sbg_consulting

More interesting reading in Tech Report: they've been doing extended endurance tests on SSDs, and have written more than 1.5PB (one-point-five million gigabytes!) to two remaining competitors: http://techreport.com/review/27062/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-only-two-remain-after-1-5pb Spoiler alert: drives still fail-- even SSDs. Tech Report intends to try to achieve 2PB writes to the remaining SSDs in their test. Keep in mind that it's not just reading big files from your hard disk and writing data back that is juiced by moving to SSD. Moving your pagefile to SSD is equally important-- if not more so-- for CA. When you're performing complex operations that saturate your CPU cores and memory, that activity moves to swap space-- your pagefile. And instead of that activity being written to/from the slowest hardware component in your computer, if's effectively written to/from extended RAM: Zing. If you're still considering performance improvements in your CA rig, you can get outstanding, reliable SSD performance for .50 per GB, and top-of-the-line performance for less than $1 per GB-- with lots of good choices in between. Thanks and HTH, steveg

ACAD-- This is generic advice regarding SSD choice. I really like my 840 Pro, but would strongly consider the 850 Pro based on recent reviews. Here's one: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/189003-samsung-850-pro-review-3d-nand-and-ram-caching-result-in-the-fastest-most-durable-ssd-money-can-buy The 850 Pro appears to have even more bang than the 840 Pro, at a tempting price. Also, prices on the 840 Pro have fallen since the release of the 850 Pro-- my 840 Pro is down $54 to $289 in less than two months, which means I could've had an 850 Pro for almost the same cost. In terms of capacity, I care about data protection as much as I care about performance/speed. Like my CA user, my own computers use RAID1 for data because I've had to pay for data recovery services before. A reputable data recovery service for a crashed hard drive is going to start at about $1500 and go up, depending on how much data is recovered. RAID1 is *such* an inexpensive way to protect your data, whether it's your designs and intellectual property, or your libraries, taxes, and kid videos. So the choice I've made and recommended many times-- for myself and my clients-- is to get a moderately sized SSD for boot, OS, and Programs, and to get two fast mechanical drives-- sometimes a third as a spare-- for RAID1 data storage. If your machine supports a limited number of spindles/bays, factor that knowledge into your decision-- along with the age of your computer, the importance of your data, your budget, and whether you enjoy your computer, or tolerate it as a necessary tool. To that point, I hesitate to make additional recommendations because I don't know what your computer gets used for, what sorts of performance issues you experience, your budget for computing overall, your replacement plans, etc. However I did review the specs on your computer and see some important differences between the XPS 9100 that I worked on and yours. Generically, these are things that I would consider. The XPS 8100 has -- Smaller power supply (325W) -- Earlier processor (i7 870) -- Support for SATA II only -- Two internal hard drive bays (Vs.4) Based on your existing config, there aren't many upgrade options before the balance would tip in favor of a new computer. The i7 installed is the fastest model that the XPS 8100 supported, according to the Dell manual and specifications. A video card upgrade-- even a mid-tier card-- would be limited by your power supply and its connectors. PSU upgrade? Hmmm. Depending on your technical experience, you could see the upgrade as a cool challenge, or way too much. It's ultimately your call. The XPS 8100 is the final model in that form factor. Even though your computer only supports SATA II, SSD is a solid, available upgrade that would extend the useful life of the XPS 8100. You will experience a conspicuous boost in performance in all the ways previously outlined. In comparable Dells that have even slower motherboards, slower processors, and less, (slower) DDR2 memory, SSD disk performance is outstanding compared to the original mechanical drives. My Vostro 200 Minitower desktop (SATA II) shows a 6.9 in in HD performance in Windows Experience Index; a test Latitude 830 (2007) shows a 6.9 in the same category. My Latitude E6520 (2011) shows 7.9. WEI isn't a precise measurement, but it's a common benchmark. I know these older computers are throttled by the clockspeed of the motherboard, and by Aero/graphics capabilities. But my eyes tell me that bootup, application loading, and app swapping are as fast as in new computers without SSD. Keep in mind I'm not loading CA X6, but my iTunes, PowerPoint, and Visio really pop when I load them. The Samsung family comes with Magician software to optimize performance, and to update SSD firmware. Run it. There is also a disk cloning tool to simply installation and data migration. Likewise: competing SSDs come with Acronis True Image, or comparable proprietary cloning/disk management tools. Some SSD vendors will require you download and burn an ISO to update firmware and won't prompt you when firmware upgrades are available. It's all worth considering when you're buying an SSD. HTH, good luck, and let us how it goes. steveg

Rich, Perry, Larry, all-- First, thanks for your replies and feedback. For the record, I'm not a CA user; I'm a frugal hardware geek-consultant, hellbent on squeezing performance out of computers. I've worked in IT professionally and independently, giving me a lot of opportunity to experiment with old and new hardware. I'm certified on some enterprise server, desktop, laptop, and storage hardware, giving me confidence to take stuff apart and upgrade. I'm not an overclocker, I've never supercooled anything, or taken snips to outer skin to make something fit. I like working on standard high volume hardware because it's what people and corporations buy and use. I posted back to this forum because I consulted ChiefTalk, Tom's, Dell, and this topic extensively in considering the New Vs. Upgrade decision for my customer. All forums were great in pointing out not only performance-focused enhancements (e.g. memory, CPU cores), but also in providing tips for resource-intensive specific tasks (like RT). My CA user had followed some of the strategies mentioned-- e.g. breaking a plan down into smaller chunks/layers, turning off lights-- in order to compensate for the thrashing induced by RT and those other intensive tasks. And the killer plan we chose-- a large multi-floored addition to an existing house-- was deliberately selected in order to make her computer work as hard as possible. I needed tasks that would lend themselves to before/after analysis, time comparisons, performance inspection, and that would illustrate the kind of thrashing that CA can cause, worst-case. I used Windows TaskManager and Resource Monitor extensively to trace not only activity by the CA executable itself, but also by the child processes (like RT) and threads that were spawned when the new tasks were invoked. TaskMan and RM give you the ability to identify a process by name and ProcessID (PID), and to trace that PID through your system. Using RM, you can watch the PID as it causes CPUs to spike and max out, causes memory utilization to climb to near capacity, causes the pagefile to swap data in and out, and then begins generating page faults-- all linked to the PID. It was surprising to see in Resource Monitor that only 9 threads were spawned by the mongo RT task. But within CA, it was even more surprising to not find any ways to modify resource allocation. This would also be a nice enhancement to CA: a Wizard that analyzes a task or a series of tasks, and then offers performance tweaks or recommendations based on your computer's resources. I'm sure there are embedded formulas or algorithms in CA that do this already, but I didn't see any parameter files that I could touch/view/modify. Even after the SSD upgrade, the number of threads spawned by CA and sub-processes didn't change. Maybe that number is hard-coded based on CPU speed, core count, and/or installed memory. Dunno-- if there are CA insiders out there who know, it would be interesting to know whether these parameters are hard-coded, table-based, dynamic, or tunable. I wouldn't exclude a faster video card down the road, but my user doesn't do a lot of 3D rendering or other tasks that seem to tax her video resources. If it were my computer, I think the next purchase for this XPS 9100 would be the i7 upgrade or doubling the RAM. The existing 12GB RAM was a lot -- and expensive-- in 2010, but faster RAM is available now and the mobo supports 24GB. But the SSD pagefile mitigates the RAM issue. As for the upgrade to the Intel i7 980 processor: more cores, more horsepower-- and more onboard CPU cache!-- would definitely be noticeable. Don't underestimate the performance impact of moving from a very early i7 to a more recent one if it offers a significant bump in both clockspeed AND L2/3 cache. CPU cache is king. We did consider a workstation platform with multiple physical CPUs, but I've had bad luck with workstations overall: they tend to generate a lot more heat, to not last as long before internals wear out, and ECC memory is a lot more expensive than non-ECC. Hot rods can be nice to look at, but it can be expensive to rely on them as your everyday driver. Your mileage may vary, but the only multi-proc devices I've been happy with are servers. Maybe you can run CA on a Windows Server OS, but it's cost-prohibitive and not worth pursuing as an option in this case. It you're on the fence about SSD, it's safe to come down and buy one. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy for any particular vendor, I'll point you to a link that I discovered after I purchased the SSD for this upgrade. It confirms and conforms with my personal experience, brand by brand. It's good reading, but you can jump directly to the conclusion, too. http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-great-high-end-ssd-shootout-2014-edition If you've already got a muscle-box-- but not an SSD-- it's time. If you're constrained by price, consider getting a smaller capacity SSD for your boot drive and pagefile, and keep your data on less-expensive spinning drives. You won't be disappointed; more likely, you'll wish you had bought a bigger one, and done it sooner. I stand by my SSD brand recommendation in my previous post; it will be the smartest $340 you've ever spent on computing hardware. Thanks again and HTH, steveg

I recently assisted a CA x6 user with a computer upgrade in order to address performance issues in CA. I reviewed all the recommendations here and in other online forums where CA is discussed. The advice I read is pretty universal: get the fastest processor you can afford; get as much memory as you can; get a fast video card; RayTrace is a monster. At a very high level, here's the system we're using. It was originally bought and configured with CA use in mind. Dell XPS 9100, purchased 12/2010. Windows 7, 64-bit. A beefy, high-performance machine in its day, but almost four years old. Quad-core Intel i7-930 @ 2.8 Ghz; 12GB RAM @ 1333Mhz 64-bit ATI video card with 1GB DDR3 vRAM two 750GB hard drives configured in hardware-based RAID1 (5400 RPM, 8MB cache, SATA II). More on RAID below. In addition to seeing early evidence of a hard disk failing, the user experienced performance issues that are common in this CA thread: RayTrace could take 20 minutes to more than an hour, depending on the size/complexity of the plan Computer would become useless to do anything else while RayTrace or other complex CA operations were queued or executing (mouse/keyboard became unresponsive, video displayed ghosting/artifacts when the CPU finally got around to UI rendering) CPU would flatline @ 100% across all 8 cores and stay there Memory utilization would go to 11.9GB (near 100%)and stay there Pagefile reads, writes, and page faults were constant, indicating that swap space was being heavily used. There's also a huge performance penalty paid for pagefile activity when the drives are slow. RAM can mitigate pagefile activity, but only until memory is all allocated Although this computer is almost 4 years old, the i7 is still a relatively fast processor. The power supply is robust (525W), and the motherboard supports up to 24GB RAM in 6 slots, as well as hardware-based RAID1. A new computer could come with a faster i7, faster memory, and a fresh warranty, but performance improvements would be incremental and wouldn't be as dramatic as--for example-- jumping from an i3 to an i7, or from 4GB RAM 24GB. So we considered several upgrade options: 1. upgrade to i7-980 six-core processor @ 3.33Ghz (faster, 12 cores instead of 8, more CPU cache) ~$350 used 2. replace video card with GeForce GTX 750 Ti PCI-E video card (128-bit, 2GB DDR5 vRAM ) $169 new 3. upgrade from 12GB to 24 GB RAM ($350-400 new) 4. Samsung 840 Pro SSD (512GB) $343 new 5. two 2TB SATA III Hard Drives (7200RPM, Enterprise Grade, 64MB cache) $179 total We decided to upgrade rather than buy a new computer just to get more cores and faster memory. We chose only the video card and the SSD options. The GeForce video card was a modest upgrade-- this is a mid-grade gaming card pulling about 200W. It occupies two card slots on your motherboard. I monitored before/after performance with the new video card and saw lower overall CPU utilization for the same task-- evidence of effectively offloading complex rendering tasks to the graphics processing card. I also noticed that the Dell's internal fans no longer kicked into high speed when graphics-intensive tasks were called and executed. There are definitely much faster video cards available, but they would draw more power and require a power supply upgrade to have the right connector for the extra power draw. The card we chose was significantly faster, with twice the bandwidth and memory, much faster graphics chip with faster memory. Video performance was incrementally better, but it was not a "Wow!" From a performance perspective however, the SSD's impact was unmistakable and clear. You notice the SSD all the time: when you power up and your OS fully loads in 20 seconds instead of 45; when you load a monster app like CA x6; when you load any application subsequently. Adding the SSD was also like adding 18GB - 34GB RAM to the system via the pagefile. And instead of the pagefile being dependent on the speed of HD and the size of the HD's cache, you're reading and writing to/from the SSD pagefile at the speed of your SATA connection.. It's remarkable. As an aside, I've been an SSD user for years, and have owned and used several brands including Kingston, Crucial, OCX, and Samsung. Samsung SSD has outstanding price/performance. For reference: the EVO is their price leader; the 840 is their mid-line product; and the Pro is the one you want. The Pro also comes with software that will optimze it for performance, optimize it for capacity, or balance the two. Selecting optimal performance will automatically adjust a handful of system parameters (pagefile, hiberfile, read/write caching and buffering, etc) so you don't need to be an expert to get the most boost from the SSD. The upgrade has resulted in a computer that still takes 21 minutes to perform all four passes of the most complex RayTrace we can throw at it, but now the computer remains fully functional while RayTrace is active. And you can continue to open other applications-- including hogs like iTunes or Outlook-- while RayTrace is running, and there is no visible impact on performance. The display doesn't ghost or create visual artifacts while RayTrace is executing like before, and the mousing is accurate and responsive. RayTrace still buries all 8 CPU cores--briefly-- and physical memory still gets maxxed out @11.9GB, but CPU and memory utilization gradually decline as the queued task is executed. Bottom line: the video card and SSD together cost about $500. If you shop hard, the Samsung 840 Pro SSD has dropped to about $300 for 512GB as the 850 Pro has been released. Expect to pay at least $100 more for the 850 Pro/512GB. The hard drive upgrade ($179) was essential because of the disk errors that were reported by the controller bios at boot time. If you're not familiar with Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, RAID is a technique to write data to more than one hard drive, protecting data by the redundant writes. There are tons of RAID levels out there, but for consumers, a hardware-based RAID1-- also known as "disk mirroring"-- is a great, price-effective option. Under Windows, you could alternatively use Disk Manager to enable OS-controlled disk mirroring; this is both slower and less resilient than a hardware-based RAID1, but doesn't requre hard drives with identical capacity. That's another topic. Users who want to protect their data should consider RAID1 as a relatively inexpensive way to mitigate the risk of hard drive failures, and consider whether your next computer includes an embedded RAID controller as an option. Entry level computers and bargain computers won't have enough drive bays for multiple disks, and won't include a disk controller that supports RAID1. Mid-tier and "performace" machines will. Higher levels of RAID are for dedicated storage devices and servers. All the essential internals of this upgrade-- the video card, SSD, and HDs-- could be transplanted to a newer computer if the motherboard failed, and all of these components would still be as viable and fast as comparable components in a new computer. I'd be happy to get in the weeds regarding all the aspects of this upgrade. RayTrace is still a beast. More CPU cores and more memory would probably goose CA performance visibly. But given the tangible improvements we've made and their cost, my CA user is very satisfied. If you've got $300 to spend, I'd strongly consider SSD as the horse to ride. best-- steveg