Gigabyte i-RAM 2 Information

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Ockie

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The i-RAM is one of the most interesting product that Gigabyte has developed this year. Gigabyte for the first time has unveiled the specifications of their upcoming i-RAM 2 during HKEPC Tech-day. The i-RAM 2 will be using DDR2 memories instead of DDR1 and the data transfer interface is SATA 3Gb/s double of the current SATA 1.5 Gb/s. It will be externally housed with by means of an external case or fitted into the 5.25" bay with eSATA interfaces. The number of memory slots are expected to double to 8 and you can have up to 16GB max memory. The expected announcement of i-RAM 2 is targeted for February next year.



Discuss.
 
Well, it's cool and all...but let's hope it doesn't suck like the first iteration.

DDR2 = less voltage for a high capacity battery in case of power loss (??).
External? :confused: What a dumb option.
 
Its still vaporware as far as I'm concerned. I'll belive it when I see it in stock. I don't have faith in the iram products actually reaching the shelves. I'd get one if they are ddr2 because the high capacity modules are cheaper than the ddr ones.

I like the concept, but after the first release, I still consider this a vapor product.
 
Bullitt said:
Its still vaporware as far as I'm concerned. I'll belive it when I see it in stock. I don't have faith in the iram products actually reaching the shelves. I'd get one if they are ddr2 because the high capacity modules are cheaper than the ddr ones.

I like the concept, but after the first release, I still consider this a vapor product.
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I-Ram 1 is out... you can buy it.
 
unhappy_mage said:
Yes, but not for the promised $50. It's $133 on the cheapest site on froogle.

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I'm assuming thats price gouging because in Japan it sells for way less :)
 
I retract my statement about not being able to find it "on the shelves"

I would be interested in the product at the $50 price point (well +/- 50%) but not a the current $130-ish level. +225% of their price is not making me beat down their doors. :)

edit. I retract my retraction.

Actually pretending that I wanted to buy this product, eastluna.com (the $132 price) doesnt have it in stock. The compmusic.inc site @ $142 doesnt have it in stock. Fadfusion @ $150 doesnt have it in stock. If I HAD to have it TODAY, I'd be paying $250 from a yahoo store I've never heard of. :)
 
Bullitt said:
I retract my statement about not being able to find it "on the shelves"

I would be interested in the product at the $50 price point (well +/- 50%) but not a the current $130-ish level. +225% of their price is not making me beat down their doors. :)

edit. I retract my retraction.

Actually pretending that I wanted to buy this product, eastluna.com (the $132 price) doesnt have it in stock. The compmusic.inc site @ $142 doesnt have it in stock. Fadfusion @ $150 doesnt have it in stock. If I HAD to have it TODAY, I'd be paying $250 from a yahoo store I've never heard of. :)
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Hey it's the price you pay for compulsive buying :p


I just wish these damn things used ecc reg memory and older memory because when companies decomission their servers they sell the memory off for cookies.
 
Ockie said:
Hey it's the price you pay for compulsive buying :p


I just wish these damn things used ecc reg memory and older memory because when companies decomission their servers they sell the memory off for cookies.
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I agree, compulsive buying isnt my style anymore when the price exceeds $100.

But cmon, how long will I have to wait for a product that was introduced 8 months ago to get into retail channels at a price that isnt 500% of their advertized price? :)

as for the nonECC memory, exactly, sorta. The cost of getting one up and running with a useable config (4gb) is exceptionally high without some sorta mega-deal on ram which means waiting for a 1-3 day uber-rebate sale and you still pay $300 for the ram to shove into the $250 box. Over 5 bills is just too much in my book for a novelty device.
 
See they are trying to cash in on businesses and mobile services.

You know what, this might not be so bad if you use it as a car computer drive... you can drive through all the pot holes you want.



I have more hope for the IRAM2, I think they saw flaws in their first unit and didn't push it hard, hence the low supply. I like the external drive idea because I don't want to kill a PCI slot just to power a device that will heat up all surrounding components. Also, being a drive mount, you can perhaps mount a few of them and raid them :) Hell yeah!
 
Ockie said:
I just wish these damn things used ecc reg memory and older memory because when companies decomission their servers they sell the memory off for cookies.
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True Dat. Even if it didn't use the ecc, letting it work would be really cool.

 
I think it is pretty gay that we have to wait until next year to have this option. What Gigabyte needs is a little competition.
 
The current iteration of the iRAM is perfect for swap files, but probably not much more. Imagine how much Photoshop and other similar apps would love a RAM disk for swapping. :)
 
Oh hell yeah...

http://www.coolaler.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=356&page=0


HD TACH3.01
Random access：0ms
Average read：222.8MB/s

PCmark05：11273

Sisoftware Sandra
Driver Index：263MB/s

DiskSpeed32
MAX Speer ：241MB/s


But do the math, that setup will run you about 800 dollars. My biggest gripe is the fact that I'm really limited on slots when running SLI.


EDIT: I remember! They will be also releasing a baymounted version, so hopefully that can handle more memory and also a bigger battery :D
 
Sweet! Now if we could get some real-world benchmarks, and maybe in English... :p

 
unhappy_mage said:
Sweet! Now if we could get some real-world benchmarks, and maybe in English... :p

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You can't read that?! :eek:


Pictures are worth a thousand words ;)
 
movax said:
The current iteration of the iRAM is perfect for swap files, but probably not much more. Imagine how much Photoshop and other similar apps would love a RAM disk for swapping. :)
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Unless you already have 4GB in your system, you are better off putting it into your motherboard and adding to your system ram instead of making your page file faster. That way you can just disable the page file if needed.
 
It might be nicer if they geared these things towards last generation memory chips. The stuff that everyone has laying around but isn't really using. Or vendors are trying to clear out of their inventory.

Even old memory is insanely faster than what HDs are capable of. And if all commonly used applications etc are stored in it things could speed up considerably.
 
I figured out what these are good for...
I was playing quake 4 the other day and got really pissed off at the game freezing up every once in a while for a second while it loaded textures or something out of my swap file. The only way i could get the performance I wanted was to disable the swap file but unforunately on my system it has too much stuff running in the background that I can't disable easily, and it would run out of memory when switching between levels.
My system is an Athlon 64 with a 1yr old nForce 3 mobo, and is overclocked a bit, and running with dual channel OCZ DDR at 240MHZ.
Even though I have 1gb of ddr ram already, the obvious solution would be to buy more ram. Unfortunately, if I want to keep the CPU performance the same, this means I need to buy two more sticks of high end DDR (so I can overclock and run in dual channel). This seems like a waste of money to me, since with the upcoming AMD AM2 socket platform using DDR2, my 2GB of DDR memory will be worthless.
So basically I can either spend $200-$300 on some more RAM that I will have to get rid of in 6 months to a year from now, or I can buy one of these for about $175 + $99 for a single 1GB stick of 'value' DDR PC3200, and use it in my next computer as well. True, the performance won't be quite the same as installing some higher quality memory directly, but if all I'm using it for is putting a 1GB swap file, I know it will be fast enough to solve my performance issues. And of course it will work fine in my next motherboard too, and I can even throw more RAM into it for free at that time if I can get the heat-spreaders off of the OCZ memory I have now...
 
Talonz said:
Unless you already have 4GB in your system, you are better off putting it into your motherboard and adding to your system ram instead of making your page file faster. That way you can just disable the page file if needed.
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I already do that with 2GB of RAM.
 
Creamy Goodness said:
True, the performance won't be quite the same as installingand I can even throw more RAM into it for free at that time if I can get the heat-spreaders off of the OCZ memory I have now...
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Why would you have to take off the heat spreaders????


 
Creamy Goodness said:
Even though I have 1gb of ddr ram already, the obvious solution would be to buy more ram. Unfortunately, if I want to keep the CPU performance the same, this means I need to buy two more sticks of high end DDR (so I can overclock and run in dual channel). This seems like a waste of money to me, since with the upcoming AMD AM2 socket platform using DDR2, my 2GB of DDR memory will be worthless.
So basically I can either spend $200-$300 on some more RAM that I will have to get rid of in 6 months to a year from now, or I can buy one of these for about $175 + $99 for a single 1GB stick of 'value' DDR PC3200, and use it in my next computer as well
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Well, let me see:
$175 + $99 = $264, if I am not mistaken, which is the same price you'd pay for some nice Overclocking DDR right now. In the future, when you upgrade to AM2, you can buy an iRAM for less than now (remember the time-value of money). At that point, you would have a whopping 3GB to use on it.

In case that you'd rather not ever buy an iRAM, you could sell the 1GB of OC-ing RAM of offset the cost of the 2GB that you are getting and are likely to get a better price for that now, than you will after AM2 is out, since the demand for non-DDR-2 will decrease rapidly at that point, especially for overclocking RAM, since most enthusiasts will want to jump on the new, shiny AM2. While that will decrease the resale value of the 2GB that you just bought, the money you made on the 1 GB will likely offset that. If I had some time now, I would throw together some calculations, but I am busy now.

Independent of that, you are in a very special position, since you know that you will upgrade within six months and you need the extra RAM right now. Most people either won't upgrade for a while if they purchase memory now, or they need the RAM for some CAD/ Photoshop type of work, in which case the future income will offset the cost, independent of their upgrade plans.

You do bring up a good point, nonetheless:
If the iRAM was cheap(er) it would certainly be significantly more attractive, especially when AM2 comes out, since there should be tons of cheap DDR that people can snag up at that point.

I, for one, wouldn't mind throwing all my old RAM (PC100/ PC133...DDR) onto a board and making a SS-disk out of it.
 
The worst part of this announcement is that it will be "announced" no less than 11 months from now. There was a huge amount of time between the i-RAM #1 "announcement" and when you could actually get it on store shelves, so I don't expect to see an i-RAM 2 any time soon.
 
jebo_4jc said:
The worst part of this announcement is that it will be "announced" no less than 11 months from now. There was a huge amount of time between the i-RAM #1 "announcement" and when you could actually get it on store shelves, so I don't expect to see an i-RAM 2 any time soon.
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Considering that the iRAM was the first of its kind, the development process was likely longer than with subsequent versions. I am sure that they learned a lot from their past experiences, but what do I know.
 
rodsfree said:
Why would you have to take off the heat spreaders????
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RAM with heat spreaders won't fit in an i-RAM because they mount on an angle to save space :(

drizzt81:

You're right, not many people are in my position...
It's too late now for me, I already bought an i-RAM. What you were saying about selling my current DDR makes good sense, I would probably spend about the same either way if it wasn't for the fact that I expect to get ripped off if I attempt to sell my high-end DDR. I'm not sure if ebay would be a good place to put it, but nobody I know would pay me more than $75 / GB for RAM since they can go to ncix.com and buy the cheap stuff for $89 / GB right now. My friends dont have money to blow on high end stuff, or have the time or ability to overclock stuff.
 
Creamy Goodness said:
RAM with heat spreaders won't fit in an i-RAM because they mount on an angle to save space :(

drizzt81:

You're right, not many people are in my position...
It's too late now for me, I already bought an i-RAM. What you were saying about selling my current DDR makes good sense, I would probably spend about the same either way if it wasn't for the fact that I expect to get ripped off if I attempt to sell my high-end DDR. I'm not sure if ebay would be a good place to put it, but nobody I know would pay me more than $75 / GB for RAM since they can go to ncix.com and buy the cheap stuff for $89 / GB right now. My friends dont have money to blow on high end stuff, or have the time or ability to overclock stuff.
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It almost sounds like you are selling 2GB of high end RAM? Watcha got? There are probably many people here (especially in the for sale/trade forum) that would be willing to pay you what you want.

So you say you have an iRAM? What has your experience been like?
 
Jason711 said:
thought the i-ram 2 was external and it needed a pci card.
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It will use eSATA (which could be through a bracket connected to a SATA port on the motherboard, or through a PCI card if you so chose...)
 
jebo_4jc said:
It almost sounds like you are selling 2GB of high end RAM? Watcha got? There are probably many people here (especially in the for sale/trade forum) that would be willing to pay you what you want.

So you say you have an iRAM? What has your experience been like?
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well, because i decided to get an iRam I only have 1GB of overclocking RAM. The i-RAM hasn't arrived yet and will likely be 1-2 weeks... I'll let you guys know if it explodes or anything, don't worry :D
 
Lord of Shadows said:
I just saw this video and didnt want to make a whole new thread about the thing. Neat to watch, even if its impractical to use for an os.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51784544344753709&q="Gigabyte+I-Ram"+playable:true
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That is... awesome.


There is rumor that a 5.25" bay version will come out so it doesn't kill off a PCI slot (Important for people running SLI and a sound card and possibly a future physix card). If they do come out with those I'm assuming they will have more slots for more memory... if that assumption is correct, I'm down for one or perhaps even two. Vista is a huge OS, so they need at least 10 gigs for that in memory.
 
Ockie said:
That is... awesome.


There is rumor that a 5.25" bay version will come out so it doesn't kill off a PCI slot (Important for people running SLI and a sound card and possibly a future physix card). If they do come out with those I'm assuming they will have more slots for more memory... if that assumption is correct, I'm down for one or perhaps even two. Vista is a huge OS, so they need at least 10 gigs for that in memory.
Click to expand...

sweet, they should make it sata2 with like 8 ddr2 slots. since ddr2 is cheaper than old ddr
 
movax said:
The current iteration of the iRAM is perfect for swap files, but probably not much more. Imagine how much Photoshop and other similar apps would love a RAM disk for swapping. :)
Click to expand...
Why wouldn't you just get more system memory and avoid swapping altogether?
 
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