Haha, I have GOT to get me one of these: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=224&type=expert Imagine using one of these for windows page file. Never peg the HD while playing Oblivion again! Bet it would be quite useful in a ram hungry Win x64 system.
4 to 5 hours of battery then you lose your data..... great... I'm at work around 11 hours per day recently. I'd have to leave my rig on 24 hours a day.. it's not exactly the world's most economical machine to run.
Yeah, which is why it'd be perfect for a swap file. You don't need the data in the swap file once you shut down your PC (actually I have my PC to dump the swap file on shut down).
Actually, it draws power off the PCI bus, so as long as your computer is plugged in and the PSU is turned on, the data on the iRam will stay intact. It's only when the power coming into the PC is turned off that the iRam starts using battery power. But yeah, one of those would be sweet. Use a bit of it for paging, a bit for programming/graphics work... saves would be so fast.
Instead of having it as a swap file, you're better off just having more ram I've only got 2GB and *never* have HDD lag in games ("only" 2GB as comparison to 1GB of ram and 4GB on the card) Now it would be good for a windows drive (and just regularly copy it over to a real drive) Its just unfortunate that the size is a bit lacking (8GB, but 2GB DIMMs are reprehensibly expensive so the practical maximum is more like 4GB). Would have liked to see SATA 300 as well, or get it running on a PCI-E 8x using the bus, as its a pity to bottleneck it at a mere 150MB/s (I get nearly 1GB/sec burst from my RAID card cache, as a comparison of what's do-able) A company called platypus used to make a card with 8 slots that ran through the PCI-X bus, now that was quick (used one of those nearly 10 years ago, so this is by no means a new idea)
PCI slots always get power as long as the PSU is plugged in. Its how network cards can do Wake On Lan etc
I'd like to see them add a 12v external plug to this puppy. Whay, you ask? A 1200 Milliamp / hour battery would fit just fine in my case and would keep the RAM alive for quite a while. I'm concerned about the 4-5 hour battery life as well because we are out of power here for usually at least one 24 hour period every year, sometimes more. <RANT> What really irks me about this, and why I sadly can't use one, is that it's not built to the full PCI standard. It's lacking a second slot in the mating pins and my mobo uses PCIx slits which are reverse compaitble IF the card manufacturer makes the card to the full standard. It's surprising the number of cards out there that aren't built to the standard. </RANT>
You can get PCI-X cards which are a lot better and transer data through the bus as opposed to sluggish (in comparison) SATA150 serious cash though :\
Hmm... maybe in 32bit windows more ram would be better, but x64 seems to have just an insane appetite for ram. Hard drive was overheating quite a bit sometimes just from the OS hammering the pagefile on 1 gig of ram and 2 gigs doesn't seem to help much either. I kinda like the iRAM because it's so cheap (like $125USD) and because I can just pop in a couple few gigs worth of old random DDR333 ram (basically free because I have em lying around). If I went with more ram, I'd have to look for 1-gig modules (like 4 of them) to replace the 4x512 I have currently, which will cost a considerable bit more. Meh, but that's just me, your situation might be different.
If you have already got the old ram laying around then thats a different matter, as on a cost-per-performance scale, youre only paying for the card. (though, with 1GB of ram in windows, x64 or not, it really shouldn't be swapping and paging as much as you say) There was quite an in-depth look in to this card somewhere, comparing it as a scratch/page drive vs more ram, and as an OS drive, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.
Doesn't stop you having to keep filling the RAM from a HD. Good idea, but it needs more slots, and a proper battery in it, then it'd be a good idea. As for RAID cards, are there any PCI-E versions yet? Surely that'd be faster than PCI-X? Give it a 16x slot and you won't have any bandwidth problems...
its a good start, perhaps in a year or two there will be faster and larger capacity RAM drives out when RAM is cheaper too.
There sure are. I've got an Areca ARC-1220, get just under 1GB/s from its cache and around 250MB/s sustained on a 6 drive RAID5 Highpoint and Boradcom make ones as well The Highpoint ones are pretty cheap, £190 for 8 an port and a mere £120 for 4 port, but they're nowhere near the same league as Areca and Broadcom
Been lookin around, one UK seller I can find selling them at the ridiculous rpice for almost 280 each; they are only 130 dollars?!?!? Even paying the daft 65 dollars some sites want for shipping to the UK and it is less that half the price of Fastek!
Very nice Mr Tad, thought you were still on a PCI-X RAID card. If I was in the market for some silly-price storage, that'd be top of my list.
