SSD drives valid for Celestia??

[Goofy]

Hi guys.
I have the notebook in signature, and I use it for my lessons, but I have a good desktop too, at home, where I prepare my scripts and shows for Celestia.
The problem is that the notebook is not so smart as I need (I always use the best and bigger textures available), and probably a higher level one would be too costly.
So here is my doubt: if is it correct to say that Celestia uses a lot of HD memory swapping , I think that changing my 7200 rpm 240 GB HD with an equal size last generation SATA III SSD would improve greatly its performance.
Am I wrong?
Someone has already tried this solution for Celestia, and if yes, with what results?
The SSD I was thinking about is priced here about 350 Euros, and that's a lot of money, at least for me, so before buying it I wish to be sure results will be worth the price.
Thanks a lot for your help
Bye

Goofy.

[selden]

Celestia does not swap unless it grows to be larger than the amount of main memory in your computer or if you run many large programs at a time, more than will fit in main memory. Celestia is a 32bit application and cannot use much more than about 2GB of main memory.

The things that Celestia writes to disk are
1. status bits to the registry (e.g. render options) when it exits
2. bookmarks
3. image captures
4. movie captures
5. log files
I can't think of anything else, but I might have forgotten something.

Item 1 happens every time Celestia exits.
Items 2-5 only happen when you tell Celestia to do them.

All Addon data files are read-only.

I've never used Celestia with an SSD, but it should work fine. (Web browsers are much worse, for example.)

[Goofy]

Hello Selden, first of all Happy New year to you and all forum members.

I bought my notebook for exclusive use with Celestia, for astronomy school lessons and adults shows, so while using it nothing else is ryunning, even antivirus and all other background stuff are temporarely stopped.
You say that Celestia doesn't need to use HD swapping until the total free memory amount will be smaller that what is needed, and I think this never happens.
Humm, perhaps this is not true when using large VT textures, as Earth and Moon 64k VT textures+normals, I fear.
Well, I'll check it and inform here on results.
Anyway, I think I can save those 350 bucks for other needs.
BTW, any hope for 64 bit Celestia?
I think it will take big advantages from this.
Thanks a lot, Selden, you have been very kind, appreciated.
Bye

Goofy

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[philb]

I would suggest you investigate "SSD caching" : http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/2

I don't know if your hardware would support this (let alone the issue of putting a second drive into your laptop).

The idea is that you can reserve up to 64GB on the SSD as a cache between the standard HD and memory. This would hopefully ensure that all (or at least the most used) Celestia textures will be accessed from the SSD most of the time, which should improve texture load time.

I haven't tried this, and as for whether it's possible on your laptop (or any laptop) who knows!

Something worth investigating though IMO, and would allow the purchase of a lower capacity (ie. cheaper SSD), and perhaps will give the same performance improvement for a lower cost.

[Goofy]

Hi John and philb, thank you for suggestions.
I followed them, and up to now my conclusions are:
1- absolute need to put OD and Celestia data on two different drives, the former on speedy HDD like the one I have now, the former on a smaller SSD, maximum size 64 GB, but smaller is OK.
2- use of one single SSD on Intel Z68 mobos, that employ a new capability, and exactly the one to format two disks on the same SSD unit, one for OS and the other for data.
Alas, both solutions are not for my actual hardware, that isn't based on Z68 and has only one SATA2 HD slot.
So, if I didn't misunderstand all this, I have to wait until I'll have enough bucks to upgrade my hardware.
Thank a lot to all of you.
Bye

Goofy