Are RAMDisks viable?

[evo4ever86]

Hello all.

Just a quick question... Are there any case uses for RAMDisks? I mean what attracts me to them is they're astronomical speed and latencies. But the problem is they're volatile however I think there's potentially a way around it by using something called a "Junction" which basically means the data on a RAMDisk gets transferred to a normal hard drive before the PC is powered down. Is it worth exploring?

Cheers guys.

 

[Rroff]

In most uses no, outside of specific uses you'll always a hit IO bottleneck or limitation with anything much faster than PCI-e 3.0 NVME speeds and the volatility adds extra awkwardness. Some RAM caching software does exist, which doesn't have the volatility issue and/or minimises the volatility issue - more designed around hybrid HDD use but again application is limited.

 

[evo4ever86]

In most uses no, outside of specific uses you'll always a hit IO bottleneck or limitation with anything much faster than PCI-e 3.0 NVME speeds and the volatility adds extra awkwardness. Some RAM caching software does exist, which doesn't have the volatility issue and/or minimises the volatility issue - more designed around hybrid HDD use but again application is limited.

Yeah I agree which feels sort of disappointing. But as an example wouldn't it be interesting to see how fast a game would load if it was installed on a DDR5 RAMDisk or would it be unnoticeable?

 

[Rroff]

Yeah I agree which feels sort of disappointing. But as an example wouldn't it be interesting to see how fast a game would load if it was installed on a DDR5 RAMDisk?

With a lot of games the loading time is bottlenecked, once you are up to around PCI-e 3.0 NVME speeds, by processing the data being loaded rather than the loading itself - typically you gain maybe 10% but you can also gain that kind of benefit from some solid state drives which have a better controller and/or more optimised memory access procedures than average. There may be some minor benefits in games which stream assets in real time where you may get less pop in and stutter but again that bonus is often limited by the processing side involved rather than the storage IO.

I've not encountered it myself but some people have reported issues with RAM disks and gaming when playing games which use kernel level anti-cheat, etc.

 

[evo4ever86]

With a lot of games the loading time is bottlenecked, once you are up to around PCI-e 3.0 NVME speeds, by processing the data being loaded rather than the loading itself - typically you gain maybe 10% but you can also gain that kind of benefit from some solid state drives which have a better controller and/or more optimised memory access procedures than average. There may be some minor benefits in games which stream assets in real time where you may get less pop in and stutter but again that bonus is often limited by the processing side involved rather than the storage IO.

I've not encountered it myself but some people have reported issues with RAM disks and gaming when playing games which use kernel level anti-cheat, etc.

So should I steer away from the idea of investing in RAMDisks then?

 

[robj20]

Only thing I use a RAM disk for is Plex transcoding, saves wear and tear on the M.2.
I wouldn't trust them to any important data but as cache drives they can be handy.

 

[Rroff]

Only thing I use a RAM disk for is Plex transcoding, saves wear and tear on the M.2.
I wouldn't trust them to any important data but as cache drives they can be handy.

True could be useful if you regularly record gameplay, etc. though modern solid state drives are relatively robust against that kind of wear but it doesn't harm to avoid it either, as long as you aren't bothered by the chance of losing the footage if you forget to copy over what you want to keep and/or unexpected power loss.