Gigabyte i-RAM (OcUK has it in stock)

[NickK]

this device would be ideal for networking wouldnt it? like transferring across gigabit would max it out probably.

4Gb - it's probably better just caching it locally.


DDR2 doesn't make sense from a performance aspect. SATA and SATAII aren't going to max out DDR.

What they can do is provide a mechanism for existing DDR owners to reuse their DDR memory in new DDR2 systems.

 

[welshtom]

The ram runs at around 30 mhz on this device

So any cheap ram will do, even pc2700.

i think its great personally. windows will fly onto 4gb (what are you people installing to make more than that :s)

Tom

 

[lay-z-boy]

4Gb - it's probably better just caching it locally.


DDR2 doesn't make sense from a performance aspect. SATA and SATAII aren't going to max out DDR.

What they can do is provide a mechanism for existing DDR owners to reuse their DDR memory in new DDR2 systems.

ddr2 requires less current and voltage, it will be cheaper than ddr1 when everything moves over to it after am2 comes out as well.
Its also cooler.

 

[mosfet]

I'm willing to bet it'll be a long time before even the slowest DDR2 modules are cheaper than old DDR200 RAM.

 

[ace_dent]

Couldn't resist

I took the plunge and ordered one of these today... no doubt they will come down in price next week...
I'll report back some benchies, etc. although I've only got some small DDR modules spare... anyone with 1GB modules (any speed) that wants to donate (or sell at a charitable* price!) please give me a shout.

Cheers,
Andrew

*Charity:
I work on using Finite Element Modelling to simulate how materials behave at a microscale (specifically electroceramics). I'm an academic researcher and hence on the scrounge!

 

[mosfet]

*Charity:
I work on using Finite Element Modelling to simulate how materials behave at a microscale (specifically electroceramics). I'm an academic researcher and hence on the scrounge!

Surely your academic establishment has a few old machines with DDR RAM in them they can afford to donate to you...

 

[nikebee]

What's the point in a DDR2 version? The iRAM is limited by being connected to the PCI bus which has 133Mb/sec max bandwidth. The iRAM will be fighting with other PCI devices for access to the bus. HDD controllers were moved off the main PCI bus in around 1999 (Intel Hub architecture on the i800 series) to free up PCI bandwidth.

An iRAM that uses PCI express is a different matter. As is SATAII because then there might be a device that can actually used the available bandwidth!

no they aren't mate, they're only using the PCI slots to draw power, they transfer over a SATA connection...

 

[sachinbadiani]

This would be suitable for storing games such as Morrowind - I made a ram drive of 1.2GB (I have 3GB ram) and install Morrowind on it.

I chose Morrowind because I knew it was very heavy on its use of the harddrive, and that loading times were affected by the HDD rate (compared to using my hard drives). Morrowind on the ram drive loaded like a dream.

I guess the 8GB version would be very good for something like Oblivion or any other DVD sized game (Oblivion doesn't fit inside 4GB)

 

[ace_dent]

What a beauty!

Having had a quick fiddle with my new toy (... the iRAM), I can probably sum up my findings by The Good, The Bad and The Indifferent.
The Good - It does indeed bench as suggested in various reviews and saturates my ICH5R SATA at ~ 138MB/s. Access time 0.0 - 0.2ms
The card is well constructed and does its job.
The Bad - A few points I hadn't considered: Firstly this is one massive card and will require some re-working of my tidy case / watercooling. It really is a beast. Secondly, using SATA is something of a pain, as it meant moving my storage HDD onto the awful and slow Promise378 SATA on my MSI MoBo. Both complaints are due to my lack of planning.
The Indifferent- Bench's are great, but what of real world performance / human (first) impressions... Booting Windows and loading applications just isn't significantly faster than a 10k Drive (Raptor 36GB) to justify the price. So I would say most users would feel indifferent or disappointed. However, for my research work (which probably has similar access requirements as large databases / webservers?), this really has speeded things up. Times were reduced from say 400s to 300s for each simulation. Not an earth-shattering speed-up, but when you need to run several thousand simulations...

In Conclusion:
* Nice, well built product- although beware the size of the card.
* It provides a reasonable advantage to very specific applications and Users.
* But for the general user, a 10k SATA drive would make more sense.
* If they start pricing these things <£50, it does make for a fun toy

PS- Will post a full review with photos as time allows and when I've tracked down some more RAM...

 

[Lanz]

I imagine a 4GB one would be handy for games, even tho you could only install one at a time.

I reckon BF2 (3.7GB install) would be pretty good, letting you load the map way before anyone else, letting you grab that tank or plane without the mad rush.

 

[mosfet]

I imagine a 4GB one would be handy for games, even tho you could only install one at a time.

I reckon BF2 (3.7GB install) would be pretty good, letting you load the map way before anyone else, letting you grab that tank or plane without the mad rush.

No-one's stopping you getting 2, or more of these things

 

[Lanz]

ha, yeah, get 2 and raid0 them, 8 GB of super fast disk

 

[MagicBoy]

no they aren't mate, they're only using the PCI slots to draw power, they transfer over a SATA connection...

Thanks for pointing that out ... AGAIN.

 

[earlyflash]

Not an earth-shattering speed-up, but when you need to run several thousand simulations...

Saves you from 555 to 416 days of simulation time, or 139 days, or nearly 5 months.

Yup, that's reasonably significant.

Do you really do 555 days of simulation though? Wow.

 

[nikebee]

Thanks for pointing that out ... AGAIN.

jees calm down mate, i just didn't notice that anybody had said it...
i scanned down and didn't notice pyro's reply (or your quote for that matter).

no need to break out the caps and the rollyeyes :-/

Having had a quick fiddle with my new toy (... the iRAM), I can probably sum up my findings by The Good, The Bad and The Indifferent.
The Good - It does indeed bench as suggested in various reviews and saturates my ICH5R SATA at ~ 138MB/s. Access time 0.0 - 0.2ms
The card is well constructed and does its job.
The Bad - A few points I hadn't considered: Firstly this is one massive card and will require some re-working of my tidy case / watercooling. It really is a beast. Secondly, using SATA is something of a pain, as it meant moving my storage HDD onto the awful and slow Promise378 SATA on my MSI MoBo. Both complaints are due to my lack of planning.
The Indifferent- Bench's are great, but what of real world performance / human (first) impressions... Booting Windows and loading applications just isn't significantly faster than a 10k Drive (Raptor 36GB) to justify the price. So I would say most users would feel indifferent or disappointed. However, for my research work (which probably has similar access requirements as large databases / webservers?), this really has speeded things up. Times were reduced from say 400s to 300s for each simulation. Not an earth-shattering speed-up, but when you need to run several thousand simulations...

In Conclusion:
* Nice, well built product- although beware the size of the card.
* It provides a reasonable advantage to very specific applications and Users.
* But for the general user, a 10k SATA drive would make more sense.
* If they start pricing these things <£50, it does make for a fun toy

PS- Will post a full review with photos as time allows and when I've tracked down some more RAM...

cheers for the review mate, from what i have seen windows was blisteringly fast after being installed onto the iRAM drives
what else did you install onto it to test it out, wouldn't mind seeing some of your opinions on game loadings etc...

 

[ace_dent]

@nikebee
Currently I'm looking at a minor mod to the iRAM, so until that's finished I can't test it further. I installed WinXP (vanilla) to the iRAM and found that compared to my Raptor with an nlite'd WinXP, the boot time was not noticeably faster. The same for loading OpenOffice (which is slow to load and hits the HDD). However, for that testing my machine was at stock speed- maybe the CPU was the bottleneck?... I might re-test when my machine is overclocked again.
Looking at numbers the iRAM will always have better load times, but in terms of perceptual difference I think most Users might struggle to justify the cost. However as I said, for a specific activity which is disk intensive, then the iRAM (clearly) excels.

@earlyflash
Sorry. To clarify those times are for the highest resolution models, of which only a few are done (10-100). However, in total it is likely this speed-up will save me a few weeks of processing. Currently I only have 2GB on loan, if I can get hold of 4GB it's likely that more complex models will be run. So in fact any time savings will be negated... but more accurate data produced.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[tomos]

i doubt its your CPU that maxed out unless its an older one. the iram is limited to sata speeds which are simply not that fast.

SATA2 bandwidth would be much better.

Ace - is the port your using for the iram SATA2 or just SATA?

 

[ace_dent]

CPU is P4 Northwood, 2.8 -> 3.3GHz. Point taken, but still worth testing in an O/C situation. My MoBo only has SATA1... but I can live with 138MB/s

 

[tomos]

cool. just wondering if it would give any boost at all on a SATA2 port.

 

[nikebee]

@nikebee
Currently I'm looking at a minor mod to the iRAM, so until that's finished I can't test it further. I installed WinXP (vanilla) to the iRAM and found that compared to my Raptor with an nlite'd WinXP, the boot time was not noticeably faster. The same for loading OpenOffice (which is slow to load and hits the HDD). However, for that testing my machine was at stock speed- maybe the CPU was the bottleneck?... I might re-test when my machine is overclocked again.
Looking at numbers the iRAM will always have better load times, but in terms of perceptual difference I think most Users might struggle to justify the cost. However as I said, for a specific activity which is disk intensive, then the iRAM (clearly) excels.

@earlyflash
Sorry. To clarify those times are for the highest resolution models, of which only a few are done (10-100). However, in total it is likely this speed-up will save me a few weeks of processing. Currently I only have 2GB on loan, if I can get hold of 4GB it's likely that more complex models will be run. So in fact any time savings will be negated... but more accurate data produced.

Cheers,
Andrew

hmmm... can't wait to get some spare cash together to get one now...
may i ask what mod your doing to the iRAM?