I run a Samsung 840 Pro SSD as my Windows boot drive and see Samsung offers the RAM caching rapid mode software. Has anyone had positive results by enabling this? I don't really hear people talk about it much so I'm not sure if it's worth using, or if it's just a placebo that would slow down bootups without much of a benefit. What are your thoughts about it?
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Thoughts on Samsung Rapid Mode?
- Thread starter ZodaEX
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drescherjm
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It likely won't slow down boots but you may not notice any benefit unless you have a more unusual workflow. As a c++ programmer who spends minutes to hours a day compiling I believe it helps but I don't spend effort to benchmark.
GotNoRice
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Samsung doesn't even give you the option to enable it on an NVMe drive, because even they admit it would be pointless. There would be more benefit for a SATA drive, but most people can't notice a difference between a SATA or NVMe drive in real-world usage, so it's unlikely most would notice the small bump from rapid mode either.
I think the best use case for this would be for older, slower TLC SATA drives. Something like an 840 or 840 evo (not the 840 Pro, as that is MLC). Write speeds on first-generation TLC drives are slow, due to the nature of TLC. Later generation TLC/QLC drives have large onboard DRAM and/or SLC caches to make up for the slower TLC/QLC write speeds. Using rapid mode on an old TLC SATA drive would allow your system RAM to perform the same role as that onboard cache found on newer drives.
I think the best use case for this would be for older, slower TLC SATA drives. Something like an 840 or 840 evo (not the 840 Pro, as that is MLC). Write speeds on first-generation TLC drives are slow, due to the nature of TLC. Later generation TLC/QLC drives have large onboard DRAM and/or SLC caches to make up for the slower TLC/QLC write speeds. Using rapid mode on an old TLC SATA drive would allow your system RAM to perform the same role as that onboard cache found on newer drives.
Rapid mode is basically just enabling benchmarks cheating. windows already have a diskcahce it is providing nothing new
that why all real world application show tiny slowdowns (overhead management) but benchmarks rocks. WHY see below
This is how the cheat works
Real world I/O goes through the windows cache and you get cache benefits
However HDD test progtams dont want this to interfer with the measure of the actual storage devices. HD test software flag their read/write request with " DO NOT CAHE ME" so they get a closer measurement to the actual performance of the devices.
However Samsung rapid mode doe NOT adhere to this request and caches it anyway. so now you are getting cache benchmarks test vs a hdd storage tets and those are not the same things and just missleads you if you think you can compared those numbers
In short. Rapid mode is useless marketing gimmick that cheats benchmarks.
that why all real world application show tiny slowdowns (overhead management) but benchmarks rocks. WHY see below
This is how the cheat works
Real world I/O goes through the windows cache and you get cache benefits
However HDD test progtams dont want this to interfer with the measure of the actual storage devices. HD test software flag their read/write request with " DO NOT CAHE ME" so they get a closer measurement to the actual performance of the devices.
However Samsung rapid mode doe NOT adhere to this request and caches it anyway. so now you are getting cache benchmarks test vs a hdd storage tets and those are not the same things and just missleads you if you think you can compared those numbers
In short. Rapid mode is useless marketing gimmick that cheats benchmarks.
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