Gigabyte's i-RAM: Affordable Solid State Storage
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 25, 2005 3:50 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
i-RAM as a boot drive
Since the i-RAM appears as a normal hard drive, you can install Windows on it just like you would a regular hard drive with no extra drivers (assuming that none are needed for your SATA controller).A full install of Windows XP Pro can easily fit on a 4GB i-RAM and even on a 2GB i-RAM, but you have to be careful not to install applications into the C:\Program Files directory and disable System Restore for the i-RAM drive among other precautions. Why would you ever want to install your OS on an i-RAM card? We came up with two possibilities:
First off, loading your OS on the i-RAM will reduce boot times.
| Boot Time Comparison | |||||
Windows Boot Time (Lower is Better) |
|||||
| Gigabyte i-RAM (4GB) | 9.12s |
||||
| Western Digital Raptor (74GB) | 14.06s |
||||
With a Western Digital Raptor, you can go from the boot menu to the Windows desktop in 14.06 seconds; with the i-RAM, it takes 9.12 seconds. It's not instantaneous, but it's definitely quicker and noticeable.
Our thoughts are that with further optimization, the boot process can be better tuned for very low latency storage devices such as the i-RAM, but that won't happen with any currently shipping version of Windows.
The second reason for installing your OS on an i-RAM card is a bit more specific, but one we came up with when thinking about a secondary benefit of Gigabyte's i-RAM: it's silent.
You could theoretically build a home theater computer using just the i-RAM to hold your OS and map a network drive (hopefully kept in another room) to hold all of your media (e.g. music, movies, pictures, etc.). Paired with a silent PSU and a very quiet running CPU fan (maybe even on a Pentium M based system), you can have a truly silent HTPC, thanks to the i-RAM. You'd ideally want whatever database of your media collection to be stored on the network drive and not your OS, just in case something ever happened causing your i-RAM to lose its data, but it is a viable use for Gigabyte's i-RAM.
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Icehawk - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Huh, if this was at the $50 price point it would be a bit more interesting.I didn't like the pagefile test - it made no sense at all. Of course going from say 4b RAM to 2gb + 2gb iRam isn't going to improve the system... You needed to test what JUST changing the pagefile from HD to iRAM does.What about a typical 1gb RAM setup that most of us use? I still hit the pagefile on occasion and I do have ~1gb of old DDR I could use. Load times? No, I'd like to know if it smooths out gameplay. I know Doom 3 hiccups on my machine due to disk accesses.
Otherwise this doesn't look like it makes a lot of sense in its current incarnation.
lewis71980 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
No mention of using JBOD instead of Raid 0.That way with 4 pci slots used up you could get 16gb.
Maybe that would be enough space to do some proper server / databases.
Use a pair of normal 80 IDE HDD for os boot in raid 1 with file backup, from the i Ram card.
Braxus - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Know the article says it doesn't support ECC memory but will it still take it and run in in non-ECC mode? Most mobos I believe can at least do this. What about registered memory? Got a couple sticks of 1GB DDR266 RECC memory I'd like to use!RMSistight - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I definitely won't purchase this product until they implement SATA-II at 300Gb/s. Why should I shell out $150 for SATA150 when my DFI LanParty Ultra-D can do 300.I even asked one of the product managers at the AMD tech tour. I don't see why they wouldn't do it since SATA-II is backwards compatible to SATA-I.
Hacp - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
BTW I hate this new layout. i have to click it to read the next comment. Is there anyway to fix this? also the forums didn't get a makeover visual wise.LeftSide - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I wonder If the athlon x2 would have shown a diffrence in the multitaking tests, Instead of useing a fx57?Nanobaud - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
If more benches are to be done, I would put in a suggestion to test some compile times. Then I guess you should compare it to boosting youe system memory and installing a RAM drive, but this could be more convenient if you have those old 256 / 512 MB memory sticks lying around.nBd
Sunbird - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I want to know how long it will take the I-RAM to drain a standard UPS if the PC is off but connected to said UPS?jkostans - Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - link
A while. You would have to find how much power is dissipated by the i-ram, then use the capacity of your UPS to get an exact number. I would go as far as to say maybe up to a month if you have a good ups.Zebo - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
$600 for 4GB (read useless) drive that maybe is not much faster than two 73GB drives in RAID 0 for half price? Uh Huh. If they sell 3000 I'll be shocked.