Do I need an SSD drive for PP?

Manfr3d · August 11, 2010

Hi there,

I am ordering a 27" iMac i7 and was wondering if I really need to shell
out $600 more to get it with an internal 256GB SSD Drive? I already have
extra ram so I will end up with 12GB total. Is there still a need then, to
upgrade from the standard 1TB Harddrive to a SSD Drive? I would prefer
to spend that extra money on some external storage or a lens instead.

Any advice?

Richard · August 11, 2010

12 GB is a hell of a lot of memory. Unless you are doing extremely complex (many layers) stuff, large panos, or multi-shot HDRs, I would be surprised if you ever used it all. I would wait and keep an eye on the efficiency readout. If you see it dropping below 100% (meaning that you are paging), then you might consider it.

Manfr3d · August 11, 2010

Hi Richard, thanks for the reply.

I bought the 12GB not just for photo but also for video editing and
programming (work) where I often have multiple VM's with windows
and linux running at the same time.

What do you think about the speed of the SSD vs. a standard drive?

Richard · August 11, 2010

SSDs are much faster but wear out sooner. In the end it's your call whether the boost in speed is worth the (long term) expense. Personally, I think they're still way too expensive, but then in Spain, we usually aren't in any great hurry.

Ric Grupe · August 11, 2010

Richard wrote: »

but then in Spain, we usually aren't in any great hurry.

Sounds like you folks have it figured!

thumb

angevin1 · August 11, 2010

Manfr3d wrote: »

Hi Richard, thanks for the reply.

I bought the 12GB not just for photo but also for video editing and
programming (work) where I often have multiple VM's with windows
and linux running at the same time.

What do you think about the speed of the SSD vs. a standard drive?

Manfr3d,

I added an SSD to my old unit and then included two into the new unit I built.

Of all of the changes I made, added and upgraded thru, including a QuadroFX3800 nvidia graphics card, and 12 GB of RAM, the SSD is by far the best choice I made>.<

SSD's Read tons faster than even the fastest disc HDD, but they tend to write a bit slower. Most of the apps you will use in video and photo need read speeds. The 12GB will come in handy during your rendering of video. Working in Premeire, I've noticed I can render a HD 1080i 500MB file in under one minute. Oh, and I only added 160GB SSD's.

ENjoy!

CatOne · August 11, 2010

Richard wrote: »

SSDs are much faster but wear out sooner. In the end it's your call whether the boost in speed is worth the (long term) expense. Personally, I think they're still way too expensive, but then in Spain, we usually aren't in any great hurry.

They really don't wear out sooner. The Apple engineers are smart enough and know about things like wear leveling… practically it would be 10+ years of 12 hours/day use before you could hope to "wear out" the SSD, at which time a point and shoot will probably have 10 GB per shot and you'll have a 25 TB SSD drive, so no worries

Manfr3d · August 11, 2010

CatOne wrote: »

They really don't wear out sooner. The Apple engineers are smart enough and know about things like wear leveling… practically it would be 10+ years of 12 hours/day use before you could hope to "wear out" the SSD, at which time a point and shoot will probably have 10 GB per shot and you'll have a 25 TB SSD drive, so no worries

Bummer, Apple uses Samsung SSD's which have 10x higher access times
than Intel X25 ssd drives for example. Also Apple does not support TRIM which is
needed to keep the disk fast when it gets filled with data (otherwise
defragmentation can reduce transfer speeds up to 50%) ... I think I better
wait until prices come down a bit and some more user experience is
available for macs. Actually, $600 for 256GB looks alot like an early adopers price doesnt it?

Richard · August 11, 2010

Manfr3d wrote: »

Actually, $600 for 256GB looks alot like an early adopers price doesnt it?

Give it a couple of years to become mainstream.

CatOne · August 12, 2010

Manfr3d wrote: »

Bummer, Apple uses Samsung SSD's which have 10x higher access times
than Intel X25 ssd drives for example. Also Apple does not support TRIM which is
needed to keep the disk fast when it gets filled with data (otherwise
defragmentation can reduce transfer speeds up to 50%) ... I think I better
wait until prices come down a bit and some more user experience is
available for macs. Actually, $600 for 256GB looks alot like an early adopers price doesnt it?

This is wrong. Apple specs the firmware on its devices and it's custom and tuned for the Macs. Going off stock SSD access times is folly. 10x higher access time ROFL. Check benchmarks.

Also, TRIM is not strictly necessary either. Performance of the SSDs in the Macs does not slow down over time, this per testing, so tell me again what the problem is?

Pricing on SSDs is an issue, yes. They're not inexpensive at this time. But they are WAY faster for many tasks, and they are hugely more reliable than spinning disks.

Manfr3d · August 12, 2010

CatOne wrote: »

This is wrong. Apple specs the firmware on its devices and it's custom and tuned for the Macs. Going off stock SSD access times is folly. 10x higher access time ROFL. Check benchmarks.

Also, TRIM is not strictly necessary either. Performance of the SSDs in the Macs does not slow down over time, this per testing, so tell me again what the problem is?

Why so agressive? It seems you feel the need to push your opinion trough and not really contribute to this thread with backed up knowledge. Please go away *pat.on.your.back*

CatOne · August 12, 2010

Manfr3d wrote: »

Why so agressive? It seems you feel the need to push your opinion trough and not really contribute to this thread with backed up knowledge. Please go away *pat.on.your.back*

Given I'm personal friends with a couple of the file systems engineers at Apple, and have discussed this issue with them at length, I feel I'm qualified to comment.

pathfinder · August 12, 2010

SSDs are coming, and soon. I would not be surprised to see laptops with SSDs as a standard configuration very soon ( I see that Apple is offereing them now - think how much that will help battery life in a laptop.

Cat, any comment how these drives from OWC compare to the SSDs offered by Apple? I have upgraded my Macs a fair amount with offerings from OWC, memory, drives, Video card etc and to date have been quite satisfied. I have been wondering if an SSD would keep me in my present desktop tower for a couple more years yet, as a main drive for system and application files.

In an interesting twist, Apple's SSDs are cheaper than the ones from OWC. That's interesting, and unusual too.

hieu · August 12, 2010

Even without TRIM, there is usually some sort of "garbage collection" system working that will keep the SSD from slowing down, don't worry about that issue too much.

OP - Personally, I feel the SSD is a good option if you don't mind spending the money. I have a RAID0 192 SSD Samsung drive setup in my laptop that I do my editing work on and then store them on a 2TB external hard drive once I am done. Currently, TRIM does not work in the RAID0 config, but with the GC system, I have not experienced any slowdowns. It is a hell of a lot faster than even a 10k RPM HD. My opinion - Do you need it? Certainly not. But if it doesn't set you back, it is definitely worth it.

CatOne · August 12, 2010

pathfinder wrote: »

SSDs are coming, and soon. I would not be surprised to see laptops with SSDs as a standard configuration very soon ( I see that Apple is offereing them now - think how much that will help battery life in a laptop.

I have the 256 GB SSD in my laptop. I don't think it will markedly improve battery life. I have the previous generation 15" so I think "claimed" battery life is 8 hours (as opposed to 9 in the new ones?) and I get probably 5+ hours of normal use. I think SSD versus HD would perhaps improve battery life by say 15 minutes or so? Really the BIGGEST improvement for a portable is the vastly better durability. Increased speed is a bonus. From login window to fully populated menu bar is like 2 seconds; all menu items pop in at the same time, instead of crawling in 1-by-1 like it is with a hard drive.

Cat, any comment how these drives from OWC compare to the SSDs offered by Apple? I have upgraded my Macs a fair amount with offerings from OWC, memory, drives, Video card etc and to date have been quite satisfied. I have been wondering if an SSD would keep me in my present desktop tower for a couple more years yet, as a main drive for system and application files.

Lloyd Chambers seems to like them:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-OWC-Mercury_Extreme.html

I haven't tested them. I do find it annoying that he makes assertions about the Apple drives and TRIM support and all that, though, not having tested them. I wouldn't be completely shocked if the fact that he gets compensated by OWC when you buy through them could influence his methods of testing.

In an interesting twist, Apple's SSDs are cheaper than the ones from OWC. That's interesting, and unusual too.

I'm sure Apple ships hundreds or thousands times more SSDs than OWC sells at retail. That probably affects the supply of materials :-)

pathfinder · August 12, 2010

Thanks for your comments.

I am sure Apple sells more Ram than OWC also, but they (Apple) do NOT sell it cheaper than OWC's RAM.....

ivar · August 13, 2010

Do I need an SSD drive for PP?
Do you need one? Definitely not. Can it be faster? I'm not sure post processing your images will go faster, but other things may be.

angevin1 · August 13, 2010

pathfinder wrote: »

I have been wondering if an SSD would keep me in my present desktop tower for a couple more years yet, as a main drive for system and application files.

Even on my old machine ( 2007 Intel Q6600), which I use for everyday tasks now. The SSD's make it behave much faster than before. I had maxed out the RAM at 8GB, and even made purchase of a Quadro FX300 graphics card...but the SSD made the largest difference in everything.

pathfinder · August 13, 2010

I had a suspicion that was true. If the prices for ssd fall, I may replace my main drive with one since my ram and video card are more than adequate. Thanks for comment, Tom.

angevin1 · August 13, 2010

pathfinder wrote: »

I had a suspicion that was true. If the prices for ssd fall, I may replace my main drive with one since my ram and video card are more than adequate. Thanks for comment, Tom.

Pleasure!

Truth is, I went about replacing the HDD's and then graphics-card due to wanting to eek out WHAT it was that was the major ____??. HDD's are a bottle neck ( of info read/write) and the SSD simply made my old Quad core behave and respond so very much better. In video rendering I do find that the new machine I built along with it's 12GB of RAM, does indeed render faster. But the old Machine rendered faster too after that simple SSD fix.

hieu · August 13, 2010

Nowadays, with the processing power, RAM amount, high-performing video cards, the bottleneck usually lies in your old hard drive. It is almost a waste of good components if your hard drive can't keep up.

Overfocused · August 13, 2010

For a video profession this may be something you'd want to look into. You can put your whole scratch drive/page file on it and go nuts. However, like you said, there are other things to shell that much $ on. Texas instruments also makes a similar drive but I can't remember the name of it for the life of me

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=fusion-io+ioxtreme+&x=0&y=0

Manfr3d · August 16, 2010

I though I'd report back on how the iMac without SSD performs.

I was able to put it through some tests with PS and LR. The thing is fast,
it just flies over my 20-40mb raw files like they where thumbnails.
LR takes four seconds to start with a 18000 pictures library and PS takes about 3.
I can certainly live with those "waiting" times. The only time when
the machine got slow was before I added the other 8GB to the existing 4.

By the way, all 8 cores are used by LR to genreate previews. However the load
does not go up to 100%. I guess that the external FW800 disk I use is the bottleneck
here. An SSD would probably help speed things up here but then 1TB of pictures would
not fit on any of todays SSD drives. I for one am happy I did not shell out $600 for
an SSD. But your mileage may vary

chrisjohnson · August 16, 2010

Manfr3d wrote: »

Hi there,

I am ordering a 27" iMac i7 and was wondering if I really need to shell
out $600 more to get it with an internal 256GB SSD Drive? I already have
extra ram so I will end up with 12GB total. Is there still a need then, to
upgrade from the standard 1TB Harddrive to a SSD Drive? I would prefer
to spend that extra money on some external storage or a lens instead.

Any advice?

SSD is more for folks who travel a lot and need the robustness, fast start, and low power.

For desktop work the extra performance does not trade-off at these prices versus the reduced capacity. Just my 2 cents. Better stay with the 1TB hard drive and spend the money saved on something else.

PS. I see you did! Wise man.

Do I need an SSD drive for PP?

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