[SOLVED] DRAM vs DRAM-less performance in real life?

May 18, 2022
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After considering the answers that I got in this thread, I decided to go for a sata3 ssd. But after doing a little bit of a research I got to know about these DRAM and DRAM-less ssd models. Now my question is, is there any noticeable difference between a ssd that have a DRAM and a DRAM-less one in real life?

Currently I'm planning to buy one of these ssds (250GB varients)
  1. Samsung 860 Evo (ddr4 DRAM) - 54$ approx.
  2. Transcend SSD830S (ddr3 DRAM) - 41$ approx.
  3. Adata Ultimate SU650 (DRAM-less) - 35$ approx.
I'm looking for suggestions to select the best cost effective option for me. I'd frequently work with the applications such as Photoshop, Matlab, Solidworks, and several IDEs including Android studio and Visual studio. So, if anyone has used a few (or atleast one) of these applications with one of the above mentioned ssd models please share ur experience here.
 
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is there any noticeable difference between a ssd that have a DRAM and a DRAM-less one in real life?

Yes.

But it doesn't matter to most people. It might to you if you are highly conscious of benchmarks. Plenty of people are...they post screen shots regularly here, complaining.

Or if you can make more money with a drive with DRAM. Or if you are prone to buyer's remorse. Or if you don't like a friend telling you that you were a fool to buy one without DRAM. Or if you are highly reluctant to pay 20 or 30 dollars more for a 256 GB drive that would not trigger regrets when you have minimal ways to accurately anticipate regrets.

You could certainly concoct a use case where you would butt heads with the DRAM-less performance issues...

4745454b

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In general dram will hold up better than dram less. But there is more to it than that. How many channels your drives memory controller has also plays a part in speed. And in general the larger the drive the more channels it can access at once. Those tiny SSDs might sound good, but there is more speed to be hand by simply moving to a 500GB or 1TB. There is also the name behind the drive. I know that Samsung drive is good, I'd have to look up the others. That alone is probably worth the extra money.
 
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Math Geek

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if i recall right, the dram-less mostly shows itself lacking when moving mass amounts of data. any drive slows dramatically once the cache fills. having no buffer causes this rather quickly. reading data is not such an issue but writing it def slows down for the dram-less drives.

otherwise i don't recall there being much of a difference between them.

i could be mistaking but i believe what i am saying is right :)
 
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May 18, 2022
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In addition, reputation and warranty.

  1. ADATA is on my DoNotBuy list, due to the messing about with changing specs, keeping the same part number, and not telling us.
  2. We've seen far more problems here with ADATA vs Samsung.
So, what about Transcend?
Do u have any experiences? :rolleyes:
 
is there any noticeable difference between a ssd that have a DRAM and a DRAM-less one in real life?

Yes.

But it doesn't matter to most people. It might to you if you are highly conscious of benchmarks. Plenty of people are...they post screen shots regularly here, complaining.

Or if you can make more money with a drive with DRAM. Or if you are prone to buyer's remorse. Or if you don't like a friend telling you that you were a fool to buy one without DRAM. Or if you are highly reluctant to pay 20 or 30 dollars more for a 256 GB drive that would not trigger regrets when you have minimal ways to accurately anticipate regrets.

You could certainly concoct a use case where you would butt heads with the DRAM-less performance issues every day....but that would be quite uncommon.

You asked for "best cost effective option". Not sure how performance ties into that requirement.

I'd probably pay more attention to possible future problems rather than speed.....such as customer service horror stories, warranty, RMA delays or denials, etc. Problem is, that info is hard to evaluate and is largely anecdotal.
 
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Solution
After considering the answers that I got in this thread, I decided to go for a sata3 ssd. But after doing a little bit of a research I got to know about these DRAM and DRAM-less ssd models. Now my question is, is there any noticeable difference between a ssd that have a DRAM and a DRAM-less one in real life?

Currently I'm planning to buy one of these ssds (250GB varients)
  1. Samsung 860 Evo (ddr4 DRAM) - 54$ approx.
  2. Transcend SSD830S (ddr3 DRAM) - 41$ approx.
  3. Adata Ultimate SU650 (DRAM-less) - 35$ approx.
I'm looking for suggestions to select the best cost effective option for me. I'd frequently work with the applications such as Photoshop, Matlab, Solidworks, and several IDEs including Android studio and Visual studio. So, if anyone has used a few (or atleast one) of these applications with one of the above mentioned ssd models please share ur experience here.
Shop in the Samsung/WD/Crucial lineup I don't think you will go too far wrong.

Dram/dramless.....I would lean toward the dram version.

Size?.....only you know what sort of space you will need I'll lean toward bigger won't hurt.
 
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