garageCube

[gmint]

I don't know if it's just that I've been doing more with Modul8 than I have been in the past, but it seems like Modul8 has been lagging on me a bit recently. That's prompted me to start looking for ways to upgrade hardware to keep things working smoothly. With the price of SSD drives coming down, and the performance they can provide in certain circumstances, that seems like a pretty obvious way to go (and something that I tried this past weekend). That said, I do have a technical question regarding the use of an SSD with Modul8.

Let's say I'm running Modul8 on a MBP with ample (6-8 Gigs of RAM) and an SSD. Would I be better off allowing Modul8 to cache my clips into RAM where it can (using large RAM settings in M8) or, with the fast speed of the SSD, would I better off just running clips direct from disk and leaving RAM available for other operations?

Obviously, the transfer speed of RAM is still going to exceed the speed of an SSD, but I'm wondering if there is additional overhead introduced by moving data from the SSD to RAM which wouldn't be incurred otherwise.

Any insight (especially well-informed insight) would be greatly appreciated!

[anomad]

. not really well informed, but i've been looking into swapping out my internal DVD on my mbp w/something like this - http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ (there are several models, i'm still researching... )



-james
(a nomad. )

[gmint]

I've been thinking about that as well. I actually popped a small SSD into a friend's MBP core i5 for a show this weekend. I was actually surprised that it didn't make more of a difference which prompted me to ask this question...

[The Midi Thief]

If you're swapping out the the DVD for a SSD I've heard that OWC's solution (http://eshop.macsales.com/search/Mercur ... a+3G+120GB) is supposed to be better than the OptiBay. I think it was majorly because OWC's enclosure, the USB equipped box you'll get for your old superdrive, is better.

I'm thinking of doing this too so this topic is really interesting. And will the speed differ if you swap the DVD for a SSD and attaching a SSD drive over Thunderbolt? I guess it could be hard to compare swapping out the Superdrive on a old MBP to using an SSD on a new MBP since there are other major components that are upgraded that will improve the speed.

[lotech]

I did the OWC upgrade about 15 minutes after unboxing my new MacBookPro. 2 words: DO IT.
No matter how much you think you need a DVD you really need a 750GB 7200rpm HDD with a 120GB 6G SSD. Makes everything boot/open/restart quicker as you'd hope and is one less 'weak link' in a good system.

[vanakaru]

I have been using HDD instead of optical drive for years. In my last classic body MBP the opdrive is PATA, so there are good and bad enclosures for that. Namely some tend to unmount the drive after long period and some work just flaky and some work reliable. Since mine is PATA I see no reason to put SSD in it. I have SSD in main slot and 750gb HDD in optibay for storage.
When I run live show I load needed media to main drive root and so far I am quit fine with this setup.
But to the original post I would chime in with Modul8 being not as snappy as before. So I have experimenting with v.2.5 and some more. It seems to make things better if I run Onyx to clean everything before the show.

[lotech]

Yeah having 2x 6G data ports on the current gen MBP is a pretty big deal. 500Mb/s R/W off you OS drive is great for temporary playback media (and the OS itself).

[gmint]

My original questions still remains though: if you've got an SSD drive, is it better to simply go direct from disk, or is there still a reason to cache videos to RAM?

That brings me to another thought--I know there's an option to decompress video and load it into RAM. Unfortunately, that can be prohibitive for any sizable clips. What about an option to decompress video beforehand, store it on disk (presumably an SSD disk) and go direct from that? In that case, it would seem like choice of codec could essentially be negligible since decompression would be done ahead of time...

[VjKg]

I can't truthfully answer the RAM vs SSD question but my setup is just like lotech's and I love it. I still use RAM up to my limit then my HDD after that. I am waiting out the SSD prices for the optical bay and weighing my thunderbolt options. I have done several shows with 10 layers of 720p content and madmapper and have had no sluggishness. The OWC kit even comes with all the tools you need to do the job and their online how to videos rock.

[bareimage]

If you're swapping out the the DVD for a SSD I've heard that OWC's solution (http://eshop.macsales.com/search/Mercur ... a+3G+120GB) is supposed to be better than the OptiBay. I think it was majorly because OWC's enclosure, the USB equipped box you'll get for your old superdrive, is better.

I'm thinking of doing this too so this topic is really interesting. And will the speed differ if you swap the DVD for a SSD and attaching a SSD drive over Thunderbolt? I guess it could be hard to compare swapping out the Superdrive on a old MBP to using an SSD on a new MBP since there are other major components that are upgraded that will improve the speed.

I have their drive. I am not terribly happy with the results. I just orderd corsair 110 gb SSD for 90 dolars Will post on perfmance

[anomad]

. on this point of performance... are there any standard methods/tests to get an idea of re-creatable performance metrics?

. ie, what is the benefit of getting an SSD over reading from a 10k RAID 5 via firewire 800 setup? that sort of thing...

. like a MacBench score or something...


-james
(a nomad. )

[lotech]

Well the max throughput of FW800 is 80mb/s. You really need to go via Thunderbolt or Internal SSD if you want reliable multi layer playback. So in my mind SSD is the best cheap(ish) option.

[gmint]

Just an update from a few of my observations:

1) I ended up purchasing a Retina MacBook Pro so the whole question of RAM vs SSD is currently overshadowed by the fact that this machine is so fast in the first place that any difference is probably negligible.

2) I have a Mac Pro with an SSD boot drive and I can definitely see a difference when I pre-load large clips into RAM vs. streaming them direct from disk. However, the SSD isn't top of the line or anything so that could have something to do with it, but there does seem to be a difference.

That said, I'd still be interested in hearing what GarageCUBE has to say about this. I really think it's something that should be discussed now that fast SSD drives and high speed external interconnect (e.g. Thunderbolt, USB 3) are available (not to insinuate that something like USB 3 is ever going to be able to out-perform RAM).