ASUS U30Jc Revisited: Adding an SSD
by Jarred Walton on June 1, 2010 2:15 PM ESTSSDs Are Definitely Faster; Are They Worth the Cost?
Everyone has an opinion on where the most value comes in a system upgrade. Looking strictly at the mobile market: For some, gaming performance is the ultimate goal, and unless you're already shelling out for something like an HD 5870 or GTX 480M you're wasting money on other upgrades. Similarly, if you're doing CPU intensive tasks like complex data analysis, video editing, or 3D rendering you'll want a fast quad-core CPU before you start to worry about other upgrades. Anand is fond of saying that SSDs are one of the most noticeable upgrades you can make to a system; it's true, but we probably need to add the qualification that it depends on what you're doing.
Obviously, hard drives are slow and they're using old technology. In fact, outside of the fans cooling down your hardware, hard drives remain the only mechanical device inside modern computers. With data rates that are several orders of magnitude slower than RAM (which is in turn a couple orders of magnitude slower than CPUs), if you run into situations where your bottleneck is the hard drive, it tends to be a very noticeable bottleneck. If you doubt this, try putting an older 80GB 7200RPM drive (circa 2004) into a modern Core i5 system and witness how painful it becomes to boot Windows and launch applications. (Notice also how freakin' loud those early 7200RPM drives are!)
There are things you can do to make a hard drive less painful. Don't install a lot of startup applications for example. Don't run real-time anti-virus protection, Internet security, or even real-time anti-malware protection tools—and hopefully you know how to avoid doing anything that might get you infected. Delete all of your temp files and defrag your hard drive regularly. Make sure you have at least 4GB RAM. You can even try running RAID 0 with 10K RPM drives (i.e. WD Raptor). All of these things help, but none of them will make the sluggishness of a hard drive disappear completely. My personal desktop system that I've been running for three years now (without a reinstall of Windows Vista) has exactly this sort of setup, and overall I'm fine with the performance. However, there are plenty of occasions where I really notice the presence of hard drives/lack of an SSD.
One of the things SSDs really help with is making even slower systems feel more responsive. Outside of Atom netbooks (and even those will benefit, though spending $200+ on an SSD with a $300 netbook is a dubious use of funds), any laptop is going to feel quite a bit faster at launching applications, copying files, installing/patching applications, etc. You can still get by without an SSD—many people do—but once you've used a system/laptop with a fast SSD it can be very painful going back to a conventional hard drive. SSDs also help to mitigate the decline in performance that Windows tends to experience over the years, though this goes back to the above list of having too many startup applications and clutter, and not defragging. If you want a system where you don't have to worry about regular maintenance, a laptop with an SSD today will generally feel just as fast in a year or two (provided you don't run into situations where the SSD performance drops substantially, though thankfully TRIM enabled drives should take care of that).
Ultimately, for laptops it really comes down to the $100 (or $300+) question: how much do you value general responsiveness, and how much do you value capacity? Also, do you have a "fast enough" CPU and GPU for what you want to do? Remember that unlike desktops, upgrading the CPU can be tricky and upgrading GPUs is generally not supported (though you can always give it a shot). On desktops, you have a lot more options and you can upgrade any component you want. You can also get something of the best of both worlds by using a smaller SSD for you OS and primary applications with a large HDD for your data, games, etc. Most laptops don't have the luxury of supporting two hard drives, particularly 14" and smaller laptops like the U30Jc, so you have to decide how to balance SSD capacity against cost. I know I'd be hard pressed to get by with anything less than 120GB on my primary laptop, and 250GB is preferred. For me, SSDs are an expensive luxury, but the general increase in responsiveness is very enticing.
One area where we think there's a lot of growth potential is in the business/enterprise market. We've asked a few OEMs about SSD uptake with laptops, and so far it sounds like many businesses are holding off and sticking with conventional hard drives. The reason businesses could really benefit is that they're frequently locked down tight with security and monitoring features, and it's in that sort of setup that SSDs really start to shine. With real-time anti-virus, TPM, and full disk encryption running (and other tasks as well), a good SSD can make even speedy corporate laptops perform common tasks twice as fast.
Looking at the U30Jc, the SSD upgrade is definitely nice. I would personally hold off and look for a faster GPU first—something with an Optimus GT335M and a better LCD would be perfect, if I could keep all the other aspects of the U30Jc. However, plenty of laptop users couldn't care less about gaming, in which case an SSD is the next logical upgrade. The CPU is plenty fast and the graphics subsystem will handle anything short of complex gaming without any trouble. Slap an SSD into the unit and it suddenly boots and launches applications faster than high-end desktops with RAID 0 Raptors. If you have a desktop or external HDD, you can even get by with an 80GB SSD quite easily—leave all your family photos, movies, etc. on the desktop and only put the data you're currently using on the laptop.
The great thing about SSDs is that you can make the switch whenever you want. Just clone your hard drive over to the SSD (using a separate desktop most likely) and you're ready to roll. My advice with laptops is to make sure you have all the other features you want first—there's typically no upgrading the LCD panel or GPU, so you'll be stuck with whatever a laptop comes with. When in doubt, go with a standard laptop configuration and a conventional HDD. Afterwards, you can upgrade as you see fit. You'll usually get better prices than what most OEMs charge for an SSD upgrade anyway, and with SSD technology advancing rapidly there's no harm in taking your time. Once the prices and capacities reach the point where you're ready to make the switch, SSDs will be waiting.
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Amazing Sathu - Monday, January 21, 2013 - link
Hi Jarred - I just posted my experience of upgrading UJ30C. Used a Seagate Hybrid SSD+HDD drive. Call it a poor man's upgrade, but the results are worth it IMO.Is it possible you can do a review of this laptop with Hybrid SSD and Win8 Upgrade?
bmgoodman - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
Would love to see a test done on a low-end netbook, comparing the OEM hard drive to one of the new Seagate hybrid hard drives!!harshaflibbertigibbet - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
An excellent article Jarred, keep the good work up.I am personally of the opinion that a CULV with Intel HD graphics/NVIDA Optimus and a cheap SSD (Indilinx or Intel V-series) would represent an excellent balance between performance (except gaming), battery life and price. Hence, a similar test on on of the ASUS UL series of CULV laptops might provide us with some useful insights.
I also find that most laptop makers do not seem very progressive in integrating SSDs. While I understand that for the average user it is expensive, there are enough premium laptops out there with price tags that justify using SSDs. Also those who do (eg. Dell, Apple) do not tell you anything about the SSD, merely stating blandly - 128GB SSD.
However, with the impending 25nm refresh, the Seagate Momentus Hybrid Drive, and the recent LG HyDrive one thing's for certain... SSDs are sure to arrive on laptops with a bang withing the next two years.
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
Let's just put it this way... I am seriously contemplating removing 1GB of RAM so that it resumes faster from hibernation. This is the most important factor. I cant use sleep because I dont trust M$. (Windows notebooks tend to wake up whenever they want, no matter what you disable.) Hibernate is a great feature that is not really practical without an SSD.strikeback03 - Friday, June 4, 2010 - link
Go ahead and try it, but most tests I have seen only show a difference of a second or two from this change. If this means a shift from 2GB to 1, there is no way I would personally consider that reduction in resume time worthwhile.adonn78 - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
An SSD will not give you faster frame rates in games. this is common knowledge. However AN SSD will cut level load times in half! And you should have tested level load times in popular games. overall good review. As you can see an SSD will cut loading times for the OS, games, and applications in half and will make your system more responsive. If you want more frames get a faster video card.JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
It depends on the game and how fragmented your hard drive happens to be. There's still a lot of internal processing (decompressing levels, textures, etc.) that happens on the CPU. My experience with testing is that the majority of games didn't load twice as fast... perhaps 25 to 33% faster at most. Of course, I don't have real-time virus scanning enabled, which would make a bigger difference.Chloiber - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
I agree.It really depends on the game. Some games don't benefit at all, others load 2x as fast. I'd say 30% don't benefit, 40% benefit noticeably and 30% cut loading times in ~half.
But yes - really depends....there is also a "cap" after you don't benefit from an even faster SSD anymore. Crysis, for example, takes about the same time to load with a single X25-E as with 3x X25-E in RAID0 on a high performance controller.
OT:
I'm using an SSD in my laptop since over a year now (UltraDrive GX/ME 32GB). The difference in real time performance is huge (Laptop is ~2.5 years old (HP 6910p 2.2Ghz DualCore). I just don't have to wait for applications anymore (well, ofc there is still some loading time).
IMHO it was the best investment in years. It makes my laptop MUCH faster. I bought the SSD for ~150€ and my laptop is - in "standard" tasks - faster than the newest notebooks. Hell, I even downclocked my CPU to 800Mhz because I don't need the extra performance....
GullLars - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
Jarred,I see you took my suggestion to do a re-test with SSD from the original article on this laptop. Cudos.
I generally liked how you did the article, but i have a couple of points i'll give critique on:
General points:
1. You did not specify if you used IDE or AHCI mode, wich will make a noticable difference.
2. You did not mention that most new SSDs, like x25-M, SF-1200, and C300 will be faster, and at some tasks/usage patterns notably faster.
3. You did not mention the "hurry up and go idle" power savings effect from the SSD and increased productivity on one battery lifespan. Sure the battery life under load and idleing will be about the same since both the HDD and SSD only use 0,1-2W and about 1-5% of total machine power draw.
and for gaming:
4. You tested _average_ FPS and not minimum FPS. I would have been OK with doing both, but leaving out minimum FPS means you don't see a big difference when textures are loaded real-time. FPS drops are much more noticable than +- a few average FPS.
5. You did not mention map loading time. wich will get a notable boost in some games.
I'll also note, for Stalker and Empire: Total War, the FPS range meassured will mean a minor difference in average FPS will note be noticable or relevant.
I'd also love to see timed World Of Warcraft or Age of Conan load into a major city (f.ex. auction house for WoW) and time to all textures are loaded. But this is a minor thing.
Don't take this critique as "not approved" from me, i would give you a B- for this article ;)
That's actually very good compared to a lot of reviews and articles out there, there's still a lot of people doing big mistakes when testing SSD in 2010.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - link
AHCI was enabled, naturally. The other faster SSDs is sort of a given--I mentioned with the Vertex that it's an older SSD and that there are faster models. I figure most people interested in the subject will simply click on our "SSD/HDD" link and find the relevant information. :-)Regarding power, "hurry up and go idle" should have been more prevalent in the Internet test at least, and yet I got worse battery life there. The idle power was actually the largest difference. But naturally we're just looking at one particular SSD here, and you'd need to look at battery life with a variety of units to see where they do better/worse. (I'd like to try an Intel G2 personally, along with the C300 and SandForce stuff.)
Minimum frame rates were largely the same, mostly because a lot of games will precache the level. Level load times, like game load times, depend a lot on how fragmented the hard drive is. With a defragged hard drive I generally don't notice a huge improvement -- and in multiplayer games it just means you get in the game and sit around waiting for others to show up. LOL. I'm sure titles like WoW and AoC could show a larger benefit -- anything with large areas where data has to be loaded on the fly should do better. But then, we're talking about a G310M here and if you want decent gaming that will be the first thing to upgrade.
Obviously, with a sample size of one SSD on one laptop, there's a lot I didn't/couldn't cover. For general use outside of gaming, though, an SSD is a great upgrade to any system. It costs as much as a good GPU, but then I know lots of people who don't game at all and they would be far better served by putting the money towards an SSD. (You'll note that the original Midrange Guide you disliked so much specifically states that it has a gaming slant, which is why we went with the GPU as opposed to SSD. The Blu-ray is still a case of adding a feature some might want, but it's easy to leave that out.)