Ramdisk+Future proofing Opinions

[ThrawnFile]

I have a slightly aging rig running AMD 8120 on a Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 board and 8GB of G.Skill PC3 8500 on two sticks. I recently read about ramdisk and wanted to create a 24gb drive to swap games off and on it, and to future proof a bit when I decide to upgrade my MB/CPU to something more Intel flavored cough:Haswell). I figured by the time games/programs require more than 8GB of ram I can shrink the ramdisk or remove it entirely.

So here is what I'm looking at. Price point was $10 when I was looking at it.

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 1600 (PC3 12800)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231569

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 1866 (PC3 14900)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231529

Will PC3 14900 stand the test of 2-3 years when new tech/prices drop and still be viable? Or is PC3 1600 good enough?

ALSO: Has anyone played around with ramdrives? Pointers? Pitfalls?

 

[evilsofa]

Since you're looking to spend $275 or so, ditch the ramdisk idea and just get a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD for $231.

 

[ThrawnFile]

Thanks for input, but I have an SSD already. And while that particular drive is faster than mine, from what I've been reading a RAMdisk is much faster.

Side note, I would have to upgrade Home Premium to make use of the extra ram it seems...

 

[Deleted member 133315]

I have a ramdrive setup, only thing that gets to me is the incredibly slow shutdown times and boot times due to loading and saving the drive.

Apart from that its wicked fast. Much faster than a ssd and 1600 be plenty fast enough even in 2-3 years time, I use 1333 myself.

 

[drescherjm]

incredibly slow shutdown times and boot times due to loading and saving the drive.

I wish ramdrive software was smarter such that it would write back only the changed blocks. Although if the system cache was configurable in such a way that you could tell it what folders you wanted to cache and to NOT send writes back to main storage immediately on some of these folders a ramdisk would be totally unnecessary.

 

[joikd]

I use Primo RAMdisk and it does exactly that. I have it set to update the save image every 60 minutes and at shutdown. Shutdown is pretty much instant. I still have long load times (20GB RAM drive), but since I sleep the computer instead of shutting down, I rarely have to deal with that issue.

 

[drescherjm]

Interesting. I would most desire a Hybrid-disk but the web page says that does not preserve data between reboots.

http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-ramdisk/feature-ramdisk-hybrid-disk-and-file-disk.html

 

[ThrawnFile]

SuperSpeed: Ramdisk costs $80 and current version can access RAM outside OS's scope

SoftPerfect: Ramdisk is free and can create any size and number of RAM Disks, but I don't know if it can access "lost" RAM

Running SoftPerfect's RAMD with a 1gb part vs my 128gb SSD testing 100mb. RAMD is 1235% faster sequential read and 2515% faster 4k read.

I've seen benchmarks where Softperfect't RAMD was double that of my setup but I am using 1066 and the bench was for 1600.

Additionally I may not have to buy a fully new set of 8gb sticks, and just get 2 more 4gb for a total of 16; $200 cheaper. And use hard-links to trick the os and only use RAMD for common files. At full load my system used maybe 5gb of RAM so I can easily use 10-11gb for a RAMD. Save my money for when I build a totally new rig. Dropping $270 on a 1.5yr old computer just doesn't sit well with me.

Startup and shutdown times aren't really a factor as I either leave the computer on, or I am willing to wait an extra 2-3mins for a cumulative gain.

 

[drescherjm]

SuperSpeed: Ramdisk costs $80 and current version can access RAM outside OS's scope

I assume it claims back the ram addresses that the GPU maps in the systems physical address space. And also reclaims ram over 4GB on 32 bit OSs

 

[Fenris_Ulf]

I've been running RAMdisks on and off for about a decade. My first one was a 512MB drive with 1.5GB total RAM back when 512 MB was an average amount of RAM in a system. I used it as a server for the Half Life mod Natural Selection. Map changes and practically every game server operation were nearly instant. Now I have a 2GB (out of 10GB) Radeon RAMdrive on my laptop that does web cache and torrent caching (lots of small writes). When I do my Haswell build in a few months I'm going for 32GB using 16-20 GB as a RAMdrive for games or other commonly used programs.

 

[joikd]

One thing I forgot to mention regarding the Primo RAMdisk that I am using is that my RAM disk image file is on my slow storage drive (hence the slow startup when booting). MY SSD is only 60GB, and once a mount point is created the folders are cut (not copied) from the SDD to the RAM drive. This frees up space on my limited size SSD, and keeps from duplicating folders (taking up double space).