Son of iRam getting close? (Acard SSD)

I'd rather have 16GB of system RAM in a machine and set aside 12GB of it for a RAMdisk for most everything I can dream of (with absolutely fucking insane performance boosts because of it) than have an iRAM or any such device with 16GB of RAM on it on top of whatever amount of system RAM already exists on the box.

I guarantee you two things with such a setup:

1) It would cheaper in the long run with just the 16GB of system RAM, and...

2) It would outperform the iRAM setup by leaps and bounds when I was done setting everything up properly.

'Nuff typed.
 
Joe Average said:
I guarantee you two things with such a setup:

1) It would cheaper in the long run with just the 16GB of system RAM, and...

2) It would outperform the iRAM setup by leaps and bounds when I was done setting everything up properly.

'Nuff typed.
Click to expand...

And I'll guarantee you one thing:

You'll never boot off the RAM disk.
 
spazoid said:
And I'll guarantee you one thing:

You'll never boot off the RAM disk.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Really a ramdisk and the iRam product are two entirely different beasts. The iRam is designed in every way to be a disk product replacement.

They would need to add additional ram slots to a motherboard, and piggy back it off of the north bridge, with a battery backup. That would be comparable.

But theoretically this will get far better performance than an SSD (read and write).
 
spazoid said:
And I'll guarantee you one thing:

You'll never boot off the RAM disk.
Click to expand...

You sure are stuck on that boot thing, any particular reason? I'm just curious, 'cause... well, I haven't rebooted my workstation in nearly 14 weeks, I'd sure love to know what the big deal about rebooting is for some folks. Damned weirdos... ;)

As I mentioned previously, this workstation of mine - Q6600 at 3 GHz, 8GB of DDR2 800 CL4, an old Maxtor 250GB 16MB 7200 rpm SATA I hard drive with an average HDTach read score of 54MB/s, about 65MB/s max at the outer edges - boots XP Pro x64 in about 17 seconds flat. With XP Pro x86 and a BootVis pass or two it'll boot in ~14, soooo...

Time to ask my age-old question once again it seems:

"How fast is fast?"

'cause what you might think is fast looks pretty damned slow to me. If you want a fast boot, try this on for size:

XP Pro x86 booting in 6 seconds flat in a VM on a virtual hard drive that exists purely inside a RAMdisk.

You can't get any faster than that, I promise you. The hardware detection, as well as network and video driver initialization take about 4 seconds of that 6 as measured by BootVis inside the VM, and the rest doesn't even really matter since it's ~2 seconds... so even if you had DDR3 1333 CL4 RAM on a Q9650 at 5 GHz it wouldn't matter. There are aspects to the boot process that have nothing to do with the speed of the CPU or the RAM, it's simple hardware initialization that takes more time these days, even inside a virtual machine.

That's an OS that exists purely in DDR2 800 CL4 RAM: the virtual hard drive is 4GB in size, with 512MB of "RAM" assigned to the VM, taken from the 8GB of system RAM along with 6GB set aside for the RAMdisk.

Beat that... ;)
 
Joe Average said:
ramdiskplusmr8.png


I don't get it. What's so expensive? We're primarily discussing desktop systems, not servers. If you're looking at the server versions of RamDisk Plus, then yes, the cost goes up but that's a given with most any software. Usually entails more support so, the cost is higher.
Click to expand...

i tried googling ramdisk plus, i'm getting other software.. do you have a link??
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Is it a SATA I or a SATA II disk interface? It should be able to peg the SATA II interface, in RAID0, approaching as close to the theoretical max as possible.
Click to expand...

It defaults to SATA II, but has a jumper if you need to limit it to SATA I speeds.
 
Joe Average said:
I'd rather have 16GB of system RAM in a machine and set aside 12GB of it for a RAMdisk for most everything I can dream of (with absolutely fucking insane performance boosts because of it) than have an iRAM or any such device with 16GB of RAM on it on top of whatever amount of system RAM already exists on the box.

I guarantee you two things with such a setup:

1) It would cheaper in the long run with just the 16GB of system RAM, and...

2) It would outperform the iRAM setup by leaps and bounds when I was done setting everything up properly.

'Nuff typed.
Click to expand...

Not enough typed. You have been making fairly strong statements. You claim all this experience. However, we haven't seen any proof. So, call me a skeptic.

Lets gets back on topic. The reason why people want this drive is they want to BOOT w/ performance. Can this software do this? What are the EXACT steps to execute this. What is the EXACT software, if others, needed. No more generalities or claims. Proof. I want the same level of detail as people who claimed to be able to boot from a thumb drive before it was understood.

If you can't do this, your comments about SW RAM disk have minimal value for the current problem. We want a BOOT disk that is fast. That is the topic.

Note: I shutdown nearly EVERY night. I see absolutely NO reason to leave a computer on that is sitting idle.
 
So what you simple folks are really saying is, you're not interested in fast booting PCs, but more accurately when you keep saying BOOT disk WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN TO SAY IS A SYSTEM DRIVE IN RAM.

Am I right, or wrong 'cause the language some of you keep using is a bit lackluster, to be honest. Anyone can get a fast boot disk, hell, SSD hardware and Velociraptors are fast boot disks these days.

I don't think anyone would need to prove anything in terms of RAM performance, you either have comprehension of just how fast true RAM is and a disk that "exists" solely in the domain of actual RAM and not some cheap knockoff that's hamstrung on a silly drive interface (IDE or SATA), or you have no clue whatsoever.

As for shutting down the PC, that's entirely your prerogative I suppose. Mine is rarely if ever idle (and no I don't waste cycles for stuff like Folding purposes, no point in it and yes that'll get me in trouble with some folks but whatever), it's usually encoding video or working on transcoding of audio for some of the podcast production work I do, and also image editing - I do most everything in huge batches that are set up during the hours I'm awake (too many) and the batches process in the hours when I'm actually physically not at the PC and hopefully sleeping (definitely not enough).

If you want proof, download the trial version of RamDisk Plus and figure it out yourself. That's what I did years past, that's the best way to learn. No benches I can post will be accepted, that much is obvious, so do it yourself.

Or stay in the slow lane... the choice is yours.
 
Hypernova said:
The performance from what was posted on http://www.oc.com.tw/article/0809/readarticle.asp?id=6519#1 is rather disappointing IMO.

Single sata tops out at 162MB/s on HD Tune and 192MB/s for dual, not a good number for a drive of this calibre. I hope this is the fault of the onboard ICH9R as I was expecting at least 100MB/s more on each.
Click to expand...

I suspect this has more to do with the on-board RAID controller than the drive. With a pair of velociraptors in RAID-0, I also get ~ 157MB/sec transfer rate. Running as JBOD, I was getting ~162MB/sec transfer rates.

** however **

Did anyone notice the access time? 0.0ms...

Write speeds trail behind the read speeds, but not by much.

Real world tests were even more interesting then the synthetic benchmarks. I was able to drop an IO operation that took 16:48 minutes with my RAID-0 velociraptors to 2:37 minutes. Database operations got a healthy boost as well. (Still working those metrics, but not sure I can release that data). Heck, this thing set what I've seen as a new personal record for how fast you can install XP - timer went from 32 mintues after entering the license key, finished in 2:16 minutes... VMWare operations... wow.

The software RAMDisk is not an option for me. I've got all that physical RAM hard at work already. (grin)

More this weekend....
 
So, what you're saying again, Joe, is that us simple people, should either have the same computer usage pattern as you, or simply be satisfied with readily available, common hardware.

Thanks. It warms my heart when I get called simple because I differ from one particular persons computer habbits :)

You're also saying that since the current SSD's and the VRaptor is already rather fast, we should not want for something faster. Errhh? So, you want the evolution of harddrive speeds to come to a halt, because the VRaptor and SSD's are already out and available?


I think that your biggest problem in understanding why anyone would want this product, is that you think everyone either has, or should have, the same usage of their computer as YOU.

Some of us actually shuts down our computers at night. Some of us do NOT run VMs. Some of us do NOT set up batches of encoding/transcoding tasks to run over night. Some of us are already capped at the amount of RAM our systems can hold, and USE that RAM for other stuff than RAM disks.


Accept that people might differ from you in their usage, and I'm sure you'll understand why people would want this piece of hardware.
 
Never said it wasn't useful, just said it's slower than it could/should be - and I'm not the only one in this thread saying that, if you noticed. Might wanna work on that comprehension there, bub.

This is a forum of enthusiasts that tend to want the best performance all around, that do use their PCs rather extensively, and certainly isn't the kind of place an average Joe - not me, I assure you - hangs out just to talk tech. That's what AnandTech or THG are for.

Simple.
 
Joe Average, can you point me to some tricks or reghacks to use with RamDisk Plus, right now I just have the cache of my A/V programs and my page file there.

TIA
 
mjz_5 said:
if only 4GB ram stick dont cost too much money
Click to expand...

Actually... I was shocked to see you could get 8G (2x4G) kit of DDR2 for as little as $190 or $240!

A single stick is going for $115, which I could swear dropped from $250 in the last two weeks.

Crazy how fast prices look to be dropping on RAM.
 
Joe Average: Can you list, in detail, exactly what you're offloading onto your massive RAMdisk?
 
mrwhitethc said:
Joe Average, can you point me to some tricks or reghacks to use with RamDisk Plus, right now I just have the cache of my A/V programs and my page file there.

TIA
Click to expand...

One thing to do is reset the standard Windows environment variables TMP and TEMP to the RAMdisk - in daily operation, Windows creates a shitload of temporary files, more than you probably realize. Changing the pointers of the default TMP and TEMP variables to the RAMdisk will give a serious boost in performance, especially when it comes to installing software which will happen ridiculously fast because when an installer runs it'll dump all those temporary files used to install the software into the RAMdisk.

The best part of that is you're not clogging up the hard drive with all those temporary files anymore.

Change the TMP and TEMP variable pointers here:

System Properties - Advanced - Environment Variables (in Vista it's a little different but the general idea is still the same). Once you get there you'll see something like this:

variables1hh7.png


Highlight either of the variables and click Edit, then you'll see this:

variables2lt6.png


Once you have your RAMdisk created, it'll have a drive letter. The default is S: for "SuperSpeed" I think, the company that makes RamDisk Plus, but I prefer R: for mine when I have one (which is almost always, actually). So change the Variable value to the drive letter of your RAMdisk with the colon and the backslash and then TEMP because what we're going to do is create a folder in the RAMdisk root directory called TEMP where all the TEMP/TMP files will go. You don't want them just in the root directory or it'll get messy fast, so you should have something that looks like this when you're done (as mine is):

variables3qi3.png


Once you're done, click OK and that's about it. From that moment on (logging off and back into your account is fine if you're paranoid but not necessary; the environment variable change goes into effect as soon as you click OK.

It wouldn't hurt to remember the original variable if for some reason you wish to change it back so it's %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp on 2K, XP, and 2K3. I think because Vista uses a lot of junction points it might be a bit different (not running Vista presently so I can't take a peek to confirm the exact variable). Make a small text file, put the original variable in it (copy and paste the text) and save it in your Windows directory as variables.txt or whatever. However you wish to keep the original path is up to you.

After you do this, the RAMdisk now becomes the "dump" site for any and temporary files that Windows itself creates, including stuff that sometimes is created by some applications that honor the system-placed environment variables. If you have software that allows you to specify temporary locations for undo work, edits, etc you can alter them to point to (RAMdisk drive letter):\Temp just like Windows and they'll use the RAMdisk also, with the aforementioned huge boosts in performance when dealing with the creation of undo files, etc.

Every little bit helps, even on the fastest PCs on the planet. They're fast, but I can always make 'em just a bit faster. ;)

Hope this helps...

Unknown-One said:
Joe Average: Can you list, in detail, exactly what you're offloading onto your massive RAMdisk?
Click to expand...

I put all temp files as I just described there. I have my Photoshop scratch disk on the RAMdisk (4GB) and performance with Photoshop CS2 for nearly every operation absolutely screams. I can open 450MB TIFF images (yes, I do have quite a few as an amateur astronomer) in under 3-4 seconds most of the time because they load into RAM directly, completely, and never into RAM and then back out to the scratch file which would "normally" be right back on the physical - read: slow as hell - hard drive.

I have most everything of any temp related nature on the RAMdisk as required. I also have a batch file set up that copies a large chunk of files (all named individually) to the RAMdisk in another directory and then alters the PATH= statement in Windows so the system hits the RAMdisk first for commonly used files when needed, especially a ton of the .dll files in the System32 directory. Instead of hitting the hard drive - read again: slow as hell - they're being pulled from the RAMdisk so everything is effectively instantaneous as far as system .dll calls are concerned.

Everything is fast, as it should be. I need to write a speed guide because I've never seen one that I considered worthy of saying "Ok, go read this guide this guy wrote, he seems to know his shit."

Might be a good idea... hrmmm...
 
my 2 cents.. you would think that windows vista would have an option to do all this stuff automatically.. some thing like, "check here if you want the system to use 2GB of memory for temporary files""
 
Vista does this for SuperFetch but, it's still not as efficient as it could be. They have to make the OS work in a default kind of situation, meaning it has to work with a "lowest common denominator" type basic level of functionality.

Where you take it from there is really up to you. To all those that have always believed Windows can't be tuned for peak performance, well... I disagree. ;)
 
I have had this idea brewing for some time now:

1) Build a separate PC
2) Load it up with 16GB of ram (P5Q variant with that takes 4GB sticks )
3) Share out most of the ram as ramdrive. With teamed gigabit
4) Others on the network can use it. Either just through samba or iSCSI

I suppose that this is what things like terra ram san already do but is buildable for the normal [H]. If the cost of the rig is kept lower than the acard it might actually work out better.
 
Thank you Joe Average, I'll give that a try when I get home. And yeah I think you should write a speed guide, I try and always eek out the best performance I can on my gaming rig and anything that helps is welcome.
 
Joe Average said:
Vista does this for SuperFetch but, it's still not as efficient as it could be. They have to make the OS work in a default kind of situation, meaning it has to work with a "lowest common denominator" type basic level of functionality.

Where you take it from there is really up to you. To all those that have always believed Windows can't be tuned for peak performance, well... I disagree. ;)
Click to expand...





Oh really? :confused: Well when did you come to that decision?


Joe Average said:
Leave it alone. And the page file is also known as the swap file, they're the same thing.

'Nuff typed.
Click to expand...
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1329917&highlight=6GB+Page+file

Joe Average said:
...[In regards to page file modification]...Three little words are still the best possible advice after Windows is installed, any version of Windows:

Leave it alone.
Click to expand...
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1282926&highlight=6GB+Page+file&page=3


Joe Average said:
...
The basic gist is again, as always, leave it alone. Windows works just fine and dandy as long as you leave it alone and use it. Doing things that are outside the norm is when the problems occur, and they do, and we all know it, even those with less experience than some of us.
Click to expand...
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1282926&highlight=6GB+Page+file&page=3


I wouldn't have bothered with this reply except that I've been in several threads where Joe is condescending to other hardware enthusiasts, acting as if he knows all and others are all collectively dumb. In the last thread quoted above regarding a discussion about the page file being able to be disabled or not by the user - Joe states directly opposite of my what my company's Microsoft Premier Field Agent's relays to me. (I work for a company of 25,000 people, with a well qualified field agent who converesed with his other MS staff before getting back with me in stating Joe was wrong). This cocky arrogance vibe, which seems born of false pretenses, has no real benefit to any thread.

Joe, some people are getting annoyed.

Great! -- I'm all for it if you want to share something, but don't go acting like you are the only one in IT who knows anything at all. More-over --- this thread was not about a software RAM Disk application. It was okay to introduce the topic, to provide another alternative, but continuing to say people are stupid for wanting anything else is headstrong and unproductive -- except in making people upset with you. I for one, subscribed to this thread ONLY because I was interested in the OP concept --- not because I'm interested in your Ram Disk software pushings. --- at this point the thread is nearly completely derailed and there isn’t much to be gleaned out of the hardware disk solution discussed in the original post, worse yet anytime anyone tries to get it back on track, Joe comes in and calls that person stupid, because he/we aren’t interested in the little app that will save the world.
 
All right - another minor update. Figured out why the ECC RAM would produce goofy results. The 4G ECC sticks I was trying to use was Registered RAM rather than unbuffered ECC RAM. Registered RAM is not supported. ;( So much for pulling out half of the RAM on my T2000 for the 'full monty' 32G test on the drive.

It will emulate ECC RAM with non-ECC RAM. Docs say 9/10 of the RAM will be reserved for error correction. In practice, I saw 1G of my 8G disk reserved when mounted as one disk.

todlerix - trying different controller / ram combinations. RAM speed seems to have no impact on transfer rates. Guessing the SATA bus is the bottleneck, as 533 and 800 performed the same. Did not have any 400 or 667 grade ram. My junk RAM worked just fine, as long as it passed memtest. I did actually try some flaky RAM (heh) and in one case it created the disk, but gave problems formatting or recognizing the partition size.

Of course I did a worse case scenario - I mixed RAM (533 paired with 800). As long as the sizes were the same, it worked.

Doing benches as one drive, JBOD, and RAID-0 splits. Speak now if you want anything else.

Unbuffered ECC ram was limited... I only had two 512M sticks. Not enough to do anything meaningful with it.

Average Joe - you should really start a thread about the superspeed product. While loosely related, this thread is about RAMSan storage, not the system board based RAM disk. Both use RAM as storage, but they have a different audience.
 
Archaea said:
<snip>
Click to expand...

I agree.

Joe Average, please shut up. We know your position on this product and on RAM disks. That's not what we're interested in. If you care so much about them, make your own thread. In the mean time, some of us are actually interested in THIS product.
 
heelix said:
*snip*
Click to expand...

On the XS board the Acard representative said that the ram runs at 200 regardless of what you put in there;)

The ECC part is interesting, this means that people who want 64GB on the cheap (relatively) with normal 4GB sticks will end up with say 56GB. So if you want a true 64GB drive you must get the more expensive ECC ram.
 
Hypernova said:
On the XS board the Acard representative said that the ram runs at 200 regardless of what you put in there;)

The ECC part is interesting, this means that people who want 64GB on the cheap (relatively) with normal 4GB sticks will end up with say 56GB. So if you want a true 64GB drive you must get the more expensive ECC ram.
Click to expand...

well without ECC you are risking data corruption.. it becomes a problem with larger amounts of RAM.

http://standbytux.blogspot.com/2005/04/should-i-buy-ecc-or-non-ecc-ram.html

If you do the math, with 64GB of RAM that would be just over 9 bit errors per day on average.. As to if that will actually matter depends on what bit errors.. (and if it is being used at that time)

But still, if I had that much RAM storing data, I'd want it to be ECC for sure.
 
The docs say 8/9ths of the drive will be used for disk, with the rest for software based ecc.

Anyone else notice 16g ram (4x4gb) ddr2 kit for $340 in the hot deals forum?
 
unfortunately the combined total of 800 dollars is too much money for my blood ---- after all it is only a 16GB drive. :(

Concept is way cool - but too expensive.
 
Archaea said:
unfortunately the combined total of 800 dollars is too much money for my blood ---- after all it is only a 16GB drive. :(

Concept is way cool - but too expensive.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The price for DDR2 HAS become dirt cheap... for 1GB modules. Until 4GB sticks are ~$20 each, it's not really worth it.
 
djBon2112 said:
Agreed. The price for DDR2 HAS become dirt cheap... for 1GB modules. Until 4GB sticks are ~$20 each, it's not really worth it.
Click to expand...

I doubt 4GB sticks will ever reach that. Personally if the ECC 4GB stick actually reach $100 each I would actually buy it. $1300 isn't that much compared to what some people pay for GFX these days. And the gains in everyday use would be a lot more than just game GFX.
 
they should just start making all ram ECC, and forget about the rest..
 
Hypernova said:
I doubt 4GB sticks will ever reach that. Personally if the ECC 4GB stick actually reach $100 each I would actually buy it. $1300 isn't that much compared to what some people pay for GFX these days. And the gains in everyday use would be a lot more than just game GFX.
Click to expand...

5 years from now, why wouldn't 4GB sticks be 20 bucks... 4gb will be the new 1gb stick
 
mjz_5 said:
5 years from now, why wouldn't 4GB sticks be 20 bucks... 4gb will be the new 1gb stick
Click to expand...

By the time that 5 years is here we would have much better drives. +DDR2 4GB would still be expensive since they are no longer mainstream due to everyone moving onto DDR3.
 
Hypernova said:
By the time that 5 years is here we would have much better drives. +DDR2 4GB would still be expensive since they are no longer mainstream due to everyone moving onto DDR3.
Click to expand...

very obvious responses
 
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