Gigabyte I-RAM FTW?

[ktr]

You ever seen this puppy?



http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Products...ame=GC-RAMDISK

and this thing is in stock, not a rare thing...

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?hl...-8&sa=N&tab=wf

sold out atm at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815168001

read the reviews...I recommend reading them all, will make you want one!

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...id=iram&page=1

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1...m/index.x?pg=1

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/07/can_gigabyte/

And look at the wicked fast load up!

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Gigabyte+I-RAM



My Conclusion:

Every site that i have read about it says 10/10! bloody fast...I might snag one of these... maybe do 2gb memory, and 2gb i-ram...not bad for 120bucks. I cant imagine raiding these!This gizmo has a built in battery to retain data, it actually uses a sata port so you can raid...

-ktr

btw... i stumbled upon http://www.gamepc.com/labs/ and it has some nice review on a lot of stuff...good reading.

[Murasame]

Thanks for all that info. I saw this a while ago and was wondering what is was for. Man this thing would be killer for vista and xp.

[Jadawin]

XP maybe, but you can't install Vista on 4GB

[ex_reven]

yeah alecstar posted this previously, and he already has a solid state hard disk, i dont think its the same unit though...certainly looks like the shizz

edit - not to worry jadawin, im sure they will release a bigger one sometime soon

[Jadawin]

You would need like 16GB for Vista and then I doub't the cost will be worth it I'm quite happy with my Raptor Enterprise. I'd like to have a real solid state disk (no battery) with 40GB

[ex_reven]

Originally Posted by Jadawin

You would need like 16GB for Vista and then I doub't the cost will be worth it I'm quite happy with my Raptor Enterprise. I'd like to have a real solid state disk (no battery) with 40GB

vista is THAT big?

now im scared.

[wazzledoozle]

I think Raptor's would be a better investment. 4gb of DDR+the board= incredibly expensive for not much performance over a raptor.

[Jadawin]

Originally Posted by ex_reven

vista is THAT big?

now im scared.

The windows folder ALONE is 7GB here. Not to mention the Program Files folder with all the programs that come with Windows.

[ex_reven]

i mean just the stuff it takes to boot the computer
not the apps and office etc

[Jadawin]

You need the windows folder to boot Vista *is* that big. 8.5 GB after a clean installation without any additional drivers, codecs etc.

[ex_reven]

hmm there has to be something you can cut out :S
at least to make it to 8 gig for one card

[D_o_S]

As soon as power goes out, you loose all your data (OS, or whatever it may be) on the IRAM... SSD is better, IMO.

[Alec§taar]

Originally Posted by ex_reven

yeah alecstar posted this previously, and he already has a solid state hard disk, i dont think its the same unit though...certainly looks like the shizz

Yup... that is a decent one, & one that is coming (who's engineer/inventor has talked to W1zzard our host & myself before here & in "pm") called the DDRDriveX1:



Is coming...

I have one, called the CENATEK "RocketDrive" & it's GOOD stuff. Solid-State Ramdisk & how I use it is noted in my signature below... mainly for performance purposes. It uses PCI 2.2 bus & PC-133 SDRAM & is the ONLY PCI device on this machine, giving it ALL of that bus.

I did a review for them, they knew who I was because I wrote a 'competing' ramdisk for software w/ a GUI adjusting front years before (CENATEK also does software ramdisks too) which was featured on the front page of their site circa 2003-2006!

(However, it is not there anymore, because the site/server it was housed from is gone now apparently - the host was old & in ILL health, & has not written me back when I discovered this 2 days ago)

... I hope he is OK, & HECK w/ the review page then if not, a good person's FAR MORE IMPORTANT (he is a good man!)...

I meant every word I wrote in it too in that SSD's are GOOD stuff for performance in many a way...

I also far earlier wrote up a document for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com that extolls how to use these things (ramdisks in general) for better performance they featured on their website as well, back as far as 1996-1997 online & did commercial coding for them in that timeframe.

So, you could say I am "into them" & have some experience using them.

Thing is though, there are better/faster types of RAM (DDR/DDR2/DDR3) as opposed to what my older (circa 2003) SSD (solid-state disk) uses out there & coming as well, plus better bus types (PCI-Express), & DDRDriveX1 is going to use it.

IIRC, I believe the IRAM uses SATA (1.5gb/sec type) in combination w/ PCI 2.2 bus slots, but correct me IF I am wrong here!

Again, iirc, the IRAM does use a faster RAM type (DDR2?) than the DDRDriveX1 will (DDR), but is sort of a waste in that its bus it rides on in PCI 2.2 doesn't 'burst' fast enough to realize that RAM's speed potentials...

This is why I felt the DDRDriveX1, will... DDR topspeed more closely matches the speed in burst that PCI-e x1 slots can send if needed, & WHY I 'gravitate' towards it.

Originally Posted by ex_reven

edit - not to worry jadawin, im sure they will release a bigger one sometime soon

Probably, & most likely for 64-bit OS, because of the 4gb memory addressabilty problem... now, you CAN stripe &/or span these things you know!

I could set, for instance, 4 rocketdrives here into an array (like RAID 0 almost via software) into 1 single 16gb sized unit... keep this in mind, because these things are treated by the OS via their drivers like ANY OTHER HardDisk &/or RAID controller out there.

Just costs money... lol, the REAL factor!

APK

[ktr]

Well this is the cheapest physical ram drive i can find. I have plenty of 2700 memory...i might pick on of these up...unless you can find a ram drive for less.

[Alec§taar]

Originally Posted by ktr

Well this is the cheapest physical ram drive i can find. I have plenty of 2700 memory...i might pick on of these up...unless you can find a ram drive for less.

Can't argue w/ that... it is a GREAT price!



* Enjoy it, I just wanted to present options to you is all...

APK

[ktr]

according to wiki

The second generation i-RAM, GC-RAMDISK, was on display at Computex 2006 [1] [2]. Rather than using a PCI slot for powering the drive, Gigabyte has implemented the GC-RAMDISK as a 5.25" drive unit powered from a four-pin molex connector. The drive supports four DDR2 memory modules of up to 2GB for a total capacity of up to 8GB and the interface supports SATA II, which doubles the transfer rate compared to i-RAM.

i guess i will wait...

[DanTheBanjoman]

They offer incredible performance, not per se bandwidth though they have the lowest latencies which you can get making Windows run and boot incredibly fast. The downside is the limited storage space though, however nothing prevents you from building a RAID 0 array from these things. Then again it'll cost quite a lot

[Alec§taar]

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

They offer incredible performance, not per se bandwidth though they have the lowest latencies which you can get making Windows run and boot incredibly fast. The downside is the limited storage space though, however nothing prevents you from building a RAID 0 array from these things. Then again it'll cost quite a lot

They ARE fast (HDTach will show you 0ns seek/access to files for instance on them - I tested mine here on our test, or one like it I did w/ somebody else & that was the result)... & about space?

Well, I don't know how much you guys need, but when I addressed that above? Even MY older one can be 'spanned' or 'striped' into a SINGLE 16gb unit, IF you use 4 of them... keep this in mind!

APK

P.S.=> The NICE part about that is, you can BOOT UP from these newer ones (mine won't)... so, as far as booting an OS from them? F A S T, & doable, even w/ VISTA! Uninterruptible Power Supply recommended though, on that note (mine has an external powersupply, but it's not like a UPS... it just supplies it power from my powerstrips)...apk

[Completely Bonkers]

Personally, I don't boot into Windows very often... since I leave my machine running 24hrs. Don't worry about setting up boot partitions for Windows for the extra 1%... because:

For performance, these RAMdrives are best used a swapdrives, temp drives, video editing drives, etc. Then there is ZERO HDD lag in most situations and you can gain 100's%. And they allow you to break the 3GB barrier on 32bit CPU/chipsets... since you have 2GB on the mainboard and 4GB swapdrive/pagefile. The machine "feels" like a 6GB machine. Perfect for photoshop, Video etc.

[Guttboy]

Seems pretty cool...but if you lose power you lose your data right? I know you said to go with a UPS or something but if that craps out as well...aka you go on vacation and lose power for a long time you would lose your OS....Correct Alec?

[Completely Bonkers]

... no problem if its just your temps and pagefile.sys

[ex_reven]

so it stays powered up in an idle state even when the computers off...
doesnt seem reliable to me it would be lovely to have though

[Alec§taar]

Originally Posted by Guttboy

Seems pretty cool...but if you lose power you lose your data right? I know you said to go with a UPS or something but if that craps out as well...aka you go on vacation and lose power for a long time you would lose your OS....Correct Alec?

If I were booting from one? Yes... I would use a UPS as a stated above, just so I did NOT have to reload my OS!

(Hoping that the brownout/blackout did not last past my UPS duration ability - but, that's what GHOST IMAGES are for, & ones housed on a normal electro-mechanical hdd for safety purposes!)

I.E.-> Say you have a blackout that's LONGER than your UPS can give you uptime for (this is not 'forever' running on battery backup power mind you & I don't care what kind of UPS you have, they all have limits - they're NOT generators after all)?

Well, no biggie - You'd reinstall your OS to your booting Solid-State drive, reinstall your GHOSTING software, restore your initial image, & YOU ARE "BACK IN BUSINESS" @ that point, just as you were before, depending on how current your GHOST image is.

APK

P.S.=> For performance, they yield gains, & in some things far more than others... CB outlines a few, there are more... apk

[ktr]

I been looking in to it more, and the iram has a backup and restore utility...

http://america.giga-byte.com/FileLis...1124_en_ch.pdf

So you can install a game on each image, and keep on swapping them...should be faster to backup and restore 4gb or less on to ram.

one question, i know you can have multiple page files, but can you tell a app/game to use a specific one?

[Alec§taar]

Originally Posted by ktr

I been looking in to it more, and the iram has a backup and restore utility...

http://america.giga-byte.com/FileLis...1124_en_ch.pdf

So you can install a game on each image, and keep on swapping them...should be faster to backup and restore 4gb or less on to ram.

Nifty - I was NOT aware of that type of utility/tool for it... cool!



* "'LIVE & LEARN', & if you learn only 1 NEW thing that day? It's NOT a wasted day..."

Originally Posted by ktr

one question, i know you can have multiple page files, but can you tell a app/game to use a specific one?

No, not that I am aware of... the memory mgt. functions in the OS take care of all of this...

APK