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Scene Load Time - SSD vs HDD

ebergerlyebergerly Posts: 3,255
in The Commons

I guess I always assumed that when you load a scene into Studio the bottleneck in load times would be the storage media, since that's usually a lot slower than the CPU or RAM. 

So I tried loading a scene from both the SSD and HDD to see if there was a difference. And to my surprise there wasn't.

When I load it from the HDD it took about 28 seconds until the grayscale image of the scene appeared in the 3D View, and another 22 seconds until the first grainy Iray image appeared. Then I tried it on my Samsung 850 EVO SSD (which is generally one of the faster SATA SSD's out there from what I hear), and both times were almost identical.

Strange.

Am I missing something?  

Comments

  • TooncesToonces Posts: 919

    I've noticed the same thing, generally speaking. Also the content search functionality on my SSD seemed a bit faster, but not much.

    Not that I mind. My HD is much larger anyway.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,306
    edited August 2017
    ebergerly said:

    I guess I always assumed that when you load a scene into Studio the bottleneck in load times would be the storage media, since that's usually a lot slower than the CPU or RAM. 

    So I tried loading a scene from both the SSD and HDD to see if there was a difference. And to my surprise there wasn't.

    When I load it from the HDD it took about 28 seconds until the grayscale image of the scene appeared in the 3D View, and another 22 seconds until the first grainy Iray image appeared. Then I tried it on my Samsung 850 EVO SSD (which is generally one of the faster SATA SSD's out there from what I hear), and both times were almost identical.

    Strange.

    Am I missing something?  

    Had you recently closed the scene? If so most of the needed assets would be sitting in the file cache of your memory, and then the open speeds for both media would be the same. Reboot your machine, and then try the one on the HDD, reboot again, and open using the SSD.

    One other thing, are the needed assets also on the HDD/SD, ie the duf/dsf/textures etc. The scene file is normally very small, and is loading all the assets needed from the runtime that will take the time. If your two scenes are sharing the same runtimes, then the difference in load times will indeed be minimal.

    Post edited by Havos on
  • ebergerlyebergerly Posts: 3,255

    Thanks. I thought that the duf contained all the associated stuff, but I guess that's all pulled in as needed? Makes sense.

  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995
    edited August 2017

    DS scenes are actually a bit more complicated.  If the content has been loaded before, there will be optimized data stored in the DS "data" folder.  If not, or if the file(s) are not found in data and are "poser" type files, the original geometry is fetched from the original area -- then the optimized data put into "data".  So, if your data folder is on HDD it makes little difference where your .duf file is since the files are pulled from the HDD anyway.  Similarly, if the data folder is on the SSD then the opposite is true.  But here's the kicker...  The time needed for DS to build the geometry, and apply the necessary textures FAR exceeds the time needed for spooling from the media.  Any half way modern HDD/SSD can provide the file(s) in a miniscule amount of time (provided the media isn't fragmented heavily).  I pull my runtime files across gigabit ethernet from a server with little effect on loading times.

    Kendall

    Post edited by Kendall Sears on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,868

    Recent builds of DS embed geometry and rigging data that has not been saved as an asset in the scene file, the /Data/Auto... folders are no longer used.

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