[satandole666]

Now that most top-end i7 motherboards support 24gbs of RAM, is it feasible to run 4-6gb of ram for system use and setup a 18-20gb ramdisk as an OS drive?

This is more of a theoretical question than a cost - benefit analysis. I've read a lot about the SSDs and became curious how fast it would be if you could run everything from RAM.

Anyone have any experience or ideas about this?

[I.M.O.G.]

It's easier to do with Linux than with windows, but either way it's not a very reliable way to run - it's called volatile RAM for a reason! (Modern Linux actually uses a RAM drive in typical operation, which avoids the reliability issues of running the OS in RAM - initrd, initramfs, tmpfs)

[ratbuddy]

Originally Posted by satandole666

Now that most top-end i7 motherboards support 24gbs of RAM, is it feasible to run 4-6gb of ram for system use and setup a 18-20gb ramdisk as an OS drive?

This is more of a theoretical question than a cost - benefit analysis. I've read a lot about the SSDs and became curious how fast it would be if you could run everything from RAM.

Anyone have any experience or ideas about this?

Thing is, you can't boot from RAM, at least as far as I know. What you could do is boot from a normal drive and set up a ramdrive for programs. Install a game or program on it, image the ramdrive to a file on a normal HD, and swap out the images to change which game/program is currently 'installed.' Probably not worth the hassle but it would be fun to play around with.

[I.M.O.G.]

You can boot from a ramdrive, you just need something to power the ramdrive when the computer is powered off. See gigabytes product here:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480

[satandole666]

So it would be possible to boot Win 7 from a ramdisk then?

Would it be insanely fast or am I missing something?

[I.M.O.G.]

Possible yes. Insanely fast, not on the iRam given the review results on anandtech.

You wouldn't be able to do it many other ways given the hardware that's available.

[ratbuddy]

Originally Posted by I.M.O.G.

You can boot from a ramdrive, you just need something to power the ramdrive when the computer is powered off. See gigabytes product here:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480

iRAM is more of an SSD that uses RAM though, not a ramdrive in the traditional sense.

[I.M.O.G.]

Originally Posted by ratbuddy

iRAM is more of an SSD that uses RAM though, not a ramdrive in the traditional sense.

Thanks ratbuddy, I was wondering why they were using SSD at times in it's description. It was so early in the game, that probably explains why it's performance is so poor (in light of all the controller limitations on SSD's even now).

[ratbuddy]

Originally Posted by I.M.O.G.

Thanks ratbuddy, I was wondering why they were using SSD at times in it's description. It was so early in the game, that probably explains why it's performance is so poor (in light of all the controller limitations on SSD's even now).

I had an iRAM for a little while. While it's much faster than a regular hard drive, the limitations were just too great. It uses 4GB at most of regular DDR, and while it sits in a PCI slot, the slot is only used for power - it uses an SATA 150 interface via a regular SATA cable for data transfer. I've been hoping for a version with 8 DDR2 or DDR3 slots that uses a PCIe slot but so far nothing..

[gsrcrxsi]

i remember seeing a PCIe 80GB RAM SSD. it didnt have removable chips, but its stupid fast still. from what i remember it passed the data through PCIe. it was really expensive though. like $2-3k

[ratbuddy]

Originally Posted by gsrcrxsi

i remember seeing a PCIe 80GB RAM SSD. it didnt have removable chips, but its stupid fast still. from what i remember it passed the data through PCIe. it was really expensive though. like $2-3k

Pretty sure you're talking about the FusionIO ioDrive, those are stupid fast and priced about like you say.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...722&lid=628335