Best way to utilize SSD drive with Adobe/Photoshop?

[complexity]

  Hi guys, 

Just bought my first SSD drive (240GIG)and are about to set it up for the purpose of doing any Adobe CC work the fastest I can.

Obviously I have to install the Windows 7 Pro system onto the drive and Adobe files, I imagine that any work Adobe .psd/work files I should also keep on the drive?

So partition it like

C: Windows 100GIG

D: Program Files and Work Files 140GIG

???

Or should I add another drive E: so I can set scratch disks to it?

Or can scratch disks just utilise my old non SSD drive?

I imagine getting everything onto SSD would be the way to go, but thats only guessing.

Any help or advice would be great

[Lundberg02]

Sure it does, but I mean why not tons of RAM and get rid of all the extra bus/controller crap. It should be relatively easy.

[Noel Carboni]

There will always be a need for more permanent, slower storage that costs less.

You may think I spent a lot on my SSDs, but what would 2 TB (2000 GB) of DDR3 RAM at today's prices cost?  About 3 to 6 times as much as I spent.  Even I don't want to spend ten thousand dollars on mass storage.

People DO spend that much for computers that absolutely MUST be the most powerful available.  Remember when computers cost millions of dollars?

-Noel

[station_two]

Noel Carboni wrote:

…Even I don't want to spend ten thousand dollars on mass storage…

"Even" you? ?? !! That points to vast wealth or your usually being a spendthrift. 

[Noel Carboni]

Nothing so grand.  It points to me being one of the first to build an expensive SSD array.  I'm neither wealthy nor extravagant, just rabid about computer performance, as software engineering is my career.

-Noel

[JJMack]

Noel Carboni wrote:

I'm neither wealthy nor extravagant

In your mind's eye.  Could be right for you know what your using your PC for.  If your use is just Photoshop.  I would say your extravagant. Though Photoshop will gobble up machine resources. Photoshop does not need that much machine to perform well and as you have observed hardly utilizes your GPU at all. Even Photoshop extended 3D stuff uses little GPU and your dual fast multi core xeons processor could handle all that GUP useage with ease.  You need to start doing video edioting  use Adobe Premier Pro so you get some use out of your GPU. You may want to upgrade to a Nivida Quadro 6000 so you can render your video effects in realtime. Or just play some games have a little fun and utilize the GPU you have.

[Noel Carboni]

It's a big system because I run a software engineering business with it, which involves not only graphics work but research, software development, testing (including running a number of virtual machines), online collaboration, serving files with Subversion, writing books, plus hobby uses as well such as astroimage processing...  You name it, I do it, with lots of multitasking.  I'm a career software engineer and entrepreneur, and yes, I know this much system isn't for everyone.  This computer does for me what 6 or more systems used to be needed for, and some of the things I've done - e.g., building the SSD array - were R&D activity that turned out to be wildly successful.

I did some gaming a bunch of years ago - around the time of the 80486 and things like ''Doom'' - but gaming just doesn't light my fire any more.

-Noel

[Lundberg02]

I had my own PDP 11-34 back in the early 70s, courtesy of your tax dollars. A roomful of eight bit computing with six foot tall hard drive and no CRT. I also had at the same time, one of the very first HP-35 calculators. So don't talk to me about cutting edge, LOL.

2TB of RAM from OWC= 18k

[Noel Carboni]

The PDP-11/34 was a 16 bit system, Richard.

Someone calculated that it takes something like 10 billion or more instructions just to boot up a modern operating system today.  This takes a modern computer a paltry few tens of seconds to execute. 

Beyond just big numbers making your mind reel, consider this:

The PDP-11/34 in the 1970s had about 0.1 MIPS in computing power (compare to several thousand MIPS from a modern Intel processor). 

That means (assuming it had a sufficient instruction set, memory, and disk space, which of course it didn't) your room-sized PDP-11/34 would have taken the better part of a week just to boot up the OS we now enjoy after a couple of sips of coffee.

Flipping the mental exercise around, if we were to boot RSX-11 (the OS those old PDP-11s ran in the '70s) on a modern computer today, assuming it took 50 million instructions to boot it up (probably less than that) - would be ready for use in a tiny fraction of a second.

We've come a long way since:  PIP /LI

-Noel

[Hudechrome]

My first encounter with a commercial computer was the PDP-8. We also had an 11, then an IBM 360.

Comparing the PDP 8 to a modern desktop is like comparing a Bach cantata to "Tinkle tinkle little Star"!

Oh wait! Hayden used it!

And what is PIP/LI?

Message was edited by: Hudechrome

[JJMack]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pip#mw-navigationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pip#p-search

Look up pip or PIP in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Pip, Pips, Pipp, PIP or PIPS may refer to:

• "Pip" (South Park), an episode of South Park
• Palisades Interstate Parkway
• Picture-in-picture, a television feature
• Police Information Point, a kiosk run by British police
• Puerto Rican Independence Party, a political party
• Peruvian Investigative Police, plainclothes police unit
• Battle of the Pips, an incident in World War II
• Punjab International Public School, a high school in Pakistan
• Pakistan International Public School and College, a school and college in Pakistan
• Pug Impression Pad, an object used for the census of tigers
• Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies, an art group
• Plug-in Prius, a Toyota PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle}
• The Pip, the nickname of a clandestine radio station of Russian origin

The PIP is not far from where I live drive on it quite often.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li#mw-navigationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li#p-search

Look up li in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Li or li may refer to:

• Li (Confucian), the Confucian concept of ritual
  • Li (Neo-Confucianism), philosophical concept of principle
• Li (unit), a traditional Chinese unit of length, often used when discussing distance
• Prunus salicina (Pinyin: lǐ), a Chinese species of plum
• Li people (黎族), an ethnic group of China
• Lisu people (傈僳族), an ethnic group of China
• 51 (number), written as "LI" in Roman numerals
• Li or cash (mass), a Chinese weight unit for ¹⁄₁₀ candareen
• Li, the polylogarithm function
• Li, the logarithmic integral function
• 954 Li, an asteroid
• License number plate of German district Lindau

Then there is the command line

1. DEC PDP-11 History - William Bader

   http://williambader.com/museum/vax/pdphistory.html
   PIP /LI displayed a directory listing. PIP *.*/PU purged old versions of files. PIP file.txt;*/DE deleted all versions of a file. Digital microcomputers and memories ...

[Hudechrome]

That command line is most likely.

I did Google the term and nothing concrete relating to this discussion showed.

Noel obviously had something concrete concerning this discussion and referring to PIP/LI!

Or did he? Maybe trying to skunk us!

[Lundberg02]

The PDP-11-34 was indeed 16 bit, how gauche of me.  I made a serious mistake one day and entered the core dump command. It immedately began a Sorcerer's Apprentice task on the line printer and started to fill them room with paper.  I threw the breaker.

[Hudechrome]

You load 16 bits, whadda ya get.......

[Trevor.Dennis]

Hudechrome wrote:

You load 16 bits, whadda ya get.......

  Funny

It's ironic that we have to thank gamers for a fair bit of the power we see in personal computers nowadays.  From a GPU point of view at least.  I've mentioned looking to replace my laptop recently, and it is a gaming system that I have more or less settled on, is an MSI GT70 ONE with GTX680M and 32GB RAM.  It has some interesting specs:

Dual 128Gb SSDs in raid0 for OS, plus 750Gb HDD.  That seems completely OTT, but I imagine gamers move a lot of data around between levels (or whatever it is they do).  The raid0'd SSDs appealed to me because of Premiere Pro.  My desktop system would not run smoothly with PremPro untill I set up a pair of V'raptors in a raid0.

BTW  I can remember becoming quite upset when running away from big red monsters in Doom 2.  Other than that, mu gaming experience consists of Sapce invaders on a Commodore PET. 

[JJMack]

If you get a new laptop with a Nnvidia Quadro chipset display adapter  Premier Pro may perform better rendering video effects.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/premiere-pro-cs6.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cs6-sdi-transmit-plugin.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-certified-drivers.html#partner_id=7&application_id=269&page=driv...

[Trevor.Dennis]

JJ they don't tend to recommend the Quadro cards for desktop systems on the PremPro hardware forum, but I do have options available with those cards.  I'll do some more research before I commit.  Thanks

[complexity]

Okay guys I forked out for an additional 2 ssd drives (now have 3 all up).

I didn't partiton any of the drives, although I did change my BIOS from IDE to ACHI (as I heard this is the better one to use these days), and again my Motherboard limits me to SATA II 3gig (and unfortuantley 8gig ram).

I set it up

C: Windows (120GIG SSD)

D: Progs + Temp work files (240GIG SSD)

E: Scratch disk (120GIG SSD)

I havent actually been able to hook up the scratch drive as yet because I have run out of SATA ports on the Motherboard (6 all taken).

I did some benchmarking, generally the loading of programs and opening of files is a lot quicker.

Load windows 7 to desktop

old drive: 1m 14sec - SSD: 26sec

Open Photoshop (and cursors stopped thinking/active)

old drive: 27sec - SSD 10sec

Open .psd (1500px x 1500px 72ppi) 200mb with 400 layers)

old drive: 1m 1sec - SSD 42sec

Windows Experience Index

old setup

Processor 4.6

Memory (RAM) 5.4

Graphics 6.7

Primary hard disk 4.1

Base score 4.3

new setup

Processor 4.9

Memory (RAM) 5.4

Graphics 6.7

Primary hard disk 7.8

Base score 4.9

So as Noel suggested I might have to look at a HighPoint Rocket 640L Controller http://www.scorptec.com.au/computer/45656-r640l to get the benefit of SATA 6gbs and to utilise the SSD scratch drive not being used.

I think my system is still a little bit sluggish/laggy though, eg when in Photoshop CC (in a reasonable sized file (1500px x 1500px 72ppi) 200mb with 400 layers) I click on a layer and it takes 5tenths to for it to do it (just not snappy), but I guess that's just a limitation of what I'm running (3.0ghz Intel Pent D dual core, 8gig ram) and the size and complexity of the file, and even when in the file manager moving windows around sometimes it lags for a fraction of a second etc.

I might start investigating things like the performance of my memory, CPU, temps, voltages and see if I can diagnose/get anything out of it there. Never done that sort of testing before in detail so if anyone know anything about getting the best out of that side of a system please let me know.

Thanks again for all the help

[Noel Carboni]

Great feedback, complexity.

A 400 layer file can take a bit of computing to render a preview display.

Your Windows boot time is good, but Photoshop might ought to be starting faster than what you described.  I think your processor may be the limitation at this point (noting the not-so-high 4.9 WEI rating).

The specific PCIe SATA III controller I mentioned was the Highpoint 2720 SGL.  It can support individual disk volumes as well.  The 640 you mentioned uses only half as many PCIe lanes, so I'd suggest moving to a better model if you really want the best performance.  Keep in mind the controller could move to a newer computer if you should get one.

-Noel

[Hudechrome]

WEI here:

7.2

Disk data transfer rate: 7.7

I'm basically Processor limited , which gave me the WEI of 7.2.

[Lundberg02]

I think it's pointless to add SSDs to a SATAII  computer.  I bought a couple of Thunderbolt devices  for my existing mini, in preparation for next year's Mac mini with SATA III when I could get some of the bus speed and the low latency of SSD, and have most of the benefit of Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt devices are so limited by SATA II that I only get Firewire 800 performance.

[station_two]

Thanks for that info, Richard.  It's extremely valuable to me as owner of a 65-lb Mac Pro1,1 (SATA II) owner.  I'll cease eyeing SSDs for this machine.

[Trevor.Dennis]

station_two wrote:

Thanks for that info, Richard.  It's extremely valuable to me as owner of a 65-lb Mac Pro1,1 (SATA II) owner.  I'll cease eyeing SSDs for this machine.

Richard?  I must say I don't hold with non specific user names.  I also love forums where real names are mandatory, like DVInfo and some of the photography forums.  But I thought My Lundberg - if that's who you were referring to - was James.  Is that right? 

BTW  I have always used my real name right back from the BBs and Usenet.

[station_two]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

…I must say I don't hold with non specific user names.  I also love forums where real names are mandatory…

Trevor,

My Adobe ID bearing my true name has been set to read-only since August of 2009  , although it still appears as among the top contributors in more than one forum (e.g. in 6th place in the ACR forum, just two notches below Noel; 8th in the Bridge forum; 4th in the Typography forum; 5th in the Adobe Type forum, etc) even four years after the banishment.

I post here thanks to the benevolence of such powers that be as have knowledge of my true name, and they can (will) zap me or ban me at anytime if Noel keeps calling me by my first name.

I've been around since at least 2002, and in all I had accumulated about 25,000 posts before this station_two account was started in May of last year.  I'm pretty confident I have Lundberg02's first name right, as I just checked our private correspondence through regular email. 

This exchange right now probably means the result of the death of station_two now. 

[Hudechrome]

Well, I've also called you by your real name also, but seeing the problem will cease and desist.

I completely disagree with the notion that SSD's are a waste of money for Sata II. The jump in performance I see is well worth it. My SO, whose computer is a Pentium 4 running XP has not paid much attention to mine, until I switched to SSD. Now I can hardly get her away from this machine. She is definitely non-tech as to understanding computers, but she definitely knows how to use them. So her experience is of interest to me.

[Lundberg02]

Apps may load noticeably faster, but data transfer speed is the only thing that matters to me.

BTW station_two our discussion was deleted by the moderator as expected, so I'd still like to hear about your RAW experience with ColorPerfect, by email if necessary.

My first name is correct. I too, have been around for many moon, kemosabe.