I-Ram for pagefile?
- Thread starter ROfu
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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.
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.
Soldato
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Combat squirrel said:
you wont find many that run that fast even. Its a problem with flash memory - its just too slow. great access times, terrible transfer rates.
oxygene said:
what he said ^^
All my USB2.0 stuff (inc. Memory Stick Pro's in USB card readers) only hit about 10MB/s. Unless it does about 40-50MB/s a hard drive is faster. When they run at the same speed, obviously the USB version would be better because of access times.james.miller said:
I don't ever envisage a USB drive being fast enough tbh - first transfer rates of USB2.0 don't really go much, if at all, above 30-35MB/s on the best connections (i.e. usb HDU's which can easily surpass 50MB/s). Then you have the extra resources being used to access the thing in the first place. After this, even the best flash disks cannot really reach good transfer speeds and I'm sure the read/write of each flash chip would mean that it wouldn't last for as long as a hard disk or RAM (although the longevity/MTBF point is not greatly viable as this requires a fair amount of time to use up and unless it's in a 24/7 server, then it's unlikely failure will occur before renewal).
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ROfu said:
So how is it running? Anything you can share with us?
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
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
Despite being a good clocker - the Abit board is one of the worst designed boards I have ever seen. It has only 1 PCI slot - something which immediately stops me buying it as I use a sound card (Audigy) and also when using Xfire, you cannot use the PCI slot.
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
its a shame realy, as this is the first board ive had that overclocks so well in a long time.
Cheers
ROfu
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Any news on the above 
I'm hoping Tom's Hardware is ok to post - can't find anything that they sell - but will remove if inappropriate!
Seen a few benchies now and the I-Rams are truely awesome, especially where people have the cash to set them up in raid, have a look at the benchmarks across several programmes (3 pages of shiny graphs) Here
Seems a shame to waste it on page file and not windows drive, but since you do actually do some work on your machine I'll let you off (who knew - someone out there actaully does
) You will see a huge difference! Especially if you can stretch to another and Raid them... 
(access time made me laugh - 0.05 seconds )
Seen a few benchies now and the I-Rams are truely awesome, especially where people have the cash to set them up in raid, have a look at the benchmarks across several programmes (3 pages of shiny graphs) Here
Seems a shame to waste it on page file and not windows drive, but since you do actually do some work on your machine I'll let you off (who knew - someone out there actaully does
) You will see a huge difference! Especially if you can stretch to another and Raid them... (access time made me laugh - 0.05 seconds
)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
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
Many of you are discussing using a USB pen drive for the page file - I definitely wouldn't use it specifically for that. Flash drives have excellent seek times for random access, but as many have already pointed out, the sustained transfer rates are nowhere near that of a hard drive.
Vista's ReadyBoost tech looks to be very impressive though - when you plug in a pen drive, it asks if you want to dedicate some space on the pen drive to Windows for page file usage. Windows will know when it has to page large streams of data and if so will access the hard drive, but for random access to various small blocks of data it knows to use the flash drive for this to make use of the seek times.
Vista's ReadyBoost tech looks to be very impressive though - when you plug in a pen drive, it asks if you want to dedicate some space on the pen drive to Windows for page file usage. Windows will know when it has to page large streams of data and if so will access the hard drive, but for random access to various small blocks of data it knows to use the flash drive for this to make use of the seek times.
you would have thought with it being a "drive" it would have been designed to fit into a drivebay, i can fit a single unit in any of my towers because i'm running a single GPU, does it actually use the pci bus for any of its data transfer or is it all in the sata ports?
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 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'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
cavemanoc said:Since you've got 4Gb installed, try disabling your pagefile and running the IRam as your 'games' drive - you will see a marked improvement on level loads etc...
You'd struggle to fit most modern games into 4 gigs tbh.