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SSD in low performance HTPC

post #1 of 17
7/7/10 at 6:12am
Thread Starter 
I am considering a cheap htpc, and questioning whether to use an SSD to store the operating system and higher usage apps. Considering the Zbox HD-ID11 (atom d510). I plan to use this for HD TV viewing, blu ray viewing. Would using an SSD (say Intel X25-M G2 or Intel X25-V) improve performance on a low performance cpu? or would the cpu speed be the bottle neck? Would startup time be much improved? thanks.
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post #2 of 17
7/7/10 at 6:26am
Can atom handle blu ray decoding? I now have two systems with an ssd in them. The first is my main rig with an x25-m g2, which has an i7 920, 6 GB ram, ati 4890 gpu. So that is a pretty high end system. I initially had a WD caviar black 1 TB drive in it, and when I put the ssd in I noticed a massive difference in boot time, application launch time, and general responsiveness. I had such a good experience in that computer that when I built my htpc I put a x25-v 40 GB drive for the OS, media players, web browser etc. It still has about 19 GB free so it is plenty big enough for a htpc os drive. The rest of the system consists of a phenom ii dual core, 4 GB ram, ati 5570 gpu. So it is a pretty mid range system and it 'feels' almost as snappy and fast as my other computer. I would highly recommend a small ssd as a boot drive, as I think for htpc use it will really help mask slower hardware elsewhere, especially since the 30-40 GB ones can be found for well under $100 these days.
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post #3 of 17
7/7/10 at 6:41am
Atom on itself can't handle Blurays, but the Ion GPU can handle it. When it comes to SSD on Atom I think the bottleneck is the Atom even on HDD.
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post #4 of 17
7/7/10 at 7:06am
Thread Starter 
thanks for your replies. if i consider higher end processors such as the i3 or even i5 will it then make a difference? thanks
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post #5 of 17
7/7/10 at 7:07am
I compromised and went with a 2.5" laptop drive and 4gig of memory. The load times are a little slower but the extra memory keeps the swapping to a minimum and makes quite a difference compared to any 1gig or 2gig system I have run. I did that because I wanted HDD space for "working" media storage and a SDD would just be too expensive in that big a size, meaning I'd need both a SSD and HDD. My system is a minimalistic mini-ITX build. If I come across a good deal on a SSD one day I'll shoe-horn it in there.

So, I guess that means I'd recommend W7 x64 with 4gig of memory and a SSD as a minimum build to eliminate the typical system bottlenecks if you don't have any price or space constraints.

You have to decide if you can use a SSD or need a SSD and HDD and if the configuration you'd need will work in your build and if you want to spend that much. If you go conventional HDD then you will basically have a little slower booting and program access times.

Peter
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post #6 of 17
7/7/10 at 8:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tony1997 View Post

thanks for your replies. if i consider higher end processors such as the i3 or even i5 will it then make a difference? thanks

I don't think it would make any huge change for a HTPC, there is improvement when it comes to boot, and perhaps you'll get to see some changes when it comes to loading screens with alot of images, like a video browser, but that's just my theory I don't have any proof that it'll actually happen. Just remember that people were experementing with RAMdisk and flash storage to improve that performance back in the days. But there might have been software changes that's taken care of the same job since then.
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post #7 of 17
7/7/10 at 11:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tony1997 View Post

thanks for your replies. if i consider higher end processors such as the i3 or even i5 will it then make a difference? thanks

The i3 is the better choice. I have an i3-530 and it takes about
25 seconds from the moment I hit the power switch to
the desktop on Win7. The SSD is is a MTRON Mobi 3500. It is about
2 generations behind the current crop of SSDs, so it is slow
compared to what that can be purchased today.

I also tried the Intel X25M-G2 in an Acer Aspire One (Atom D410 Netbook)
It took Win7 about 60 seconds to boot, about 10 seconds faster than the
original HDD. The Atom is the bottleneck as the SSD did not make the
machine seem any faster.
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post #8 of 17
7/8/10 at 2:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tong Chia View Post

The i3 is the better choice. I have an i3-530 and it takes about
25 seconds from the moment I hit the power switch to
the desktop on Win7. The SSD is is a MTRON Mobi 3500. It is about
2 generations behind the current crop of SSDs, so it is slow
compared to what that can be purchased today.

I also tried the Intel X25M-G2 in an Acer Aspire One (Atom D410 Netbook)
It took Win7 about 60 seconds to boot, about 10 seconds faster than the
original HDD. The Atom is the bottleneck as the SSD did not make the
machine seem any faster.

Is the bottleneck the Atom or is it the disk controller? I'd have to guess disk controller.

Mike
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post #9 of 17
7/8/10 at 4:15pm
The Atom d510 supports SATA2 so the disk controller will not be a bottleneck for you with a SSD. I'd think you'd notice a marked improvement with a SSD over a hard drive. I upgraded my Core2 T5600 1.8Ghz laptop with an Intel X-25M G2 which is capped at 140MB/s due to SATA1 and I've seen a huge performance increase. It performs better than a new $1000 laptop using an archaic moving media storage device in general desktop use (obviously 3d performance isn't as good)
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post #10 of 17
7/9/10 at 7:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by PanamaMike View Post

Is the bottleneck the Atom or is it the disk controller? I'd have to guess disk controller.

Mike

I think it is the single channel memory controller on the Atom coupled
with the small cache. (The Mobi is 100Mbs read and write, SATA1
would not have bottlenecked it))

The SATA controller transfers data directly to memory, and while that is
happening the CPU cannot access memory.

If the data is in cache then it can continue to work otherwise it is
stalled until the io transfer completes.

Windows chops the disk accesses into multiple iorequests, and the CPU
competes with the SATA controller to get to the memory controller for
the duration of the transfer.

When the CPU is data starved the apps slow down and this partially
cancels out the faster data access from the SSD.

A fast SSD puts a lot of pressure on the mechanism the faster it goes.
This is where the C2D has the upper hand. The memory subsystem is
2X faster (dual channel) and there is 4X the cache (2M vs 512k) on the
T5600. So the on the C2D the SATA controller will take less time to
complete the transfer (for a given block size). If the CPU has to
wait, the chances of a stall is reduced as the cache is larger and probablity
of finding the executable code is higher

Intel has made some attempts to address this as the memory controller
runs at 667/800MHz on the D510 as opposed to 533MHz on the N330.
The CPU fsb is unchanged at 533MHz.

With careful tuning of the kernel working set the Atom can produce good IO
thruput. A lot of Atom NAS vendors use Linux because of this.

The difference here is that the custom OS kernel does not have to
deal with general desktop duties.
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post #11 of 17
7/10/10 at 5:48pm
Here's an interesting drive

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...178&CatId=2682

Also, look at the second performance video. The SSD was 41 seconds faster booting compared to a 7200rpm Hitachi. However, the test then goes through a sequence of loading applications and the difference there was 43 seconds (the total test time difference was 85 seconds). Watch how long each application takes to load on the SSD vs the 7200rpm drive. Seems to me the SSD advantage was more at boot time than while loading applications.

If a lower power CPU becomes IO starved then it'd seem the dfference would be even less.

Peter
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post #12 of 17
7/10/10 at 7:25pm
Except the WDC SSD in that review is not a worthy test for 'SSD' and you can expect even greater results if you shop wisely when buying a SSD. It's one of the weaker SSDs on the market in 4KB or less read/writes, which is where applications gain the greatest performance. The hybrid momentus also happens to be in these charts.

In my personal experience, the OCZ Vertex 2, one of the best SSDs on the market today per reviews, has shown a marked improvement even in HTPC functionality. I used to use a WD Raptor 10k for my OS. Within Windows Media Center, I see a huge performance increase with the Vertex 2. When I hit guide, it immediately appears - it used to take a second or more to appear. When I click on Media Browser and go into each section, it immediately loads and doesn't take seconds. When I click on a video to play, or skip forward/back/pause/resume it is also instantaneous. It used to take a second or two for a video to start and there was a slight hiccup when skipping before it continued smoothly.

Some may not see these 'few seconds' as worth the extra cost, but to me it makes the HTPC experience much more pleasing and makes me think of it less as a PC acting as an entertainment device but instead as a dedicated entertainment device. This of course isn't to say an Atom the OP is using would benefit this greatly. I'm using a Core i7 930 with 6GB DDR3 and ATI 5870 (I game on this HTPC as well).
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post #13 of 17
7/10/10 at 7:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshDorhyke View Post

Here's an interesting drive

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...178&CatId=2682

Also, look at the second performance video. The SSD was 41 seconds faster booting compared to a 7200rpm Hitachi. However, the test then goes through a sequence of loading applications and the difference there was 43 seconds (the total test time difference was 85 seconds). Watch how long each application takes to load on the SSD vs the 7200rpm drive. Seems to me the SSD advantage was more at boot time than while loading applications.

If a lower power CPU becomes IO starved then it'd seem the dfference would be even less.

Peter

The difference in bootup time between the WD SSD and the Hitachi HDD was 24 sec. (30 SSD vs 54 HDD).
The WD is typical of SSD bootup (~30 sec.). The Hitachi is slow for a 7200RPM notebook [my notebook's 5400RPM ST9160310 boots in 47 sec.
The difference for the entire run was about a minute and a half.
One thing's for sure, that Hitachi takes its sweet time booting.
It's funny how I watched Seagate's demo and all of my attention was on the other drives.
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post #14 of 17
7/10/10 at 11:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tong Chia View Post

I think it is the single channel memory controller on the Atom coupled
with the small cache. (The Mobi is 100Mbs read and write, SATA1
would not have bottlenecked it))

The SATA controller transfers data directly to memory, and while that is
happening the CPU cannot access memory.

If the data is in cache then it can continue to work otherwise it is
stalled until the io transfer completes.

Windows chops the disk accesses into multiple iorequests, and the CPU
competes with the SATA controller to get to the memory controller for
the duration of the transfer.

When the CPU is data starved the apps slow down and this partially
cancels out the faster data access from the SSD.

A fast SSD puts a lot of pressure on the mechanism the faster it goes.
This is where the C2D has the upper hand. The memory subsystem is
2X faster (dual channel) and there is 4X the cache (2M vs 512k) on the
T5600. So the on the C2D the SATA controller will take less time to
complete the transfer (for a given block size). If the CPU has to
wait, the chances of a stall is reduced as the cache is larger and probablity
of finding the executable code is higher

Intel has made some attempts to address this as the memory controller
runs at 667/800MHz on the D510 as opposed to 533MHz on the N330.
The CPU fsb is unchanged at 533MHz.

With careful tuning of the kernel working set the Atom can produce good IO
thruput. A lot of Atom NAS vendors use Linux because of this.

The difference here is that the custom OS kernel does not have to
deal with general desktop duties.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, that seems like a poor design, pretty surprised it works in this way.

Mike
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post #15 of 17
7/11/10 at 2:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by PanamaMike View Post

Thanks for the detailed explanation, that seems like a poor design, pretty surprised it works in this way.

Mike

You are welcome.

The Atom has more in common with the 12year old Pentium III desktop
design. Back then the fastest thing it faced nothing more aggressive
than an IDE-ATAPI controller. IO thruput was so poor that I could never
get more than 60% of line rate in a GigE NIC.

A lot has changed in that time.

The i3 is part of Intel's best and latest design and it shows. The i3-530
running on SSD (Mobi 3500) starts windows in 17s. My home office box is
an i7 @4GHz using the X25M-160-G2 and it starts in about 15s.

Time measured when bios hands over to windows and to the time the
desktop appears.

TMT3 and XBMC complete starting before I can move my fingers off the
mouse button.

The i3-530 is in my opinion one of the best options for a htpc. It is relatively
cheap, cool running and fast.
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post #16 of 17
7/11/10 at 9:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliver Deplace View Post

The difference in bootup time between the WD SSD and the Hitachi HDD was 24 sec. (30 SSD vs 54 HDD).

The chart at the end shows 18 seconds vs 59 seconds. Did you pick the times from the video during the test?

Jrwalte posts interesting comments. Some of the SSD gain is in the "small stuff", which consists mostly of random reads and writes, and not just in program launches. Also, if you are going to buy a SDD then make sure you get one of the fast random read/write models to help with this small stuff. No point just going 1/2 way.

The WD SSD really isn't that far behind on larger file size sequencial reads which is most of the task it has to perform when starting applications.

I just posted that link so you could watch it and see some possible differences you might experience.

Peter
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post #17 of 17
7/11/10 at 3:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshDorhyke View Post

The chart at the end shows 18 seconds vs 59 seconds. Did you pick the times from the video during the test?

Yes, I watched them reach their desktops and noted the times.
Since we can't do anything until it reaches that point, that is the earliest point that I consider the computer to be up. I did see that 18 sec. readout, but when I re-watched, it isn't apparent why that point would be significant as Windows was still loading.
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