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 for Gamers
Although you definitely need more memory if your game is pausing during gameplay to swap to disk, level load times can be very annoying, especially with the excruciatingly long load times of some recent popular titles such as Unreal Tournament 2004 and Battlefield 2. So, what about using the i-RAM as a "game drive" to store whatever game you happen to be playing the most at the time, and hopefully reduce those pesky load times?So, we went to test a handful of games, Splinter Cell 3, Doom 3, Battlefield 2 and UT2004, and in that quest, we ran into our first problem - UT2004 required around 5GB of space to install, and we only had 4GB on our i-RAM. The rest of our tests proceeded without a problem, but the capacity issue is one that was an underlying theme of our testing with the i-RAM: its Achilles' heel is its capacity limitation more than anything else.
Most of the games that we installed on the i-RAM occupied between 1GB and 3.5GB of space, but we wouldn't put it past many developers to begin pushing those limits very soon, if they aren't already. But then again, you could always add another i-RAM later, so how'd it fare in the games we could install on it?
| Game Level Load Time Comparison (Lower is Better) | |||||
Splinter Cell: CT |
Doom 3 |
Battlefield 2 |
|||
| Gigabyte i-RAM (4GB) | 8.0s |
19.6s |
20.83s |
||
| Western Digital Raptor (74GB) | 10.59s |
25.78s |
25.67s |
||
First off, we had Splinter Cell 3 - we ran the lighthouse benchmark that ships with the game and timed the loading screen for the level. The Raptor came in at just under 11 seconds, while the i-RAM came in at 8 seconds. Not a huge improvement, and honestly not overly noticeable (other than the fact that there was no disk crunching), but it was a measurable difference.
Doom 3 proved to be a bit more appreciative of the i-RAM's efforts; the Raptor came in at just under 26 seconds, while the i-RAM loaded the first level in 19.6 seconds. Again, if you were expecting the load time to drop to instantaneous, that's not going to happen, but the reduction in this case was quite measurable.
Our final test was the big one - Battlefield 2. For this test, we used our benchmark level and once again, timed the ever-so-long loading screen. The Raptor got us out of that screen in 25.67 seconds, and the i-RAM did it in 20.83 - a similar performance gain to what we saw in Doom 3.
Overall, we saw some reasonably tangible performance improvements in game level load times - but nothing we would characterize as spectacular. For the money, you're much better off buying a better video card to improve your gaming performance; but if you happen to already own a pair of GeForce 7800 GTXes, then maybe an i-RAM is in your future.
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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.