Ram Drives VS SSD VS HDD

I am looking for the best performance solution that is at a reasonable cost for use as a paging drive. Normal page file size is 8-10gb with 4gb used. Sequential performance of my WD 640 Caviar Blue is 90-95mbs.

I would love to do with out a page file but some of my programs require its use and 8gb (2x4gb) DDR2 kits that aren't for workstations and servers use cost as much as a GTX460. 16GB costs as much as a GTX480/5970.
 
In terms of performance, the best solution is always the one which gives you enough RAM so that you don't need to use the page file. I run my system with no pagefile. I couldn't do that with Photoshop 6 and Windows XP, but now that I'm running CS4 and Windows 7 it's not a problem.

IMHO it doesn't make a lot of sense to use a RAM drive as a pagefile because it's more efficient for the program to simply use the memory directly rather than going through the OS's virtual memory layer to swap pages between active RAM and pagefile RAM. But if you really, really can't run without a pagefile then that would be the fastest way to do it.

After that, an SSD would be the next best option. And it might well be the one that gives you the best overall performance if you go to the trouble of installing the OS and your programs on it as well - that would give you much faster boot times and drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to start programs up.
 
Thanks for your reply and I agree but for the time I would like to explore the ram option using part of it to act as a drive (system) rather a expensive addon. Do you know of any such software? The main thing I use that needs a pagefile is emulators while I am using vista x64.

6gb ram atm (2x2gb+1x1gb)
8250e (2.57ghz) 271 base clock
WD6400AAKs 640gb with mod (boot)
4 other but slower storage drives installed.