Got a Gigabyte GCRAMDISK iRAM (pics)

Zardoz

Zardoz

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 27, 2000
Messages
3,251
Hey got a i-RAM today to mess with total cost 200.00 with ram, so not to bad of a deal for this type of tech. here is the p0rn pics.

* yes it's fast
* got it to play around with, but I might see how readyboost works with it and some VMs

iram01.jpg


iram02.jpg


dmunalloc.jpg


dmhealthy.jpg


mycomp.jpg


hdtune.jpg
 
While I still like the idea and the concept of these things, the fact that they can't find a workaround to tying them to the IDE or SATA style speed limits is kinda disheartening. To have the capability of such ridiculously high speed RAM and then hamstring it to these slow ass interfaces... ugh.

For myself, I'd rather have 4-8GB of real RAM and set aside a chunk of that RAM as a RAMdisk and get screamingly fast performance that would make that iRAM look like it's standing still.

Nothing beats a RAMdisk, nothing... and besides, iRAM... sounds too much like an Apple product (ok, just poking fun now). :) $200 these days goes a long way towards 8GB of RAM in a box... even 16GB if you do it right and watch for specials on 2x2GB sticks. Fry's regularly will put 2x2GB of Patriot 4-4-4-12 DDR2 on sale for around $50 - that's 16GB for ~$200, but then again, that would require a mobo with 8 slots for RAM. Soooo...

What's up with that anyway, all of those specs should be maxed out across the board, most especially the Burst rate. Ouch... that's like taking a crowbar to a marathon runner's kneecaps before a race.
 
silent-circuit said:
SATA tops out at 1.5GB/s. SATA II at 3.0GB/s. The interface isn't the limiting factor here.
Click to expand...

It's 1.5 or 3 Gb/s not GB/s... Gigabits, not Gigabytes, big huge difference so yes it *is* the limiting factor, that's my point. The math works out to about 150-175MB/s (Megabytes) max for SATA I, 250-275MB/s max for SATA II.

Snipped from the Serial-ATA wiki:

SATA 1.5 Gbit/s
First-generation SATA interfaces, also known as SATA/150 or unofficially as SATA 1, communicate at a rate of 1.5 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). Taking into account 8b10b coding overhead, the actual uncoded transfer-rate is 1.2 Gbit/s, or 1,200 megabits per second (Mbit/s)

First-generation SATA devices were at best little faster than parallel ATA/133 devices. A 3 Gbit/s signaling rate was added to the Physical layer (PHY layer), effectively doubling maximum data throughput from 150 MB/s to 300 MB/s
Click to expand...
 
only problem with a RAMdisk, is it's volatile. This type of device is less so, I do wish it was at least SATA2 but, it is still very fast, Also look the sustain rate very little drop off, and almost no access time. anyways going to be fun to mess with.
 
That's why the iRAM has the backup battery on it... and yeah, they are quick, but but but... in my testing I was so damned pissed at how slow it was (aside from access time) that I sent it back and returned the RAM I bought for it too. Took that money and bumped up to 4GB of RAM (this was a year ago) and set a 1.5GB RAMdisk on it for temp files, etc. Talk about fast. :D
 
I agree that system ram is the fastest, thats a given, and the i-RAM is not a replacement for memory it's a SSD device. but somehow I can not see why you would think the i-RAM is slow compared to any single hard drive and for that matter any single SSD. I would agree that some hard drives have some dam fast transfers rates, but they lack in the access times and SSD lack in transfers rates that compared to the i-RAM.

The i-RAM is not perfect, but I believe it's one of the fastest SSD's you can get for 200.00.range. It does lack big in storage, and if it only had a SATA2 interface or better.

However, for my use. it's great, and should serve me well. I know the i-RAM is not for everyone, but it's fun to have. and dam it's a quick drive :D
 
I had one and used it for scratch disk purposes, I ended up selling it because I really didn't "need" it and the fact I ran out of PCI slots.

For what it is, I really like the concept but I wish they had a new DDR2 sodimm version with say 8 slots and could do 2GB modules each with a SATA II interface. I would be sooo sold.

PS:

Zardoz said:
hdtune.jpg
Click to expand...

Your's seems a bit slower than mine which is a little odd IMO since you are running a 780i vs my 680i chipset.

untitled-3.jpg
 
yeah this is some slow CL3 stuff. what ram was/are you using?

how did you set it up? as for unit size?
 
Like I said when this first came out, if it were sataII AND contained TWO connectors to allow 2/4 slots of ram per connector providing raid0 ability, it's be awesome. Also a connection to 5VSB so the battery would only come into play when the PSU was actually unplugged from the wall.

I'd love to see two of those the OP has, set up in raid0 to assess performance.

Given the price of ram, 16 GB isn't really that expensive, so 8 2GB sticks would make a good OS disk (image it just in case) would be one hell of a fast bootup. :eek::rolleyes::p
 
The way this thread was titled, I had thought about something like this ...

samsung64gbssd-lg.jpg


There are other smaller sizes available at better prices.
 
thebeephaha said:
No that wouldn't do it, the i-RAM runs at DDR200 speeds with very slow timings, I forget where the documentation is but you could have the worst DDR on earth and the i-RAM won't care.
Click to expand...

Yeah I been reading about that today, I did see somewhere that if you have all 4 slots filled it was a tad slower, but I do not think that much. not sure what the difference is as of yet. might be drivers, or motherboard.
 
DDR2 does not matter, just something that uses cheap memory and something more then 4GB. I like the fact that is does not use the PCI or PCIe and uses just a hard drive interface. no drivers are needed this way and insures cross platform uses.
 
It's... just... too... damned... slow...

If I could build a box with 8GB of RAM in it, and set aside 4GB as a RAMdisk and assign it to every duty that folks would use the iRAM for and then benchmark and test the hell out of it...

And then yank out 4GB of that RAM in the box and slap it on an iRAM and put that in, assign the same stuff to it that was assigned to the RAMdisk, wow...

It would be like the difference between standing still and... ludicrous speed!!! :D While the iRAM is hamstrung at sub-150MB/s speeds, the RAMdisk would cruise along at gigabytes per second...

It's the very fact that the iRAM does fall back and use today's hard drive interfaces that makes it so ridiculously slow. Hell, look at the speeds posted in the pics in this thread and realize the new VelociRaptor hard drive {which is a physical device with mechanical parts) can pretty much wipe the floor with the iRAM except in sheer random access time, and it's no slouch there either.

I understand why people get these things, but but but... well, maybe I don't. :confused:
 
Zardoz said:
DDR2 does not matter, just something that uses cheap memory and something more then 4GB. I like the fact that is does not use the PCI or PCIe and uses just a hard drive interface. no drivers are needed this way and insures cross platform uses.
Click to expand...
DDR2 does matter since it's cheaper than DDR1 and you can get 2 GB sticks
can't believe it's been out like 3 years and people still don't realize the only thing it gets from PCI is power
 
EnderW said:
DDR2 does matter since it's cheaper than DDR1 and you can get 2 GB sticks
can't believe it's been out like 3 years and people still don't realize the only thing it gets from PCI is power
Click to expand...

I almost got sucked into the hype when it first came out myself because I thought it was going to link the RAM on the card directly into the PCI bus - that would open it up like a throttle on a dragster, but... those... slow... ass... hard... drive... interfaces... hehe

It's really a shame because this could have been such a truly wicked evil cool thing, really.

But yeah, it's sad in a way because of that. Great idea, shitty implementation is how I'd describe it.
 
Joe Average said:
I almost got sucked into the hype when it first came out myself because I thought it was going to link the RAM on the card directly into the PCI bus - that would open it up like a throttle on a dragster, but... those... slow... ass... hard... drive... interfaces... hehe

It's really a shame because this could have been such a truly wicked evil cool thing, really.

But yeah, it's sad in a way because of that. Great idea, shitty implementation is how I'd describe it.
Click to expand...


pci is only 133MB/s, its not gonna be "WOW SO MUCH FASTER!"

pci-e 4x or higher would be something though
 
Joe Average said:
It's the very fact that the iRAM does fall back and use today's hard drive interfaces that makes it so ridiculously slow. Hell, look at the speeds posted in the pics in this thread and realize the new VelociRaptor hard drive {which is a physical device with mechanical parts) can pretty much wipe the floor with the iRAM except in sheer random access time, and it's no slouch there either.
Click to expand...
... but RAM is so fast that if it gets a better interface it'll saturate that too. Even if you use a whole pci express x4 slot for your Raptor it's not going to go any faster.

Also, every time your Raptor makes a click noise it's delaying whatever you're doing by 8 ms or so. Compare that to the sub-millisecond access times of RAM and you start to see where the issue is. Sure, if you're doing big sequential reads a mechanical drive will be okay, but if you're using a database application or something that does non-sequential I/O, the ram drive will blow spinning media away. Think of it this way. Optical drives (CD-ROM, etc) have access times about 120 ms, 15 times or so slower than a Raptor. The ram disk is at least 15 times faster than the Raptor (more like 100, but who's counting). But try booting a live-cd and doing a couple things at once: it can get pretty unresponsive while you wait for those 1/8-second seeks. Now imagine moving the latency to the other end of the scale.
Joe Average said:
I understand why people get these things, but but but... well, maybe I don't. :confused:
Click to expand...
Persistence. What happens to your main memory when you turn the machine off? It goes poof. I do agree that buying as much main memory as you can afford is a good move, but if you want to save anything you need something else.
 
EnderW said:
DDR2 does matter since it's cheaper than DDR1 and you can get 2 GB sticks
can't believe it's been out like 3 years and people still don't realize the only thing it gets from PCI is power
Click to expand...

Oh, I am not saying that DD2 is not cheap DDR2, DDR3, SODIMMS, (insert technology here) or what ever is cheap. my point is;

1. uses cheap memory whatever that might be.
2. at least 32MB capable.
 
Joe Average said:
I almost got sucked into the hype when it first came out myself because I thought it was going to link the RAM on the card directly into the PCI bus - that would open it up like a throttle on a dragster, but... those... slow... ass... hard... drive... interfaces... hehe

It's really a shame because this could have been such a truly wicked evil cool thing, really.

But yeah, it's sad in a way because of that. Great idea, shitty implementation is how I'd describe it.
Click to expand...

PCI bus is max 133MB/s for all devices at least SATA1 is 150MB/s point to point, also the fact that if it used PCI for it's data, you would need drivers for whatever OS you are running, I like the fact I need no drivers at all for the device.

As for implementation, I think they did a good job, somewhat lacking, but we are talking about a device that was designed 3 years ago. as with technology it's moved along ways in 3 years.

3 years ago this would have cast you 900 bucks for the card and memory.Now I was able to get card and memory for little over 200 bucks, if it used DDR2 memory I might have saved around 50 bucks, and if I was to shop more I prolly could have gotten the DDR for less, but I know the memory I got would work fine and it was a good name brand., so i paid a little extra.
 
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