The graphic there doesn't seem to support that idea. Seems all the SSD drives in the graphic eat less power than that standard HDD. Maybe a different graphic should have been picked here?
and according to the graphic, when they are idle they take 1/2 the power, which contradicts the post that "whereas SSDs use full power whenever they're in use"
I understand that: 2 of the drives are lower in idle 2 are higher - unfortunately for the standard drive: all drives are lower than it. The top 2 drives pretty much solidly kick that drive's butt.
The graphic is indeed misleading, the article explains it much better. The jist is that while the standard drive can do worse, with average use you don't gain much battery life saving, if at all. Also interesting is that the SanDisk does indeed consume much less power, but is lower performing in other benchmarks.
The article does indeed show that for at least the SSDs and HDDs they tested, the SSDs consumer more power on average.
However, I do NOT think that this pattern will hold into the future. Manufacturers have been finding ways to optimize and lower the power usage of mobile harddrives for over a decade, and power-saving features are now very mature.
On the other hand, SSDs are an incredibly young technology, and there are not even basic power saving measures integrated yet. I'm sure as the technology quickly matures, manufacturers will develop a range of power saving techniques and optimizations that will allow SSDs to take the power usage crown as well as having incredible performance.
Nope, I don't think you understand yet. Let me come back tomorrow and see if anything has changed.
(AND FINALLY)
Jeff @ Jul 1st 2008 12:36PM
I'll be less vague than Bob. The TH article was, as usual, significantly flawed. The benchmark they used to test battery life restarts itself after each completion, doing so until the battery is dead. However, the article did not report how many times the benchmark was able to run on the SSD vs. the mechanical HD.
The reason this is a critical flaw is that, as their own graphs show, the performance of the SSD was substantially better than the other HD. With a slower drive, the CPU spends a larger proportion of time in idle mode, as the system is blocking on IO, waiting for the slow drive to return data.
With the faster SSD, the CPU spends less time idling. It is using more power, but also doing more work. If TH had reported the number of times the benchmark ran on each machine, we would have seen the SSD machine run the benchmark many times more than the mechanical drive. Their conclusions are flat-out wrong.
The whole exercise was very silly to begin with. An SSD draws less power in use than a mechanical drive does while idle. Of course it will improve, or at least not effect, battery life. The article you reference is just another sad example of the decade-long slump Tom's Hardware has faced.
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The graphic there doesn't seem to support that idea. Seems all the SSD drives in the graphic eat less power than that standard HDD. Maybe a different graphic should have been picked here?
Look again. The higher number does not mean better when you are looking at power consumption.
I know, all the ssd's seem to consume less.
and according to the graphic, when they are idle they take 1/2 the power, which contradicts the post that "whereas SSDs use full power whenever they're in use"
wth engadget... this article makes no sense.
I understand that: 2 of the drives are lower in idle 2 are higher - unfortunately for the standard drive: all drives are lower than it. The top 2 drives pretty much solidly kick that drive's butt.
While it may seem like that, if people read the article, they would know the HDD peaks at the state, while the SSD is constantly in that state.
Nevermind, Jason just pointed something out I didn't even see.
So now I'm wondering too.
The graphic is indeed misleading, the article explains it much better. The jist is that while the standard drive can do worse, with average use you don't gain much battery life saving, if at all. Also interesting is that the SanDisk does indeed consume much less power, but is lower performing in other benchmarks.
The graph appears to be wrong.
The article does indeed show that for at least the SSDs and HDDs they tested, the SSDs consumer more power on average.
However, I do NOT think that this pattern will hold into the future. Manufacturers have been finding ways to optimize and lower the power usage of mobile harddrives for over a decade, and power-saving features are now very mature.
On the other hand, SSDs are an incredibly young technology, and there are not even basic power saving measures integrated yet. I'm sure as the technology quickly matures, manufacturers will develop a range of power saving techniques and optimizations that will allow SSDs to take the power usage crown as well as having incredible performance.
Timothy Sottek @ Jul 1st 2008 9:37AM
Tom's Hardware just did a recent comparison between SSD power consumption and traditional platter drives.
If you're going to put that in a laptop beware: SSDs drain batteries FASTER than platter drives!
BobTurbo @ Jul 1st 2008 9:54AM
"SSDs drain batteries FASTER than platter drives!"
Correction: The SSDs tested using TH's methodology did not perform as well as the platter HDD.
Timothy Sottek @ Jul 1st 2008 10:08AM
Correction, part deux:
"However, we have discovered that the power savings aren’t there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash SSD."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html
BobTurbo @ Jul 1st 2008 10:19AM
Nope, I don't think you understand yet. Let me come back tomorrow and see if anything has changed.
(AND FINALLY)
Jeff @ Jul 1st 2008 12:36PM
I'll be less vague than Bob. The TH article was, as usual, significantly flawed. The benchmark they used to test battery life restarts itself after each completion, doing so until the battery is dead. However, the article did not report how many times the benchmark was able to run on the SSD vs. the mechanical HD.
The reason this is a critical flaw is that, as their own graphs show, the performance of the SSD was substantially better than the other HD. With a slower drive, the CPU spends a larger proportion of time in idle mode, as the system is blocking on IO, waiting for the slow drive to return data.
With the faster SSD, the CPU spends less time idling. It is using more power, but also doing more work. If TH had reported the number of times the benchmark ran on each machine, we would have seen the SSD machine run the benchmark many times more than the mechanical drive. Their conclusions are flat-out wrong.
The whole exercise was very silly to begin with. An SSD draws less power in use than a mechanical drive does while idle. Of course it will improve, or at least not effect, battery life. The article you reference is just another sad example of the decade-long slump Tom's Hardware has faced.