I-RAM

J.B

J.B

J.B

Soldato
Joined
16 Aug 2006
Posts
5,924
Has anyone bought one of these yet?
Found Here

been looking at it for a while and cant decide to get it or not. It only holds 4GB at the moment which i guess isnt really enougth for Windows once you put all the updates in. Gigabyte recommend it for video editing, i dont really do enougth to justify buying it.

Was just bored at 2 am and woundered what people thought about them
 
I think it's a great idea, just a bit too expensive at the moment. I'm sure lots of people have 1 or 2Gb of DDR lying around after upgrading to DDR2, and this would be a good way to keep using it.

There's also the fact that it's completely silent, it would seem really strange to watch XP start up/shut down without the sound of a churning hard drive :)
 
I believe another one is coming out that uses more RAM and maybe ddr2 too. Don't quote me on that though.

// EDIT //

gamepc.com said:
We’re eagerly awaiting the I-RAM 2, which is supposedly going to support Serial ATA-II, DDR2 memory modules, and up to 16 GB peak capacity.
Click to expand...
There we go.
 
on my next upgrade I will have 2gb ddr hanging round too, and would definately consider it if I was making a silent pc. considering I got a 6gb compact flash disk and convertor for £100ish the lot, tyhis would work out only a little more expensive and a lot faster.
 
It wasnt so much the silence that interested me, rather the speed of being able to load things like that directly from the RAM! although my undergradute knowledge of PC architecture would make me wounder if it bottlenecks on the SATA bus
 
A.N.Other said:
I believe another one is coming out that uses more RAM and maybe ddr2 too. Don't quote me on that though.

// EDIT //

There we go.
Click to expand...

Please tell me who can afford 16 GIG's of ram you would be better off with 10 raptors in raid, at least then you would get a lot more capacity for your money
 
J.B said:
It wasnt so much the silence that interested me, rather the speed of being able to load things like that directly from the RAM! although my undergradute knowledge of PC architecture would make me wounder if it bottlenecks on the SATA bus
Click to expand...

it deffo saturates the SATA bus. 150MB/sec max i think. would be cheaper to get some raptors as mentioned before.
 
<maddness> said:
just saw that video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51784544344753709&q=windows+on+ram

have to get meself one of these :D
Click to expand...
pretty sure the general impression everyone had when that video first came out that it was sped up (slightly).

i'm sure that I-RAM will load windows fast etc... but POST happens way too quick on that video...

i've never used one though so i may be wrong... it just seems... too fast :-/


edit:
this seems to be more believable.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7022101358364214432&q=xp+iram


the POST (etc) in this video isn't faster than it should be (it's longer but i can't work out what he's doing) but the actual windows load up is much faster
 
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The thing about the I-Ram, sure it saturates the SATA bus, but unlike a billion raptors in a raid, it has just about 0ms access time, as there are no mechanical read/write heads to move.

When I upgrade my computer, I'll have 2 gig's lying around, and I'll be very tempted to buy one of these and set it up as a swap drive. I believe Windows Vista allows USB memory sticks to boost load times, if you can configure Vista to do the same trick with an I-drive that would be even faster Ram read/write times are a lot quicker than Flash, and the SATA bus is faster than the USB bus.

While using an I-Ram as a swap drive, it doesnt even matter if the battery goes flat, and the power is turned off for too long. Windows will just whine about its missing swapdrive on the next boot up, but you'll be able to reformat the I-Ram, and recreate a new swapfile. So no real problem there.
 
If you can pick a load of cheapo PC2100 second hand then these things aren't too bad. 4GB could probably be picked up for around £80. It's still too pricey for me though as I really don't mind waiting a few seconds for windows to boot.
 
True, you could use any dog slow ram and it would still provide instant seek times and satuate the interface, even SATA2

Shame there isn't a type of RAM designed just for this sort of application. It could certainly be manufactured much cheaper.
 
nikebee said:
pretty sure the general impression everyone had when that video first came out that it was sped up (slightly).

i'm sure that I-RAM will load windows fast etc... but POST happens way too quick on that video...

i've never used one though so i may be wrong... it just seems... too fast :-/


edit:
this seems to be more believable.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7022101358364214432&q=xp+iram


the POST (etc) in this video isn't faster than it should be (it's longer but i can't work out what he's doing) but the actual windows load up is much faster
Click to expand...


damn that POST took forever!!!
 
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