ramdisks, why are we not seeing more of them?

233 · 29 Oct 2011 at 17:49

was sitting thinking about this earlier

looking at programs like ramdisk etc i had 2 thoughts

firstly

why cant i buy a ddr3 ramdrive that slots into a pci-e slot or similar?

DDr3 is peanuts atm ie
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-310-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

16 gigs of ram for £80 quid surely someone can offer a controller card with a pile of ddr3 slots say allowing 40-120 gigs of ram to be fitted.
i'd imagine that a ram based hdd would literally wipe the floor with any ssd raid array available.

Yes i understand the downsides would require battery back up etc etc but the performance would be staggering

secondly i'm looking to upgrade to SB before xmas and i'm seriously considering using ramdrive to give me a superfast ssd beating drive on my system. Can someone recommend a mobo that will allow me to run 32 gigs of ram or above- pref 64 or more.

oh and as a foot note anyone see any obvious flaws in my thoughts? going down the ramdrive route i'm towing with using a ramdrive for my game files backed up with a drive image.(means reimaging before every shut down and loss of data with every crash or power interuption but those are small issues i could overlook for the potential speed boost

King Damager · 29 Oct 2011 at 17:55

Foxtrot26 said:
was sitting thinking about this earlier

looking at programs like ramdisk etc i had 2 thoughts

firstly

why cant i buy a ddr3 ramdrive that slots into a pci-e slot or similar?

DDr3 is peanuts atm ie
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-310-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

16 gigs of ram for £80 quid surely someone can offer a controller card with a pile of ddr3 slots say allowing 40-120 gigs of ram to be fitted.
i'd imagine that a ram based hdd would literally wipe the floor with any ssd raid array available.

Yes i understand the downsides would require battery back up etc etc but the performance would be staggering

secondly i'm looking to upgrade to SB before xmas and i'm seriously considering using ramdrive to give me a superfast ssd beating drive on my system. Can someone recommend a mobo that will allow me to run 32 gigs of ram or above- pref 64 or more.

oh and as a foot note anyone see any obvious flaws in my thoughts? going down the ramdrive route i'm towing with using a ramdrive for my game files backed up with a drive image.(means reimaging before every shut down and loss of data with every crash or power interuption but those are small issues i could overlook for the potential speed boost

I'm unsure of the technicalities of RAMdisks tbh, however will note that I'm pretty sure that there are no SB motherboards out at the moment that have more than 4 DDR3 dual channel slots. Therefore their pretty limited to 16GB of RAM due to anything above 4GB sticks being remarkably more expensive. I believe 2011 will have support for 8 DDR3 Quad channel slots however, which would give you a maximum of 32GB of RAM...

kd

stulid · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:00

Things like this?

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2180#ov

Plug them into a PCI slot and stuff them with ram, but its EOL

Werewolf · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:03

Re the PCI/PCI-X slot solution, IIRC there are a few out there (and have been since the days of EDO ram), but the problem is that the controller cost is fairly high, and the space they take up, along with the cost per gb still being high even at today's pricing, combined with the fact that it still needs to be loaded from a normal drive.

I think the solutions that are available are aimed very much as the high end market where disc speed is a truly limiting factor rather than a minor annoyance.

Surveyor · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:06

stulid said:
Things like this?

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2180#ov

Plug them into a PCI slot and stuff them with ram, but its EOL

It's so EOL it's virtually extinct.

And it only uses a maximum of 4GB of DDR RAM.

stulid · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:10

Surveyor said:
It's so EOL it's virtually extinct.

And it only uses a maximum of 4GB of DDR RAM.

And?

Don't think I was suggesting it as a purchasing decision.

233 · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:11

stulid- thats the one i was thinking of the i-ram just dont understand why there isnt a market for these with current ram prices. surely someone somewhere must be seeing the potential for slapping 32 or 64 gig of ddr3 onto a riser card and selling as a solution

werewolf. any more information manufacturers brands etc? its something i'm keen to look into. that said i cant see anything like an i-ram that supports ddr3 (mores the pity) might have to do a bit of research on fc ssd drives

233 · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:12

stulid said:
And?

if only they could give me that with a 16 or 32 gig capacity of ddr3. i could live with it as a boot drive. christ my windows folder is bigger than 4gb

Surveyor · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:15

Foxtrot26 said:
secondly i'm looking to upgrade to SB before xmas and i'm seriously considering using ramdrive to give me a superfast ssd beating drive on my system. Can someone recommend a mobo that will allow me to run 32 gigs of ram or above- pref 64 or more.

The maximum you'll get with Sandy Bridge is 32GB and only by using expensive 8GB DIMMs.

The forthcoming Sandy Bridge-E wil be quad channel and some motherboards will have 8 RAM slots. So that's a possible 32GB using inexpensive 4GB DIMMs or 64GB using expensive 8GB DIMMs.

Of course all that will be volatile RAM so to use it as a RAM Disk the data would have to be loaded initially from an SSD or HDD.

Surveyor · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:18

stulid said:
And?

Don't think I was suggesting it as a purchasing decision.

I never said you were.

Just pointing out that it isn't the type of RAM Disk the OP was envisioning.

stulid · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:19

Foxtrot26 said:
if only they could give me that with a 16 or 32 gig capacity of ddr3. i could live with it as a boot drive. christ my windows folder is bigger than 4gb

They are out there for enterprise solutions and like Werewolf said, do you fancy getting a second mortgage to buy one?

stulid · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:19

Surveyor said:
I never said you were.

Just pointing out that it isn't the type of RAM Disk the OP was envisioning.

Well obviously it was,

stulid- thats the one i was thinking of the i-ram

Orcvader · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:21

The thing is, even if it was PCI/PCI-E wouldn't the bandwidth be slower then the RAM itself? Might as well get an OCZ Revodrive instead!

Surveyor · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:24

stulid said:
Well obviously it was,

It's nothing like what the OP originally said they wanted:

16 gigs of ram for £80 quid surely someone can offer a controller card with a pile of ddr3 slots say allowing 40-120 gigs of ram to be fitted

StriderX · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:24

The ramdisk isn't what you expect in performance, apparently they aren't optimised in Windows as much as say linux.

Its still faster than than an SDD obviously, but not by much.

stulid · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:25

Surveyor said:
It's nothing like what the OP originally said they wanted:

Yeah it is, thats why I said "things like this"

233 · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:33

stulid said:
They are out there for enterprise solutions and like Werewolf said, do you fancy getting a second mortgage to buy one?

anyone care to give me some product names, my googglefu is weak today.

bit of research, bit of ebay watching. i could have some nice toys for my sb/bulldozer build

Surveyor · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:34

stulid said:
Yeah it is, thats why I said "things like this"

Yeah "things like this" but completely different from what the OP wants in terms of the amount and type of RAM it can use, which is all I was trying to point out.

233 · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:37

oh and back to the ramdisk point,

just found some interesting figures posted up on the web

Ramdiscs Vs harddiscs

hdparm

seeks

Random access time

now.....even using 24 gig of ram on a rig to allow 8gig system and a 16gig ram drive thats an appealing thought. 16 gig drive with those kind of stats for say windows and your favourite game

stulid · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:39

Surveyor said:
Yeah "things like this" but completely different from what the OP wants in terms of the amount and type of RAM it can use, which is all I was trying to point out.

Not even sure why you are trying to point anything out? King damager was referring to software that use system ram to allocate as a drive, I thought the OP was on about "things like" the idrive so was trying to be certain of the OP's needs, then you come along.