Started playing with Intel Smart Response Technology

[El_Capitan]

Well, I was curious since I felt like I needed the 96GB's for other things and could used the 64GB Kingston SSDNow V+100 to test out just how well the Intel Smart Response Technology (SRT) really is. I'm using it on my four Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB's in RAID 10.

 

Note, this is for Z68 motherboards.

 

First thing I did was launch StarCraft 2. The initial loading time will not see any benefits since it isn't cached, and thus took somewhere along 10 - 15 seconds. However, once I exited and launched it again, it was barely 1 second!

 

Then, I was curious. How would a benchmark look?

 

Well... see for yourself.

 

First run (no benefit since there's no cache):

 

Second run (is now cached):

 

Here's another one without the 64GB SRT:

 

Here's one with (interesting to note, write speeds are slower):

 

 

Lol, anyone want me to run any other tests? This is fun!

[SpeedCrazy]

We need a drop jaw smiley.

That is insane.....

[The Smith]

I want the Windows startup time!

[rivalary]

Ooooo!

[El_Capitan]

I want the Windows startup time!

Unfortunately, I can't test that at the moment (another SSD is already my dedicated OS/App drive). I might try and set that up for later (it wouldn't take too long).

[HarryTaco]

Thanks Capitan. Im thinking that adding a cheap 64g SSD to my 1tb Samsung with SRT is a better answer overall. I will continue to run my OS on my Crucial M4 128g and maybe SWTOR along with some Utilities. All the rest can go on the Samsung. Hey thanks for all your input on the boards man. You ROCK.

[VaporX]

This is a great way to get the benefit of an SSD with the size to cost ratio of a standard drive, however be aware that this really works best if you have a limited set of programs you use alot. This is just a cache and if you spread out your programming usage alot the benefit will not be nearly as great. However if you have a single game or two you play all the time plus office apps, browsing and that being about it, this rocks. I know that for me, as I am only playing one game a lot right now, the speed is about the same as a pure SSD rig when it comes to the feel of the system.

[El_Capitan]

Yeah, I haven't read the finer details that Intel provides on when the cache gets cleared, but my guess is, you won't over-saturate a 64GB cache (more like 61.057GB) all that quickly. I just wonder if:

1. It's a serialized type of cache. For instance, if the disk gets saturated, the first cached item gets cleared to make room.

 

or

 

2. It's prioritized. So, say you launched 20 different programs, and you add a 21st. The first of that program doesn't get cleared to make room, instead, the least used program(s) get cleared instead.

 

It would take a while to test it. I guess I'll just document on this thread of any real-world findings.

[Fogel]

From what I understand is that it doesn't use the whole drive to cache, something like 20GB or something by default ...but is configurable.

[El_Capitan]

From what I understand is that it doesn't use the whole drive to cache, something like 20GB or something by default ...but is configurable.

You allocate how much of the drive you want to cache when you set it up. Intel suggests that no more than 64GB is needed, but reviews that test SRT suggest the 20GB that Intel recommends (because they want you to buy their 20GB SSD's to use for it) is too low.

[hardnrg]

Could you install the OS onto the SSD, and also use it for the SRT cache, thus having the fast OS boot time *and* the cached performance boost?

 

I'm pretty interested since I use RAID and SSDs... no Z68 board, so at the moment I have 3x SSD RAID-0 (3x64) and am thinking about going back to RAID-10 with the 4x64 SSDs I have, but if I can have this SSD/HDD hybrid on Z68 with fast OS load times, I might shell out for the Z68.

[El_Capitan]

Could you install the OS onto the SSD, and also use it for the SRT cache, thus having the fast OS boot time *and* the cached performance boost?

 

I'm pretty interested since I use RAID and SSDs... no Z68 board, so at the moment I have 3x SSD RAID-0 (3x64) and am thinking about going back to RAID-10 with the 4x64 SSDs I have, but if I can have this SSD/HDD hybrid on Z68 with fast OS load times, I might shell out for the Z68.

I don't see why not. Basically if you have a 128GB SSD, you partition it to have 64GB reserved for caching. The other 64GB (actually less than that) can be used for your OS.