would be needed to eliminate the volatile state of ram memory would be GOD awfull expensive.

 

Load at startup with conventional SSD and then load images from a Revo3 480gb pcie bus SSD into, say 64/96/128gb ram drive depending on size(s) of image(s). Win-Win setup imho.

 

On your sidenote, I've just been "burned out" on military sims. I haven't flown one in some time. I'm just tooling around with "Return to Misty Moorings" using Prepar3d. Good to Type at you!

 

plug_nickel

[+Lothar of the Hill People 6]

Lothar, I dunno...we should probably ask those folks I mentioned who have 'gobs of RAM' running W7/64 why they continue to have stuttering...that's what they reported, and their systems would undoubtedly be running SuperFetch.  Shouldn't be a problem, according to your perspective - yet there they are.

 

(BTW, wouldn't this also mean that anyone who has 16G of RAM or more won't see any improvements at all from adding SSDs?  Dubious, in my mind.)

 

Or maybe let's ask the guys who have 16G+ RAM how they noticed a clear improvement with stuttering upon adding SSDs, when SuperFetch should have already made such an improvement unecessary, and difficult (if not impossible) to notice.  Yet reports of noticing a substantial improvement are fairly consistent.

 

We'll ask them why they wasted money, since the free technology (!) our trusted friends at Microsoft included with Windows (SuperFetch) made the purchase of an SSD unecessary, because they already had 16G or more of RAM.

 

We should also probably contact the SSD manufacturers and tell them to get out of that business quick, because once the general masses figure this 'SuperFetch" thing out as you have, no one's going to spend $200 for an insanely fast 250G drive, when adding $75 worth of memory can do the same thing just as well...

 

...

 

And don't forget people with 16G or more of RAM, apparently already using SuperFetch caching, yet still having problems with stuttering...

 

Come on, Tamper, I never said there's no reason for anyone to use SSDs, in fact gave several examples of scenarios where they are optimal (particularly mobile and embedded systems). Nor did I say people won't see "any improvements". Nor did I claim SSDs and more RAM do "the same thing". Nor is SuperFetch "free" as you have to pay for Windows and the extra high-speed RAM. Sheesh!

 

And of course you'll still have stutter if you're trying to stream a bunch of textures from a hard disk because they haven't yet been SuperFetched. Takes a few times running/playing a game before it adapts to your usage and preloads things. Upgrading to 16GB RAM eliminated my OFF stutter problems--once SuperFetch recognizes I'm running OFF a lot. But it's not instant. Then again, neither is having to manually install/move files to the SSD for the games you're currently playing.

 

Also, I wouldn't assume most PC gamers with gobs of RAM are actually running SuperFetch. When Vista first came out, there was a lot of FUD about how it "steals all your RAM". People saw how all of a sudden their machines report nearly 0 free RAM (only 5MB free on my 16GB system right now). But that's a good thing--the RAM is being used to cache what you're most likely to run next so it loads instantly. Still this freaked a lot of people out and many Vista/Win7 users took bad advice and have disabled SuperFetch despite its performance improvements. And lots more were scared and stuck with archaic, slow, buggy, insecure, RAM-limited XP--pretty much the worst thing you could do to a modern, 64-bit, multi-core machine.

 

The write issues you mentioned are outdated. SSDs are progressively becoming more recognized/supported by the OS, where all the manual tuning isn't necessary.  For example, wear leveling was introduced in past generations of SSD firmware which helps keep the 'write wear' in check.  Windows 7 recognizes SSDs and handle them differently from conventional drives.  In a typical, single, non-RAID SSD setup, according to MS, "Typically, Windows 7 automatically disables these services for your SSD disk." (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2727880)  TRIM is also supported, and it's automatic (again, assuming W7 and single drive arrangements).

 

Windows automatically disables all those services if Windows boots from a SSD (a lot to gloss over with "typically"). If you add in a SSD on which to install games, you'll have to disable these services manually. But the point stands, either way by disabling these service the SSD makes all your extra much-faster RAM inert and useless rather than serving as a useful cache to speed up your system, making your existing hard disks function more slowly.

 

It's a tradeoff. And I still think most desktop PC gamers will get more of a performance boost for all games and applications for less money by adding RAM and running SuperFetch rather than adding a SSD and disabling SuperFetch.

I don't think we'll ever see a pc that loads everything at startup....not only time consuming but the software/hardware combo that would be needed to eliminate the volatile state of ram memory would be GOD awfull expensive.

 

That's funny 'cause the Amiga had no problem (re)booting the entire OS from a recoverable (non-volatile) RAM disk, while supporting gobs more RAM and being much cheaper than the Macs and PCs of the day.

 

Ah, the good old days...

 

Lothar of the Hill People, wether you realize it or not, your OFFice mod is actually functioning, in a minimal way, as a ram drive.

 

Not sure what you mean?

 

On a side note, I personally would not have more than 12-16gb's of system ram in any pc unless you're going to run a ram drive.

 

That's the great thing about SuperFetch, it uses all your extra RAM as an automatic RAM disk for the programs and data you're most likely to load: All of the advantages of running stuff from a RAM disk, with nNone of the hassle of actually managing a separate RAM disk and copying files to hard disk to save them.

 

[almccoyjr 7]

That's funny 'cause the Amiga had no problem (re)booting the entire OS from a recoverable (non-volatile) RAM disk, while supporting gobs more RAM and being much cheaper than the Macs and PCs of the day.

 

Ah, the good old days...

 

 

Ah yes, the good old days. There are some substantial reasons why pc architecture went with ram and not rom. At one time. Amiga even did some "experiments" with eeproms to no avail. Amiga's "RAM disk" was a variation of a eeprom.

 

plug_nickel

[Tamper 9]

 I'd certainly admit a dose of sarcasm, Lothar, but you have to admit many of those things I said are certainy implied by what you've said.  Logically, if 16G marks the point beyond which SuperFetch makes SSD performance look sluggish, well, what the heck would be the point in putting an SSD in a system with 16G+ RAM?

 

(Because it's still going to be faster, that's why...but never mind that for a moment...)

 

Either way, I don't make any money off SSDs *lol* so folks are free to do whatever, of course.  I just know what made "the" difference for me, and I try to help others understand it; hopefully maybe benefit from it as well.

 

I admittedly cannot convey the benefits of having 16G+ of RAM...

 

...or can I?  Hmmm.

 

I have a question, then:

 

In my sig, you'll see performance figures for all my volumes, both the plain old 500G hard drive and two different SSD-based RAID0 arrays, on two different controllers and two different interfaces - the difference being apparent in the respective read and write figures.  Also, you'll note I currently have 8G of RAM.

 

I've been considering adding memory lately, and it's gotten cheaper all the while...*heh* Father's Day is coming up...NewEgg emailed me a discount on the exact memory I used...

 

So, here's the thing: The performance figures you see in the sig (as well as a lot of others I fool with, but you don't see in the sig) are all programs.  I've not disabled SuperFetch.  RAM, we all agree, is faster than even the fast Revodrive SSD...

 

So, I get another 8G of RAM, slap it in the rig here, run the same several programs enough times, I should fairly soon see my SSDs performance get even faster...

 

I will have gone well past the 8G that isn't enough to give the increase.  Even if the SSDs are doing their best, the RAM's still faster...and the drive testing apps I use are all programs which would be recognized, cached and made faster by SuperFetch.

 

Even better, I think...since I have two different types of drives (but both solid state media) I ought to see some comparative differences once the caching kicks in, as well....

 

Oh, man, this is fun...I'm almost giddy here...*whew*  I gotta go get a beverage

[almccoyjr 7]

Oh, man, this is fun...I'm almost giddy here...*whew*  I gotta go get a beverage

Better make it coffee; big cup, black and extra strong.

[Tamper 9]

*heh* RAM ordered; 10% off the price that was already $5 cheaper than MicroCenter (my usual haunt).  4-7 days free shipping (but it always comes faster...I love NewEgg).

 

Can't wait to test!  Now where's that coffee?

[hood 2]

What absorbing reading.I have learned more from you men in this post than I have in years of bumbling around the web.And the result? I am getting 16G of RAM and an SSD !!! Many thanks to you all.

[Tamper 9]

Now that's the way to cover all the bases, hood!  I'm sure you'll enjoy a performance improvement worthy of your cost and effort.

 

I wonder if we might impose on you - strictly in the name of science - to do a little experiment.  I do hate to ask, but, given the discussion we've had here, I'd welcome any actual specific testing to verify.

 

Don't suppose you'd be willing to try it?  I can describe what I had in mind, but it will take some of your time, and require you to hold off on putting all the new parts in your machine at once, temporarily.