Should I enable Rapid Mode on my Samsung 860 Evo?

[GamerBlake]

I believe the way it works (correct me if I’m wrong please) is that it uses available RAM as a cache in order to get higher speeds.

 

I have plenty of available extra RAM but I’m wondering if Rapid Mode provides any real world performance benefits or is it just something that helps in benchmarks with no real use applications?

[Meganter]

*mod cleanup*

 

It's a gimmick because it will only work when doing test (3 times or more the speed, more or less depending of your hardware using crystal disk mark).

 

In real life experience it does literally nothing. Why ? Because I noticed a slower boot time for some reason, for games ? A SSD is already as good as a NVMe.

 

It does however take part of your ram which is then use ONLY by the SSD, it takes up more CPU since it's running a little program (one more to add) etc. You can also lose data if you are transferring files since, it's stored for a limited time in the ram, in case of a crash or power shortage.

Edited May 4, 2020 by wkdpaul

[GamerBlake]

Just now, Billbill said:

First off Rapid Mode actually works.  If you really want to utilize that feature well you are going to need extra RAM.  The more RAM the better.  I caches data ahead of time.  If you set things up properly there is no data loss.  

I do have 32GB of RAM and rarely use more than 14GB so I think I’ll enable Rapid Mode then. Thanks for the help!  

[NewMaxx]

I would never use Rapid Mode, but opinions will differ. It adds, if anything, more overhead and a risk of losing data because any modern OS is quite good at RAM caching. There are limited scenarios where you might benefit from it although, of course, at that point you might as well use something more robust like PrimoCache.

[GamerBlake]

2 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

I would never use Rapid Mode, but opinions will differ. It adds, if anything, more overhead and a risk of losing data because any modern OS is quite good at RAM caching. There are limited scenarios where you might benefit from it although, of course, at that point you might as well use something more robust like PrimoCache.

But what if I don’t really care about losing data in the rare event it happens because I only game on my PC and if I lose a game or it becomes corrupted I can simply uninstall it and then reinstall on Steam?

 

All of my important photos, documents and other work is on my laptop and backed up via cloud.

[NewMaxx]

It can be useful in limited circumstances, for example with deferring writes for QLC-based drives, but a modern OS will already have write caching enabled for that drive. All it does is ensure a certain amount of cache while the OS will dynamically allocate instead. This generally is less efficient in the use of system RAM as the OS will cache system-wide, it adds more overhead as there's double caching (for the drive separate from the OS's still-existing caching), and it increases the chance of data loss because you're using another layer of volatile memory that again is separate from system caching.

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, Billbill said:

You are calling something a gimmick for the fact that you do not understand what it is.  

It is a gimmick in every usecase I've tested. I always tell customers to disable it. The negatives outweigh the benefits. Superfetch (which is already mostly pointless when you have an SSD) will already use an extra RAM you have. Rapid mode is just there so people will get misleading benchmarks.

 

 

 

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Edited May 4, 2020 by wkdpaul
cleanup

[NewMaxx]

6 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

But what if I don’t really care about losing data in the rare event it happens because I only game on my PC and if I lose a game or it becomes corrupted I can simply uninstall it and then reinstall on Steam?

 

All of my important photos, documents and other work is on my laptop and backed up via cloud.

It's a write cache. And the speed of the device in terms of how fast it can write does not change. You just defer some of the writes in system memory (which already happens to some degree). Your OS will already have write caching enabled for any SSD by default, this is just a separate dedicated cache, but there's little reason to do that unless you specifically know why. 

[NewMaxx]

4 minutes ago, Billbill said:

PrimoCache would do the same thing as rapid storage

No, PrimoCache is very different. It has both tiering and caching, it's block-based rather than application-based, it has actual mapping (e.g. 4B-to-4KB), etc. I don't think PrimoCache is a good idea either unless you know why you need it, but it's absolutely not the same.

[JoostinOnline]

We're at a weird point where 8GB is usually enough, but sometimes you go over that and you seriously suffer performance-wise. Memory works best in matching kits. If you could get two 6GB sticks (so a total of 12GB), that would be great, but you can't. 16GB is the recommended amount, just because 8GB often isn't enough.

Edited May 4, 2020 by wkdpaul
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[Guest]

No.

[WkdPaul]

* thread cleaned *

 

If you're not interested in helping, then don't reply and move on.

[GamerBlake]

1 hour ago, wkdpaul said:

* thread cleaned *

 

If you're not interested in helping, then don't reply and move on.

Thank you!