Faiakes

Ok, I sent this yesterday and this is the reply I got:
--------------------------------------
I am interested in your product but:

1) 4GB is not enough. WinXP and a game like Doom3 would fill all of that. I want to house all my programs in a rocket drive and leave my data in other disks.

We will have an 8 GB out next year.

2) What about a PCIe version of the rocket drive? Wouldn't that be faster? Would it choke the PCI express lane though (if I had a GeForce 6800 Ultra for example running alongside)?

Again, more on this next year.

3) What latency does your RAM have (if that applies)?

The drive latency is 0.6 us (microseconds)
---------------------------------------

So how does microseconds compare to nanoseconds.

Faiakes

And this is the answer I got from Texas:

-----------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your recent inquiry for information on RamSan solid state disks (SSDs). I appreciate your interest in Texas Memory Systems (TMS) SSDs, but I may have to disappoint you. Because of the expense of the systems (the introductory 8GB system, the RamSan-120, costs $24,000), there are no immediate plans to introduce a retail model.
----------------------------------------------------

Ouch! That's going to leave a scar:grum:

jmke

500Mb Ramdisk here really pays off; games load instantly from that drive

__________________

Faiakes

What's the procedure like because I can devote whole GB to it.

jmke

Get http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php ramdisk

version 8.x if possible; worth the $; allows you to create ramdisk to use for pagefile

__________________

Faiakes

Ooooooooohh, now I get it. Ooops

I certainly can't devote a GB to it.

I have 1 GB of 2-2-2-5 ram.

Let's say I wish to improve the performance of Doom 3. Is there a point in using RamDisk 8 ? What's the max Ram Doom3 can use at any given time? If there is any Ram left would there be a point of allocating the rest for the pagefile (or some other file which would increase Doom3 performance)?

I am usin Doom3 as an example because it is a widely used application and a very demanding one.

jmke

You'll need 2gb+ RAM to make RAMdisk useable for larger games like Doom3/FarCry/etc..

__________________

Faiakes

Let's say I do buy another GB of 2-2-2-5 RAM.

What then? I allocate that second GB to the pagefile?

I won't be able to run the RAM at 2-2-2-5 though, so I'll loose some performance, and some more because I will have all 4 DIMM slots fitted with RAM (I don't remember why exactly but when all 4 are fitted I think the Frequency drops on most motherboards).

But we can skip that and assume that the system was designed with RamDisk in mind and 2x1GB modules were purchased.

Will there be a considerable gain in performance? Will it have a decent value? (given that we were forced to buy 2 GB of RAM).

Couldn't you turn this into an article and test such a rig (I'm just saying)?

jmke

the maximum I can fit is 3 slots in my A64 testrig; which would be 1.5gb at PC3200 CL2.5 2-3-7 2T

not good enough for page file action though; I only have version 7 of ramdisk; might need to contact them for a higher version, but not without sufficient hardware to do a test. don't have time/resources to it anyway now though...

having 2GB with 1gb ramdisk and your pagefile on there will increase performance quite a bit when swapping between programs. but I have not tested this yet; would be interesting to see how it will work out.

I've only experimented with putting game demos on the ramdisk; and loading times are instant, 5x-10x faster then on 10000rpm 74gb Raptor

__________________

Faiakes

I think most ASUS motherboards will tolerate all 4 DIMM slots filled with RAM. Don't you have one lying around (in your vast, underground, JamesBond style lab )

1 GB of pagefile might just be enough. I currently have 2GB solid (perhaps another article idea there...)

However, Diskeeper 9.0.515.0 advises to increase over 2GB. (how about a software review of defragmentaion progs, like Diskeeper, the best I think).