AMD Radeon RAMDisk Pitched as Trial

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by hippie

What would be a huge step forward is if I could use my VRAM as main system memory when not gaming. Still unsure why this can't be addressed somehow. Think of all that super fast GDDR5 just sitting there idle.

Would be great if they could adapt this tool for something like that.

there is no way to use vga ram as system ram. it's possible to make a ram disk with vga memory, i started coding that a while ago, but then decided it's a waste of time.. memory is so cheap nowadays and 1 GB more or less won't make any difference.

[Steevo]

Would the latency of the PCIe bus even make it worthwhile?


I have a new trinity laptop at home I am setting up, and it has 8GB of RAM since I upgraded it to take advantage of dual channel (for all of $18 you think they would have done this anyway).


Might have to give it a try.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by Steevo

Would the latency of the PCIe bus even make it worthwhile?

compared to HDD or SSD, it would be astronomical.

Still a dumb idea. We just purchased 64GB of ram for our server workstations for a couple hundred.

[Super XP]

Ram is super cheap now, everybody should be putting minimum 16GB to 32GB for there basic rigs. Why not, and RAMDisk a bunch of that.

[Steevo]

I mean compared to RAM.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Fun fact: Despite RAM disks being still largely impractical despite the average joe now having at least 8GB such functionality was even built into old school Macintosh System 7. Back when you had like 64MB total.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by Steevo

I mean compared to RAM.

That would only matter if you were to use the RAMdisk in a manner that is akin to RAM, but since it is a RAMdisk, that would be like allocating your RAMdisk and use it for page-file memory. Which is hilariously redundant.

[damric]

This is the coolest thing since Windows Ready Boost

[Steevo]

Originally Posted by 3870x2

That would only matter if you were to use the RAMdisk in a manner that is akin to RAM, but since it is a RAMdisk, that would be like allocating your RAMdisk and use it for page-file memory. Which is hilariously redundant.

You don't say.

I am saying the difference in latency from Vram & PCIe VS DDR3 ram. Plus with dynamic clocking on Vram to save power. With 8GB of system RAM I don't believe the tech will ever use more than about 4GB, but I would never use this in a production environment, the last thing I need is it bombing out during a firmware update and killing a $5K component and costing me a day or two.

Perhaps if it got a user 5% higher FPS in a demanding game it would be worth it. GTA comes to mind where their streaming protocol for the world is ineffective at times, having it all cached in RAM would be beneficial.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by Steevo

You don't say.

I am saying the difference in latency from Vram & PCIe VS DDR3 ram. Plus with dynamic clocking on Vram to save power. With 8GB of system RAM I don't believe the tech will ever use more than about 4GB, but I would never use this in a production environment, the last thing I need is it bombing out during a firmware update and killing a $5K component and costing me a day or two.

Perhaps if it got a user 5% higher FPS in a demanding game it would be worth it. GTA comes to mind where their streaming protocol for the world is ineffective at times, having it all cached in RAM would be beneficial.

I see where you might be confused. This woudln't be for actual gaming performance, it is more for loading common games or files that you use often, and that generally take a while to load.

[Steevo]

Err. Right.



Have you ever actually ran performance monitoring while playing a game?




The software caches "hot files"that are accessed often in the "drive" for faster access. All you need to look at is hard faults, parent process and files to determine what needs cached. Those little hiccups and missing textures now go away. As good as windows is at memory management, there is the limitation of the program and what it calls and can allocate of system RAM, this is just a way around those limitations.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by Steevo

Err. Right.



Have you ever actually ran performance monitoring while playing a game?




The software caches "hot files"that are accessed often in the "drive" for faster access. All you need to look at is hard faults, parent process and files to determine what needs cached. Those little hiccups and missing textures now go away. As good as windows is at memory management, there is the limitation of the program and what it calls and can allocate of system RAM, this is just a way around those limitations.

If you have enough RAM for it, everything about a game will be loaded into RAM, and should not be grabbing from the hard drive (or in this case RAMdisk) for anything.

In the case of RAMdisk, everything is first loaded from RAMdisk into your RAM, therefore RAMdisk is totally taken out of the equasion until something else needs to be loaded into memory by the game.

When the game needs something on demand, like textures, it will grab that from the RAM.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Originally Posted by damric

This is the coolest thing since Windows Ready Boost

I do thankfully think I detect some sarcasm yet can't be 100% sure...

[damric]

Originally Posted by Wrigleyvillain

I do thankfully think I detect some sarcasm yet can't be 100% sure...

Thanks, I try and ride that fine grey line. Reminds me, I need to lol at the VP debates tonight

[Wrigleyvillain]

That's an easy task.

[Steevo]

Originally Posted by 3870x2

If you have enough RAM for it, everything about a game will be loaded into RAM, and should not be grabbing from the hard drive (or in this case RAMdisk) for anything.

In the case of RAMdisk, everything is first loaded from RAMdisk into your RAM, therefore RAMdisk is totally taken out of the equasion until something else needs to be loaded into memory by the game.

When the game needs something on demand, like textures, it will grab that from the RAM.

Only after it has been loaded the first time, and only until it is dumped from memory.

There are significant improvements to more RAM, but you eventually hit a wall with it too, then it becomes the next slowest part, which is the HDD.

[eidairaman1]

Originally Posted by Steevo

Only after it has been loaded the first time, and only until it is dumped from memory.

There are significant improvements to more RAM, but you eventually hit a wall with it too, then it becomes the next slowest part, which is the HDD.

yep data access topology

Cache, Ram, HDD

[EpicShweetness]

My workstation at work with 40GB of RAM using a Duel LGA 771 takes forever to boot, why? I would never use more then 2.5GB since we use VM's, so I decided to use a RAMDisk Boot Load Software. On Boot the HDD loads the RAM with everything on it, (only about 28GB worth of stuff on it) the speed I experience (load times) well it makes me jealous, lol. So i know the advantage of a software that would dynamically assign a partition on the RAM according to the software that was being used. Good job AMD, or who rather who ever finalizes this first.

[Steevo]

Data reads are often compressed/encrypted, and may not be optimized, creating significant waits as data is hard faulted, and then the command is issued, the heads have to seek to the data, read, assemble and or decompress, transfer, and then act upon.

A cached read from RAM eliminates a significant portion of these steps and thus time, and during boot as well during dependent execution of a program the next step may or may not be loaded into RAM if that data has not been called yet. Even at 500MBps for a SSD, or 800MBps for my array it is significantly slower than system RAM.

RAMdisk software has been around for awhile, but it is still going to be years before many are brave enough or comfortable enough to put it into production environments.

[Thefumigator]

Do you want to know how a RAM drive performs,
Use virtual box, install windows XP, it should be less than 10GB, copy that virtual hard drive to the ram disk and then boot it. See what happens ;-)

[Completely Bonkers]

Anyone wanting to play with Ramdisks should try this:

I've been watching it develop over the last 2 years, and with their latest version, it is very fast. And FREE. http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/