Non-typical RAM Setup Question

MagusALL

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May 24, 2013
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I have recently watched a video on RAMDisk and am thinking of trying it out. If anyone has personal experience using this tech please give me any advice or suggestions you have. Other than that I am wondering what is the proper way or amount of RAM to have to use this. Currently I am running 2x4Gb sticks of G. Skill RipJaws X at 1600Mhz via a XMP profile on a MSI Z77A-GD55 motherboard. I believe this should be at 9-9-9-24. I am a gamer but to be honest I don't really know what is the best way to utilize this tecthis hnology to gain performance in any area including games/internet/etc so please tell me the best way to set this up, as in what I should put in this volume. Also would I be foolish to add a third stick of RAM for the RAMDisk exclusively or should I always keep the sticks in multiples of two (ie 2 or 4 sticks) to get dual channel? I know this information is out there somewhere but it is honestly much easier and better to have someone who has used it on forum explain it to me otherwise I will be scratching my head for weeks wading through mostly jargon I don't comprehend. Thanks for all your help and hopefully I can either get this up and running or 86 the idea completely. My rig consists of the aforementioned motherboard/RAM as well as a i7-3770K at 4.2Ghz, MSI GTX 760 TF OC, SanDisk Extreme 120Gb SSD, two WD Blue Caviar 1Tb in RAID1. Thanks again.
 
Solution
RAM Disk / RAM Drive is software, the RAM itself is hardware.

The timings do not matter, people used to use RAM drives heaps back before Windows ran in Protected Mode as it was better than having 32MB of EMS memory in an add-in card sitting there doing nothing (at all) in the earlier versions of Windows.

EDIT: You cannot dedicate physical hardware to a given task once the Operating System loads. The memory the driver sees may align with physical memory addresses, but even if it does it will not align with a single stick of RAM. The motherboard chipset and memory controller (integrated within the CPU) do a much better job of this than a programmer possibly could! :)

Using three sticks should not disable dual-channel mode...
RAM Disk / RAM Drive is software, the RAM itself is hardware.

The timings do not matter, people used to use RAM drives heaps back before Windows ran in Protected Mode as it was better than having 32MB of EMS memory in an add-in card sitting there doing nothing (at all) in the earlier versions of Windows.

EDIT: You cannot dedicate physical hardware to a given task once the Operating System loads. The memory the driver sees may align with physical memory addresses, but even if it does it will not align with a single stick of RAM. The motherboard chipset and memory controller (integrated within the CPU) do a much better job of this than a programmer possibly could! :)

Using three sticks should not disable dual-channel mode on most modern chipsets either.

You may not notice a speed benefit at all using a RAM Drive, and it may be slower -some of the time- as there will be some contention -some of the time- if the RAM is acting as a storage medium, in addition to the OS Disk Cache (which is also in RAM, possibly duplicating data in the RAM Drive), in addition to 'hosting' all the applications code and required data.

That said, it will be faster at certain tasks too, -some of the time-, and there may not be any contention at all -almost all of the time- (depending on the software being executed and the data it requires, and where that data is at the time it is needed).

e.g. Running DOOM from a RAM-DRIVE on a 486 was actually slower on 'most' 486 systems available at the time; it was better to run Norton Disk Cache or Microsoft Smart Drive with a small 512KB to 8MB read-only/read-ahead cache instead.

Alternatively just run a time-demo prior to loading the game in question so the OS keeps the recently used data in the disk cache if the occasional skipping bothers you, in addition to running IOBit GameBooster to reduce the number of tasks performing disk I/O while gaming.

Since you have 8GB of RAM the above is more likely to serve you well, you may also want to try disabling the SuperFetch service, as it doesn't 'play optimally' with all game titles. (Especially ones that DO NOT put all the game data into a few LARGE files when a real-time virus scanner is going mad trying to keep up).

UPDATE: At the end of the day, you already have a 120GB SSD anyway, so just install your most used games there and make that your primary Steam Library if you use Steam.

PS: IObit GameBooster may do a better job at solving your problem than using a RAM Drive.
 
Solution

MagusALL

Honorable
May 24, 2013
182
0
10,710
To add to this question what I originally intended to ask was can I add a third 4Gb RAM at the same speed and use this only for the RAMDisk or should I add sticks 3 and 4 for an additional 8Gb and use those two? How much RAM do I need for regular use? Sorry for the second post.