# Update on Gigabyte I-RAM and The DDR-Drive



## mcloughj (May 3, 2008)

I saw a review of a SSD recently that made comparisons with normal HDDs and the gigabyte I-RAM. The I-RAM wiped the floor with the other two and it got me wanting one all over again. So i figured that since it's been a while sine the I-RAM was launched the newer version with SATA 300Gb/s and DDR2 suppose would be on the way soon. I decided to email Gigabyte to see what the story is. Got this reply:



> Dear Sir,
> 
> Thank you for your kindly mail and inquiry. About the issue you mentioned, because the controller chip of DDR2 is not ready yet. The I-RAM for DDR2 and SATA II may not be published in near future. Sorry we cannot give an exact date of it.



I then remembered that someone had announced a similar device, namely DDRDrive LLC. A quick mail and reply garnered the following:



> John,
> 
> Our first generation DDRdrive X1 is being sold exclusively to Intel, and we have not formally announced our second generation product.  We are diligently working towards that goal and expect to have a product announcement in 2H08.  A firm ship date with pricing and a full featured website (www.ddrdrive.com) is forthcoming.
> 
> ...



SO it looks like we might be waiting a while for a fully featured ram drive... oh well! I'll have to get by with the I-RAM with 4GB of DDR that i bought yesterday!


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## AsRock (May 3, 2008)

mcloughj said:


> SO it looks like we might be waiting a while for a fully featured ram drive... oh well! I'll have to get by with the I-RAM with 4GB of DDR that i bought yesterday!



So hows the I Ram working out for you ?..  If i remember right there was another ram idea floating around too.  Like a special socket for it to plug into your mobo..


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## oli_ramsay (May 3, 2008)

sweet, u got an Iram drive!  They boot into windows in like 5 seconds lol.  Can u post some HD tune or HD tach results with it?


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## AsRock (May 3, 2008)

Newegg stoped selling them for some reason.  and if there right about the batteries  like sheesh thats a issue.  

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16815168001


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## mcloughj (May 3, 2008)

I should clarify, I bought it on Ebay so should have it next week. I have a test computer half built with which I will run a good few benchies.

Gonna try some real world tests too by transferring the page file to the  as well as temp files etc and booting from a normal HDD. should be fun!


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## jonmcc33 (May 5, 2008)

Not enough capacity. Windows Vista takes up far more than what you can get and games are using up far more than 4-8GB installed data these days.


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## mcloughj (May 5, 2008)

jonmcc33 said:


> Not enough capacity. Windows Vista takes up far more than what you can get and games are using up far more than 4-8GB installed data these days.



Very true. However I believe it would be unwise to use this as a boot drive so I'm hoping that it will be useful as a pagefile drive as well as a temp folder and so on. I can't see myself trusting it to hold a operating system or even any particularly important files.

While you could use it for an OS the time spent backing up would negate performance gains.


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## mcloughj (May 5, 2008)

AsRock said:


> So hows the I Ram working out for you ?..  If i remember right there was another ram idea floating around too.  Like a special socket for it to plug into your mobo..



Think about it... 4 slots on a mobo for your regular ram and another four slots for the ram drive that's connected via PCI express X16. Instant Operating system (if you were that brave!)


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## jonmcc33 (May 5, 2008)

mcloughj said:


> Very true. However I believe it would be unwise to use this as a boot drive so I'm hoping that it will be useful as a pagefile drive as well as a temp folder and so on. I can't see myself trusting it to hold a operating system or even any particularly important files.
> 
> While you could use it for an OS the time spent backing up would negate performance gains.



I don't think it would help much as a pagefile either unless you are running with 256MB RAM as your system memory.


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## Disparia (May 5, 2008)

> Dear Sir,
> 
> Thank you for your kindly mail and inquiry. About the issue you mentioned, because the controller chip of DDR2 is not ready yet. The I-RAM for DDR2 and SATA II may not be published in near future. Sorry we cannot give an exact date of it.



Unfortunately that's the reply Gigabyte has been giving for over a year now. The rumored 8-slot/16GB i-Ram that would fit into a 5.25" bay and sport SATA 3.0, DDR2, and a larger battery backup was suppose to be out early 2007 IIRC.


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## Disparia (May 5, 2008)

mcloughj said:


> Think about it... 4 slots on a mobo for your regular ram and another four slots for the ram drive that's connected via PCI express X16. Instant Operating system (if you were that brave!)



Could just be a PCIe expansion card, as dedicated slots doesn't seem all that feasible.






An old Platypus QikDrive 8 - 8GB SDRAM/32bit PCI. 

A PCIe model would be screaming fast.

There is also some pretty decent software out there for using main memory as a drive. Lazy-write backups, restore of image at boot, support for Vista, etc. I bought 8GB of DDR2-800 for under $200 a month ago, and the software is $12. so it's not all that pricey.


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