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Author Topic: Would this upgrade improve performance?  (Read 1151 times)

iamimdoc

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Would this upgrade improve performance?
« on: April 30, 2018, 03:15:49 pm »

I use MacBook 2010, Windows 7 under Bootcamp with 8 GB ram.  "Performance score" was 1800 or something (maybe higher but haven't looked in year or so - this is my best guess)

JRiver operated by JRemote on an IPAD

All music on NAS - Un raid (older version).  Large library  (> 150 k songs).  NAS has been 100% reliable for years but I think is relatively slow.

When using JRemote and searching thru database (just looking not selecting), I may get hiccoughs in music that is playing - hesitation, pause, etc

Boot time not an issue for me.  PC used only for music playback.  Does nothing else.

Question:

Would a solid state drive improve this performance issue?

Thanks
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sandrei

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Re: Would this upgrade improve performance?
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2018, 05:47:19 pm »

I guess this is a general issue: a solid state drive will dramatically improve the performance of the operating system first and foremost, and of the MC program, and any other program, that is for sure. I was not convinced till I tried, and upgraded my OS hard drive to a solid state. I could not believe how much better was the performance with same motherboard, same processor and same memory. I have also revived an old laptop to make it run decent again replacing the hard drive with solid state.

I am talking about Windows installed directly on a PC, not on Mac, through Bootcamp.

I am not sure if Bootcamp will activate all the features of a solid state that makes it faster, like "TRIM" or "Rapid mode". I would say, if you cannot activate these options under Bootcamp forget about it, you will get a marginal improvement that will not justify the investment.

Plus, each solid state drive comes with a mirroring program that makes it easier tomake the change, you create a mirror image of your current hard drive on the new solid state, than you just swap drives. Not sure if this mirroring works on Bootcamp properly.

About the library? Well of course it will run faster and more reliable on a solid state, but you will have to spend a significant amount of money to have the space required on a NAS, not to mention that you will need a special NAS for solid state drives.

What about your network components? are you sure that those are not the culprits of the low performance you mention?

I would say, before spending any money look carefully at ALL the components of your system, not only the MAC hard drive or the NAS and determine what is the bottleneck. It may be very well be your router, or NAS network card, or Mac network card, it may be very well be Bootcamp itself. Network components evolved exponentially from 2010. And any operating system and program installed on an emulated drive (what Bootcamp is doing) will always run slower than installed on a dedicated "native" drive.
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JimH

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Re: Would this upgrade improve performance?
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2018, 06:00:34 pm »

You should be able to run the benchmark under Help in MC.  You could paste the results here.  Maybe something will jump out.
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glynor

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Re: Would this upgrade improve performance?
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2018, 08:38:22 pm »

Yeah... I mean, switching from a spinner to an SSD is always going to be your best general-purpose bang-for-the-buck upgrade potential with older systems. So, as a very generic, will it help with the system generally? Sure. SSD boot disk is ALWAYS better than a spinner. In dramatic fashion.

That system is pretty darn old, but for your use case, I'd imagine it should still be able to handle things. But, your post doesn't really have enough information to determine where the bottleneck lies. I don't know if that will help you with this specific problem or not.

One other thing worth mentioning, make sure you DO NOT have your MC Library (by this I mean the database, not the media files themselves) stored on the NAS. You can keep your media files on the NAS, but NOT the MC Library. More detail:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Troubleshooting_Network_and_Slow_Storage

You may also just want to do some generic troubleshooting on that system. Run FSCK on the boot disk. Reset the PRAM/NVRAM and SMC Controller. Stuff like that.
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michael123

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Re: Would this upgrade improve performance?
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2018, 04:37:35 am »

I use MacBook 2010, Windows 7 under Bootcamp with 8 GB ram.  "Performance score" was 1800 or something (maybe higher but haven't looked in year or so - this is my best guess)

JRiver operated by JRemote on an IPAD

All music on NAS - Un raid (older version).  Large library  (> 150 k songs).  NAS has been 100% reliable for years but I think is relatively slow.

When using JRemote and searching thru database (just looking not selecting), I may get hiccoughs in music that is playing - hesitation, pause, etc

Boot time not an issue for me.  PC used only for music playback.  Does nothing else.

Question:

Would a solid state drive improve this performance issue?

Thanks

It is not JRiver for sure.

I recently upgraded my NAS, it is based on plain 6TB disks.
Upgraded, my NAS now has strong CPU (Xeon V6), and lots of RAM (64GB) for caching.

Library scan now takes 1-2 min rather than 20 min as before.


My NAS is unRaid as well, the most recent version, the file system is XFS

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iamimdoc

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Re: Would this upgrade improve performance?
« Reply #5 on: May 02, 2018, 06:26:39 am »

-Library on the PC, not the NAS
-I suspect Unraid is much of the problem - I could never get it to stream movies reliavbly for example on 1000 GB network.  But the though of redoing it and moving nearly 200k songs, does not entice.

As requested
=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 4.952 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 2.934 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 4.967 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 2.950 seconds
Score: 1202

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 0.464 seconds
    Flood filling... 1.310 seconds
    Direct copying... 2.519 seconds
    Small renders... 2.416 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 2.917 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 1.986 seconds
Score: 1895

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 0.476 seconds
    Populate database... 3.436 seconds
    Save database... 1.346 seconds
    Reload database... 0.289 seconds
    Search database... 2.337 seconds
    Sort database... 1.950 seconds
    Group database... 1.198 seconds
Score: 1949

JRMark (version 22.0.108): 1682

Thanks to all for constructive comments
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JimH

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Re: Would this upgrade improve performance?
« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2018, 07:00:01 am »

The connection to the NAS may be the weak link.  You can test this theory by creating a new library with local files.  File > Library > Library Manager.

If that works, then the problem may be the NAS itself or the network.  michael123's post above addresses the NAS.

Your benchmark is just OK, but should be fine for playing ordinary audio.
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