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Solid state drives are in our computing futures. While prices right now make them mostly impractical for those of us without unlimited cash cheat codes, prices will fall and we’ll be buying more of them instead of the standard magnetic, spinning hard disk drives.

Perhaps by the time that SSDs are affordable, we’ll still be using Windows 7 (which means within the next few years). Thankfully, Microsoft has included several features in Windows 7 that accounts for the presence of an SSD.

“Windows 7 tends to perform well on today’s SSDs, in part, because we made many engineering changes to reduce the frequency of writes and flushes. This benefits traditional HDDs as well, but is particularly helpful on today’s SSDs,” wrote Michael Fortin, one of Microsoft's Distinguished Engineers, in the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

When a solid state drive is present, Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation, Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching.

“These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck,” explained Fortin.

One of the more notable advancements in Windows 7 is support for the Trim command. The reason for the command deals strictly with the way that data is written to NAND memory. For an exceptional explanation of why Trim is important, check out AnandTech’s article on the topic.

Fortin detailed how Trim will work in the upcoming OS:

“In Windows 7, if an SSD reports it supports the Trim attribute of the ATA protocol’s Data Set Management command, the NTFS file system will request the ATA driver to issue the new operation to the device when files are deleted and it is safe to erase the SSD pages backing the files. With this information, an SSD can plan to erase the relevant blocks opportunistically (and lazily) in the hope that subsequent writes will not require a blocking erase operation since erased pages are available for reuse.

“As an added benefit, the Trim operation can help SSDs reduce wear by eliminating the need for many merge operations to occur. As an example, consider a single 128 KB SSD block that contained a 128 KB file. If the file is deleted and a Trim operation is requested, then the SSD can avoid having to mix bytes from the SSD block with any other bytes that are subsequently written to that block. This reduces wear.

“Windows 7 requests the Trim operation for more than just file delete operations. The Trim operation is fully integrated with partition- and volume-level commands like Format and Delete, with file system commands relating to truncate and compression, and with the System Restore (aka Volume Snapshot) feature.”

Author:	NephyrS [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:31 pm ]
Post subject:	PC Upgrades
So it's been a long, long while since I've played in the world of upgrading my computer, and I'm feeling quite out of touch. We just finished moving, and I have a bit more space and free time, so I decided to open up the desktop that crapped out on me last December, and see what the problem was- turns out the graphics card had "partially" died. So I went to Best Buy today (and I hate myself for it) and picked up a new card, and it's working fine. My question is what else I can do to tweak the performance, or if there are really any sizable upgrades worth doing. It's a solid computer, and I think it's got a good bit more life in it- and it's not like I play much in the world of top end, demanding games. It's a Dell XPS 410 from 2006 (yes, old, I know) with WinXP. The processor is a Core 2 Duo 2.4 (Conroe 6600) with a 4 MB L2 Cache. I have 4 GB of 1066 ram in it, and the card I just upgraded to is the XFX Radeon 4550 HD (1GB). Not the best video card, but way better than the Geforce 7300 LE that was in there. The drive is a decent one- it's a 7200 RPM Baracuda from Seagate (250GB, I don't have much stuff). I'm mainly planning on using it for light/medium gaming (WoW, EQ2, EQ1, Diablo 1-3, etc), as well as for watching DVDs and streaming stuff. I've got "work" computers for school now, so I really don't need to do any work/school related stuff on this one (yay!). Even before the video card update, this was able to drive WOW at ~1600x1200 and EQ at 1900x1200 for me at what I consider playable, so I'm thinking going from the 256 7300LE to the 1 GB 4550 will help quite a bit. The PSU is rated at 375, but from what I read, Dell is notorious for under-rating their PSUs, and people say this could be considered a 450 pretty easily. The heatsink is massive, and the cooling system is quite robust, since it was designed as a gaming system when the released it. I can't really upgrade the ram anymore (4 GB is the cap), and while I'm open to upgrading the graphics card, I'm somewhat limited by my PSU. What about an SSD? I have a second bay for a drive, would it be worth it to try to put a small SSD in for OS/Game files? Is it even possible to install an SSD in an older computer without SATA 3? Suggestions welcome.

Author:	Kaffis Mark V [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:11 pm ]
Post subject:
Is there a reason you feel driven to upgrade it more? With that replacement of the GPU, your RAM or CPU will prove the bottleneck for pretty much anything I can think of, aside from load times. You won't be able to see any benefit out of upgraded RAM until you upgrade to a 64-bit OS anyways. I don't have a lot of first-hand experience with SSD, and I haven't been following the product availability to know what's out there that would be SATA2 or whether the SATA3 offerings are backwards compatible. So I'll leave that for somebody else. But I think, at this point, pinpointing what you're looking to improve will be the best way to get sound advice. As you say, the games you've been playing were really just out of reach of performing very well on your old setup, and that old card was a budget version even in 2006. (While the new one is a pretty solid mid-range card from a generation ago that's fallen to an affordable price) I have no doubt you'll thrash the games you mentioned at full resolution with it.

Author:	NephyrS [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:16 pm ]
Post subject:
No real drive to upgrade- I guess I was more asking if there was something I was missing in the system, or if it seemed pretty solid for what I wanted to do. 2006/2007 or so was the last time I really looked into parts and upgrades, and I know quite a bit has changed since then. The SSD is the only part I could think about wanting to upgrade/add, but I'm not sure if the CPU will prove a bottleneck to it or not- although I think Midgen mentioned SSDing an old computer and seeing great increases in EQ1 performance.

Author:	Lex Luthor [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:26 pm ]
Post subject:
If your computer is from 2006/2007 you need to get an entirely new computer or else you will likely bottleneck it with upgrades.

Author:	Lenas [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:30 pm ]
Post subject:
If it were my computer, I wouldn't spend any money on single part upgrades. I'd be looking at getting some 64bit hardware/os set up. How much are you willing to spend? $499 all-in-one desktops are comparable to your current setup.

The Glade 4.0 https://gladerebooted.net/

PC Upgrades https://gladerebooted.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6802	Page 1 of 1

Author:	Lex Luthor [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:41 pm ]
Post subject:
Personally if I got another desktop to replace mine, it would be a very cheap one... desktops are dying out for home use in my opinion. Next-gen gaming consoles will be the finishing blow, although those are a couple years out probably.

Author:	NephyrS [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:44 pm ]
Post subject:
Haha, no love for Core 2 Duo . I guess that answers my questions, then. I probably won't upgrade the whole computer until I can't keep this one running satisfactorily anymore/it won't play what I want it to, which I imagine will be a bit down the road. But I do get your point about spending on single part upgrades- I only really did the video card because the old one was completely non-functional, and I really wouldn't pay more than $70 or so for a small SSD. I just thought I might be missing some major upgrade (aside from a new computer), but I guess that's not the case.

Author:	Midgen [ Tue Jul 26, 2011 3:28 pm ]
Post subject:
An SSD could be migrated to the new system you buy down the road, and you could reap some benefits now, so go ahead and get one (as long as your current system/controller will support it). Just keep in mind that Win7 (assuming you game on Windows) has features that optimize and protect SSD's that XP does not. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/window ... ,7717.html Toms Hardware wrote: Solid state drives are in our computing futures. While prices right now make them mostly impractical for those of us without unlimited cash cheat codes, prices will fall and we’ll be buying more of them instead of the standard magnetic, spinning hard disk drives. Perhaps by the time that SSDs are affordable, we’ll still be using Windows 7 (which means within the next few years). Thankfully, Microsoft has included several features in Windows 7 that accounts for the presence of an SSD. “Windows 7 tends to perform well on today’s SSDs, in part, because we made many engineering changes to reduce the frequency of writes and flushes. This benefits traditional HDDs as well, but is particularly helpful on today’s SSDs,” wrote Michael Fortin, one of Microsoft's Distinguished Engineers, in the Engineering Windows 7 blog. When a solid state drive is present, Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation, Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching. “These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck,” explained Fortin. One of the more notable advancements in Windows 7 is support for the Trim command. The reason for the command deals strictly with the way that data is written to NAND memory. For an exceptional explanation of why Trim is important, check out AnandTech’s article on the topic. Fortin detailed how Trim will work in the upcoming OS: “In Windows 7, if an SSD reports it supports the Trim attribute of the ATA protocol’s Data Set Management command, the NTFS file system will request the ATA driver to issue the new operation to the device when files are deleted and it is safe to erase the SSD pages backing the files. With this information, an SSD can plan to erase the relevant blocks opportunistically (and lazily) in the hope that subsequent writes will not require a blocking erase operation since erased pages are available for reuse. “As an added benefit, the Trim operation can help SSDs reduce wear by eliminating the need for many merge operations to occur. As an example, consider a single 128 KB SSD block that contained a 128 KB file. If the file is deleted and a Trim operation is requested, then the SSD can avoid having to mix bytes from the SSD block with any other bytes that are subsequently written to that block. This reduces wear. “Windows 7 requests the Trim operation for more than just file delete operations. The Trim operation is fully integrated with partition- and volume-level commands like Format and Delete, with file system commands relating to truncate and compression, and with the System Restore (aka Volume Snapshot) feature.”

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