RamDisk or not to RamDisk?

W0LFMAN

Hey All,

Like most of you, itching to get hold of the new LGA 2011 Sandybridge-E motherboards and Processer, I'm looking to squeeze out a few more months of my old set-up before a New Build next year.(X79 with a X3960X anyone?)

Some of the new X79 Motherboards come with with Eight Ram slots, with the new release of single 8G DDR3 equals a possible 64G of DDR3 memory...

I'm looking to ask if anyone has played around with Ramdisk programmes to set-up virtual drive in there RAM, I heard it can run programmes even faster than SSD.

Im running 8G DDR3 1600hz and was thinking of using 4G of that to run Sony Vegas 10 Pro.

Whats your Thoughts?

Monotype

I haven't tried it myself but I have to say that Windows 7's superfetch does a good job of caching items that you use regularly into RAM. I noticed that some programs were no faster when moved to SSD and conclude that it must have been superfetch.

The the virtual RAMdisks would have the advantage of loading the entire program into RAM - you get the advantage of speed no matter what packages you want to call upon, but it's pretty wasteful for the programs with huge libraries that you're only ever going to need very small portions of at any one time.
If you can afford a 2011 system, you can probably afford a fair bit of RAM but 64GB seems excessive, if 8GB is serving you well.

Serephucus

Why not buy a 512GB SSD? If you have that much money, why bother putting all of it into a 64GB disk that performs no better (at least that you can notice, or will ever be useful) than a fast SSD? Dump it into higher capacity, I say.

2011 is decidedly underwhelming, in my opinion. If you happen to have applications that are very well threaded, then yeah, great. Most don't. I'm probably going to pick up two sets of Ivy Bridge parts. One for my main rig, one for a server/HTPC, based on how good the graphics parts of the chips are shaping up to be.

Lu Tze

Pogmothoin i think it was that had one, or at least somebody made a post comment/thread about using one before. Said it was very fast, but no side by side with an ssd.

Tar.Aldarion

I heard it is faster than ssd? but as it is volatile memory id rather buy an ss than 64gb of ram lol

Serephucus

It is, but not enough that you'd really notice anything. Your games might load in 4.5 seconds, versus 5 seconds, but if you went with the 5 second option, you'd be getting 512GB for the price of 64, and it would be a lot more reliable too.

SickBoy

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I heard it is faster than ssd? but as it is volatile memory id rather buy an ss than 64gb of ram lol

A good RAM Disk program will dump an image of the drive on shutdown and load it again on startup.
They're ideal for swapfile / scratch / internet cache.

Tar.Aldarion

true maybe a small one might be good ( a few gb) but 64gb seems a bit much when you could get a great ssd.

Serephucus

If you want a small fast one, wait until Intel comes out with its 20GB SLC SSDs. They ones that are designed to be used with SRT. They're reported to be bloody monstrous.

BaconZombie

Physical RAM disk are "ok" but I have not seen a good software only one for Windows in years, there are a few for *nx tho...

SickBoy

It would be a cool add-on for Pro, Enterprise or Ultimate if MS had a built in RAM Drive app.
The available RAM disk apps are a little on the ugly side...

Unregistered.

SickBoy wrote: »

They're ideal for swapfile / scratch / internet cache.

This.

eth0

Swap file? are ya mad? If you have ram to burn then disable that thing altogether. No use putting what's supposed to be virtual memory on real memory

Software ram disk are OK I used to use them in Linux sometimes but if there's a glitch in the power or something crashes then its contents are lost. Hardware RAM disk are also a bit of waste these days now that a SSD can almost saturate a Sata-3 link

Serephucus

eth0 wrote: »

Swap file? are ya mad? If you have ram to burn then disable that thing altogether. No use putting what's supposed to be virtual memory on real memory

Software ram disk are OK I used to use them in Linux sometimes but if there's a glitch in the power or something crashes then its contents are lost. Hardware RAM disk are also a bit of waste these days now that a SSD can almost saturate a Sata-3 link

Exactly! Swap files were designed for people who didn't have a lot of RAM, using one when you do it just... well, stupid. I'm only running 6GB - before that, 4 - and even I don't use a page file.

Unregistered.

Serephucus wrote: »

Exactly! Swap files were designed for people who didn't have a lot of RAM, using one when you do it just... well, stupid. I'm only running 6GB - before that, 4 - and even I don't use a page file.

Fundamentally disagree with disabling page file. Does no harm to have it enabled (reducing it on SSDs is purely just to claw back valuable space)

Serephucus

Unregistered. wrote: »

Fundamentally disagree with disabling page file. Does no harm to have it enabled (reducing it on SSDs is purely just to claw back valuable space)

The reason the pagefile should be disabled on HDDs is that is elimiates the need for data to be stored there, thereby drastically reducing the wait time needed for data to be fectched for the next instruction by the CPU, basically eliminating the HDD as a bottleneck in applications.

You actualy could leave it on with an SSD, and you might actualy see a bit of an increase, but again, best to disable it. The reason being that you drastically reduce the number of writes over the SSD's lifespan if you do, meaning it'll last quite a lot longer.

Why do you suggest keeping it?

asif2011

I remember reading about this before, though I can't find the site. It was suggested strangely that it was faster to set the pagefile to something small like 2Mb rather than disabling it completely. However once you have loads of RAM it's better to turn the pagefile off - read this.

Unregistered.

Serephucus wrote: »

Unregistered. wrote: »

Fundamentally disagree with disabling page file. Does no harm to have it enabled (reducing it on SSDs is purely just to claw back valuable space)

The reason the pagefile should be disabled on HDDs is that is elimiates the need for data to be stored there, thereby drastically reducing the wait time needed for data to be fectched for the next instruction by the CPU, basically eliminating the HDD as a bottleneck in applications.

You actualy could leave it on with an SSD, and you might actualy see a bit of an increase, but again, best to disable it. The reason being that you drastically reduce the number of writes over the SSD's lifespan if you do, meaning it'll last quite a lot longer.

Why do you suggest keeping it?

Put it this way. Its only used if it needs to be used. If you have enough ram, very little - if any - is paged to disk. It was designed in an era when memory was very expensive and capacity was very low. But it's there to save your ass just the the same now as it done back then.

PogMoThoin

Lu Tze wrote: »

Pogmothoin i think it was that had one, or at least somebody made a post comment/thread about using one before. Said it was very fast, but no side by side with an ssd.

No, not hardware, I did it through software, I created a 4GB virtual partition on my ram for most of the large gamefiles of Arma 2, to make it run smoother, but ended up buying an SSD in the end. What got copied into the ramdisk was wiped at each reboot and needed copying in before I launched the game.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055731929