Intel DC P3700 SSD: Will it significantly improve Visual Studio 2013 startup time?

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PrecisionGuy

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Jun 22, 2012
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Hi guys,

I'm currently running my virtual development environment on a Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD. Normally, everything works fast enough, except that Visual Studio 2013 takes some time to start: When double-clicking a solution file, it takes up to 11.5 secs on average until VS is ready for work. I have analyzed the start procedure using Windows Performance Analyzer, but couldn't find anything unusual. I have ReSharper running, when disabling it, the startup performance improves to 8.5 secs on average. Better, but still far from being blisteringly fast. And that's really annoying, since I have to work with a lot of solutions and therefore I open new VS instances very often.

According to hardwarecanucks.com, the Adobe CS5 starts in 2s on a P3700 800GB and in 7s on a 840 Pro 256GB (3.5x faster). Loading 100 Firefox Portable offline tabs takes 21s on a P3700 800GB and 107s on a 840 Pro 256GB (5x faster).

Because of this I'm considering getting an Intel DC P3700 400GB, but I'm a little bit reluctant. Benchmark numbers are impressive, the price tag too. If I pay more than $1,000, will I get a 3x or 4x better VS startup performance?

What do you guys think? Anyone here who went from 840 Pro (or comparable) to P3700 and using Visual Studio?

Thx!

EDIT 2015-04-15:
Purchased a P3700 400GB and installed it. It's "only" a 2x increase in VS start performance, but still nice. Don't regret it! :D

Benchmarks:
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Solution
A
This is your solution:

Standard:
Dell PERC H310 PCIe host-based RAID card with four 6Gb/s ports supporting SATA/SAS/SSD drives and RAID 0, 1, 5,
10 configuration

I'd pick up 3 - 4 drives and configure them in a RAID5 at this point. Moving from one drive to the next won't provide significant benefit, but running a RAID on the perc controller will
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Alec Mowat

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Jan 8, 2014
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This is your solution:

Standard:
Dell PERC H310 PCIe host-based RAID card with four 6Gb/s ports supporting SATA/SAS/SSD drives and RAID 0, 1, 5,
10 configuration

I'd pick up 3 - 4 drives and configure them in a RAID5 at this point. Moving from one drive to the next won't provide significant benefit, but running a RAID on the perc controller will
 
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PrecisionGuy

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Jun 22, 2012
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Alec, thx! Will consider this option too.
 
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Alec Mowat

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With an upgrade SSD, you'll still bottleneck on the speed of the SATA cable.

Moving to the PCIe RAID card will give you the full bandwidth of the PCIe slot and multiple sata ports. This will be 2 or 3x the speed of a single drive. Make sure you run a RAID1 or RAID5, if a drive fails in a RAID0, you will lose all of your data.
 
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PrecisionGuy

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Jun 22, 2012
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Intel DC P3700 is a NVMe SSD and uses PCIe 3.0! It's currently one of the fastest SSDs money can buy.
 
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Alec Mowat

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Jan 8, 2014
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Java:
"can replace the performance of 7 SATA SSDs aggregated through a host bus adapter (HBA)."

That answers your question.

I dunno... Filling the RAID card with proper drives would probably be around the same price, give you redundancy and a bit more space.
Make sure your working files are on the SSD as well, maybe even Windows (if it's using windows API's)
Also, make sure every working directory is excluded from the AV. Antivirus might scan the files as you open them.
 
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amenophis

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Feb 23, 2016
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Hi guys,

I know this thread is a year old and sorry for that.

I was wondering if PrecisionGuy could tell more about the NVMe ssd drive setup in his Dell Precision T3600 ?

I'll get the same Precision T3600 in a couple days, and i'm willing to add a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M2 drive.
(by using a adapter like http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-3-0-x4-Host-Adapter-for-M-2-NGFF-PCIe-SSD-for-desktops-/301845329603?hash=item46476236c3:g:Kp4AAOSwNSxVci7B)

May i know if you were able to boot on your PCIe NVMe Drive easily ?

Thanks for the info ;)



 
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PrecisionGuy

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Jun 22, 2012
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Hi amenophis,

unluckily the Precision 3600 won't boot from the P3700, because the P3700 doesn't get recognized by the BIOS as a boot device. Booting from NVMe is supported only by newer Precision models. I boot from Samsung 840 Pro and have some applications (Visual Studio, SQL Server) installed on the P3700.
 
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amenophis

Commendable
Feb 23, 2016
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Hi PrecisionGuy,

Thank you for your fast answer even on this old thread.

I guess that you've updated your T3600 to the latest bios version (14).
Adding support to boot from PCIe on the C600 chipset is something that Dell could do as this chipset is capable of supporting it.
As well as adding support for NVMe.

The T3600 is a very good machine, and with added support it could become even better.

Cheers
 
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PrecisionGuy

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Jun 22, 2012
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Hi amenophis,

yes, BIOS A14 is installed. The 3600 is a very decent machine indeed. Got mine back in 2013, still works like a charm. Dell for sure could make it support NVMe as a boot drive... but they want you to buy a new workstation from them in order to get support for newest tech. That's life :)
 
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