SuperFast RAM Disks

MadModMike · Mar 21, 2006

I don't know how many know of this, but it's a pretty nifty program I found. I'm sure we all know what RAM Disks are, where part of your RAM is used as a temp hard drive. It's kind of like the iRAM and other drives but this uses your system RAM vs. buying extra for that. Again, not sure how many people know about it, but I get about 1050MB/s on the RAM Disk which can be used to install stuff, etc. It's pretty neat, only a trial version for free and it's $$$ for full, but it's worth a check out. I recommend having 1GB or more, I have 2GB and set a 512MB RAM Disk, works nice.

http://superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

Trial Download

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

samir_nayanajaad · Mar 21, 2006

What would be cool mike, if you could get enough ram, like 4gb, to install a game on your ram disk then see what kind of fps you can get.

kumana1 · Mar 22, 2006

i would imagine that load times for games/apps in general would be substantially reduced.

MadModMike · Mar 22, 2006

i would imagine that load times for games/apps in general would be substantially reduced.

Considering you're going from avg. of 50MB/s for a hard drive, to over 1GB/s, there will be a near instantaneous load time. But the contents of it get deleted on reboot so if your comp crashes, bye bye data.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

mpjesse · Mar 22, 2006

as I'm sure you're aware, working with large video and audio files would certainly benefit from this program. but you better damn well have a UPS. lol.

i'd probably go mad if I made a shite load of changes to a .dwg file and then the power went out!

I might just try it out... thx. ;-)

MadModMike · Mar 22, 2006

as I'm sure you're aware, working with large video and audio files would certainly benefit from this program. but you better damn well have a UPS. lol.

i'd probably go mad if I made a shite load of changes to a .dwg file and then the power went out!

I might just try it out... thx. ;-)

Yeah, I'm tempted to buy another 2GB kit or get a entirely new Opteron 64 system w/ 8GB of RAM and set a 6GB RAM DISK, LOL! That's sick. I have a 512MB one now, gonna use it for LAN Parties when we need to transfer files fast, each of us will use the RAM Disks to get instant transfers, but now that stupid 1GbE is slowing us down grrz, I wish 10GbE wasn't $1000 for a freakin' NIC -.-.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

bombasschicken · Mar 22, 2006

haha i was just thinking..

"I wonder if you can put the swap file on the ramdisk??"

i can decide if its stupid or not.. yes your using ram for virtural ram.. but that would be considerably faster than using the harddrive.. seems like a way to force windows to use the ram one way or another...

prolly stupid...

MadModMike · Mar 22, 2006

haha i was just thinking..

"I wonder if you can put the swap file on the ramdisk??"

i can decide if its stupid or not.. yes your using ram for virtural ram.. but that would be considerably faster than using the harddrive.. seems like a way to force windows to use the ram one way or another...

prolly stupid...

I have done this on a machine, and it works. Windows will say all your RAM Disks are part of Virtual Memory, so a 512MB RAM Disk shows 512MB more in Virtual Memory. But yes, you can put your Page File on this, I haven't tested performance, as I find that a waste of my RAM Disk.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

mpjesse · Mar 22, 2006

That's not a bad idea actually... you'd need 4GB of memory to really pull it off though. You could do it w/ 2GB I suppose... but you might run into problems if you've got a lot going on (multitasking wise).

-mpjesse

darkstar782 · Mar 22, 2006

Surely you might as well jsut run with 4gb ram and no swap file? :/

MadModMike · Mar 23, 2006

That's not a bad idea actually... you'd need 4GB of memory to really pull it off though. You could do it w/ 2GB I suppose... but you might run into problems if you've got a lot going on (multitasking wise).

-mpjesse

A friend of mine with a Dual AMD Opteron 64 rig is thinking of buying 4GB-8GB of RAM and having a 2-6GB RAM Disk, that would be sick.

ON a side note, Windows Disk Management doesn't recognize a RAM Disk, so AFAIK, you CAN'T RAID them.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

MadModMike · Mar 23, 2006

Something that IS awesome, is if you had a 10GbE or 1GbE network, and ran some high-performance-needed apps, you can Cluster RAM Disks linearly and, for example, have 10 servers with each 1GB of RAM Disk and have a Single 10GB RAM Disk for use, which is insane.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

MadModMike · Mar 23, 2006

I installed 3DMARK05 on a 750MB RAM DISK out of 2GB of RAM (I installed RAM Disk Plus Desktop Full Edition). Loading times were the same (shockingly), but I gained 2 frames per second in the tests, so it's something.

EDIT: To those who run x64, this is something great: I get 1050MB/s under 32-bit, but under 64-bit, the performance more than DOUBLES to 2300MB/s, hehe.

EDIT2: http://spare2.com/bench/index.html - That's a screen of cached HDD in a RAID 5, it can basically be taken as a RAM DISK. It gets 4.5GB/s using Linux x64.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

linux_0 · Mar 23, 2006

Yup that was on FC3 x86_64 on a Dual Opteron 252 with 4GB RAM :-D

Stole that from a guy @ the LUG.

Luscious · Apr 14, 2006

I was thinking of getting the i-RAM as well since I had the spare PCI slot and sata port there in my machine, but then I remembered THG also mentioned in their review another solution, the HyperDrive III by HyperOS.

Well I went to their website and as it happens they have a new version the HyperDrive IV.

Highlights:

1. It can take upto 16GB!!! of RAM
2. Doesn't use up a precious PCI slot
3. Retains power if computer is rebooted or shutdown
4. Also offers battery backup option
5. Lets you connect a drive directly to the board as memory backup device.

I don't know what you might be thinking, but I put my money on this baby.

For starters, I would without hesitation rather fill up a useless empty 5.25 inch bay then sacrifice a PCI slot. Especially when SLI can take away the space of 4 slots in itself.

Second, 16GB is way more useful than 4 or 8 will ever be. When you think that a regular 20GB HDD has about 18GB available after formatting, then 16GB of super-fast instant space opens up a lot of opportunities!!!

It is expensive - $1048 on their website for the 16GB version, and thats WITHOUT the ram! - but you do get what you pay for. And the fact that you can now have 16GB of instant silent storage space is something I for one as an enthusiast would be willing to pay for.

I can just imagine how amazing things will be after I install this!!!

linux_0 · Apr 14, 2006

I was thinking of getting the i-RAM as well since I had the spare PCI slot and sata port there in my machine, but then I remembered THG also mentioned in their review another solution, the HyperDrive III by HyperOS.

Well I went to their website and as it happens they have a new version the HyperDrive IV.

Highlights:

1. It can take upto 16GB!!! of RAM
2. Doesn't use up a precious PCI slot
3. Retains power if computer is rebooted or shutdown
4. Also offers battery backup option
5. Lets you connect a drive directly to the board as memory backup device.

I don't know what you might be thinking, but I put my money on this baby.

For starters, I would without hesitation rather fill up a useless empty 5.25 inch bay then sacrifice a PCI slot. Especially when SLI can take away the space of 4 slots in itself.

Second, 16GB is way more useful than 4 or 8 will ever be. When you think that a regular 20GB HDD has about 18GB available after formatting, then 16GB of super-fast instant space opens up a lot of opportunities!!!

It is expensive - $1048 on their website for the 16GB version, and thats WITHOUT the ram! - but you do get what you pay for. And the fact that you can now have 16GB of instant silent storage space is something I for one as an enthusiast would be willing to pay for.

I can just imagine how amazing things will be after I install this!!!

The problem with these devices is that they connect to the system over an SATA or PATA IDE interface which is relatively extremely slow.

A RAM disk made out of system RAM would be much faster.

PATA IDE 133 = 133MB/sec
SATA1 = 150MB/sec
SATA2 = 300MB/sec
U160 = 160MB/sec
U320 = 320MB/sec

PC3200 RAM = 6.4GB/sec in dual channel
PC2-1066 RAM = 8.5GB/sec

All numbers are MAX theoretical.

MadModMike · Apr 14, 2006

Linux, you meant:

DDR2-1066: 17GB/s

You just typed it differently

.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

angry_ducky · Apr 14, 2006

Very, very cool. It won't work well for me; 1GB of RAM probably isn't enough.

linux_0 · Apr 14, 2006

Brain malfunction

PC2-8500 = DDR2 1066 = 8.5GB/sec in 64bit mode

PC2-8500 = DDR2 1006 = 17GB/sec in 128bit mode

shabodah · Apr 14, 2006

See ddrdrive.com They are trying to get their product out the door for the 939 to AM2 update so people have something to use their DDR for. It is set to use the PCIe slot which helps a lot in this instance. The others are stuck with PCI or Pata or Sata bandwidth, which IS restrictive for this tech (Actually PCIe X1 is still restrictive if you've got enough Ram)

linux_0 · Apr 14, 2006

See ddrdrive.com They are trying to get their product out the door for the 939 to AM2 update so people have something to use their DDR for. It is set to use the PCIe slot which helps a lot in this instance. The others are stuck with PCI or Pata or Sata bandwidth, which IS restrictive for this tech (Actually PCIe X1 is still restrictive if you've got enough Ram)

I would like to see an X16 DDR drive :-D

shabodah · Apr 14, 2006

PCIe x16 seems a bit of overkill unless you had 32X2GB sticks or something, I think x4 or x8 would be a good idea though.

linux_0 · Apr 14, 2006

PCIe x16 seems a bit of overkill unless you had 32X2GB sticks or something, I think x4 or x8 would be a good idea though.

PCI-Express X16 is only 4GB/sec simplex or 8GB/sec duplex

A single PC3200 stick can theoretically push 3.2GB/sec

2 PC3200 sticks in Dual Channel can can theoretically push 6.4GB/sec

Ideally you would want a DDR drive like that to have a Dual or Quad channel DDR controller.

shabodah · Apr 14, 2006

As many channels as Sticks would make sense, but my point is that it seems very cost prohibitive to use this tech at its finest AND I don't want to waste a PCIe X16 slot for it (well not until motherboards are come with 5+ PCIe x16 slots anyway). How often is anyone going to be using 8GB's a sec of bandwidth on a PC? Sounds like a good number to shoot for, but more is going to be something current technology is going to need to catch up to first, you know for when Microsuck has a OS using 2TB of your systems ram just at idle (in other words in a few years

)

linux_0 · Apr 14, 2006

As many channels as Sticks would make sense, but my point is that it seems very cost prohibitive to use this tech at its finest AND I don't want to waste a PCIe X16 slot for it (well not until motherboards are come with 5+ PCIe x16 slots anyway). How often is anyone going to be using 8GB's a sec of bandwidth on a PC? Sounds like a good number to shoot for, but more is going to be something current technology is going to need to catch up to first, you know for when Microsuck has a OS using 2TB of your systems ram just at idle (in other words in a few years )

I would get an SLI board or a board with 2 or more X16 slots and use one of the extra X16 slots ;-)

Although a 2, 4 or 8way Opteron 64 with a giant RAM disk in system RAM is a much better choice :-D

SuperFast RAM Disks

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