# Should i buy primocache?



## OctupleGolf001 (Sep 20, 2021)

it tripled my SSD performance!


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## Toothless (Sep 20, 2021)

It didn't. It's using ram as a cache. Your drive isn't faster..


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

OctupleGolf001 said:


> Should i buy primocache?​


No. Waste of money. It's just a fancy RAM-Drive type software. Unless you have a frak-ton of RAM(128GB+) is will not be worth the purchase.

I was wrong. See testing below...


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## Mussels (Sep 20, 2021)

Aww, i was hoping this would be a good primocache thread.

I have a frakton of spare RAM and played with it, but want to see other peoples thoughts and advice on how best to use it before i pay.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Aww, i was hoping this would be a good primocache thread.
> 
> I have a frakton of spare RAM and played with it, but want to see other peoples thoughts and advice on how best to use it before i pay.


Ok, I'll be fair, if you have 32GB+ and you leave at least 16GB for your system, this is useful, but 32GB is the bare minimum! There-in lays the catch, you have to have a serious amount of RAM to get the most out of this program and it is very much a case of the-more-memory-the-merrier!

The program is found below;





						PrimoCache - Excellent Software Caching Solution to Accelerate Storage
					

Home page of PrimoCache product which is a supplementary software caching scheme to improve the system performance.



					www.romexsoftware.com
				



Learn more here;





						PrimoCache Overview
					

PrimoCache Help Documents - Get Started - PrimoCache Overview



					www.romexsoftware.com
				



And the Specs;





						Features & Specification
					

PrimoCache Help Documents - Get Started - Features & Specification



					www.romexsoftware.com
				



The minimum is stated as 2GB, and the recommend 4GB, but there is no way in hell a user will make the most of what this program can do unless you give it huge chunks of RAM. The useful minimum is 32GB system RAM with 16GB allocated to PrimoCache.

Honestly, the prices are very reasonable(lifetime use) if you can make the most of it.





						Purchase PrimoCache
					

Buy or upgrade PrimoCache



					www.romexsoftware.com


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## OctupleGolf001 (Sep 20, 2021)

thanks, i have 20gb ram


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## Mussels (Sep 20, 2021)

OctupleGolf001 said:


> thanks, i have 20gb ram


Let's just assume 16GB is needed for the OS and programs, as thats a common recommendation

That means you've got 4GB of data cached, and you cant choose what that data is

Are you really going to benefit? Are you reading/writing small data so often and so fast, that your SSD cant keep up?


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## lZKoce (Sep 20, 2021)

Man, I had forgotten about this one. There was a time I had played with it, but it was a while back. It all depends of course. If you have decent SSD/ RAM perhaps AV software (if needed), backup software (paid if needed) and you still feel the need to invest into your PC, yeah go for it.

EDIT: what I mean is, I have way more other bases to cover before I even consider splashing cash on this kind of software.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

OctupleGolf001 said:


> thanks, i have 20gb ram


Ok, try this since you already have the trial version: Set your cache allocation for 8GB. That will leave 12GB for your system, which is a doable amount of RAM. You can always try 4GB as well if your system performance dips.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 20, 2021)

Mussels said:


> I have a frakton of spare RAM


In a wooden frame hanging on the wall?  

On topic ~
While I was play testing a mod for 7 Days to Die, ram usage topped  27Gb, took a while to load. Those with less than 16gb systems experience really crap performance. Using a tool like this would put that whole thing into the pagefile, could ruin a drive lol.


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## Vayra86 (Sep 20, 2021)

Never had any trust in these solutions. It just reeks too much of downloading RAM or 'your computer has 670161 problems we can fix'.

As if the most efficient data management isn't already built into the whole rig as it is...


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 20, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Aww, i was hoping this would be a good primocache thread.
> 
> I have a frakton of spare RAM and played with it, but want to see other peoples thoughts and advice on how best to use it before i pay.


I payed , I don't use it now, simply not worth the effort for a typical home user.
Games didn't all of a sudden fly or load much quicker.


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## Superzuber (Sep 20, 2021)

depends on the use case - just for read cache for SSD probably no, it's good for cache/prefetch on HDD (ofc Windows does that too but with Primocache you have control over it) and great if you need functions like write L2 caching and defer write function


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

Decided to actually test this rather than rely on past experiences. Testing showed interesting results. See screenshots.
The testing system is one of my Dell T3500s with 12GB of RAM and a Xeon W3680 6core CPU running Windows 11 Build 22000.194. I wanted to use this system as it's the one I've been testing Windows 11 on and has the least amount of RAM of all my desktop type systems.

This is a test on a non-cached partition, which shows the bare drive performance. This acts as a control baseline result. This is what was expected from the drive in question(Seagate 7200RPM HDD).





This is with a 2GB cache. As you can see, there is a marked improvement in read speeds, but not much in write speeds, which were only slightly better.




This is with a 3GB cache. This is where the read speeds bump an even larger margin(more than double). The write speeds went back down to the baseline, not sure why.




This is a 4GB cache. Once again an improvement, but not a big one compared to the 3GB test.




This is with a 6GB cache. This was an interesting improvement. The memory bandwidth of that system is 13GB per second so the cache is approaching the system bandwidth limit.




So I was wrong, this program is not a waste. This software is not like others of this type. However, the testing clearly shows that you need a fair amount of system RAM to use it effectively.

@OctupleGolf001
You should be able to allocate 6GB of your system RAM and not choke your system while taking advantage of what this program has to offer. I'm changing my advice to: Yes, buy it if you will use it alot. Seems to work really well.

@Everyone
I think the pattern in the results is clear here, the more RAM the better, but unlike disk caching programs of the past, a frak-ton of RAM in NOT actually needed. You can get a solid result just using a 2GB cache.

My original recommendation though still stands, the more RAM the better. The advice I'm changing is the bare minimum, which is 12GB. I will say if you're going to use this program on a constant basis, start with 24GB and an 8GB cache. RAM is affordable these days so upgrading if you need to should not be expensive. This program seems to be very efficient and 8GB cache size should provide anyone a great result.


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## silentbogo (Sep 20, 2021)

Primocache is essentially superfetch on steroids. Short-term satisfaction is good (so as "on paper" numbers), but actual daily benefits are highly questionable, especially if you are already running an SSD.
I assume Windows 11 only feels snappier only because they fixed preloading algos to account for higher RAM capacities, which means it's another con to buying software which can potentially become obsolete in a couple of months.


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## BSim500 (Sep 20, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Aww, i was hoping this would be a good primocache thread.
> 
> I have a frakton of spare RAM and played with it, but want to see other peoples thoughts and advice on how best to use it before i pay.


I tried a 16-24GB RAMDisk on a 32GB RAM system, and quite honestly it isn't worth it for general gaming. My findings:-

*1.* If you switch your computer off every night then you're basically going to have to "install" / copy the game over anyway every day. Total loading time = copy time from HDD/SSD to RAMdisk + the time when you start the game from the RAMDisk + the extra "human time" you spend setting it up is actually longer than just running it off an SSD.

*2.* Exponentially depreciating gains. An 80% reduction from say 75s (5,400rpm HDD) to 15s (SSD) feels huge. But a further 5% reduction from 15s (SSD) to 14.3s (RAMDisk) is not noticeable in the real world, especially when 11s of both involves unskippable intro movies, epilepsy warnings, etc, or CPU bottlenecked decompressing data files. I have one smallish 1.6GB game (Quantum Conundrum) that takes 34s to load on a 5,400rpm HDD and yet still 29-30s on a RAMDisk / SSD. Why? It's an endless string of intro movies you can't skip. RAMDisks won't help with this stuff.

*3.* Whenever you access any file, you're loading it into the Windows file cache anyway. So when you copy a file from SSD to RAMDisk, you're actually making two copies : 1. RAMDisk and 2. Windows file cache. And the first place Windows looks is the latter. So for many games you're not actually starting it from the RAMDisk but the cache. If you have a lot of RAM (16-32GB) and your game only uses say 6GB, then Windows will be holding it all in RAM anyway even without a RAMDisk even if you made a "null" file copy or simply "read" the files some other way, eg, MD5-ing the game folder will cache a game into RAM (Windows File Cache) even without a RAMDisk.

*4.* Games are getting larger than RAMDisks can handle faster than RAM is coming down in price. With +50-100GB game installs becoming more common, it's already getting pretty ridiculous and expensive to buy 64-128GB RAM to try and keep up with the "rat race" vs buying an increasingly cheap 2TB SSD.

*Bottom line :* If you never reboot your system, play only the same small game over & over, day after day, can't afford a large SSD yet simultaneously happen to have +32GB of expensive RAM lying around unused there's probably some value in RAMDisks to some people. For most people, however, there isn't. Overall, I decided a 2TB SSD was a better investment than RAMDisk-ing 32GB RAM and a whole lot less fiddling about "pre-loading" every time I rebooted / shut down / wanted to play something else. The only real practical use I found for a RAMDisk was a 1GB web browser cache for heavy daily browsing sessions, and even then most of that benefit was less about speed and more about reducing SSD defragmentation / maximising PE cycles.

Edit: I know Primocache works differently than a pure RAMDisk (most commonly / recently accessed based algorithm) but the same principle applies - if you play only the same small games over & over and perhaps have a fast boot SSD + a large secondary HDD, it may increase the speed of games loaded from the latter. But if you play a variety of games (especially larger ones), then whatever the algorithm decided to cache / pre-load yesterday may not be what you want to play today and it's no different to loading from an SSD directly.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Primocache is essentially superfetch on steroids.


No, this seems to be something else entirely. The caching is on RAM not on disk like SuperFetch is.


silentbogo said:


> Short-term satisfaction is good (so as "on paper" numbers), but actual daily benefits are highly questionable


I have not done any long term tests, but I predict that there is something tangible to gain.


silentbogo said:


> especially if you are already running an SSD.


This I doubt, but it can be tested just as easily on the same system which has an SSD installed. I'd be willing to run tests with that drive if requested.



silentbogo said:


> I assume Windows 11 only feels snappier only because they fixed preloading algos to account for higher RAM capacities, which means it's another con to buying software which can potentially become obsolete in a couple of months.


Those are a few assumptions. Time will tell.


BSim500 said:


> I tried a 16-24GB RAMDisk on a 32GB RAM system, and quite honestly it isn't worth it for general gaming. My findings:-


That is because your configuration was flawed. If you have 32GB of RAM and you set a 16GB or 24GB cache, your system performance will tank as a result. The rest of your points are invalid as they are based on your experience with a flawed configuration. Try an 8GB or 12GB cache and let us know how it goes.


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## silentbogo (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> No, this seems to be something else entirely. The caching is on RAM not on disk like SuperFetch is.








						Windows Vista I/O technologies - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				



The only difference is that Superfetch does it automagically without user intervention, while PrimoCache creates a RAM disk(and wastes resources) to do essentially the same thing manually.
Most linux distros do similar thing with preload. The only thing that's kinda beneficial - is user control(e.g. choosing what to preload), other than that - I can't really think of any.


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## BSim500 (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> That is because your configuration was flawed. If you have 32GB of RAM and you set a 16GB or 24GB cache, your system performance will tank as a result. The rest of your points are invalid as they are based on your experience with a flawed configuration. Try an 8GB or 12GB cache and let us know how it goes.


I tried all sizes (starting with 2GB) and ended up at 16-24GB (for caching sub 10GB smaller games outright). It can make a huge difference if you're loading from a 5,400rpm HDD and the algorithm gets it right, but vs a fast SSD, it didn't made much difference in the real-world for reasons mentioned. My RAMDisk shows CrystalDiskMark Sequential screenshots of over 12,000MB/s vs only 520MB/s from an MX500 SATA SSD, yet that really doesn't mean games will load 23x faster as games simply don't load like that. In the real world, they'll request a chunk of data, then go through a lot of CPU cycles unpacking it, initialising it, etc, only then request another chunk, etc. It isn't a continuous "sequential" stream at all. _"If my SSD is 2,000MB/s and my RAMDisk is 10,000MB/s then that means game load times will fall from 15s to 3s because that's what CrystalDiskMark says"_ as some believe just doesn't happen in the real world for the same reason the newest P31 NVMe review isn't showing 6x lower load times for games than 2016-era SATA's on the same chart. The theoretical CrystalDiskMark Sequential -> real-world Game Load times never was something that ever scaled linearly, let alone do so to infinity beyond depreciating gains of which fast SSD's are already well into the realms of.


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## aliceif (Sep 20, 2021)

Modern SSDs already use a technology called HMB (Host Memory Buffer) that uses system RAM for performance optimization, even aside from any preloading and caching your OS does for you, so paying money for yet another thing that puts RAM between your Operating System and your SSD seems of marginal use at best.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Windows Vista I/O technologies - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...





BSim500 said:


> I tried all sizes (starting with 2GB) and ended up at 16-24GB (for caching sub 10GB smaller games outright). It can make a huge difference if you're loading from a 5,400rpm HDD and the algorithm gets it right, but vs a fast SSD, it didn't made much difference in the real-world for reasons mentioned. My RAMDisk shows CrystalDiskMark Sequential screenshots of over 12,000MB/s vs only 520MB/s from an MX500 SATA SSD, yet that really doesn't mean games will load 23x faster as games simply don't load like that. In the real world, they'll request a chunk of data, then go through a lot of CPU cycles unpacking it, initialising it, etc, only then request another chunk, etc. It isn't a continuous "sequential" stream at all. _"If my SSD is 2,000MB/s and my RAMDisk is 10,000MB/s then that means game load times will fall from 15s to 3s because that's what CrystalDiskMark says"_ as some believe just doesn't happen in the real world for the same reason the newest P31 NVMe review isn't showing 6x lower load times for games than 2016-era SATA's on the same chart. The theoretical CrystalDiskMark Sequential -> real-world Game Load times never was something that ever scaled linearly, let alone do so to infinity beyond depreciating gains of which fast SSD's are already well into the realms of.


I'm not going to argue. Believe what you want.

Moving on...
So after the mention of SSDs, I decided to test the difference. Once again the results were interesting... Same system, just on the Windows 7 installation on an SSD. Here we go..

NonCached partition. Results were as expected.




2GB cache. Once again, the read speeds jumped up dramatically but had a different mix of results from the HDD.




3GB cache. Simply massive improvement! This is effectively my system RAM bandwidth minus processing over-head.




4GB cache. Almost no change from 3GB. Margin of error flucutation kind of thing.




6GB cache. Again, little change VS 3GB.




What can we conclude from this series of results? For one, this program offers a much better performance spread with an SSD VS HDD. The second point is that the performance ceiling is limited by overall system RAM bandwidth, so the faster your system RAM, the better the performance. Third, with an SSD, the need for a large cache seem unnecessary, whereas with an HDD a larger cache is of benefit.

I am now very curious how this software actually functions. It seems to have it's own unique caching scheme.

Thinking it's time for a test on a more powerful system with larger data sizes..

EDIT;
More tests done. Tried this on a different system, one with a Xeon E5-2667v2 & 32GB of RAM and an SSD. Once again the results were interesting.

Non-Cached partition. 




2GB cache. The boost wasn't the same as the other system's SSD 2GB run. Weird.




3GB cache.




4GB cache.




6GB cache.




8GB cache.




I did 12GB and 16GB runs with little difference.

I'm going to run some benchmarks later just to compare load times. I know of at least one game engine based benchmark that accounts for drive load times. Will post later...


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## ThrashZone (Sep 20, 2021)

OctupleGolf001 said:


> thanks, i have 20gb ram


Hi,
If you fill in your system spec's everyone that post on your threads... would already know this and more


			https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/account/specs
		


Asus ROG boards come with ramcache included
I've personally never used it some buddies use it mainly for benchmarks and some use it for programs
Vulnerabilities execute through memory so it's a double edged sword feature like virtual machine/ virtualization which I always disable one less security hole.


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## BSim500 (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> I'm not going to argue. Believe what you want.


There's nothing to "believe". I literally just tested it (*1.* Picked a game at random, Mark of the Ninja (and it's the GOG offline installer version so no client running spending time doing DRM checks), *2.* Start it from a 5,400rpm HDD then a SATA SSD then a RAMDisk (with a cold boot in-between each to clear the Windows Cache) and *3.* Record "time from start click until reaching the main menu":-

*A.* (5,400rpm HDD) = 12.1s
*B.* (MX500 SSD) = 3.9s
*C.* (RamDisk) = 3.8s

^ And that's with the entire game pre-cached (a 100% perfect cache prediction hit rate of a game that completely fits into RAM) vs a slow (by modern standards) SATA SSD. For larger games that won't fit into a RAMDisk, or perhaps playing something else the algorithm hasn't cached, the 3.9 vs 3.8s would be reduced even more as it'll be loading direct from the SSD anyway. As I said, regardless of the _Quattuordecillion Yottabytes per FemtoSecond_ CrystalDiskMark sequential marketing screenshots, real world game load times = depreciating gains...



lexluthermiester said:


> What can we conclude from this series of results?


That unless you "play" CrystalDiskMark all day long, you're not actually testing anything of real-world substance beyond how CrystalDiskMark specficially can saturate multi GB/s loads in a way normal games / applications don't. (Hint: If you're looking at this software for the purpose of reducing game load times, have you tried testing some actual games)?...


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> If you fill in your system spec's everyone that post on your threads... would already know this and more
> https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/account/specs


This is NOT a requirement and not everyone looks.



BSim500 said:


> There's nothing to "believe". I literally just tested it (*1.* Picked a game at random, Mark of the Ninja (and it's the GOG offline installer version so no client running spending time doing DRM checks), *2.* Start it from a 5,400rpm HDD then a SATA SSD then a RAMDisk (with a cold boot in-between each to clear the Windows Cache) and *3.* Record "time from start click until reaching the main menu":-
> 
> *A.* (5,400rpm HDD) = 12.1s
> *B.* (MX500 SSD) = 3.9s
> ...


You are missing important context and as I said...


lexluthermiester said:


> I'm not going to argue.


...so move along.


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## P4-630 (Sep 20, 2021)

> Should i buy primocache?



Sure if you got the cash for the cache....


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## ThrashZone (Sep 20, 2021)

Hi,
Superficial feature at best 
How poor your system is and how much ram you have is the only possible perk
To me as a buy, it's a no and I already have similar included with my boards and still don't use it.


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## BSim500 (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> You are missing important context and as I said... ...so move along.


LOL. No problem. By all means continue to be 'that guy' who 8 years said "Whoa man look at this DOUBLING IN SPEED improvement from turning 'RAPID' mode on in Samsung Magician", followed up by _"But this time around, I'm not gonna bother testing to see if that translates to a 12.6s halving in game load times to 6.3s based on false extrapolation of the same synthetic maths in case it doesn't tell me what I want to hear..." _

Seriously, I've been playing with RAMDisks since hacking DEVICE=C:\RAMDRIVE.SYS into CONFIG.SYS in MS-DOS. They have their uses, but they are not a "magic beans" way of tripling your SSD speeds for free in actual real-world software outside of the CrystalDiskMark bubble the way some marketing brochures portray...


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## Shrek (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> No. Waste of money. It's just a fancy RAM-Drive type software. Unless you have a frak-ton of RAM(128GB+) is will not be worth the purchase.
> 
> I was wrong. See testing below...



You gained my respect; few people these days seem able to admit they are wrong. I will be taking your posts all the more seriously.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 20, 2021)

Hi,
Yeah almost forgot sammy's rapid mode voodoo feature I don't use either 
So much superficial performance I missing that is free with those products man my benchmarks are really suffering 

Money is money but waste is also waste you just have to pick what is either by yourself.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> but not much in write speeds, which were only slightly better.


Your differences in write speeds are just margin of error. Primocache doesn't improve write speeds unless you enable Defer-Write.  Defer-Write is disabled by default with a RAM cache because there is a risk of data loss if the system is powered off before the written data that is in the RAM cache is actually written to the drive.

I've used Primocache for years now, but I don't use the RAM cache. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I just use it to add a large SSD cache to hard drive storage. IMO, that is a far more useful function, and you can enable defer-write without much risk of data loss from a power outage.


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## Shrek (Sep 20, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> I've used Primocache for years now, but I don't use the RAM cache. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I just use it to add a large SSD cache to hard drive storage. IMO, that is a far more useful function, and you can enable defer-write without much risk of data loss from a power outage.



Given the way Solid State Drives can fail without warning, this seems like a great way to use them.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 20, 2021)

BSim500 said:


> I tried all sizes (starting with 2GB) and ended up at 16-24GB (for caching sub 10GB smaller games outright). It can make a huge difference if you're loading from a 5,400rpm HDD and the algorithm gets it right, but vs a fast SSD, it didn't made much difference in the real-world for reasons mentioned. My RAMDisk shows CrystalDiskMark Sequential screenshots of over 12,000MB/s vs only 520MB/s from an MX500 SATA SSD, yet that really doesn't mean games will load 23x faster as games simply don't load like that. In the real world, they'll request a chunk of data, unpack it, initialise it, etc, then request another chunk. It isn't a continuous "sequential" stream at all. "If my SSD is 2,000MB/s and my RAMDisk is 10,000MB/s then that means game load times will fall from 15s to 3s" as some believe just doesn't happen in the real world for the same reason the newest P31 NVMe review isn't showing 6x lower load times for games than 2016-era SATA's on the same chart. The theoretical CrystalDiskMark Sequential -> real-world Game Load times never was something that ever scaled linearly, let alone do so to infinity beyond depreciating gains.


I agree.


newtekie1 said:


> Your differences in write speeds are just margin of error. Primocache doesn't improve write speeds unless you enable Defer-Write.  Defer-Write is disabled by default with a RAM cache because there is a risk of data loss if the system is powered off before the written data that is in the RAM cache is actually written to the drive.
> 
> I've used Primocache for years now, but I don't use the RAM cache. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I just use it to add a large SSD cache to hard drive storage. IMO, that is a far more useful function, and you can enable defer-write without much risk of data loss from a power outage.


This is how I used mine , the storage tiering is brilliant, better than AMDs free one, I swapped to all nvme then ditched it but this is a viable use of primo, I also used cache at the same time.
GtaV did load quicker but not quickly still.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 20, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> This is how I used mine , the storage tiering is brilliant, better than AMDs free one, I swapped to all nvme then ditched it but this is a viable use of primo, I also used cache at the same time.
> GtaV did load quicker but not quickly still.


At this point I only have my 8TB games drive in my main PC cached with a 1TB SATA SSD, and I have my RAID5 array in my home's media server cached with a 1TB NVMe SSD.

Edit: Here are some results from a RAM cache I through together just now for testing.

Baseline:





Cache w/o defer-write:




Cache w/ defer-write:


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## Bill_Bright (Sep 20, 2021)

Interesting results Lex. Thanks for posting that. 

However, I wonder if the performance gains are actually noticeable in real-world use? If using a HD, for sure. But if someone already has a big chunk of RAM, and a decent SSD, are they really going to see and experience any significant performance gains? I still have my doubts.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 20, 2021)

Bill_Bright said:


> Interesting results Lex. Thanks for posting that.
> 
> However, I wonder if the performance gains are actually noticeable in real-world use? If using a HD, for sure. But if someone already has a big chunk of RAM, and a decent SSD, are they really going to see and experience any significant performance gains? I still have my doubts.


In my experience, using a RAM cache with a decent NVMe SSD makes no noticeable difference.


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## Bill_Bright (Sep 20, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> In my experience, using a RAM cache with a decent NVMe SSD makes no noticeable difference.


Same here. That's my point. It is like many so called enhancements - they only look better on paper and in benchmark programs. Good, maybe, for bragging rights, but they provide zero "noticeable" performance gains when compiling databases, downloading a movie, rendering a webpage or graphics image, spell checking a 300 page document, or playing a game.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 20, 2021)

@lexluthermiester A real test is moving 20,000+ music files, 100+gb, from one SSD  to another.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> You gained my respect; few people these days seem able to admit they are wrong. I will be taking your posts all the more seriously.


Despite what the perspective is, I have no problem admitting when I'm wrong and couldn't care less where the information comes from, whether my own discovery or someone else proving a point.



TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> GtaV did load quicker but not quickly still.


Tried this and a few other games that load large amounts of data. I'm not seeing a difference with and without the cache on GTA5, but with Wolfenstein 2 & the Metro games I see a 15% to 20% drop in load times. Then tried...


DeathtoGnomes said:


> @lexluthermiester A real test is moving 20,000+ music files, 100+gb, from one SSD  to another.


...doing this. I copied files from one cached drive to a non-cached drive and vice-verse. Nothing. Not a bit of improvement.

This is making me wonder how this program works and why it performs well in some situations and not others..


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## silentbogo (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> I'm not going to argue. Believe what you want.


Somehow I missed the historical point where caching mechanisms became a religion....


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Despite what the perspection is, I have no problem admitting when I'm wrong and couldn't care less where the information comes from, whether my own discovery or someone else proving a point.
> 
> 
> Tried this and a few other games that load large amounts of data. I'm not seeing a difference with and without the cache on GTA5, but with Wolfenstein 2 & the Metro games I see a 15% to 20% drop in load times. Then tried...
> ...


One time transfers are not going to improve with a cache?!.

Regularly used files see improvement over time (not a long time but not instantly).


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## ThrashZone (Sep 20, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> One time transfers are not going to improve with a cache?!.
> 
> Regularly used files see improvement over time (not a long time but not instantly).


Hi,
Yeah this is the benchmark voodoo 
Run it once and repeat benchmark improves second/... time.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 20, 2021)

Bill_Bright said:


> Same here. That's my point. It is like many so called enhancements - they only look better on paper and in benchmark programs. Good, maybe, for bragging rights, but they provide zero "noticeable" performance gains when compiling databases, downloading a movie, rendering a webpage or graphics image, spell checking a 300 page document, or playing a game.


Yeah, it's why I don't use a RAM cache. Just use a fast NVMe drive(or heck even a SATA SSD if your system doesn't have NVMe) for your system drive.  Where Primocache helps out is when you still have hard drives that you use regularly, or even run games/programs from.



lexluthermiester said:


> I copied files from one cached drive to a non-cached drive and vice-verse. Nothing. Not a bit of improvement.
> 
> This is making me wonder how this program works and why it performs well in some situations and not others..


This is very much going to depend on how you have Primocache setup and the drives involved.  If you have defer-write disabled(again it's disabled by default) then Primocache is not really going to help at all with file transfers.  Lets just say you have the following setup:

Drive A + Cache
Drive B

With defer-write off, any data written to drive A will be written directly to the drive at the same time it is written to the cache. Writing is cached but not sped up.  I know that sounds kind of stupid, but it does make some sense. The written data is stored in the cache so that if it is accessed for reading the reading will be significantly faster because the data is already in the cache.

So, with defer-write off, write speed to Drive A won't be any faster. Likewise, copying data from Drive A to Drive B also won't be any faster, since Drive B's write speed will likely be the limiting factor here. So copying data from A to B or vice-versa will probably not be any faster.



TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> One time transfers are not going to improve with a cache?!.



It depends on how you have it setup. Yes, one time transfers can be improved with a cache if configured to do so.

For example, my RAID5 arrays in my server have terribly slow write speeds. Once the small amount of cache on the RAID controller is used up, write speeds just nosedive to below 100MB/s. But using Primocache with an SSD as a cache drive write speeds are way faster.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 20, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, it's why I don't use a RAM cache. Just use a fast NVMe drive(or heck even a SATA SSD if your system doesn't have NVMe) for your system drive.  Where Primocache helps out is when you still have hard drives that you use regularly, or even run games/programs from.
> 
> 
> This is very much going to depend on how you have Primocache setup and the drives involved.  If you have defer-write disabled(again it's disabled by default) then Primocache is not really going to help at all with file transfers.  Lets just say you have the following setup:
> ...


Fair point I should have been specific ,I meant in his test but your right to point out wrote caching could help.


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## aliceif (Sep 20, 2021)

Now that I think of it, maybe it is significantly more effective on something like a DRAM-less drive with 90%+ used space since that would reduce its internal SLC cache, could be an interesting scenario to try.​


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## newtekie1 (Sep 20, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> Fair point I should have been specific ,I meant in his test but your right to point out wrote caching could help.


Just to illustrate my use I ran a file copy test. I just crabbed a few Windows ISOs amounting to about 28GB and put them on OS SSD. The OS SSD is just a standard SATA SSD, so max read speed is about 500MB/s. I then copied them to my RAID5 array(this array is 3x12TB hard drives).

This is the beginning of the file transfer when the RAID controller's cache is being used and Primocache is turned off:




This is what happens after the RAID controller's cache is full and Primocache is still disabled:




And this is when I enabled Primocache:


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 20, 2021)

TheoneandonlyMrK said:


> One time transfers are not going to improve with a cache?!.
> 
> Regularly used files see improvement over time (not a long time but not instantly).


I thought about that. Exited and reloaded several games a few times to be sure. GTA5 saw no benefit at all. Not sure why. The other games I tested with and without the cache seemed to have a steady benefit. I was going to post each of FF14 Benchmarks but they ended up not showing any benefit either.

I'll admit to being a bit stumped. Why is this working for some situations and not others? Is it a glitch in the program? Am I missing a setting that is important? Clearly there are indications of potential...
This thing is intriguing but I've got a busy schedule. Anyone else want to do testing and see if we can figure it out?


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 20, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> I thought about that. Exited and reloaded several games a few times to be sure. GTA5 saw no benefit at all. Not sure why. The other games I tested with and without the cache seemed to have a steady benefit. I was going to post each of FF14 Benchmarks but they ended up not showing any benefit either.
> 
> I'll admit to being a bit stumped. Why it this working for some situations and not others? Is it a glitch in the program? Am I missing a setting that is important? Clearly there are indications of potential...
> This thing is intriguing but I've got a busy schedule. Anyone else want to do testing and see if we can figure it out?


I would offer to help but the weekends rebuild is lingering on , it's built but flakey as Shiite ATM.
I used it (primo)solidly for a year on two 3TB drive's in raid 0 with a 256GB sata3 ssd as a cache and memory cache turned on, as you say it did improve load times but after swapping to 3Xnvme  the in use gains were not apparent, they still showed in benches.
GtaV did load quicker for me but I'm talking a minute instead of three(obviously those are feeling not fact time's I didn't clock it)


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## newtekie1 (Sep 21, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> I thought about that. Exited and reloaded several games a few times to be sure. GTA5 saw no benefit at all. Not sure why. The other games I tested with and without the cache seemed to have a steady benefit. I was going to post each of FF14 Benchmarks but they ended up not showing any benefit either.
> 
> I'll admit to being a bit stumped. Why it this working for some situations and not others? Is it a glitch in the program? Am I missing a setting that is important? Clearly there are indications of potential...
> This thing is intriguing but I've got a busy schedule. Anyone else want to do testing and see if we can figure it out?


If the bottleneck isn't the storage device, then increasing the speed of the storage device won't help. I've seen GTAV not benefit from going from a HDD to a SSD. The initial loading screen just takes forever, I'm not sure what it is doing in the background, I suspect it is de-compressing game assets during that part.


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## Space Dynamics (Sep 21, 2021)

Ohh this makes me want to purchase one of those T3610's off ebay for cheap and stuff it with ram.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 21, 2021)

Before I respond, I couldn't see your posts. Resolved.


newtekie1 said:


> With defer-write off, any data written to drive A will be written directly to the drive at the same time it is written to the cache. Writing is cached but not sped up.


Interesting, I had not used that function.


newtekie1 said:


> I know that sounds kind of stupid, but it does make some sense. The written data is stored in the cache so that if it is accessed for reading the reading will be significantly faster because the data is already in the cache.


Actually, that makes perfect sense and is logical. I think it's time to try again..


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 21, 2021)

No


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## Mussels (Sep 21, 2021)

Oh wait, i found a good use for primocache
Write caching for torrents on my NAS/HTPC, to reduce wear on SSD

Torrenting to RAM storage and then moving to SSD reduces writes, and on a mech drive reduces fragmentation (if the whole thing fit in the RAM storage)


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## silentbogo (Sep 21, 2021)

Space Dynamics said:


> Ohh this makes me want to purchase one of those T3610's off ebay for cheap and stuff it with ram.


I think it's still more financially viable to mod BIOS and just stick an NVME drive in it. With v2 xeons you get PCIe 3.0 on some slots, which means 3GB/s is totally doable.
Did it on my HP Z620, and even on v1 CPU I'm getting enough bandwidth to fully utilize a cheap-ass Goodram PX500 NVME SSD.
Plus, on T3610 you don't even need to solder anything, the entire procedure can be done in software (and ME_Unlock jumper).
Even if you are scared of flashing new firmware or modding BIOS, you can bootstrap an NVME drive just by running a bootloader off a USB flash drive or HDD.


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## alexs20 (Nov 25, 2021)

I was about to buy PrimoCache but then I realized that they are pure Chinese company, with physical address in China.
Since then I have another question: Should I trust to PrimoCache which is Closed-Source and runs as SYSTEM level service in my PC?


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## CheapMeat (Nov 25, 2021)

Honestly some of the responses here remind me of the same type of people who outright dismiss Optane drives.


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## lexluthermiester (Nov 25, 2021)

alexs20 said:


> I was about to buy PrimoCache but then I realized that they are pure Chinese company, with physical address in China.
> Since then I have another question: Should I trust to PrimoCache which is Closed-Source and runs as SYSTEM level service in my PC?


That's a solid question. The answer is ultimately going to be up to you. There are many things that come out of China that are perfectly safe. During the testing a few months ago, no "iffy" behaviors were exhibited, and I was paying careful attention. If you're worried, use firewall rules to block it from access to the internet.


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## Mussels (Nov 25, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's a solid question. The answer is ultimately going to be up to you. There are many things that come out of China that are perfectly safe. During the testing a few months ago, no "iffy" behaviors were exhibited, and I was paying careful attention. If you're worried, use firewall rules to block it from access to the internet.


I actually trust lex to be paranoid about that sort of thing, so his opinion has some weight there


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## lexluthermiester (Nov 25, 2021)

Mussels said:


> I actually trust lex to be paranoid about that sort of thing, so his opinion has some weight there


I prefer the term "ultra cautious", but whatever.


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## Rob_mc_1 (Dec 22, 2021)

Hi,

I am currently in the process of upgrading my system. Current system is dual e5-2630 v1 with 64 gb ram with a 1 tb 2.5in ssd for os and apps and a 4 tb hdd for my data and profile.

The system I'm moving to will be 12700k with 64 gb ram. I do have a 2tb nvme drive to replace the os drive but I will be sticking with the 4tb hdd for storage. I was looking at primocache as an option to tier cache the old 1 tb as cache for the 4 tb data drive. I was not planning on doing ram cache. Based on the comments earlier that seems to be its focus.

I was just looking at primo being $30 while a 4 tb ssd replacement being more.

In my scenerio, would it be worth it?


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## R0H1T (Dec 22, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Primocache is essentially superfetch on steroids. Short-term satisfaction is good (so as "on paper" numbers), but actual daily benefits are highly questionable, especially if you are already running an SSD.


You really don't know what you're talking about then, I've been using it on & off for over half a decade & it just works! Except for some unexpected power loss scenarios there's nothing like it out there ~ not even close 


Mussels said:


> Write caching for torrents on my NAS/HTPC,* to reduce wear on SSD*


Use defer write for that.


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## harm9963 (Dec 22, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> If you fill in your system spec's everyone that post on your threads... would already know this and more
> 
> 
> ...


More trouble than its worth, for so little return.
My Sabrent NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 Interface is more than enough.


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## lexluthermiester (Dec 23, 2021)

Rob_mc_1 said:


> In my scenerio, would it be worth it?


Honestly, it will depend on your usage scenario. The great thing is the download includes a 30day trial, so once you get your new system, you can try it out and see if it'll work for you. If it does, you buy a copy and you're off and running. If it doesn't work for you, at least you'll know.

If you need some advice or tip for getting it setup and optimized for your system, chime in here and we'll help you get things sorted out.

BTW, welcome to TPU!


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## Mussels (Apr 4, 2022)

Bumping this older thread, to show that primocache does have a benefit on modern systems: reducing writes.
They had a long convoluted article about it, boils down to the cache being TRIM aware so it can "un-delete" files without a full re-write of them so certain files getting re-used over and over saves on many writes over time.

Smaller number since my system just booted, but over the last week, i've been seeing an average 20% reduction in writes on my C: drive consistently. Games and downloads drives see about a 1% reduction.



My C: is a 128GB partition containing just the OS: no documents, downloads, desktop folders, no games, no torrents. Just the OS and installed programs like web browsers.

a 20% increase of lifespan on my boot SSD? Worth it to me.


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## lexluthermiester (Apr 4, 2022)

Mussels said:


> a 20% increase of lifespan on my boot SSD? Worth it to me.


Anything that can boost SSD lifespan is a good thing IMO.


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## pavle (Apr 4, 2022)

alexs20 said:


> I was about to buy PrimoCache but then I realized that they are pure Chinese company, with physical address in China.
> Since then I have another question: Should I trust to PrimoCache which is Closed-Source and runs as SYSTEM level service in my PC?


Doesn't the latest Diskeeper have a RAM cache feature? Would be interesting to test it.


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## Mussels (Apr 4, 2022)

pavle said:


> Doesn't the latest Diskeeper have a RAM cache feature? Would be interesting to test it.


Do you mean this?








						DymaxIO
					

DymaxIO is fast data performance software that returns 40%+ of your throughput that is lost due to I/O inefficiencies. DymaxIO fixes I/O issues at source.




					condusiv.com
				



 That's a monthly cost, while diskeeper itself is long abandoned


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## pavle (Apr 4, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Do you mean this?...


Oh, yeah - I meant that - the DymaxIO, it still contains Diskeeper, I just forgot they'd combine it into a blob and made it a service, which understandably is undesirable.


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## ThrashZone (Apr 4, 2022)

Hi,
After looking at some of my oldest now 10 year old ssd's I'm not worried about wear and tear


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## Bill_Bright (Apr 4, 2022)

Mussels said:


> i've been seeing an average 20% reduction in writes on my C: drive


I'm confused. Where are you seeing 20%? 

Beyond that, I see in your screen shot, 870MB of writes. 870MB is nothing. 

For example, if you take the budget minded Samsung 870 EVO SSD and scroll down to the section "Industry-defining reliability" and note the following fine print where it says (my bold added)



> * Warrantied TBW (terabytes written) for 870 EVO: *150 TBW for 250 GB* model, 300 TBW for 500 GB model, 600 TBW for 1 TB model, *1,200 TBW for 2 TB* model and 2,400 TBW for 4 TB model.



If you were to write a whopping 30GB to the SSD each and every day, 365 days a year, that is still only 10.95TB per year. And note that super budget 250GB SSD is rated for 150 TBW. That means if you wrote 30GB per day, 365 days per year, it would take 13.7 years (150/10.95) to wear that drive out. You would hit the 5 year warranty long before that. 

Look at the 2TB SSD. With 1,200 TBW and that same 30GB every day, it would take 40,000 days or 109 years! 

How many people write 30GB to their disk in one day, let alone every day, all year long, year after year? What are the odds our hard drives will last 13 years? How about our RAM sticks, PSUs, motherboards, CPUs, you name it!

Terabytes written. 

The write limit with first generation SSDs was certainly a problem for a few folks in certain scenarios. But, these days, several generations later, there just isn't the need to worry about wearing out our SSDs anymore. The odds are clearly in our favor that the rest of our computer components will die, or be replaced due to obsolescence (or the upgrade "itch) before we reach the write limits on our SSDs.


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## lexluthermiester (Apr 5, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> After looking at some of my oldest now 10 year old ssd's I'm not worried about wear and tear
> 
> 
> View attachment 242437


Still, anything that can save SSD wear is of benefit, especially for QLC based drives which are(sadly) becoming more common in prebuilt OEM machines.


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## oobymach (Apr 5, 2022)

I went to the website and it "accelerates" hdd's for example by writing the file to a cache first then transferring the data over a period of time, that's what I'm doing already so this is a redundancy that isn't needed imo, it's not magically making the hdd faster. I already minimize ssd writes by moving temp and download folders to an hdd.


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## Mussels (Apr 5, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I'm confused. Where are you seeing 20%?
> 
> Beyond that, I see in your screen shot, 870MB of writes. 870MB is nothing.
> 
> ...


That screenshot was showing since last boot. The amount of data was small because the system had just rebooted, and i already stated that the drive is pure OS + browsers - it doesnt do large writes.
_That's the whole point. reducing smaller writes to save the SSD._



Here it is again today, after gaming. 28.5% reduction.



That number can show values of data still in the cache to be written, but the buffer is empty here.

All i've done this reboot is Dying light + edge (TPU+email)
Heres E: (user folders like desktop, downloads etc)




and D: (Steam/games)





As i stated earlier, primocache can save on repetetive file use that deletes and creates the same files via TRIM usage (somehow) - and lighter tasks like browsing and gaming, shows some good lifespan gains.

I don't benefit from the read caching much, but the write caching is helping for sure.
My two drives and their life usage. A lot to go, but with efforts like this i can keep using them another 10 years.


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## 95Viper (Apr 5, 2022)

Stay on topic.
Keep your discussion on the technical aspects.
Thank You


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## 80251 (Jun 6, 2022)

I believe GTA V wastes a LOT of time hitting the rockstar servers, so your underlying storage medium is nearly irrelevant.


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## chrcoluk (Jun 7, 2022)

Having found this thread when it got linked from a newer thread.

I feel the best use of this program is making it run like the ZFS L2 cache setup.

So basically use a NAND drive to accelerate a Spindle, and in addition if you have a UPS (ideally with auto hibernate/shutdown setup on low battery in case unattended) then also enable write-defer for NAND drives.

So basically a configurable software version of the SSHD concept.


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## Mussels (Jun 7, 2022)

chrcoluk said:


> Having found this thread when it got linked from a newer thread.
> 
> I feel the best use of this program is making it run like the ZFS L2 cache setup.
> 
> ...


primocache lets you assign an SSD as a cache for other drives (SATA or NVME to speed up mech) as well as RAM to speed up all of that (or just RAM alone)
Personally, i've been using it to reduce writes on SSD's - especially useful when i had to torrent to my laptop with a WD green and watched the write endurance tank


Heres an example: In the 30 minutes my PC has been on, the cache hasnt been super helpful on the reads. Just under a 20% hitrate.
What it has done, is buffered the writes and prevented some duplicate writes, so that 15% less writing overall has been done.
Is that a lot of writes? No... but random small writes are the ones that burn out SSD's, so they're the ones killing off QLC and budget drives before their time should be up. 15% longer life span is a huge win, and QLC drives or those using psuedo-SLC caches might multiply the benefits of those reductions.






They have a full length article on this - essentially by using TRIM, if a deleted file was about to be written again (such as repeat stuff from a browser cache) it just un-deletes it, saving those writes entirely.
Example: Reduce Wear on Solid-State Drives by Defer-Write (romexsoftware.com)


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## chrcoluk (Jun 7, 2022)

Are your reads a RAM cache or storage backed?  I am not a fan of RAM accelerators on desktops as its going to be a cold empty cache on every boot up, but can work well with high uptime such as on a server.

Definitely tempted to test this on my laptop to see affect on NAND writes, those writes are mostly logs and registry database writes including the journaling.  So the writes will be small write topups multiple times a minute, which seems a prime use case for write-defer.


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## Mussels (Jun 8, 2022)

chrcoluk said:


> Are your reads a RAM cache or storage backed?  I am not a fan of RAM accelerators on desktops as its going to be a cold empty cache on every boot up, but can work well with high uptime such as on a server.
> 
> Definitely tempted to test this on my laptop to see affect on NAND writes, those writes are mostly logs and registry database writes including the journaling.  So the writes will be small write topups multiple times a minute, which seems a prime use case for write-defer.


primocache lets you choose to  make a new cache or to save and re-use it, mines not set to save and re-use (the odds of my overclocking causing an error are too high, imo)


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