# Superspeed SuperCache,  any thoughts on this?



## johnspack (Sep 24, 2011)

I'm trying out SuperCache 5 x64,  and am finding it does indeed increase cache hits.  I'm finding with 6gbs ram,  I usually have at least several gigs worth doing nothing.  With this app I can allocate dedicated cache ram to which ever drive I want.  I set some for my os drive,  and then some for which ever game drive I'm going to run a game off.  It does indeed speed things up.  Anyone else try this and have any results with it?  http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/supercache.php  Just curious?


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## johnspack (Sep 24, 2011)

Effects of using just a 1gig cache on my c drive:





Edit:  it seems to have the same effect as using a very small,  but stupidly fast ssd as a cache drive.


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## qubit (Sep 24, 2011)

Wow, how much did you pay for this? I checked the prices expecting something like $30, but it's at "server" prices of between $450 & $750! 

www.superspeed.com/servers/supercache.php#pricelist

I was interested in this product until I saw these prices. Ridiculous.


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## johnspack (Sep 24, 2011)

You just need the desktop version,  it's $79.  At the bottom of the link which I posted:
http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/supercache.php
Edit:  also on that page is a link for a trial version for you to test it out.


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## qubit (Sep 24, 2011)

Ah, much more reasonable! I might well buy this now.  Gives me an excuse to have lots of RAM, doesn't it? 

I did initially click the buy link at the top of the page you linked to, but it did nothing. I then found one on the left, which lead to the server version and I couldn't find anything else.

This is post 4999... just one more to go and I get my custom title.


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## RejZoR (Sep 25, 2011)

O&O also offers similar software based on SuperCache technology (just their GUI). Donno what's the price... I was testing it for a while but i couldn't see any real benefits other than insane results in ATTO. In fact shutdown and boot was even slower which makes no sense. Was testing on netbook with 1,5 GB of RAM.


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## JrRacinFan (Sep 25, 2011)

Started playing around with this and it helps my RAID 0 with read speeds ALOT. Near instant loading of any application.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 25, 2011)

Hmmm could be nice for my HP DM1 - I run it with 8Gb and losing 2Gb of ram is nothing.

Does this speed loading of windows from the moment you input your password and click enter??


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## JrRacinFan (Sep 25, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Hmmm could be nice for my HP DM1 - I run it with 8Gb and losing 2Gb of ram is nothing.
> 
> Does this speed loading of windows from the moment you input your password and click enter??



It would make more of a difference for those who don't shutdown often.


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## AphexDreamer (Sep 25, 2011)

Why can't Microsoft gives us something like this in Windows 8? I guess they ware waiting for Windows 9....

Will this get in the way of games?

For instance if a program needs the RAM later will this "Free" it up so that my games can use it?


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## JrRacinFan (Sep 25, 2011)

AphexDreamer said:


> Will this get in the way of games?
> 
> For instance if a program needs the RAM later will this "Free" it up so that my games can use it?



Already tried it out on hard reset, dead island and l4d2. All load without a hitch and actually load a little bit faster but not much.


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## AphexDreamer (Sep 25, 2011)

JrRacinFan said:


> Already tried it out on hard reset, dead island and l4d2. All load without a hitch and actually load a little bit faster but not much.



Did you let it manually allocate the cache? It's using like 540MB of Cache for my 4GB of RAM.

How about you?


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## JrRacinFan (Sep 25, 2011)

Yup. It did. No issues here.


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 25, 2011)

would it be safe to use this to cache an SSD i wonder.....


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## MrMilli (Nov 29, 2011)

I guess this is comparable with Intel's Smart Response Technology (except it's RAM instead of a SSD). I've seen very good results from SRT and personally I have very good experience with SRT. Now i'm wondering, does SuperCache remember what to cache between boot ups or does it start from scratch every time? Does it backup and restore it's content between boot ups?


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 29, 2011)

MrMilli said:


> I guess this is comparable with Intel's Smart Response Technology (except it's RAM instead of a SSD). I've seen very good results from SRT and personally I have very good experience with SRT. Now i'm wondering, does SuperCache remember what to cache between boot ups or does it start from scratch every time? Does it backup and restore it's content between boot ups?



SRT is a lot better.

I used this program for about a month and even though it speeded a few apps up a bit, boot times were still the same. the cache remembers what you load up after every boot similar to SRT.

Made a small difference to load times in gaming too, but BC2 started developing problems with the game (i.e - Spawning without a gun) Disabled the cache any everything was fine.


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## AsRock (Nov 29, 2011)

I'll give this a try,  like hell why not hehe. Not as if windows for me catches any more rthan 2GB on my system anyways.


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## hellrazor (Nov 29, 2011)

I swear I was just having a conversation about something like this.

BTW, does anybody know of a free analog of this? I'm finding it hard to justify spending money for something so little that Windows should have had from the very beginning.


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## PaulieG (Nov 29, 2011)

hellrazor said:


> I swear I was just having a conversation about something like this.
> 
> BTW, does anybody know of a free analog of this? I'm finding it hard to justify spending money for something so little that Windows should have had from the very beginning.



+1. However, I'm willing to spend some money to help a developer, just not $79 for something like this.


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## CJCerny (Nov 29, 2011)

Important to remember what a cache is, of course, and the fact that it is being done in RAM in this case. RAM caches are great for improving benchmark numbers--always have been. RAM caches will help if you frequently access the same things over and over again inbetween reboots. Whether or not a RAM cache actually speeds up your rig in the way you actually use it is the real question. It's not like this idea is new--it's been around forever--and the reason RAM caches are not a holy grail is because their application to real world use patterns is quite limited. All these guys are really doing is bringing back a concept that pretty much died off some time ago because it wasn't terribly practical in the hopes that people have forgotten that or that you're too young to remember why the idea died on the vine in the first place.


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## AsRock (Nov 29, 2011)

Not noticing any thing being any better.  I'll give it till trail ends but don't looks good for how many programs \ games i have restarted over and over.

Not worth dumping my ramdisk and hardlinks at least that does make a improvement noticeable.. 



hellrazor said:


> I swear I was just having a conversation about something like this.
> 
> BTW, does anybody know of a free analog of this? I'm finding it hard to justify spending money for something so little that Windows should have had from the very beginning.



Wrong place for it maybe ?.

Anyways have you tried a ramdisk with hardlinks ?  
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152930&highlight=hardlinks


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## hellrazor (Nov 29, 2011)

EDIT:
Nevermind, fixed it.


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## johnspack (Nov 30, 2011)

Still playing with this,  and finding it to be very effective.  It works better if you can allocate at least 2+gigs per drive/partition.  I found that by caching my game drive with a few gigs of cache was just as effective as running the whole game from an 8gb ram disk.  I also cache my os drive,  and find things like after awhile,  web pages load faster and faster in firefox,  apps like word 2010 load before I can finish clicking it!  It's probably more useful on an os drive if you're like me,  and never shut your computer down.  Now I need to upgrade to 24gbs ram.....  Oh and sscvf.sys is the filter driver used by supercache and ramdisk pro,  just reinstall/repair the app install.


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## johnspack (Nov 30, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> would it be safe to use this to cache an SSD i wonder.....



I've tested the throughput,  which uses the same filter driver for both ramdisk pro and supercache,  and on my computer I get around 6GB/s,  on an sb that would be more like 8,  compare that to the fastest sata3 ssd at 550MB/s.  So yes,  it can even help an ssd.  Just make sure you have lots of system ram to do it.


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## johnspack (Dec 16, 2011)

Upped my ram to 20gbs,  so needed to test disk caches even more.  Found a new one called FancyCache..  for now it's free:  http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/
It is a trial,  but fully functional,  and for 90 days,  and could be extended while it's still in beta.  In one test I tried I loaded MW3 using a 4gb cache,  it took about 2 minutes until I was in the game ready to run in a certain level,  exited game,  reentered,  took all of 5 seconds to load the same level again.  Looks like this:




If you have lots of ram,  give it a try!


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## HalfHuman (Jan 16, 2012)

*bad experience with superspeed supercache*

conclusion (for *superspeed supercache*)
- it did sped up things on two of my machines, but files got corrupted every once in a while (on reboots and on write heave cases). must say that I've been using a pirated version but the problems are not necessarily from there
- ~80$ to me seems too high for desktop use
- the gui is ugly, unpolished and unintuitive
- had deffered writes but cannot do that exclusively (does read caching at the same time) making it less efficent. windows is quite ok with read caching

have been using the desktop version of superspeed supercache for several months. at first i was using a ramdrive (romex free) and was almost ok. i wanted something more efficient that would cache only writes as windows really is ok with caching reads and i think it does not need any help there. it did what was advertised but started to notice that windows reports corrupted files after shutdown or not notifing but seeing it with my eyes. after several of these my windows started going bad showing some errors... do not remeber really what it was but had to reinstall it again. started using it on work machine. at work i do a lot more disk activity. started seeing my visual studio source files being corrupted , showing either binary giberish or other pieces of text. this happened quite often after reboot. 
i have to give a *big disclaimer* and admit that i pirated it... you should know it's a bitch to pirate it. wanted to evaluate it before deciding to buy.
to me the behaviour seems like the super speed driver does not do flush data on system shutdown and ocuasionally the blocks of files get mixed up between files. i saw that the software has lots of certifications but the way it worked for me is unacceptable.

being pissed i decided to search for alternatives. found the below post about *fancycache *that seems to hold a lot of promise:
- for now it's free (because it's beta) and they promise it's stable 
- it can do write caching exclusively (this is good because windows 7 does read caching quite well) so more ram can be dedicated to where it counts
- can evict stuff from cache after write caching it, making the solution good for bursty write scenarious as there will be more cache available when needed 
- supports level 2 caching... this is potentially excellent
- the gui for statistics seems suprinsingly good and informative (especially after super speed experience )
- for the moment it's free and hopefull will have more realistinc pricing then superspeed



johnspack said:


> Upped my ram to 20gbs,  so needed to test disk caches even more.  Found a new one called FancyCache..  for now it's free:  http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/
> It is a trial,  but fully functional,  and for 90 days,  and could be extended while it's still in beta.  In one test I tried I loaded MW3 using a 4gb cache,  it took about 2 minutes until I was in the game ready to run in a certain level,  exited game,  reentered,  took all of 5 seconds to load the same level again.  Looks like this:
> http://img.techpowerup.org/111215/fancycache1.png
> If you have lots of ram,  give it a try!


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## johnspack (Jan 16, 2012)

Yes,  I actually prefer fancycache now.  It has more features than supercache,  and when tuned properly,  will perform much better.  Very good use of my 24gbs of ram!


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