Whoops my bad. Still most SSDs will attempt to be powered on for a duration after power loss either through a battery or capacitor for the sake of data integrity, because there is a risk of data corruption on power loss.
Whoops my bad. Still most SSDs will attempt to be powered on for a duration after power loss either through a battery or capacitor for the sake of data integrity, because there is a risk of data corruption on power loss.
That varies wildly by architecture. The problem is when an SSD writes first to cache, and only later copies the data from cache to the NAND flash. If it reports a write as being done, then loses power before it can commit the write to NAND, the write fails and the file can be corrupted. That's a bigger problem in architectures that rely heavily on DRAM write caching than models that only use a little bit of cache as part of the controller chip and push writes out to NAND much faster.
And it's worth noting that hard drives have a much bigger case of the same problem, precisely because copying writes from the cache to platters is much, much slower.
When the big box stores start including them in the desktops they sell at markdown budget prices throughout the year as well as black friday... Problem is they markdown the shit that's been on their shelves since forever so we get the old crap.
The average consumer (gamer or otherwise) doesn't build their computers. They sure as hell aren't savvy enough to upgrade their CPUs and such every 3-4 years.
They grab whatever is on sale at Walmart or BestBuy or Costco, slap a better graphics card in it, then expect to play on ultra settings any game that comes out in the next couple of years.
...And the technology and the market makes that a reality, so until new becomes old, spending $100+ over your budget so the loading screen finishes a couple of seconds faster is a tad bit excessive.
When the big box stores start including them in the desktops they sell at markdown budget prices throughout the year as well as black friday... Problem is they markdown the shit that's been on their shelves since forever so we get the old crap.
It will probably be several years between the moment that an SSD makes sense for 99%+ of consumer computers and the moment that even half of prebuilt computers have an SSD. Unfortunately.
The bright side is that tablets and smartphones almost invariably have an SSD built in, even if they often won't call it that. That may well be part of the reason for the devices' popularity, not just the mobility.
Originally posted by Quizzical Originally posted by UhwopStorage over performance. The average pc user, even gamer, is more concerned with having more storage than they are with getting a slight performance increase with considerably less storage at a still higher price point. The average pc user just wants their crap to load and games to play. Spending slightly more on a 3rd of the storage so that the computer and applications boot 2 seconds faster really isn't a deal to most people. The example I read about the guy who was told he put a limiter on his PC by installing a HD is nonsense. The guy was only trying to sell him something he doesn't really need, and the performance increase isn't making that big a difference. Were talkîng about time measured in MILLISECONDS, and an SSD does not increase frame rate in games no matter what intel says. SSD and gaming performance is a myth perpetrated by a company trying to sell its product to people who don't need it. The people that benefit the most from an SSD are the ones who need to run multiple programs at once, like people that bot multiple game clients at the same time. An SSD would be of more benefit to me doing digital art than it ever would to someone playing WoW, unless that guy was botting six WoW clients on the same machine, and I would still get more of a benefit out of it.
It's not a slight performance increase. If you built a $600 computer with a good SSD and a $2000 computer with no SSD and otherwise spent the money sensibly on each, and then asked someone who wasn't at all tech savvy to use both for a bit and say which computer was faster, he'd say that the $600 computer with the SSD was faster--and that it wasn't close.
Yes, we're talking about time measured in milliseconds, at least for hard drives. For SSDs, it's often in microseconds. For system memory, it's nanoseconds. For some CPU purposes, it's picoseconds. But if something reliably takes 100 picoseconds longer on this CPU than on that one, that can mean that this CPU is considerably slower than that one. Small time differences multiplied by doing something an enormous number of times can easily add up to things that are noticeable to humans. For example, the main thrust of DirectX 12 is to reduce the performance hit of certain operations that currently take tens or hundreds of nanoseconds on typical hardware.
Also, keep in mind that it's milliseconds, multiplied by however many files your handling. Last time I peeked - games have a ~lot~ of files that get accessed a lot (or have them compressed into a single PAK/HOG/DAT/PIGG/whatever file). You multiple a millisecond by a few hundred, and your up to seconds before too long.
And you may say "What's a few seconds?" but that all adds up too. Going from a boot time of minutes to seconds is extremely noticable. Sure, you may only turn on your computer once or twice a day.. but how many days does your computer last? That's hours over the life of a SSD... and that's just in boot time savings.
As far as gaming goes, it may not show up in FPS, but it does show up. It's completely noticeable when your waiting for the other 4-5 people in your instance to load in every... single... time.... It's very noticeable in texture pop, and can even help some game engines with microstudder.
It's definitely not a myth. It's one of those "See it to believe it" things. Most people, after they get used to it, will definitely complain about it if they ever use a computer without an SSD again.
The only reason i own a SSD is because i got one for free.
I really don't see any reason to buy a SSD as an average consumer, even during gaming it makes very little difference for me.
Loading screens might be a little faster, but for me personally thats not worth spending a lot more money on, I'd much rather get a bigger and cheaper HDD, and booting my computer faster seems pointless as i usually have something to do during the time It's doing so anyway ( Breakfast before work, dinner when i get home )
SSD's will have to get a lot cheaper for me to buy into them, i may not even get one untill HDD's are no longer an option.
Comments
Whoops my bad. Still most SSDs will attempt to be powered on for a duration after power loss either through a battery or capacitor for the sake of data integrity, because there is a risk of data corruption on power loss.
SSD sudden power loss
That varies wildly by architecture. The problem is when an SSD writes first to cache, and only later copies the data from cache to the NAND flash. If it reports a write as being done, then loses power before it can commit the write to NAND, the write fails and the file can be corrupted. That's a bigger problem in architectures that rely heavily on DRAM write caching than models that only use a little bit of cache as part of the controller chip and push writes out to NAND much faster.
And it's worth noting that hard drives have a much bigger case of the same problem, precisely because copying writes from the cache to platters is much, much slower.
When the big box stores start including them in the desktops they sell at markdown budget prices throughout the year as well as black friday... Problem is they markdown the shit that's been on their shelves since forever so we get the old crap.
The average consumer (gamer or otherwise) doesn't build their computers. They sure as hell aren't savvy enough to upgrade their CPUs and such every 3-4 years.
They grab whatever is on sale at Walmart or BestBuy or Costco, slap a better graphics card in it, then expect to play on ultra settings any game that comes out in the next couple of years.
...And the technology and the market makes that a reality, so until new becomes old, spending $100+ over your budget so the loading screen finishes a couple of seconds faster is a tad bit excessive.
It will probably be several years between the moment that an SSD makes sense for 99%+ of consumer computers and the moment that even half of prebuilt computers have an SSD. Unfortunately.
The bright side is that tablets and smartphones almost invariably have an SSD built in, even if they often won't call it that. That may well be part of the reason for the devices' popularity, not just the mobility.
Yes, we're talking about time measured in milliseconds, at least for hard drives. For SSDs, it's often in microseconds. For system memory, it's nanoseconds. For some CPU purposes, it's picoseconds. But if something reliably takes 100 picoseconds longer on this CPU than on that one, that can mean that this CPU is considerably slower than that one. Small time differences multiplied by doing something an enormous number of times can easily add up to things that are noticeable to humans. For example, the main thrust of DirectX 12 is to reduce the performance hit of certain operations that currently take tens or hundreds of nanoseconds on typical hardware.
Also, keep in mind that it's milliseconds, multiplied by however many files your handling. Last time I peeked - games have a ~lot~ of files that get accessed a lot (or have them compressed into a single PAK/HOG/DAT/PIGG/whatever file). You multiple a millisecond by a few hundred, and your up to seconds before too long.
And you may say "What's a few seconds?" but that all adds up too. Going from a boot time of minutes to seconds is extremely noticable. Sure, you may only turn on your computer once or twice a day.. but how many days does your computer last? That's hours over the life of a SSD... and that's just in boot time savings.
As far as gaming goes, it may not show up in FPS, but it does show up. It's completely noticeable when your waiting for the other 4-5 people in your instance to load in every... single... time.... It's very noticeable in texture pop, and can even help some game engines with microstudder.
It's definitely not a myth. It's one of those "See it to believe it" things. Most people, after they get used to it, will definitely complain about it if they ever use a computer without an SSD again.
The only reason i own a SSD is because i got one for free.
I really don't see any reason to buy a SSD as an average consumer, even during gaming it makes very little difference for me.
Loading screens might be a little faster, but for me personally thats not worth spending a lot more money on, I'd much rather get a bigger and cheaper HDD, and booting my computer faster seems pointless as i usually have something to do during the time It's doing so anyway ( Breakfast before work, dinner when i get home )
SSD's will have to get a lot cheaper for me to buy into them, i may not even get one untill HDD's are no longer an option.