Les McLean
In Memoriam
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- Name
- Les
- Edit My Images
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Recently purchased a Solid State Drive (Intel 160GB X25-M) to function as a primary (boot) drive in my main desktop.
I'd read a number of reports highlighting the gains to be had against a more conventional sata hard drive, but none particularly related to the real world of processing that togs employ regularly.
Therefore, I thought I would run a number of tests, comparing like for like, SSD against a conventional sata drive, looking at a number of applications that are generally important to post processing images.
For the test set-up, I installed windows 7 (64bit) on two hard drives within the same desktop, first drive a conventional 1TB sata drive (no RAID configuration), second hard drive, 160 GB SSD, the drives in a dual boot setup. With virtually bare bone drives with just the operating system , I loaded CS4 on each, configured similarly, with memory usage(via preferences...performance) at 80 % on each (5737mb), with a separate partition on each individual drive as a scratch disk.
I removed all peripherals except for monitor, keyboard and mouse.
The base desktop configuration- Quad processor (i7 2.8 GHz), 8GB Memory, twin Nvidia 9500GT Graphics cards.
I ran each test 3 times (except for tests 1-5 and test 10) and took the average of the 3 tests for each drive.
Test breakdown:
Tests 1 to 5 relate to the Windows Experience score:
1-Processor: calculations per second
2-Memory (RAM): memory operations per second
3-Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero
4-3D Business and gaming graphics
5-Primary hard disk-Disk data transfer rate
6-Windows start up, from pressing 'enter' at the dual boot screen to actual desktop appearing on screen.
7-CS4 start-up, from clicking the CS4 icon to CS4 opening-no plug-ins installed.
8-Dragging 7 tiff (125mb total) files into CS4 to open simultaneously, identical tiff files each on respective source drive (sata or SSD)
9-Copy 30 raw files (214mb) from SD card (via card reader) to source drive (either sata or SSD)
10-Loading 1 tiff file of 105mb( 4992 x 3328 pixels) and applying surface blur filter-radius 100, levels 255
11-Same file-box blur filter applied- 999 pixels
12-Copy 4 video files (6.59 GB) from source drive to source drive i.e. from 1 folder in sata drive to another folder on same drive and partition, similarly with SSD.
13-Copy same video files from a separate internal sata drive to source drive (sata or SSD)
14-Copy same files from source drive to separate sata drive.
Test Results (tests 1-5 higher is better, 6-14 lower is better)
Thoughts.
Although the tests were not the most scientific, the results tend to favour the SSD drive as being generally faster.
I noticed this also after the tests, when I'd set up the OS (and activated) on a single (SSD) drive, programmes just seemed to spring to life immediately without any lag.
From the tests, very surprised that the windows boot uptime was around twice as long for the sata drive against the SSD ,CS4 start up was equally impressive in the SSD.
Copying large files (or a number of small files) resulted in a significant (but not as dramatic) difference in performance.
Less of a difference appeared to be the processing power within CS4, although I employed some extreme filtration effects, (one lasting 18 minutes), the difference between the drives was not as great as the other tests.
Not really surprised at the windows experience score, as the only variable in the tests was the hard drive, reflected in the respective scores.
On the downside, the cost of SSD drives is a major factor, with the retail price around £2 per GB, although will likely fall over time.
Am I pleased I took the plunge and splashed out -you bet
I'd read a number of reports highlighting the gains to be had against a more conventional sata hard drive, but none particularly related to the real world of processing that togs employ regularly.
Therefore, I thought I would run a number of tests, comparing like for like, SSD against a conventional sata drive, looking at a number of applications that are generally important to post processing images.
For the test set-up, I installed windows 7 (64bit) on two hard drives within the same desktop, first drive a conventional 1TB sata drive (no RAID configuration), second hard drive, 160 GB SSD, the drives in a dual boot setup. With virtually bare bone drives with just the operating system , I loaded CS4 on each, configured similarly, with memory usage(via preferences...performance) at 80 % on each (5737mb), with a separate partition on each individual drive as a scratch disk.
I removed all peripherals except for monitor, keyboard and mouse.
The base desktop configuration- Quad processor (i7 2.8 GHz), 8GB Memory, twin Nvidia 9500GT Graphics cards.
I ran each test 3 times (except for tests 1-5 and test 10) and took the average of the 3 tests for each drive.
Test breakdown:
Tests 1 to 5 relate to the Windows Experience score:
1-Processor: calculations per second
2-Memory (RAM): memory operations per second
3-Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero
4-3D Business and gaming graphics
5-Primary hard disk-Disk data transfer rate
6-Windows start up, from pressing 'enter' at the dual boot screen to actual desktop appearing on screen.
7-CS4 start-up, from clicking the CS4 icon to CS4 opening-no plug-ins installed.
8-Dragging 7 tiff (125mb total) files into CS4 to open simultaneously, identical tiff files each on respective source drive (sata or SSD)
9-Copy 30 raw files (214mb) from SD card (via card reader) to source drive (either sata or SSD)
10-Loading 1 tiff file of 105mb( 4992 x 3328 pixels) and applying surface blur filter-radius 100, levels 255
11-Same file-box blur filter applied- 999 pixels
12-Copy 4 video files (6.59 GB) from source drive to source drive i.e. from 1 folder in sata drive to another folder on same drive and partition, similarly with SSD.
13-Copy same video files from a separate internal sata drive to source drive (sata or SSD)
14-Copy same files from source drive to separate sata drive.
Test Results (tests 1-5 higher is better, 6-14 lower is better)
Thoughts.
Although the tests were not the most scientific, the results tend to favour the SSD drive as being generally faster.
I noticed this also after the tests, when I'd set up the OS (and activated) on a single (SSD) drive, programmes just seemed to spring to life immediately without any lag.
From the tests, very surprised that the windows boot uptime was around twice as long for the sata drive against the SSD ,CS4 start up was equally impressive in the SSD.
Copying large files (or a number of small files) resulted in a significant (but not as dramatic) difference in performance.
Less of a difference appeared to be the processing power within CS4, although I employed some extreme filtration effects, (one lasting 18 minutes), the difference between the drives was not as great as the other tests.
Not really surprised at the windows experience score, as the only variable in the tests was the hard drive, reflected in the respective scores.
On the downside, the cost of SSD drives is a major factor, with the retail price around £2 per GB, although will likely fall over time.
Am I pleased I took the plunge and splashed out -you bet
