Just created Ramdisk.. no speed increase.. why?

[shizzzon 461]

Interested in the capability of a ramdisk..

I have a q9300 running at 3.4ghz, ddr2 corsair dominator at right under 1066.

Gave just 600mb of memory to ramdisk.

All my other drives in the computer are standard 7200rpm drives either individual or Raid 1.

I compared my 7200rpms first using Crystal Diskmark.

I only tested the SEQ test.. they were in the mid 90s in both read and write...

So then i move onto the Ramdisk-

SEQ =

R- 2834 W- 3767

512K =

R- 2945 W- 3123

4K =

R- 559 W- 436

4K QD32 =

R- 506 W- 402

I did a couple tests comparison of the following of both source and destination file in same location-

TMPGEnc transcoding 10min video clip, standard dvd template, VBR 2-pass

7200rpm drive- 4min 23sec

Ramdisk drive- 4min 22sec

Winrar - maximum RAR compression for ~250mb file

7200rpm drive- 1min 15sec

Ramdisk- 1min 17sec

Winrar - extraction RAR compression for ~250mb file

7200rpm drive- 5sec

Ramdisk- 4sec

So.. if the Ramdisk is so much faster, why am i not seeing faster times?

I can understand TMPGEnc is mostly cpu demanding but i've always heard Winrar is dependent on hard drive speed.. apparently that's not true at all.

So.. what dramatic speed increases will I see when using a Ramdisk?

What benefits from a massive speed increase from the storage device?

[Duran 387]

Wut?

[Tirefryr 1,742]

No shit. WTF is this?

[shizzzon 461]

You can use your RAM as a storage device with the use of Dataram software.

It basically installs a driver, allocates a pre-determined amount of MB (up to 3,496MB) of RAM to be used for this device.

Ramdisk is TONS faster than an SSD which is 2-4x faster than a mechanical drive.... according to benchmarks.

Now, since i got the speed.. what can i use it on? if i can find something beneficial for it.. then i will purchase more RAM but if i can't, then what's the point?

[shizzzon 461]

the benchmark numbers above are in MB/sec, not Mb/sec

So my ramdisk can run at over 3,000MB/sec vs 95MB/sec on a 7200rpm drive

See the difference?

So.. what can i use it on because i see no difference for transcoding and compression\extraction times.

[Duran 387]

I see no application for it, SSD's are already blazingly fast, especially compared to HDD's

[Tirefryr 1,742]

I have no idea what any of this means.

[shizzzon 461]

well, let's look at SSD...

I'm assuming you are saying blazing fast just based on specs...

While I cannot use a Ramdisk UNTIL i get in Windows, after that, Ramdisk will destroy a SSD.

SSD can be used to boot the system up.. Ramdisk cannot.. at least not a software ramdisk.

But after that, Ramdisk is tons faster than SSD.

i see some people use this for browsing cache... well, i don't have a speed problem with surfing the net.

The only thing that takes time is compression, extraction, transcoding, CAD work and Office products bootup as far as i can tell.

Transcoding is cpu dependent

CAD work is video card dependent

Office may be disk speed dependent but a ramdisk is for temporal storage so no installing programs on it "safely".

[Tirefryr 1,742]

I farted.

[Adrian_D 520]

Poke around here:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?43460-Making-XP-pro-SSD-friendly

Some have mentioned they did not see the speed increase in some benchmarks but they have noticed the increase while using the PC.

[UpGradde 7]

Don't waste your time or money on it. If you have to ask, it's not for you. Just use the money you'd spend on ram and apply it towards the purchase of a nice Solid State Drive. Read/Write speeds found on today's SSD's are upwards of 500MB/s. This applies to everything, not just a "database".

[shizzzon 461]

I'm not comparing ssd to ramdisk... I can get extra ram easy cheap. Been reading when using a ramdisk to point all temp dir of all apps to it.

Ie-

For me that would be

Firefox

Windows

Goldwave

Audacity

Tmpgenc

Audioconverter

Mkvtoolnix

And any other app that uses temp dir

[shizzzon 461]

ah HA!

I finally found one thing that actually did have a speed improvement using a Ramdisk!

As of right now, i have Firefox and windows cache being dumped in the ramdisk.. no visual improvements that i can tell...

Been running Audacity and Goldwave temp files through it, no speed increase either when executing filters.

However, this is one thing that did improve-

Video Authoring!

I loaded up a 345mb video test clip into my DVD\BluRay Authoring package and outputted to standard 7200rpm drive tested at 95MB\sec SEQ read and write.

This drive took 44seconds to complete the task.

I then switched output to Ramdisk and executed output-

This Ramdisk took 22seconds to complete the task!

Oh yea! now we are getting somewhere.

Typical single layer DVD full is 4.3GB of output data.

Time it takes to output to a mechanical drive will vary based on tracks being outputted. (the more tracks, the more files to be written)

VOB files split at the 1GB mark...

My Ramdisk is over 3000MB/sec on write so you can see how disk speed is crucial for authoring.

I only Author DVDs anyway...

So, for a full single layer authoring job, i will need to set aside 4.5GB just for authoring.

[Shogen 325]

cool... my SSD is enough for what I do... being on them internets!!!