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About LinkBacksDoes this variant of the Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK i-RAM deliver the blistering performance it promises? HEXUS investigates...Using fast RAM modules to emulate a hard disk drive, is an interesting approach to speeding up storage...
HEXUS.reviews :: GIGABYTE GC-RAMDISK i-RAM
Does this variant of the Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK i-RAM deliver the blistering performance it promises? HEXUS investigates...Using fast RAM modules to emulate a hard disk drive, is an interesting approach to speeding up storage...
Don't know where I've read, but there's something that the battery is only capable to keep the data overnight, some 12 hours, that's not quite good.
for the purposes of a scratch area it appears this would help improve the overall performance of a machine, but the cost is a bit steepI was wondering though how it would perform in a 3 way test involving conventional hdd's & these new "hybrid" hdds
The hybrids use flash memory (IIRC) which is still a lot slower than RAM, but it would certainly give them an advantage over regular HDDs. However, I'm not sure whether our particular testing regime would show that.Originally Posted by SpawnofSonic
for the purposes of a scratch area it appears this would help improve the overall performance of a machine, but the cost is a bit steep
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I am getting really annoyed that the people who make this sort of hardware always put a limiting factor on it, by this I mean a PCI bus instead of a PCI-E bus, SATA150 instead of SATA300. Have hardware developers not heard of PCI express?!
On to the solution for backing up this drive there is a much easier way: ACRONIS (true image?). It comes with its own backing up schedule solution and so you could schedule a backup every 10hrs or so, a restore is equally as easy as backing aswell
I won't be getting this RAMdisk or any other RAMdisk until there are ones which use both SATA300 and PCI-E. Same as RAID card aswell tbh.
EDIT: To further illustrate my point http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?14941 . Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't ATA have a maximum transfer speed of 133Mbps?
Last edited by ExceededGoku; 27-07-2006 at 09:28 AM.
Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.2Ghz (400Mhzx8) 1.52V (set in bios, 1.47v real) | 4GB GeIL PC6400 4-4-4-12 | Gigabyte DQ6 @ 1600Mhz | HD2900XT 1GB | Enermax Infiniti 720W | Silverstone TJ07-B with custom watercooling | BenQ FP241WZ
3dmark05 - 13140 | 3dmark06 - 6698 | SuperPi 1M - 15s
Its normally down to the cost of implmentation and r&d costs - i.e its cheaper to implement technology they know more about.
Yeah, David's right. Also they've used an FPGA... basically a chip they can program to do what they want. I wonder if it's actually quick enough to justify a SATA 300 PHY?
As for Acronis true image... have they made version 9 support x64 yet? I have a license but can't use the damn thing.
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I've used this as a scratch disk for photoshop and for the swap file and it can make a huge difference. My friend works in television and 700mb pictures are not unheard of. When photoshop starts putting these on the scratch disk it can take 3-4+ minutes. On the iram its only a matter of seconds.
The computer has 3gb of ram already with the /3gb switch and there wasn't much more that could be done to speed photoshop up without spending a fortune.
Raid might have improved the harddisk throughput but I would have had to upgraded the case, power supply, cooling, raid controller and get fast hard disks. I tried Raid a year or so ago and was disapointed with the performance. I'm also wary of hard disk reliability.
For other people 4gb isn't really enough, the improvements are very application specific.
hmmm, I've never used acronis on x64 before so I can't help you there... Could you perhaps run Acronis on a network computer and make your disc a network drive or something like that?
About the R&D costs though, couldn't they just add a premium on the final product? It would make it soo much easier for motherboard makers if everything was one standard instead of having 10 different types of standards (PCI, PCI-E, PCI-X etc.) on the mainboard. I would pay more for a PCI-E of the XFX RAID card aswell as a lot of other PCI only products (sound cards, etc.)
Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.2Ghz (400Mhzx8) 1.52V (set in bios, 1.47v real) | 4GB GeIL PC6400 4-4-4-12 | Gigabyte DQ6 @ 1600Mhz | HD2900XT 1GB | Enermax Infiniti 720W | Silverstone TJ07-B with custom watercooling | BenQ FP241WZ
3dmark05 - 13140 | 3dmark06 - 6698 | SuperPi 1M - 15s
I think that sums it up perfectly.
ExceededGoku: Not for the backups I want to do. Anyhoo it's a bit off topic from the i-RAM, so I'll grumble no more.
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what does the i stand for?
Trend whore.
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my thoughts exactly
I've read a few other online reviews about the iRAM, most a good 6 months or so back when it was first released. Real world performance is disappointing and it really seems only suitable for those with a specific need.
I think in time this sort of technology could be commonplace with PCs shipping with the OS on a RAM based device and a hard drive being used for data storage and backup. It offers huge advantages in speed and more importantly reliability (assuming the backup works automatically (every time computer shuts down perhaps?).
i want one. but im not sure why. it just screams SPEED at you. of course its a new mobo/proccy/ram/gfx/hdd first.... so maybe someone will have a clear-cut use for it by then rather than just bragging rights?
non-photoshop etc user btw, i know its got some uses already. just not for the general pc user
Vodka
The cost is definitely a huge deterrent. I mean, does it really need to use PC3200 RAM? Wouldn't this be a great way to put good old SDRAM lying around to good use?
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