Thursday, October 11th 2012

AMD Radeon RAMDisk Pitched as Trial

AMD's Radeon RAMDisk software, launched along with its desktop A-Series "Trinity" APUs, is being pitched to consumers as a trial software. A combination of A-Series "Trinity" APUs and AMD-certified memory lets you use the software to create a RAMDisk which works in conjuction with the primary HDD/SSD much in the same way as Intel Smart Response tech or NVELO Dataplex, it's just that the cache SSD is replaced by the system memory, an infinitely faster and more durable caching medium. The software juggles data from the primary drive to the RAMDisk based on its heat (frequency of access). Used with DDR3-1600 MHz memory, users could see data access speeds of up to 25.6 GB/s (gigabytes per second), a 1,700-times speedup over conventional HDD. When off the trial, a license to use the software can be bought for $19.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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45 Comments on AMD Radeon RAMDisk Pitched as Trial

#26
Steevo
Would the latency of the PCIe bus even make it worthwhile?


I have a new trinity laptop at home I am setting up, and it has 8GB of RAM since I upgraded it to take advantage of dual channel (for all of $18 you think they would have done this anyway).


Might have to give it a try.
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#27
3870x2
SteevoWould the latency of the PCIe bus even make it worthwhile?
compared to HDD or SSD, it would be astronomical.

Still a dumb idea. We just purchased 64GB of ram for our server workstations for a couple hundred.
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#28
Super XP
Ram is super cheap now, everybody should be putting minimum 16GB to 32GB for there basic rigs. Why not, and RAMDisk a bunch of that.
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#29
Steevo
I mean compared to RAM.
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#30
Wrigleyvillain
PTFO or GTFO
Fun fact: Despite RAM disks being still largely impractical despite the average joe now having at least 8GB such functionality was even built into old school Macintosh System 7. Back when you had like 64MB total.
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#31
3870x2
SteevoI mean compared to RAM.
That would only matter if you were to use the RAMdisk in a manner that is akin to RAM, but since it is a RAMdisk, that would be like allocating your RAMdisk and use it for page-file memory. Which is hilariously redundant.
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#32
damric
This is the coolest thing since Windows Ready Boost :)
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#33
Steevo
3870x2That would only matter if you were to use the RAMdisk in a manner that is akin to RAM, but since it is a RAMdisk, that would be like allocating your RAMdisk and use it for page-file memory. Which is hilariously redundant.
:slap:

You don't say.

I am saying the difference in latency from Vram & PCIe VS DDR3 ram. Plus with dynamic clocking on Vram to save power. With 8GB of system RAM I don't believe the tech will ever use more than about 4GB, but I would never use this in a production environment, the last thing I need is it bombing out during a firmware update and killing a $5K component and costing me a day or two.

Perhaps if it got a user 5% higher FPS in a demanding game it would be worth it. GTA comes to mind where their streaming protocol for the world is ineffective at times, having it all cached in RAM would be beneficial.
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#34
3870x2
Steevo:slap:

You don't say.

I am saying the difference in latency from Vram & PCIe VS DDR3 ram. Plus with dynamic clocking on Vram to save power. With 8GB of system RAM I don't believe the tech will ever use more than about 4GB, but I would never use this in a production environment, the last thing I need is it bombing out during a firmware update and killing a $5K component and costing me a day or two.

Perhaps if it got a user 5% higher FPS in a demanding game it would be worth it. GTA comes to mind where their streaming protocol for the world is ineffective at times, having it all cached in RAM would be beneficial.
I see where you might be confused. This woudln't be for actual gaming performance, it is more for loading common games or files that you use often, and that generally take a while to load.
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#35
Steevo
Err. Right.



Have you ever actually ran performance monitoring while playing a game?




The software caches "hot files"that are accessed often in the "drive" for faster access. All you need to look at is hard faults, parent process and files to determine what needs cached. Those little hiccups and missing textures now go away. As good as windows is at memory management, there is the limitation of the program and what it calls and can allocate of system RAM, this is just a way around those limitations.
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#36
3870x2
SteevoErr. Right.



Have you ever actually ran performance monitoring while playing a game?




The software caches "hot files"that are accessed often in the "drive" for faster access. All you need to look at is hard faults, parent process and files to determine what needs cached. Those little hiccups and missing textures now go away. As good as windows is at memory management, there is the limitation of the program and what it calls and can allocate of system RAM, this is just a way around those limitations.
If you have enough RAM for it, everything about a game will be loaded into RAM, and should not be grabbing from the hard drive (or in this case RAMdisk) for anything.

In the case of RAMdisk, everything is first loaded from RAMdisk into your RAM, therefore RAMdisk is totally taken out of the equasion until something else needs to be loaded into memory by the game.

When the game needs something on demand, like textures, it will grab that from the RAM.
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#37
Wrigleyvillain
PTFO or GTFO
damricThis is the coolest thing since Windows Ready Boost :)
I do thankfully think I detect some sarcasm yet can't be 100% sure...
Posted on Reply
#38
damric
WrigleyvillainI do thankfully think I detect some sarcasm yet can't be 100% sure...
Thanks, I try and ride that fine grey line. Reminds me, I need to lol at the VP debates tonight:laugh:
Posted on Reply
#40
Steevo
3870x2If you have enough RAM for it, everything about a game will be loaded into RAM, and should not be grabbing from the hard drive (or in this case RAMdisk) for anything.

In the case of RAMdisk, everything is first loaded from RAMdisk into your RAM, therefore RAMdisk is totally taken out of the equasion until something else needs to be loaded into memory by the game.

When the game needs something on demand, like textures, it will grab that from the RAM.
Only after it has been loaded the first time, and only until it is dumped from memory.

There are significant improvements to more RAM, but you eventually hit a wall with it too, then it becomes the next slowest part, which is the HDD.
Posted on Reply
#41
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
SteevoOnly after it has been loaded the first time, and only until it is dumped from memory.

There are significant improvements to more RAM, but you eventually hit a wall with it too, then it becomes the next slowest part, which is the HDD.
yep data access topology

Cache, Ram, HDD
Posted on Reply
#42
EpicShweetness
My workstation at work with 40GB of RAM using a Duel LGA 771 takes forever to boot, why? I would never use more then 2.5GB since we use VM's, so I decided to use a RAMDisk Boot Load Software. On Boot the HDD loads the RAM with everything on it, (only about 28GB worth of stuff on it) the speed I experience (load times) well it makes me jealous, lol. So i know the advantage of a software that would dynamically assign a partition on the RAM according to the software that was being used. Good job AMD, or who rather who ever finalizes this first.
Posted on Reply
#43
Steevo
Data reads are often compressed/encrypted, and may not be optimized, creating significant waits as data is hard faulted, and then the command is issued, the heads have to seek to the data, read, assemble and or decompress, transfer, and then act upon.

A cached read from RAM eliminates a significant portion of these steps and thus time, and during boot as well during dependent execution of a program the next step may or may not be loaded into RAM if that data has not been called yet. Even at 500MBps for a SSD, or 800MBps for my array it is significantly slower than system RAM.

RAMdisk software has been around for awhile, but it is still going to be years before many are brave enough or comfortable enough to put it into production environments.
Posted on Reply
#44
Thefumigator
Do you want to know how a RAM drive performs,
Use virtual box, install windows XP, it should be less than 10GB, copy that virtual hard drive to the ram disk and then boot it. See what happens ;-)
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