The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Application Launch Times
You know the drill; grab a stop watch and let's see how fast some of these apps run. The first on the list was just how long it takes to boot my application testbed. This is a fully configured machine with over 50GB of applications and data. I started timing as soon as I hit the power button and stopped it as soon as I got to the Windows desktop. Note that around 15 seconds of the boot takes place before the machine ever finishes its POST:
Most of the SSDs perform similarly here and all of them are a good 20 - 30% faster than the WD VelociRaptor.
I tried launching Adobe Photoshop CS4:
Not all applications will launch faster than a VelociRaptor on a SSD, but let's not forget that the VelociRaptor is the world's fastest consumer desktop hard drive. Put one of these SSDs in a notebook and you'll completely redefine the word performance.
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Erickffd - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
Also created an account just to post this comment.Really impressive and well done article ! Will stay tune for further developments and reviews. Thank you so much :)
Also... very impressed by OCZ's respond and commitment upon end users needs and product quality assurance (unfortunately not so commun by large this days among other companies). Certanly will buy from them my next SSDs to reward and support their healty policy.
Be well ! ;)
Gasaraki88 - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
This truly was a GREAT article. I enjoyed reading it and was very informative. Thank you so much. That's why Anandtech is the best site out there.davidlants - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
This is one of the best tech articles I have ever read, I created an account just to post this comment. I've been a fan of Anandtech for years and articles like this (and the RV700 article from a while back) show the truly unique perspective and access that Anand has that simply no other tech site can match. GREAT WORK!!!Zak - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
I just got the Apex. I'd probably cough up more dough for the Vertex after reading this. However, I've run it for two days as my system disk in MacPro and haven't noticed any issues, it's really fast. But I guess I'll get Vertex for my Windows 7 build.Z.
Nemokrad - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
What I find intriguing about this article is that these smaller manufacturers do not do real world internal testing for these things. They should not need 3rd parties like you to figure this shit out for them. Maybe now OCZ will learn what they need to do for the future.JonasR - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
Thanks for an excellent article. I have one question does anyone know which controller is beeing used in the new Patriot 256GB V.3 SSD?
tgwgordon - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
Anyone know if the Vertex Anand used had 32M or 64M cache?Dennis Travis - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
Excellent and informative article as always Anand. Thanks so much for posting the truth!!IsLNdbOi - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
Can't remember what page it was, but you showed some charts on the performance of SSDs at their lowest possible performance levels.At their lowest possible performance levels are they still faster than the 300GB Raptor?
Edgemeal - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
It's too bad Windows and applications don't let you select where all the data that needs to be updated and saved to is stored. If that was an option a SSD could be used to only load data (EXE files and support files) and a HDD could be used to store files that are updated frequently, like a web browser for example, their constantly caching files, from the sound of this article that would kill the performance of a SSD in no time.Great article, I'll stick to HDDs for now.