I-Ram for pagefile?

ROfu

ROfu

ROfu

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Hey guys has anyone out there used the I-ram for pagefile? I'm upgrading a few machines at work, and will be having a good few spare DDR1 dimms left over.

Obviously the new machines will be running DDR2 so the old ram will be useless. But wouldnt the I-ram be rather usefull for pagefile.. as irrelevant to how much Physical Ram you have installed.. windows always uses pagefile - this would essentially give your pagefile speed a massive boost?

Any Comments or reponses from people who have tried this please post

Cheers
ROfu
 
theoretics always sound good to me.. so ive ordered one.. thier only 90bux so if it doenst help.. its not a huge loss.. but could be a massive boost.

Would still love to here from folks who have either tried it .. or know a little about the technology.

Cheers for the response
ROfu
 
im guessing so, and yes i go way over my ram limit a lot, using windows64 and Maya8-64bit.. been using well over 8gb lately.. meaning 4gb installed.. and 4gb page being used.. its kinda painfull but needed.

Well its all ordered guess ill find out this weekend when i install it
Cheers again for the responses.

Cheers
ROfu
 
I-ram2 i guess would make sense to use DDR2 from a marketing standpoint, everyone considers DDR2 the current tech.. and its faster. Irrelevant to the fact that the sata2 interface wont even scrape the surface of how fast DDR2 ram can go, people will believe it (wrongly) to be faster.

DDR1 limitatons on size (incredibly rare 2gb dimms) is a fair point, but if you can afford DDR2 2gb dimms, if you have managed to fill your primary ram slots with this and have enough left over to use on I-ram, then you should be considering upgrading the motherboard for more slots instead. I-ram2 using the sata2 setup is obviously better than the current sata1, but again it wont be touching the max ram speed - I-ram2 should be simply the same setup with more slots and sata2 interface.

consider i-ram2 with sata2 and 8 ddr1 slots - would be very usefull for a lot of people updating from old AMDs to am2 and intel chipsets, with 8 slots 512dimms could be used which are by far the most common about.

Cheers
ROfu

ps. got confirmation of order. will be testing it out this weekend - will report back then.
 
sadly ive not had chance to test it .. i built my machine over the weekend.. but very very anoyingly the AWD9-MAX board has a sound daugterboard.. which very kindly stops you using the space needed for the iram (because it takes up 2 slots)
Will hopefully give it a blast sometime this week, as a test (obviously loosing sound) and see how it performs.
Kinda anoyed to be honest, it was the last thing i would have thought about - size issues.
I did initially have it installed when i was installing windows, during my overclocking tests (without all the peripherals -usb frontpanel etc installed) and it shows up the full 4gb of the OCZ 3200 fine, and also offered to install windows to it. Sadly like mentioned i had to remove it for the sound card. was almost tempted to return the mobo.. but it overclocks so well i chose to keep it.

Ill keep ya posted on my findings when i get chance to put it in.

Cheers
ROfu
 
Yup totaly agree its a horrible design, but as i dont use any pci cards anymore i have no real worries. but yup its kinda anoying. considering just using the front ports for the sound and using the I-ram instead of the daughter card, on a full time basis.. but as it was a work machine, i just need the machine up and running for monday with the least amount of hassles.

its a shame realy, as this is the first board ive had that overclocks so well in a long time.

Cheers
ROfu
 
Theres only one flaw for most people when using Iram in Raid, is you need two slots per card.. because the card plugs into one .. and the ram overhangs the one below this is the reason i have mine still sitting in the box.. as i only have one PCI slot.. and under is the onboard sound daughter card..(hugely anoying)
When i get the 680i nvidia board, ill try it agian and use for pagefile. Untill then i have it sitting looking useless in a box next to me :(

Cheers
ROfu
 
its using the PCI slot to power it, thats all .. all data is pushed through the connected Sata port.
I would have been nice to make it an actual "drive" although the actual board is pretty damn long, like a good sized graphics card.

Cheers
ROfu
 
I've been using it for Pagefile for a little while now with 4gb installed, like i mentioned on previous posts AW9D Max is useless for Iram unless your willing to give up the sound daughterboard (incredibly bad design on Abits part)
I'm Now using an Evga 680i board.. with plenty of space to use the Iram.

So far over the 2 months ive been using it.. ive noticed very little difference compared to using my raptor (also tested using my other raptor 74gb as the page drive - obviously massively wasting space but, wanted to see speed results)

Im considering using the Iram for a Cache drive for applications like Photoshop and After Effects (which i use all the time) i think this would have some advantages.

As Pagefile the Iram doesnt seem to massively speed up things. One thing I dont get anymore are the old pauses when your system sometimes dumps pagefile, normaly after you close a few applications which have been open for a while. Also when games finnish and i go back to the desktop, theres no lag - windows returns to a clean state. In the latter respect i guess the Iram is doing its job quite well, but considering how much it would cost to allow windows to "recover" after application closing - is a little crazy (luckily i had all the ram from older machines so the only additional outlay was the Iram - which i wanted to test anyway ;))

I would love to hear from other folks using the Iram and for what purposes thier doing so
on a final note - It looks unlikely the iram2 will ever surface especially with the new solidstate drives now bieng available. This is a shame considering it was supposed to be using the sata2 interface.. which could seriously speed up things. More slots for ram would have also been usefull

Cheers
ROfu
 
i think he means disabling the pagefile on the Iram not totaly - Im tempted to try it as a cache or games drive, but it is nice how windows doesnt require any time to recover after applications or games are over.
On another note.. surely the games/levels are loaded into pagefile anyway.. so - wouldnt the Iram in its current state be just as quick.
To be honest ive not noticed any loadtimes lately - dont know if it means thier quicker or my brain simply refuses to care after getting used to them for so long ;)

edit appologies - after rereading your post, you said couldnt fit a game in 4gb, i was thinking you expected to turn off pagefile totaly hence the 4gb ram left on the board - rather you meant 4gb game filesize wouldnt fit on the iram if it were made a drive Doh! - been in a big discussion about VM and pagefile most of the day so mind on the wrong thing ;).

Cheers
ROfu
 
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how much are 2gb ddr2 dimms atm? and how fast do they run.
All ive seen are insanely expensive and not particularly fast i regularly use just over 4gb of ram.. so buying 8gb would be awsome but not cost effective.. like mentioned i already had a pile of ddr1 memory left over from other builds and bought the Iram quite a few months ago when DD2 ram was very expensive in any configuration.

Also i would like to point out this was a test, irrelevant to practical useage.

(Of note Every windows based PC uses VM irrelevant to what settings and how much ram you have - even if you turn off VM theres still a temp swap so i wanted to see just how much difference it makes having swap as ram)

I'm more than happy with wasting 100bux on the Iram compared to over 1000 on replaceing all my ddr2 1gb dimms with ddr2 2gb dimms which run slower. Or reconfigure my entire system with a workstation board which has more than 4 dimm slots.. need to buy new cpus and new ECC memory

Cheers
ROfu
 
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i quickly downloaded HD-tach, as it looked like an interesting benchmark which id never seen before the Iram speeds were:

constant 126mb/s for sequential read speed.
Burst speed 132mb/s
random Access 0.1ms
Cpu utilization 7%
average read speed 126.5mb/s

This results are actually considerably faster than i expected - although they do show the limitations to the Irams sata controller.

Iram is considerably more expensive and sadly very limited in size unless you want to go crazy and start raiding them - although for the few folks with spare dimms (not that uncommon for all the old ddr1 to ddr2 upgrades most folks have had lately) its still a great idea, for that little extra boost for pagefile or speedy cache for certain apps.

Cheers
ROfu
 
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I read the same as you Foxeye.. but after rereading it i think he meant disabling the pagefile off the Iram, which i currently have it used for. I dont think he meant like i mentioned earlier disabling the page file entirely just off the iram and to use the iram as a games drive instead.

Cheers
ROfu
 
I have all 4gb installed, as well as 4gb of Normal Ram.
I have reciently been working at home on a few projects which utilize all of my ram and a good chunk of pagefile. Today i realised just how fast my system is with Iram as pagefile. as an example with over 3gb of page in use i had a application crash (After Effects can get unwieldly) and my system recovered instantly. there was no dump where the HDD would normaly take a short while to flush itself it just gave me the option for my final save then went to the desktop with no fuss.. i restarted the app and was back up and running with no time loss (barring the actual error message).

Using the Iram for a games drive is, like a previous post stated, almost impossible, as there are very few if any current games that install in less than 4gb space. and those that do would fill it up and mean you only have access to one game at a time.

Considering this was just a little test initially - im very impressed with its functionality to assist with very smooth desktop usage.

I think for the time being i will continue to use the Iram as pagefile it seem the most intelegent use of the hardware and would whole heartedly recommend it for anyone with either spare/old DDR ram (remember any speed ddr1 will do as its top end will never be pushed) and recommend for anyone who does professional 3d or Video effects editing.

Cheers
ROfu
 
Well as your using it for games then i would suggest Fat32 as its a little quicker than NTFS, you also dont need all the security stuff from NTFS either. Only thing i will say is that fat32 gets fragmented quite quickly, I have no clue how this would effect the Iram.. i dont know if you would notice the performance degredation as you would on a HDD.. either way as its ram and only 4gb .. its not gonna take long to format it once a month ;)

I would stick with Fat32 for a games drive definately.

Cheers
ROfu
 
i used some leftover OC 3200, mixed with some random value ram, both running at 3200.
The speed of the ram is irrelevant though, so dont waste your money on good quality ram, as it will have no effect as the speed of the ram will never get close to touched by the i-ram.

I'm also looking forward to the 64gb SSD hdd, I believe samsung are making a 128gb version too.. although this will be insanely expensive (so is the 64gb realy.. but i still want one).

As far as noticing any speed differences with the pagefile, itll only realy be on some very big apps, like Maya, Photoshop and After Effects, as they all use all of your system ram if its available and hammer the pagefile as well. most games wont hammer your pagefile, although they do use it a bit.
The speed the games close down will be an indication of the pagefile working well (rather than starting up - thats showing the iram read speed)

If your going to get a second I-ram i would suggest buying some OcUK value ram or kingston/cruicial value ram, any of this will be as quick as you have and itll be cheaper than wasting it on something that wont actually get any extra speed.

What games are you running off the I-ram as i found it difficult to fit a lot of the newer games when i tried it (although battlefield 2142 would be perfect size ;) )

As far as the new SSD drives..unless you have a wish to waste large sums of cash ;), i would wait for these rather than buying another Iram setup.
as an Iram setup would problably be about the same price as the 16gb SSD drives.. and unlike the 16gb SSD drive.. youll only have 4gb per Iram..

I think the Iram is a cracking little bit of hardware if you have some spare memory. but buying memory just to use it - is a luxury rather than a massive benifit.

Either way ;) if you do get the second Iram setup - make sure you post some pics of it raided up ;) and some case pics

Cheers
ROfu
 
cavemanoc -
2x2gb matched ram for under 390 ;) not noticed them on Overclockers yet so guessing your talking elsewhere.. are these quick ram dimms? 800mhz+ or 667 - they ECC too ? or unregistered.

Well Splattered -
Did you have any issues with the ramsink of your corsiar ram getting them to fit on the I-Ram board, as i have mixed setup half being value (no ramsinks) and half quality ram i didnt have an issue.. although i noticed while putting the quality ram with sinks on, that they started to bend the slots outward a little.. with 4 of the same does it splay the slots a lot?

Cheers
ROfu
 
looking at the 2x2gb sticks now ;)
didnt notice the underline - needs to be 72point in red with a big black underline before i notice most links ;)

Damn they have dominator 2x2gb packs too.. looks like an 8gb upgrades on the way.. although if im gonna do that.. may as well get a quad core... Damn thats another new computer... guess ill wait a while. only just upgraded to 4gb of Dominator (4x1gb).

I must have been a bit unlucky with my Iram then, as i nearly ripped off the end socket when putting the last dimm in with OCZ ram thier just Damn wide.

Cheers
ROfu

p.s Get vista 64bit .. its as good/bad depending on your outlook as 32bit but has support for insane amounts of ram.
 
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