Single core vs multi, high bus vs low CL? SSD impact on performance?
Thread poster: Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 00:16
English to Polish
+ ...
Jun 24, 2016

As per title, what helps more:

– maxed out single core vs high multicore performance (capped at dual or quad or no cap?)
– high mem bus or low CLs?
– pure clock vs more nuanced general performance?
– high overall CPU clock (i.e. high multiplier) vs higher FSB (but lower overall clock, i.e. lower multiplier)?

To what extent does fast storage matter:

– SATA3 SSD (e.g. 550/500 R/W) vs traditional 7200 RPM SATA3?
– M2. 2280 S
... See more
As per title, what helps more:

– maxed out single core vs high multicore performance (capped at dual or quad or no cap?)
– high mem bus or low CLs?
– pure clock vs more nuanced general performance?
– high overall CPU clock (i.e. high multiplier) vs higher FSB (but lower overall clock, i.e. lower multiplier)?

To what extent does fast storage matter:

– SATA3 SSD (e.g. 550/500 R/W) vs traditional 7200 RPM SATA3?
– M2. 2280 SSD (e.g. 2200/1200 R/W) vs SATA 3 SSD?

Do RAM disks help? If yes, at which point of SSD speed does it no longer help (or start to be detrimental)?

Anything else important to know re: CPUs, memory and storage?
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Jo Macdonald
Jo Macdonald  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 00:16
Member (2005)
Italian to English
+ ...
What works for me Jun 24, 2016

Hi Lukasz,
I can't comment on all your questions but I've just done a bit of research on this as I've had to change system and this is what I found.

Current system is a 4 year old i5 7200 HD with 8Gb RAM.
Running Studio 2014 with TMs up to 400/500Mb the system never uses anything really over half the CPU power or RAM and never lags.

When researching for the new system I found that:
i7 gives you up to 1 hour less battery time on a laptop than i5 with no
... See more
Hi Lukasz,
I can't comment on all your questions but I've just done a bit of research on this as I've had to change system and this is what I found.

Current system is a 4 year old i5 7200 HD with 8Gb RAM.
Running Studio 2014 with TMs up to 400/500Mb the system never uses anything really over half the CPU power or RAM and never lags.

When researching for the new system I found that:
i7 gives you up to 1 hour less battery time on a laptop than i5 with no real difference in processing power, especially for the stuff we do. A hybrid SSHD is almost as fast as an SSD but costs much less than the same size SSD. You really don't need more than 8 gigs of RAM for most of what we do. Trados Studio 2015 system requirements is just 2 Gb, 4 Gb recommended for example.

So I'm going for an i5 (faster clock), 500 GB SSHD, 8 G RAM (can be upgraded to 16)
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Lennart Luhtaru
Lennart Luhtaru  Identity Verified
United States
Member
English to Estonian
+ ...
SSD, RAM, CPU Jun 25, 2016

Priority list:

Important--------------------
1) SSD - makes everything faster (opening files, writing segments to TM, etc.) + even the slowest SSD would be times faster than 7200rpm HDD. You probably won't notice the difference between PCI Express (or M.2) and SATA3 when translating. Hybrid drives could make system startup and application faster, but won't have any effect on stuff you don't R/W regularly, and as SSDs are really cheap now (about $250 for 1TB), there's no point
... See more
Priority list:

Important--------------------
1) SSD - makes everything faster (opening files, writing segments to TM, etc.) + even the slowest SSD would be times faster than 7200rpm HDD. You probably won't notice the difference between PCI Express (or M.2) and SATA3 when translating. Hybrid drives could make system startup and application faster, but won't have any effect on stuff you don't R/W regularly, and as SSDs are really cheap now (about $250 for 1TB), there's no point in getting a hybrid drive IMO. Instead get SSD as main work drive and HDD as a 2nd archive drive if you need lots of storage.

2) RAM - those 400 page PDFs can eat a lot of RAM, especially when converted to Word files with lots of pictures and bunch of errors in DOCX XML code. More RAM would also mean that you can have as many tabs open in browser as you want. I would go with 8GB minimum and 16GB preferred (32GB would probably be overkill unless running VMs or doing DTP). Install memory recommended for your motherboard (whatever its max supported clock speed is). Always buy memory sticks in pairs (to take advantage of multi channel memory architecture) and if mixing different sizes/brands/types, install them in pairs and in correct slots (see computer/motherboard manual). But otherwise, no need to go crazy with latency and other specs. You probably won't notice any difference when translating. Just remember, that when combining memory with different clock speeds, all of them will work at the clock speed of the lowest memory stick.

Less difference------------------
3) CPU cores - I don't think you can even get single core CPUs any more, but anyway, even if the application itself doesn't support multithreading, you will still benefit from multicores when working with different applications at once. For laptop processors I would go with quad core, for desktop you can also go dual core (just because laptop processors are always less powerful).

4) CPU clock - basically all of the CPUs are clocked fast enough, clock speed probably won't make a noticeable difference when translating. This might not hold true to those ultra low voltage processors that some ultraportable laptops use though.



[Edited at 2016-06-25 04:59 GMT]
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Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 00:16
English to Polish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
... Jun 25, 2016

Jo Macdonald wrote:

Hi Lukasz,
I can't comment on all your questions but I've just done a bit of research on this as I've had to change system and this is what I found.

Current system is a 4 year old i5 7200 HD with 8Gb RAM.
Running Studio 2014 with TMs up to 400/500Mb the system never uses anything really over half the CPU power or RAM and never lags.


Thanks, Jo. I've also been told (didn't realize that before) Studio is 32-bit, so no huge RAM craze.

Given the low prices of desktop memory (16 GB for like €60), I'm going to go 8x4 or 16x2, probably the latter.

i7 gives you up to 1 hour less battery time on a laptop than i5 with no real difference in processing power, especially for the stuff we do.


That's useful to know. I might consider getting a laptop eventually. Too attached to desktops for now.

A hybrid SSHD is almost as fast as an SSD but costs much less than the same size SSD.


I don't use much space, though, so I think I'll maximize the speed of sys/app drive and use something else as storage. What I've been thinking about is getting a SATA SSD now for the system and apps — even 256 GB would allow me to clone and forget rather than reinstalling — and focusing on speed rather than capacity when eventually moving to M.2. That would leave me with no HDD with mechanical parts, which is an advantage in a desktop case (more silence and less vibration).

Lennart Luhtaru wrote:

3) CPU cores - I don't think you can even get single core CPUs any more


Yeah. I was referring to the 'single core performance' statistic, i.e. how well the CPU performs in applications that only use one core (old, underoptimized etc.). This is what sometimes makes older CPUs perform better in applications that weren't specifically designed to benefit from more than one core.

4) CPU clock - basically all of the CPUs are clocked fast enough, clock speed probably won't make a noticeable difference when translating.


There are some applications in which the clock means everything — for example there games that favour ridiculously old or cheap/entry-level processors over strong units simply because of the clock, but yeah, probably shouldn't matter that much in office applications.

[Edited at 2016-06-25 08:57 GMT]


 
Henning Holthusen
Henning Holthusen  Identity Verified
Philippines
Local time: 07:16
English to German
+ ...
Studio is just slow Jul 19, 2016

Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote:


Do RAM disks help? If yes, at which point of SSD speed does it no longer help (or start to be detrimental)?



I tried putting the large EU TM on a RAM disk, but I don't think that made any difference at all. I'm not even sure there's a difference in concordance/TM searches between a HD and an SSD.
Studio is just slow and I don't know where the bottlenecks are.
Concordance searches take way longer than, for example, searching the same TM in a text editor, which is basically instantaneous. How the hell can that be?
Studio doesn't make efficient use of hardware resources and the database system behind its TMs is apparently quite poorly designed.
On a computer with 16 GB RAM, concordance and TM searches should be INSTANT.


 


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Single core vs multi, high bus vs low CL? SSD impact on performance?







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