SSD Benefit In Digital Photo Professional?

[idata]

Greetings Intel forumers,

I had a quick question regarding looking into the X25-M G2 160GB Drive. Although many sites give excellent benchmarks on how great these drives appear, none have really gone into detail regarding specific photo-editing tasks outside of Photoshop.

For anyone that uses and exports from Canon's Digital Photo Professional, I was really wondering how much faster the SSD would be in exporting say, Jpegs from the orginal RAW files from a Canon 5D Mark II.

A typical client of mine generates a data folder of 60-70+ GB and to handle the proofing exports with my current 1TB Western Digital drive (presuming 7,200RPM), it can take almost a day.

I am wondering if I took a batch of the photos and copied them to the SSD, would exporting them go any faster? I know it would be writing to the disk a lot but I figure I could copy batches to and from the SSD to go through a client's set of photos rapidly - well, hopefully more rapidly than letting the HDD grind all night / day.

Thanks for the input.

[idata]

Well hey Davem! I got some numbers for ya...

I think this is down to what I wanted to know in the first place. (copy/paste from Word)

Revised Setup:

Primary Drive = Intel X-25M 160GB

Secondary Drive = WD Raptor

Or

Primary Drive = Intel X-25M 160GB

Secondary Drive = WD Caviar

(Guess I ignored using the slower WD250GB Black drive for these tests. whoops)

Intel X-25M DPP Export RAW > Jpeg to Same Drive = 16m 30sec

Intel X-25M DPP Export RAW > Jpeg to WD Raptor = 16m 28sec

Intel X-25M DPP Export RAW > Jpeg to WD Caviar = 16m 42sec

Intel X-25M Opening 80 Jpegs in Photoshop CS4:

(Photos on X-25M) = 2m 33sec

(Photos on Raptor) = 2m 33sec

(Photos on WD250GB) = 2m 36sec

Now here's the unique part below... I even attempted a small overclock (which I've never even done before) just to see if the CPU was the main issue. Had to use the below programs since this Dell XPS is locked out in BIOS.

Unique test utilizing CPUID (CPU-Z), HWMonitor, and ClockGen

System @ 2.4ghz > 2.5ghz

Intel X-25M DPP Export RAW > Jpeg to Same Drive = 15m 25sec

(7% boost)

Intel X-25M Opening 80 Jpegs in Photoshop CS4:

(Photos on X-25M) = 2m 27sec (3% boost)

System @ 2.4ghz > 2.6ghz

Intel X-25M DPP Export RAW > Jpeg to Same Drive = 14m 58sec

(3% boost from 2.5ghz)

Intel X-25M Opening 80 Jpegs in Photoshop CS4:

(Photos on X-25M) = 2m 22sec (4% boost from 2.5ghz)

System @ 2.4ghz > 2.7ghz (locked at 2.65ghz) End Tests

So basically in the end of all these messes of pages, and for all others to read, we've come to some really good conclusions that hopefully help us out and others.

1. Some programs simply need more CPU power / speed. A WD Raptor changed to an Intel SSD brings no benefit (DPP) or some benefit (Photoshop), or a lot of benefit (Database, Virus scanning, OS, general tasks, game loading etc.,). I suppose here is a good place for "Your Mileage May Vary".

2. SSDs still rock and on standard reads, writes, and OS startup / shutdown, can't be touched by HDDs.

3. System seems to be more responsive even while browsing or doing other tasks while running any tests (though I tried to let the system be completely idle while doing the runs).

4. SSD copied my 80 Jpegs to both the Raptor and the Caviar at over 300MB/sec. CRAZY!

So although I haven't gotten the benefit I was expecting from moving to an SSD, let me say that the other areas of responsiveness (well only had it running for less than a day so far), have made the price premium totally worthwhile. These are just two very specific tests and I'm sure with different programs and needs, that the benefits of an SSD will greatly outshine any HDD. I haven't tried doing any standardized video test but again all I can really suggest for those who are looking to make the jump is to make up a standard test and repeat it fairly without bias on any drives you have.

Davem, thank you for your extensive help in working with me to figure out this concern. Even though the times haven't really gone down, I'm going to stick with this drive for many other obvious reasons. Also since my attempt at overclock did work but not to a really stable level (2.5 locked with all cores loaded and 2.65 locked w/o load and exporting photos), I think I will be more than happy leaving the system at stock speeds. Now whether it's a CPU issue, PSU issue (mine's only 300w), or something else is beyond our original scope, but suffice it to say I can conclude a faster processor probably wouldn't hurt down the road.

Hopefully this helps everyone out and thank you for patience while we conducted the tests if you were watching the thread.

[idata]

Hi Real,

Great work, you beat me to it. Very interesting results as well. I'll be posting in the next week given that my OS and software installs without any hardware glitches. Been so busy with holiday work, travel and family, today I finally got all the hardware connected and in the case.

When I do the test, I'll see if I can do it with the stock Intel i7 920 at 2.66Ghz and also at 3.2Ghz or higher overclocked, as you raise a good point that it may in fact just be a CPU bottleneck.

I got a Noctua NH-U12P CPU cooler so I should be able to get at least 3.5Ghz although using 12GB of RAM, maybe I can only do a small overclock....

Until then.

All the Best,

David