gigabyte ramdisk - ED likes something?

[Thingi]

One thing that Ed speaks about is the problem of the boot time "only" being cut in half......... He's got a point, although he's wrong about the cause. It's not a bottleneck caused by the CPU, it's caused by another reason/s that is related to what he's talking about though.

I'd set my machine to hibernate A sequential read from the iRam to normal Ram would be very fast indeed.

When a hibernated winXP machine boots alot of the PCI, AGP and various other low level registers are restored to their last know state without waiting for the device's handshake during the normal boot process. This handshaking is what slows boot time down dramatically, USB device detection and hardshaking takes an incredible amount of time. Another massive slowdown is caused by obtaining an IP address via DCHP.

This would give a nice fast boot time (dependant of the amount of used ram in your system) - Windows would probably load in about the same time it takes your BIOS / SATA Controller's to post.

Anyone who is not convinced by the hand shaking arguement well I've got a test for you.....

1. Turn off as many things in the BIOS as possible.
2. Unplug ALL USB device's
3. Install a fresh copy of Linux or XP
4. Install all drivers for vid etc.
5. Give yourself a Static IP address
6. Clear msconfig
7. Delete the PreCache folder withing the WinXP folder.
8. Boot about 8 times and measure the average boot time (don't count the first - this is when XP will create some nice precache files to speed boot up).

Then do the same steps as above but with all devices in the BIOS enabled that you usually have and keep your usb devices plugged in + enable DCHP networking. You might well be surprised by the massive difference in boot time.

thingi

 

[Audioaficionado]

I don't have that problem as I seldom shut down

Heck the post takes longer than XP when I do reboot.

 

[Xris]

Heck the post takes longer than XP when I do reboot.

ditto

 

[DrSpanky]

what would be nice to know is if you would have any control over the memory speed and timings... and how that would affect performance. some el cheepo ram may perform close to having some leet uber expensive ram. depending at what speeds it runs at

also u could buy xp lite from http://www.litepc.com/ shrink xp down nicely :>
i brought a copy a while back sure cut's down the size of xp. would be handy when you dont have much space to play with.

just done a clean install...
what can i say windows xp with sp2 installed and dx9 2.3GB (default instalation with pagefile on other partition)
after 783mb with all drivers installed

 

[elec999]

It seems that different sources say different stories. I think we should wait until the acutal product is officially released and then test it. I am sure gigabyte, is testing it, to make it better. No matter what, I believe that this ram drive will beat any sata hard drive. (This is what I believe).
Thanks

 

[Flasher702]

http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=14213 says that iram now officially supports 8gb (4x2gb ram cards). A much more useful amount of space. However, if you have extra SATA and PCI ports it would be cheaper to get two iram cards and eight 1gb memory modules and put them in raid-0. But at least the option is there and now officially supported. A nice pre-built adapter and mounting bracket or cage to remove the PCI slot requirement would also improve the useability of this product as SFF cases are increasingly popular and some people actually use their PCI slots for *gasp* PCI devices and not just a handy source of stand-by power.

 

[wfarid]

awesome

 

[deathstar13]

well seems anandtech tested one and ed did another post about it.

poor ed he seems kinda sad after all this time of wanting a product so badly,but it not being fully refined enough as of yet to see its full potential.

its kinda rediculous $150 release price.i think gigabyte has been talking to amd about pricing stratagies.

i feel this product will see a few revisions quikley myself and kinda scared to drop $150 for it atm.
i think they will ramp it to use the sata2 or even the pci-e bus and do it rather quikley before the years end.
i dont see no reason beside software internally on the card that that could be bios flash to work on sata2.

i personally think the review shows the results i expected.
thier isnt no 1 majic bullet out thier thats gonna make a bigger impact on a pc's speed like this will tho.
just remember this only aleaviates the hdd bottleneck issues enough to see the other bottlenecks.ocing has always been this way imo.fix one thing to see another problem that needs cleared up and then another.its the never ending bottleneck syndrome.

but imo it would take 1ghz amd or 2ghz intel in cpu power advances to see normal pc with a hdd to equal what this does.
just remember once you remove one bottleneck every part works faster thus making the upgrade seem faster than it really appears in benchmarks.

in the end i see it as a big advancement in toys.yeh ill probley get one rather soon and ill have a blast with it.but i dont see it being anything mainstream for a while anyhow.

 

[JaY_III]

150 seems awful cheap seing how only 1000 are going to be made for the inital run.
If you are going to talk about price, this is also something that must be talked about.

And of course this product will be seing some quick reviersions. 1000 made for a launch, are you kiding me? It Must mean that they have others being worked on while the 1st group for laumch go and get some press.

Wth the IC they used as a controller, yes you are 100% correct a flash of some soft can fix all that. As its just a generic controller, theat is prgramed for SATA I Ect.

As it is right now, it stiil looks like ensuring your system has all the RAM you can handel would be the wiser way to spend you money

 

[-=Mr_B=-]

For the Iram to be usefull, i belive you need a hardware hack, to power a few of them simultaniuesly, and raid em up. Preferably through some fast Sata2 raid, on a PCI-E multilane slot. would take care of those instances where you need ALOT of bandwidth, and lso would solve my main problem with its usefullness.. size.

B!

 

[Flasher702]

The real-world performance indicated by anadtech is nothing mind-blowing. I guess HDs weren't nearly the bottleneck we thought they were, even when dealing with operations that are largely I/O like loading game levels. Perhaps sofware just needs to be optimized to take advantage of something like this? I was always told that the reason it took so long to load a level was the HD being slow, but now we test a HD that is 10x as fast and level load times are only cut by half, if even that much? Perhaps coders have not bothered to optimise a process that depends on a slow component anyway?

So level load times arn't instantaneous. So what? It's still way faster then a WD Raptor. A few revision with more slots, more capacity, make the PCI slot requirement optional, lower the price, this thing with be perfectly usable. However, DDR memory prices are set to start rising again, DDR manufacturers are migrating to new products. AMD is adopting DDR2 soon. People are making calculations on the cost to populate the IRAM using current DDR prices. No more then 1000 people are even be able to get one until after the end of august? What will DDR prices look like then? DDR is being phased out, sempron prices are going to be cut. Demand is going up on an ever shrinking supply of DDR and will continue to go up forever. The iram may not enjoy a very long retail life. But for those that get it I imagine it will be a HD solution that will be "fast" for quite some time to come.

I do want one... but I fear that this is a product that may have missed most of it marketablility by being released at the tail-end of DDR and I may not get a chance to aquire one and populate it at a price I could forgive myself for. I only have 2.75gigs of DDR, and I'm using most of it, and none of it is in 1gb or larger modules. Recycling isn't much of an option for me. This product should have come out last winter. Enjoyed some holiday sales and publicity, gone through a few revisions, and been ready to rock in january when DDR prices really started to plumet. 20/20 hindsight?

Down note: putting two irams in raid-0 is reported to be unstable? I wonder why. I hope this gets fixed!

 

[-=Mr_B=-]

Actually, the transfer rates aint 10 times, since they are limited by the Sata standard, random access times are good tho. I would like a Sata2 based, raided solution, with more memory slots, say 4 iram's aiming at roughtly 20Gb total, on smaller rams. Meaning atleast 8 slots, 512Mb in each for 16Gb, as the smalest "usable" configuration.. however, that is right now, to costly.

Its a good idea, a litle late, and to expencive still.. way better then older alternatives, but still to expencive.
B!

 

[elec999]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480
A review on anandtech.
Thanks

 

[warlock110]

ok, things that can be improve

maximum bandwith: what sup with using the SATA interface? i hope they comeup with something better... but by the looks of everything now, the only way to get more max bandwith is the PCI-E or AGP, thats not possible

DDR200? common now i got PC4000 sticks, i ain't got no 200 sticks laying around, and talk about DDR200 that has 1GB density? give me a break...

Battery? couldn't they get us some bigger battery? we pay 150 for this piece of plastic, @ least give us some lithium battery that's about 1/2 of my laptop... not the phone battery that cost a dollar to make

More density is a plus, i agree that the range of 8GB is great... i'm not a gamer but i do install softwares and stuff, 6 to 8GB is good...

And last but not least, we want the ram maker to start producing lowspeed high density ram for cheap , around PC3200 would do the trick, fast enough and we can get big density...

This is a good idea, but gigabite has no support from any ram manufacture and the technology is still young, most likely need to be improve and price wise too, @ this price is just too stiff.

right now the problem is still price, 2 cards plus 8GB of ram is more than i can ever afford, i have 4 computer plus a laptop and all together is less than 8GB of ram lol. and most of us are sitting @ 1GB of ram per computer, this is not good unless RAM price take a dip to be as low as plastics... Raiding these will be so crazy though, no more delay in seeking time

 

[Overlag]

this sort of thing would be good MIXED with a CF 4gig HDD as a mirror. The ram would be the source of information, but the ram would be constantly backed up to the flash drive. This way you could save power, and make it last forever, although it would need to "rebuild" from the CF 4gig drive if the ram lost its power.

fitting it to a 5inch bay would be good too, would allow more slots, a bigger battary, and the extra space for the mirror HDD maybe?

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

Battery? couldn't they get us some bigger battery? we pay 150 for this piece of plastic, @ least give us some lithium battery that's about 1/2 of my laptop... not the phone battery that cost a dollar to make

Space probably, i am sure they could of used it but they have specifications if they are placing it in a PCI slot. and as stated above some people do use their PCI slots.

Also it is not just a piece of plastic it is an electronic device that could change the market if done right and updated to newer specifcaition - Gigabyte has probazbly been working on this project for a few years - they didnt just pull it out of their closet a few months back and decide hey lets sell this! - dont forget your are also paying for the labour and research that went into making this thing.

 

[elec999]

I must ask. Why didnt gigabyte choose to make the iram using ddr2 and sataII.
Thanks

 

[-=Mr_B=-]

So thay can feel the market, since many have DDR laying around, but not that many have DDR2 laying around? Since even slow DDR can fill the SataII bus, DDR2 really wont affect performance. And Sata vs Sata2? My best guess is that the Sata2 version is coming, if the first version makes sales, and will be slightly more expencive.

B!

 

[YouEatLard]

Because DDR2 would be pointless for this application number one. DDR2 is more expensive and even if they jumped to SATA II my guess is that DDR 400 would actually out perform even DDR2 800 (marginally ofcourse) as DDR 400 would still max out the bus but still have better latencies.

If they've had the card on the drawing board for a while chances are they started before Sata II had come out. Even then perhaps theres another interface yet to come out making it worth while to skip SATA II (only speculation ofcourse) or perhaps they already spent the money on R&D of the first product and wanted to see how it'd do before they spent the time on doing the next.

Personally I hope they never jump to DDR2. Some people don't like to hear it but I think DDR2 is pretty much pointless. It's not only a work around, but the chips they're putting on this RAM is yesterday's tech for the cutting edge dollar. Untill I see a benchmark that supports DDR2 being even 5% better then the original I'd like to see it flop.

For this application I'd rather see them jump to a dual or maybe quad channel config, more or less like having a RAID with in the card. Hopefully they'ed put a fitting proc on the board to do the job there with out tasking the main CPU.

I like -=Mr_B=-'s answer also.

 

[Overlag]

I must ask. Why didnt gigabyte choose to make the iram using ddr2 and sataII.
Thanks

not been reading the thread have you?