Accroding to this article, the PCI slot powers it up while the computer is off and therefore the battery is only for when it is unplugged or during a power outage.
how about this:
1-set your PC to boot off SATA first as in:
no OS goto harddrive
OS goto SATA ramdisk
2-mirror your xp install to your 4G ramdisk
3-reboot
4-configured for ALL OS functions running off the SATA ramdisk (including swapfile, temps, etc.)
5-never leave your PC off for more than 16 hrs.
*grin*
I'd really like to run the Gigabyte ramdisk for my pagefile.
The key factor would be finding slow (cheap) RAM.
My thoughts on more system memory vs. ramdisk:
Yeah, more system memory is obviously better. But with system memory you're trying to milk every bit of speed you can--and that's expensive. Most folks top out around 2gb or even 1gb. 4Gb is troublesome.
It seems that a cheap 2-4 gb ramdisk for the pagefile would be an excellent addition to 2Gb of system memory.
Question:
Why don't DIMM manufacturers make something like this? Seems like they could build a big PCB with 4+ gb of appropriate and cheap RAM chips (instead of whole DDR DIMMS designed for a completely different application). One big-ass memory module. Wouldn't this be a more elegant and cost-effective solution?
2 months ago I posted my ideas about a PCI-E based RAM card on OCAU and a couple of other forums. I even emailed a couple of big-name companies, but not gigabyte. My mistake it seems :/
(link to my post : http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t...
Because you can buy cheap ram for the board, and it won't hurt performance. The limiting factor will be the sata connection, not the ram speed.
Whereas there's problems with 4GB of system memory, such as many OS' not liking that much, many motherboards not supporting that much, and if you want to run at DDR400 you're going to have to buy expensive ram.
Also some of that system memory would have to go towards the system and not the ram disk... in the end you'll probably max out at a 3GB ram disk or so. And finally with the add-in boards you could raid two of them together to create ram disks > 4GB in size, which would otherwise be impossible since no ram disk software seems to support sizes over 4GB, at least on Windows.
61 Jarred thanks for letting me know why you have reservations about using SiS, but can you really say that the reasons you pointed out are deal breakers for 10% or even 1% of the 115,727 users registered to Anandtech forums?
Not providing drivers for a beta OS, complaints of long term stability of a cheaply manufactured motherboards, or a "feeling" that you have doesn't effect my choice of chipsets (no matter what brand) but if I hadn't asked about the reference to being "stuck" with a certain chipset, I might have had second thoughts (if I didn't take it upon myself to find out more).
Believe it or not, I don't do this to persuade people to buy SiS chipsets. I do this to prevent people (including myself) from unknowingly being persuaded to avoid a potentially good chipset for their needs (I would do this for any chipset brand if I thought they where being misrepresented).
Hey, you guys aren't getting what I'd use that RAMDRIVE for.
I play World of Warcraft (WoW). I like to PvP. When I run into one of the huge zerg fights, my computer stutters as it thrashes the hard drive while it loads the files into memory of all the extra players around me.
With one (or two, since the WoW game files take up about 4.5GB) RAMDRIVE, I'll then have a batch file that copies all the game files from my hard drive to the RAMDRIVE. I run the game off the ram drive, and now every file access takes place near-instantly. I can run into a huge melee and not notice any disk accesses and while everyone else is suffering, I'm killing away.
Everyone here seems to be talking performance. This seems to me much better as the basis of a silent PC with no moving parts, 2GB of OS and a Gb link to a file server.
I'm no electronics engineer, but wouldn't it be easier to unplug that cable that runs from the battery pack into the pcb, modify the termination and connect that to an external power supply?
Anand, please tell Gigabyte to put such a feature in as standard!!
I wonder if this product can achieve the same benchmarks as the CENATEK rocket drive.
where can we buy the ramdisk pci? i cannot find anything about it in gigabyte's site. It would be very interesting for somebody like gigabyte to create a ramdisk that fits on a 5 1/2 bay and has pre-installed the most dirt cheap ram chips one can find! i think a 300$ 8-16gb disk is entirely feasible for a company that buys mass quantities of ram chips. add some batteries and the ability to run from the 5volts the psu provides when the pc is shut down, and you have a product that sales like hot cake!
Level load times for games won't be too much affected by ramdrives - they are mostly processor bound, not disk bound.
However, ramdisk for swap would be great (maybe not that great as more RAM, but more RAM has its own problems, like price, the DIMMs must match, they are high speed so they are expensive).
55 (justly again) - Part of the problem, at least from my perspective, is the lack of a unified installation package. NVIDIA, Intel and VIA all have chipset driver installation packages that are mature and let you know that everything is installed. SiS driver installation always leaves me feeling like I may not be getting everything.
Performance is only part of the equation, and while SiS does keep up and surpass other chipsets in some situations, that's not the same as being better than the chipsets. How quickly did SiS get out 64-bit capable drivers? How about drivers for beta OSes like Longhorn? (I can tell you from experience that sound on many SiS boards doesn't work under Longhorn.) There's an overall package that you get with a motherboard, and the SiS boards almost always feel "less" than Intel/NVIDIA/VIA boards that I've used.
That can change, of course, but I have yet to use an SiS solution that was as stable in long-term use as an Intel board. Was it the chipset or the cheaply made motherboard? I can't say for sure - maybe both. Anyway, for another comparison, you can look at the Foxconn e-bot in the SFF roundup I did a few months ago.
Anand,
Benchies, we need benchies and lots of them on the RAM drive. AFAIK there haven't been any good reviews on any RAM drives. I am sure it would pull in some sweet traffic....
Things to try
1) Games (level load times)
2) web browsing (cache on ramdrive)
3) OS (page file, entire install)
4) multi media (scratch file...)
That Ramdisk is VERY intriguing...
Total cost looks to be ~$270 for a 4GB drive ($50 + 4 1024MB PC2100 sticks) and ~$150 for a 2GB drive...
It might even be cheaper if you bought some used low-speed Ram on Ebay!
#57, I don't see why they couldn't make a PCIe solid state card that was bootable. bios will already recognize and boot to hard drives on a PCI controller card. A manufacturer could make a PCIe card that was both a IDE controller and a IDE to DDR controller. That way there would be no extra cables or reliance on a seprate IDE controller. Plus there would be all the bandwidth of a PCIe bus for data transfere. (If they do that, I would still want a conector for an external power supply though.)
#21 Raid 0 with 2, 3, or 4 of these cards would be awesome! Add PCI express x4 so for extra bandwith and keep the sata just so it can be bootable. Once windows starts and loads drivers the SATA Conncetor can take it's break or work in tandem with PCI-E.
Anand, thanks for the reply, and I will be looking forward to the piece you mentioned.
I do understand that SiS (along with other brand chipsets) are not marketed twards the "enthusiast" (if by that you mean gamers). However, I still see little information as to why they are so inadequate, and that is the information I would like to find out instead of just hearing these comments that appear to be indirect slander of a chipset because they are not utilized in high end motherboards and marketed directly at gamers.
Even in the article you linked to (I briefly looked over it as I have read it before) I saw no mention of driver problems (as you hinted twards) and the performance indicates that it competes very well. You say "it is really tough to beat the high end chipset makers right now" but look at the review you referenced to on your own site and you can see that the SiS chipset did just that on more than one benchmark. In fact it only lost to all of the 4 nForce based motherboards twice, but it beat ALL the nForce based motherboards 3 times, the rest of the time it placed between. Given that this review shows SiS as realitively equal in performance when compared to Nvidia, I ask again what are the problems with SiS that make the term "stuck with SiS" more appropriate than something like "limited to SiS"?
Just as a reminder my complaint is that these comments get directed at the chipset not the motherboard. If all nForce chipsets where relegated to ultra low end solutions by motherboard manufacturers that wouldn't make nForce a bad chipset ... would it?
I didn't mean cut the wires to the battery. I meant to take a razor blade and cut the traces on the PCB to the PCI connector and then solder wires to the traces and run them to an external wall cube. It could work, but it would mean damaging the card.
I've got plenty of PCI sockets laying around on old AT motherboards. I'm going to take one off and solder a power adapter to the apropriate pins. That way I can power the ramdisk all the time without modifying it.
an eight gb swap file that accesses at the speed of memory is fast. the limiting factor would be the sata connector, which means you may notice it swapping but nothing even close to a disk find on a mechinal drive. You could even get away with the worst latency ramm {random access memory modules} out there as they would already be waiting on the sata controller. What would be better would be a native interface on the PCI-e 1x channel. Oh an giga byte could not make an always power pci unless they change how the PSU is turned on and off as power goes through the cpu on the 12volt line they might be able to use one of their raiser cards there is a reason mobos don't leave the traces powered. The person who mentioned cutting the three lines to the batter and simply powered them has a good idea but you might want to find out what the draw is first so that when you hook it out you don't fry the whole mobo :)
this might be the dumbest idea ever.. but here goes:
what if... you get a 2nd case with a motherboard that has 6 pci slots, stick in a 200w powersupply and hook up this 2nd case through a ups
now, get 6 of these pci cards, hook them all up with 4gb of ram.. 6cards x 4gb = 24GB total space
now, to make this all feasible, u'd have to have this second case right next to ur 'main' case so that the sata cables would reach into the main case's motherboard (an nforce4 board has 8 sata's)
of course without a cpu in ur 2nd case, it wouldn't even post.. but the motherboard is powered and so are the 6 pci slots, and a 200w powersupply should last at least an hour even on a cheap ups
you are ofcourse limited by the 150Mb sata, but isnt the raid on the nforce4 chip directly connected to the rest of the chip/system? therefore you could get 4x150= 600Mb/s out a 4disk raid (i dont think u can span across both raid chips of a dfi board)
for the 2nd motherboard, i think even an old 486 mobo should work.. no?
just an idea that popped into my head.. what do u guys think?
I bet it wouldn't be hard to cut the PCI traces on the ramdisk card and use an external wall cube to power it. Or better yet, take a PCI connector off an old mobo and wire it up to an external wall cube.
For the most part, SiS chipsets are relegated to ultra low end solutions by motherboard manufacturers. There are times when SiS solutions are better suited for the enthusiast market, and whenever we do come across those chipsets we always present them to you all as best as possible (e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2301).
There are always diamonds in the rough, and when we find them we do our best to present them. But when it comes to performance and solid drivers, it is really tough to beat the high end chipset makers right now - mainly Intel and NVIDIA (and potentially ATI).
That being said, I am working on a piece that will shed light on how the motherboard manufacturers and motherboard market view all of the chipset makers - you may be in for a bit of a surprise. More and more, ULi is looking like they may be the best kept secret of Taiwan. But more on that later :)
I'll pass on the positive comments about Gigabyte's solution on to the Gigabyte team here in Taiwan, I'm sure they'd love to hear it.
42 - don't take this wrong, but if SiS, ULi (or any other chipset for that matter) is so "inferior in several areas of performance" then why do many articles (including Anandtechs) not make it clear that SiS (or any other chipset for that matter) have such limitations? I realize that SiS is not supirior in every aspect but when ever I see any article author confronted about chipsets (other than NVIDIA or Intel, and not just at Anandtech either) they all seem to throw off an aditude that "I know more than you" yet fail to give sound answers or links/proof of what they say. I for one can think for myself (I don't need to ask forum members to critique or pick out parts for my needs, I don't think most of them could since I am not a gamer) but I need the information to make a informed decission, and to put it bluntly your statement "inferior in several areas of performance" does not provide me with the information I need. If anything your answer just makes me more belligerent.
Also Hopefuly gigabyte will release a motherboard just for this SSD drive. A motherboard that has one PCI slot that always recives power and remains powerd on at all times even when the PC is off, just for the support of this card only. Also it would be needed to have a bios option that would be able to turn this feature on or off, so that people who don't own one of these SSD's do not have a constantly powerd PCI slot when the pc is off.
Also Hopefuly gigabyte will release a motherboard just for this one that has one PCI slot that remains powerd on at all times even when the PC is off, just for the support of this card only. Also it would be needed to have a bios option that would be able to turn this feature on or off, so that people who don't own one of these does not have a constantly powerd PCI slot.
The one advantage that the Cenetek Rocket Drive has over the gigabyte solution is the ability to recive power through an AC adapter that can be plugged in to the back of a nice BIG UPS.
I'm surprised Gigabyte didn't put a standard four-plug on the RAM board. That would allow for power during the time the computer was off (provided the PSU was receiving power).
My guess is that it's intended for web servers, which have huge amounts of random accesses, but a reasonably low storage requirement. It would also be good for huge databases.
There's also the possibility of tossing a few of them into a RAID 5, with initial sync off a hard drive. That would quite handily alleviate storage requirements.
Hmm...just remove the battery back-up from that ramdisk, and now you have yourself a drive that can store sensitive (illegal) data without much risk. You'd just need to be there to shut down the computer, or make it so the wrong keystrokes automatically shut it down when your not there. Back in my yonger days, I used ramdrive.sys for password cracking/encryption stuff all the time. Of course, that's back when 64MB of RAM was unheard of. Just an idea...
30 - When actual tests back up the feeling that SiS chipsets (and ULi) are inferior in several areas of performance, such statements are not biased. There are many instances where SiS chipsets work fine, but to pretend that they are the equal of Intel is bias in the other direction.
The real problem with that design is the cost of the upgrade boards. $50? There are cheap SiS-based boards for only slightly more than that. You deactivate the 775 socket and onboard memory in order to use the daughter card, so if you already had the board working, you now have at the very least an extra CPU sitting around. You also drop from four DIMM slots to two.
It's an interesting idea if you could make it work with the onboard RAM and sell the upgrade boards for much less than $50. At least, that's my opinion.
Well if the G70 boards are supposed to be in manufacturer's hands by the 2nd week of June, then when does this mean that they will actually be available for people to buy?
Of course if you use Linux it has no problems using the RAM as a HDD as it is; look at Knoppix and DamnSmallLinux, both use the ram as a HDD and DSL can run completely out of the ram. You can also do that with Knoppix if you have at least 1GB of ram.
But then again, no permanent distro goes to ram soooo...
There simply is no justification for the BTX design. It isn't a good design and it doesn't cool Intel's overheating products sufficiently. It's just a marketing gimmick that the Mobo mfgs. were smart enough to NOT adopt despite arm twisting by Intel. Intel is on there way down and the Mobo mfgs. know it.
That RAMDISK card is quite interesting although there is a Japanese company that make similar product since 1998 (only for Mac though) ... the idea of being able to use older RAM sticks are also the main thrust for that old product ... but that old product (which I just can't seem to remember what or who makes them) has an external power connector + battery backup.
It is a nice use for scratch disk / temp drive though.
I never really understood the use of a riser card to make a motherboard compatibile with other processors. Well I guess it could be used by review sites to compare processors using the same platform, but other than that what reason would any sane person have for this feature?
Anand, I am also curious as how you can still claim that Anandtech has no bias, yet in every Anandtech (or any other sites) articles featuring a SiS chipset, the SiS chipset allways seems to have good showing (please realize I'm talking chipsets not motherboards) yet tou make this comment.
"There are some limitations to the technology; first and foremost, you are stuck with SiS chipsets"
"STUCK WITH SIS CHIPSETS" doesn't that look like bias to you? If you really where unbiased I think you would have worded this differently.
Very interesting that solid state. I wonder if you the standby 5V line from the powersupply would have enough juice to keep the memory alive?
Adding a rechargeable battery seems like a rather expensive way to fix the problem... And using a programmable FPGA for controller? What is this, still a prototype??
Read the article a little closer. The PCI slot ONLY provides power. All transfers go through the SATA connector in the upper right of the PCB to your motherboard SATA connector. That will be 150MB/s. The PC recognizes the drive as a SATA drive on startup.
I wonder if they will come out with a SATA II 300MB/s version. That would rock even more. MORE DROOL!
it is not limited by the PCI bus since the transfers actually occur over the SATA controller of the mobo.
i think though that it is just SATA 1 so that would limit it to 150mb/s (if it were SATA II then that would be 300mb/s.
I wonder if you could setup one of those cards as a second OS installation, and have it sync'ed with one on a HD - point being that you could boot to the HD if the ramdrive wasn't available/wiped after 16 hours.
I'm going to have to wait for reviews + stories of people using the card, but I very well could end up using 2-3 of these things depending on how well they work. the productivity increase would probably be worth whatever they cost.
DDR max? can you even buy that anymore? what about 2gb modules? hmmm.
I love the concept here, but for the amount of money that I would end up spending here I would rather have a couple of 74gb SCSI drives.
The one advantage that this card has over installing extra ram on your system is that data stored on this card is bootable and does not have to be dependant on a HDD. Where as adding ram to your PC the data will be gone as soon as you shut down your PC. Also Windows does not treat ram the same way it treats a HDD, but I know there is software that can take care of that.
#17 has a good point, you can use a solid-state drive for all kinds of things. In addition to a great swap file:
1. Website Hosting: You could store your websites on the fast solid-state disk to improve delivery performance.
2. Database: You could put your database files (logs or data) on the solid state disk to improve request times. You could probably even use a file-based database like Access or FoxPro with some efficiency.
3. Video editing: half the time you spend doing this work is waiting for data to be read from or written back to the hard drive.
4. Dumb Terminals: you could set up a simple BART PE boot image on the solid-state disk to allow a client workstation to boot quickly and access a mainframe, web application, or Terminal Server. They would be expensive but fast. Any data loss could be recovered by simply booting to a CD to reinitialize the drive from the CD's contents.
5. If you had a good backup process, you could put your system boot files on it. Imagine how fast you could hibernate your computer to and from one of these solid-state devices.
You could even make a RAID1 or RAID5 mirror out of these things for some redundancy if you had enough slots and cash.
Or, you could put a whole Linux distribution on that and have some fun!
Of course another drawback is that it is a 32bit PCI card, so you will only get a maximum of 133mBps sustained to the south/north bridge thus limiting it further. Still way faster than any hard-drive though.
Ah yes, use a ramdisk for the swap file so the computer doesn't slow down when swapping data to it from ram. Or not.
#17 has a point though, this would be useful for Intelists that have moved to DDR2 and still have their old DDR-sticks around. Though it would probably be a better idea to just sell those sticks and buy more DDR2 :P
I want that RAM-Disk. Here's why - I have a gig of older DDR ram that is essentially worthless. How about using the Ram-Disk for your virtual memory swap file? Ah... now you see the possible benefit?
I thought the idea behind BTX was to improve cooling through better air flow. Why would they place the IDE cables directly in-line with the CPU, and the power and SATA cables all nearly in-line with the CPU?!
What I don't quite get with the solid-state drive is: Why not just increase the amount of ram you have, and let the O/S use it as it sees fit, either for a huge disk cache, or for applications if they need it. This should actually be faster, as the OS can intelligently decide what data to buffer in ram; and with 64-bit nearly mainstream, you don't have a 4GB limit.
The only issue might be that you'll have to spend a lot more on RAM you want to put on your motherboard than the dirt-cheap stuff you'd put on the Gigabyte board; but surely 2GB of extra system ram would be better than a 4GB Ram-Drive?
hey, you can put winXP onto that ramdisk and just have that. I mean if you use that as your OS partition, it will rock. maybe use a minimal XP install without the bloat-ware...maybe even a 512mb swapfile there. (I wonder how fast will boot times be???)
OR
just use the ramdisk as the swap file. that would still be a boost. (you won't have to worry about the volatile ram either)
Yeah, it doesn't seem there's enough capacity to make it worth getting one of these. Even if you got 4x1GB, with the cheapest 1GB sticks on newegg costing ~ $80, You're looking at $320 for 4 Gigs. I'm sure there'll be will uses for this, but it's not enough space to put an OS or Games. With that said, I wonder who's going to be the first person to buy two of these, fill them up with 4GB each, and then run a Raid 0 :P
#2 and #5
you would need a lot of memory to install games and windows or whatver you wanted onto it, and even then its limited to 4 slots. How much memory would you be willing to buy for that? Awsome idea...but i can't see how someone could actually use it (unless u were willing to get 4x1gb modules)...
I think Ati is playing it smart here. I wouldn't be suprised if the G70 is a 24 pipes gpu and when their almost on the shelve then Ati announces it's R520 is a 32 pipe gpu.
$50 for the cpu upgrade card when a whole nforce 4 board can be had for under $100? surely they must be joking.... needs to be nearer $25 to have some real use
if you could put that Gigabyte card in tandem with a harddisk, so that data would be written to the HDD at power-down - or that battery could get a direct connection to a power socket - that would truely transform computing. Imagine having your OS on that one instead of a Raptor :c)
Is there any info on its intended availibility for retail?
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dmctaggart - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link
BTW where is the $50 ram card?Anandtech says:
Prices
Newegg.com $88.00
Amazon Marketplace $91.54
Monarch Computer Systems $87.00
dmctaggart - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link
Since when do you need hardware to have a ramdrive?Hookup a ups to a ram drive? Why not just hook it up to your computer if you don't want to lose the ramdrive?
Buy the slowest ram you can for your hardware swap drive?
Why not have a ramdrive using the fast ram you have installed on your computer and aim your swapdrive at it?
I think everyone has gone buggy.
Danno
flloyd - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
Accroding to this article, the PCI slot powers it up while the computer is off and therefore the battery is only for when it is unplugged or during a power outage.http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/01/HNxpwind...
drag0n - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
how about this:1-set your PC to boot off SATA first as in:
no OS goto harddrive
OS goto SATA ramdisk
2-mirror your xp install to your 4G ramdisk
3-reboot
4-configured for ALL OS functions running off the SATA ramdisk (including swapfile, temps, etc.)
5-never leave your PC off for more than 16 hrs.
*grin*
MrHaze - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
I'd really like to run the Gigabyte ramdisk for my pagefile.The key factor would be finding slow (cheap) RAM.
My thoughts on more system memory vs. ramdisk:
Yeah, more system memory is obviously better. But with system memory you're trying to milk every bit of speed you can--and that's expensive. Most folks top out around 2gb or even 1gb. 4Gb is troublesome.
It seems that a cheap 2-4 gb ramdisk for the pagefile would be an excellent addition to 2Gb of system memory.
Question:
Why don't DIMM manufacturers make something like this? Seems like they could build a big PCB with 4+ gb of appropriate and cheap RAM chips (instead of whole DDR DIMMS designed for a completely different application). One big-ass memory module. Wouldn't this be a more elegant and cost-effective solution?
Mr. Hayes
myne1 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Actually, nevermind my last comment.This is an absolutely awesome way of doing it.
Gigabyte; please pat your engineers on the back.
Any word on eta/avaliability?
I want one now! Now as in yesterday :D
myne1 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
WOW!2 months ago I posted my ideas about a PCI-E based RAM card on OCAU and a couple of other forums. I even emailed a couple of big-name companies, but not gigabyte. My mistake it seems :/
(link to my post : http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t...
The concept drawing is crude, but I still hope that someone makes it. Even in 1x mode it'll have nearly 4x the bi-directional bandwith of PCI.
http://www.users.on.net/~jvizard/myne/RAMcard.JPG
Gigabyte, if you're reading this, pretty please :)
EODetroit - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Because you can buy cheap ram for the board, and it won't hurt performance. The limiting factor will be the sata connection, not the ram speed.Whereas there's problems with 4GB of system memory, such as many OS' not liking that much, many motherboards not supporting that much, and if you want to run at DDR400 you're going to have to buy expensive ram.
Also some of that system memory would have to go towards the system and not the ram disk... in the end you'll probably max out at a 3GB ram disk or so. And finally with the add-in boards you could raid two of them together to create ram disks > 4GB in size, which would otherwise be impossible since no ram disk software seems to support sizes over 4GB, at least on Windows.
oupei - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
If you're willing to buy 4gb of ram to put on the ramdrive, why not just put it on the mobo and just have 4gb of ram?unless you want it for startup, i don't see why anyone would want it.
justly - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Also, thanks for the URL. I haven't read it yet (SFF is not a priority for me) but I will make sure to read it. thanks again.justly - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
61 Jarred thanks for letting me know why you have reservations about using SiS, but can you really say that the reasons you pointed out are deal breakers for 10% or even 1% of the 115,727 users registered to Anandtech forums?Not providing drivers for a beta OS, complaints of long term stability of a cheaply manufactured motherboards, or a "feeling" that you have doesn't effect my choice of chipsets (no matter what brand) but if I hadn't asked about the reference to being "stuck" with a certain chipset, I might have had second thoughts (if I didn't take it upon myself to find out more).
Believe it or not, I don't do this to persuade people to buy SiS chipsets. I do this to prevent people (including myself) from unknowingly being persuaded to avoid a potentially good chipset for their needs (I would do this for any chipset brand if I thought they where being misrepresented).
EODetroit - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Hey, you guys aren't getting what I'd use that RAMDRIVE for.I play World of Warcraft (WoW). I like to PvP. When I run into one of the huge zerg fights, my computer stutters as it thrashes the hard drive while it loads the files into memory of all the extra players around me.
With one (or two, since the WoW game files take up about 4.5GB) RAMDRIVE, I'll then have a batch file that copies all the game files from my hard drive to the RAMDRIVE. I run the game off the ram drive, and now every file access takes place near-instantly. I can run into a huge melee and not notice any disk accesses and while everyone else is suffering, I'm killing away.
Actually I've already found the perfect solution, but I'm unwilling to drop $3550 on it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&...
:/
I've emailed that guy to sell it to me (a lot) cheaper but he just won't budge :/ .
knightwhosaysni - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Everyone here seems to be talking performance. This seems to me much better as the basis of a silent PC with no moving parts, 2GB of OS and a Gb link to a file server.BigandSlimey - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
I'm no electronics engineer, but wouldn't it be easier to unplug that cable that runs from the battery pack into the pcb, modify the termination and connect that to an external power supply?Anand, please tell Gigabyte to put such a feature in as standard!!
I wonder if this product can achieve the same benchmarks as the CENATEK rocket drive.
http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Storage-Devices/CEN...
http://www.cenatek.com/store/category.cfm?Category...
If it does, it would certainly put CENATEK out of business considering their product is around 30 times the price :S
cartman - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
correction:sales=sells
cartman - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
where can we buy the ramdisk pci? i cannot find anything about it in gigabyte's site. It would be very interesting for somebody like gigabyte to create a ramdisk that fits on a 5 1/2 bay and has pre-installed the most dirt cheap ram chips one can find! i think a 300$ 8-16gb disk is entirely feasible for a company that buys mass quantities of ram chips. add some batteries and the ability to run from the 5volts the psu provides when the pc is shut down, and you have a product that sales like hot cake!Viditor - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
A question for Anand...In the article, you state:
"Gigabyte has introduced a number of interesting add-ons for their motherboards"
Does this mean that the Ramdisk will be a Gigabyte-only item?
All knowledge gratefully accepted! :-)
Calin - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Level load times for games won't be too much affected by ramdrives - they are mostly processor bound, not disk bound.However, ramdisk for swap would be great (maybe not that great as more RAM, but more RAM has its own problems, like price, the DIMMs must match, they are high speed so they are expensive).
ceefka - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Please ditch BTX and go ahead on CTX. We need lots of slots for those SSDs :-DVery good work with the Xilinx Spartan FPGA. These things are so useful. Nice one, Gigabyte.
I am not sure if the PCI-slot is the best location for an SSD in the future. It looks perfect for today.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
55 (justly again) - Part of the problem, at least from my perspective, is the lack of a unified installation package. NVIDIA, Intel and VIA all have chipset driver installation packages that are mature and let you know that everything is installed. SiS driver installation always leaves me feeling like I may not be getting everything.Performance is only part of the equation, and while SiS does keep up and surpass other chipsets in some situations, that's not the same as being better than the chipsets. How quickly did SiS get out 64-bit capable drivers? How about drivers for beta OSes like Longhorn? (I can tell you from experience that sound on many SiS boards doesn't work under Longhorn.) There's an overall package that you get with a motherboard, and the SiS boards almost always feel "less" than Intel/NVIDIA/VIA boards that I've used.
That can change, of course, but I have yet to use an SiS solution that was as stable in long-term use as an Intel board. Was it the chipset or the cheaply made motherboard? I can't say for sure - maybe both. Anyway, for another comparison, you can look at the Foxconn e-bot in the SFF roundup I did a few months ago.
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=23...
ravedave - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Anand,Benchies, we need benchies and lots of them on the RAM drive. AFAIK there haven't been any good reviews on any RAM drives. I am sure it would pull in some sweet traffic....
Things to try
1) Games (level load times)
2) web browsing (cache on ramdrive)
3) OS (page file, entire install)
4) multi media (scratch file...)
Viditor - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
That Ramdisk is VERY intriguing...Total cost looks to be ~$270 for a 4GB drive ($50 + 4 1024MB PC2100 sticks) and ~$150 for a 2GB drive...
It might even be cheaper if you bought some used low-speed Ram on Ebay!
Brian23 - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
#57, I don't see why they couldn't make a PCIe solid state card that was bootable. bios will already recognize and boot to hard drives on a PCI controller card. A manufacturer could make a PCIe card that was both a IDE controller and a IDE to DDR controller. That way there would be no extra cables or reliance on a seprate IDE controller. Plus there would be all the bandwidth of a PCIe bus for data transfere. (If they do that, I would still want a conector for an external power supply though.)Googer - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#21 Raid 0 with 2, 3, or 4 of these cards would be awesome! Add PCI express x4 so for extra bandwith and keep the sata just so it can be bootable. Once windows starts and loads drivers the SATA Conncetor can take it's break or work in tandem with PCI-E.Zebo - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
everything there is retared cept for that DFI ATI board.justly - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Anand, thanks for the reply, and I will be looking forward to the piece you mentioned.I do understand that SiS (along with other brand chipsets) are not marketed twards the "enthusiast" (if by that you mean gamers). However, I still see little information as to why they are so inadequate, and that is the information I would like to find out instead of just hearing these comments that appear to be indirect slander of a chipset because they are not utilized in high end motherboards and marketed directly at gamers.
Even in the article you linked to (I briefly looked over it as I have read it before) I saw no mention of driver problems (as you hinted twards) and the performance indicates that it competes very well. You say "it is really tough to beat the high end chipset makers right now" but look at the review you referenced to on your own site and you can see that the SiS chipset did just that on more than one benchmark. In fact it only lost to all of the 4 nForce based motherboards twice, but it beat ALL the nForce based motherboards 3 times, the rest of the time it placed between. Given that this review shows SiS as realitively equal in performance when compared to Nvidia, I ask again what are the problems with SiS that make the term "stuck with SiS" more appropriate than something like "limited to SiS"?
Just as a reminder my complaint is that these comments get directed at the chipset not the motherboard. If all nForce chipsets where relegated to ultra low end solutions by motherboard manufacturers that wouldn't make nForce a bad chipset ... would it?
Brian23 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I didn't mean cut the wires to the battery. I meant to take a razor blade and cut the traces on the PCB to the PCI connector and then solder wires to the traces and run them to an external wall cube. It could work, but it would mean damaging the card.I've got plenty of PCI sockets laying around on old AT motherboards. I'm going to take one off and solder a power adapter to the apropriate pins. That way I can power the ramdisk all the time without modifying it.
jiulemoigt - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
an eight gb swap file that accesses at the speed of memory is fast. the limiting factor would be the sata connector, which means you may notice it swapping but nothing even close to a disk find on a mechinal drive. You could even get away with the worst latency ramm {random access memory modules} out there as they would already be waiting on the sata controller. What would be better would be a native interface on the PCI-e 1x channel. Oh an giga byte could not make an always power pci unless they change how the PSU is turned on and off as power goes through the cpu on the 12volt line they might be able to use one of their raiser cards there is a reason mobos don't leave the traces powered. The person who mentioned cutting the three lines to the batter and simply powered them has a good idea but you might want to find out what the draw is first so that when you hook it out you don't fry the whole mobo :)unhaiduc - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
this might be the dumbest idea ever.. but here goes:what if... you get a 2nd case with a motherboard that has 6 pci slots, stick in a 200w powersupply and hook up this 2nd case through a ups
now, get 6 of these pci cards, hook them all up with 4gb of ram.. 6cards x 4gb = 24GB total space
now, to make this all feasible, u'd have to have this second case right next to ur 'main' case so that the sata cables would reach into the main case's motherboard (an nforce4 board has 8 sata's)
of course without a cpu in ur 2nd case, it wouldn't even post.. but the motherboard is powered and so are the 6 pci slots, and a 200w powersupply should last at least an hour even on a cheap ups
you are ofcourse limited by the 150Mb sata, but isnt the raid on the nforce4 chip directly connected to the rest of the chip/system? therefore you could get 4x150= 600Mb/s out a 4disk raid (i dont think u can span across both raid chips of a dfi board)
for the 2nd motherboard, i think even an old 486 mobo should work.. no?
just an idea that popped into my head.. what do u guys think?
Brian23 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I bet it wouldn't be hard to cut the PCI traces on the ramdisk card and use an external wall cube to power it. Or better yet, take a PCI connector off an old mobo and wire it up to an external wall cube.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
justlyFor the most part, SiS chipsets are relegated to ultra low end solutions by motherboard manufacturers. There are times when SiS solutions are better suited for the enthusiast market, and whenever we do come across those chipsets we always present them to you all as best as possible (e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2301).
There are always diamonds in the rough, and when we find them we do our best to present them. But when it comes to performance and solid drivers, it is really tough to beat the high end chipset makers right now - mainly Intel and NVIDIA (and potentially ATI).
That being said, I am working on a piece that will shed light on how the motherboard manufacturers and motherboard market view all of the chipset makers - you may be in for a bit of a surprise. More and more, ULi is looking like they may be the best kept secret of Taiwan. But more on that later :)
I'll pass on the positive comments about Gigabyte's solution on to the Gigabyte team here in Taiwan, I'm sure they'd love to hear it.
Take care,
Anand
cryptonomicon - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
ramdrive looks sweetjustly - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
42 - don't take this wrong, but if SiS, ULi (or any other chipset for that matter) is so "inferior in several areas of performance" then why do many articles (including Anandtechs) not make it clear that SiS (or any other chipset for that matter) have such limitations? I realize that SiS is not supirior in every aspect but when ever I see any article author confronted about chipsets (other than NVIDIA or Intel, and not just at Anandtech either) they all seem to throw off an aditude that "I know more than you" yet fail to give sound answers or links/proof of what they say. I for one can think for myself (I don't need to ask forum members to critique or pick out parts for my needs, I don't think most of them could since I am not a gamer) but I need the information to make a informed decission, and to put it bluntly your statement "inferior in several areas of performance" does not provide me with the information I need. If anything your answer just makes me more belligerent.Googer - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Corretion:Also Hopefuly gigabyte will release a motherboard just for this SSD drive. A motherboard that has one PCI slot that always recives power and remains powerd on at all times even when the PC is off, just for the support of this card only. Also it would be needed to have a bios option that would be able to turn this feature on or off, so that people who don't own one of these SSD's do not have a constantly powerd PCI slot when the pc is off.
Googer - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Also Hopefuly gigabyte will release a motherboard just for this one that has one PCI slot that remains powerd on at all times even when the PC is off, just for the support of this card only. Also it would be needed to have a bios option that would be able to turn this feature on or off, so that people who don't own one of these does not have a constantly powerd PCI slot.Googer - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
The one advantage that the Cenetek Rocket Drive has over the gigabyte solution is the ability to recive power through an AC adapter that can be plugged in to the back of a nice BIG UPS.erwos - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I'm surprised Gigabyte didn't put a standard four-plug on the RAM board. That would allow for power during the time the computer was off (provided the PSU was receiving power).My guess is that it's intended for web servers, which have huge amounts of random accesses, but a reasonably low storage requirement. It would also be good for huge databases.
There's also the possibility of tossing a few of them into a RAID 5, with initial sync off a hard drive. That would quite handily alleviate storage requirements.
flatblastard - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Hmm...just remove the battery back-up from that ramdisk, and now you have yourself a drive that can store sensitive (illegal) data without much risk. You'd just need to be there to shut down the computer, or make it so the wrong keystrokes automatically shut it down when your not there. Back in my yonger days, I used ramdrive.sys for password cracking/encryption stuff all the time. Of course, that's back when 64MB of RAM was unheard of. Just an idea...JarredWalton - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
30 - When actual tests back up the feeling that SiS chipsets (and ULi) are inferior in several areas of performance, such statements are not biased. There are many instances where SiS chipsets work fine, but to pretend that they are the equal of Intel is bias in the other direction.The real problem with that design is the cost of the upgrade boards. $50? There are cheap SiS-based boards for only slightly more than that. You deactivate the 775 socket and onboard memory in order to use the daughter card, so if you already had the board working, you now have at the very least an extra CPU sitting around. You also drop from four DIMM slots to two.
It's an interesting idea if you could make it work with the onboard RAM and sell the upgrade boards for much less than $50. At least, that's my opinion.
flatblastard - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#40 Christmas if yur lucky.Waylay00 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Well if the G70 boards are supposed to be in manufacturer's hands by the 2nd week of June, then when does this mean that they will actually be available for people to buy?Brian23 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Sorry, I can't count. I ment to say #37.Brian23 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#36, that's what the gigabit ethernet is for!bob661 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#36Too bad you couldn't store any movies on it.
patrick0 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
How about using a SSD for a HTPC?! Now that's silence.bob661 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
The swap file idea is excellent. I think four 512MB sticks would be enough and would run about $160 on Newegg.sprockkets - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Of course if you use Linux it has no problems using the RAM as a HDD as it is; look at Knoppix and DamnSmallLinux, both use the ram as a HDD and DSL can run completely out of the ram. You can also do that with Knoppix if you have at least 1GB of ram.But then again, no permanent distro goes to ram soooo...
Beenthere - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
There simply is no justification for the BTX design. It isn't a good design and it doesn't cool Intel's overheating products sufficiently. It's just a marketing gimmick that the Mobo mfgs. were smart enough to NOT adopt despite arm twisting by Intel. Intel is on there way down and the Mobo mfgs. know it.semo - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
solid state storage has been around for some time but not as cheap.http://www.hyperos2002.com/
look for hyperdrive
tungtung - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
That RAMDISK card is quite interesting although there is a Japanese company that make similar product since 1998 (only for Mac though) ... the idea of being able to use older RAM sticks are also the main thrust for that old product ... but that old product (which I just can't seem to remember what or who makes them) has an external power connector + battery backup.It is a nice use for scratch disk / temp drive though.
justly - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I never really understood the use of a riser card to make a motherboard compatibile with other processors. Well I guess it could be used by review sites to compare processors using the same platform, but other than that what reason would any sane person have for this feature?Anand, I am also curious as how you can still claim that Anandtech has no bias, yet in every Anandtech (or any other sites) articles featuring a SiS chipset, the SiS chipset allways seems to have good showing (please realize I'm talking chipsets not motherboards) yet tou make this comment.
"There are some limitations to the technology; first and foremost, you are stuck with SiS chipsets"
"STUCK WITH SIS CHIPSETS" doesn't that look like bias to you? If you really where unbiased I think you would have worded this differently.
Larso - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Very interesting that solid state. I wonder if you the standby 5V line from the powersupply would have enough juice to keep the memory alive?Adding a rechargeable battery seems like a rather expensive way to fix the problem... And using a programmable FPGA for controller? What is this, still a prototype??
mlittl3 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Yes #20, #27 is right.Read the article a little closer. The PCI slot ONLY provides power. All transfers go through the SATA connector in the upper right of the PCB to your motherboard SATA connector. That will be 150MB/s. The PC recognizes the drive as a SATA drive on startup.
I wonder if they will come out with a SATA II 300MB/s version. That would rock even more. MORE DROOL!
MDme - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#20it is not limited by the PCI bus since the transfers actually occur over the SATA controller of the mobo.
i think though that it is just SATA 1 so that would limit it to 150mb/s (if it were SATA II then that would be 300mb/s.
Avalon - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
That ECS board is very cool. I don't understand the hoopla over the solid state ram drives, though.Dubb - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I wonder if you could setup one of those cards as a second OS installation, and have it sync'ed with one on a HD - point being that you could boot to the HD if the ramdrive wasn't available/wiped after 16 hours.I'm going to have to wait for reviews + stories of people using the card, but I very well could end up using 2-3 of these things depending on how well they work. the productivity increase would probably be worth whatever they cost.
DDR max? can you even buy that anymore? what about 2gb modules? hmmm.
Brian23 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I will be the first one to own one of these ram-drive cards.Googer - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I love the concept here, but for the amount of money that I would end up spending here I would rather have a couple of 74gb SCSI drives.The one advantage that this card has over installing extra ram on your system is that data stored on this card is bootable and does not have to be dependant on a HDD. Where as adding ram to your PC the data will be gone as soon as you shut down your PC. Also Windows does not treat ram the same way it treats a HDD, but I know there is software that can take care of that.
semo - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
goddamn #21 and all the rest. stop it. i'm running out of drool heredavecason - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#17 has a good point, you can use a solid-state drive for all kinds of things. In addition to a great swap file:1. Website Hosting: You could store your websites on the fast solid-state disk to improve delivery performance.
2. Database: You could put your database files (logs or data) on the solid state disk to improve request times. You could probably even use a file-based database like Access or FoxPro with some efficiency.
3. Video editing: half the time you spend doing this work is waiting for data to be read from or written back to the hard drive.
4. Dumb Terminals: you could set up a simple BART PE boot image on the solid-state disk to allow a client workstation to boot quickly and access a mainframe, web application, or Terminal Server. They would be expensive but fast. Any data loss could be recovered by simply booting to a CD to reinitialize the drive from the CD's contents.
5. If you had a good backup process, you could put your system boot files on it. Imagine how fast you could hibernate your computer to and from one of these solid-state devices.
You could even make a RAID1 or RAID5 mirror out of these things for some redundancy if you had enough slots and cash.
michaelpatrick33 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Or, you could put a whole Linux distribution on that and have some fun!Of course another drawback is that it is a 32bit PCI card, so you will only get a maximum of 133mBps sustained to the south/north bridge thus limiting it further. Still way faster than any hard-drive though.
AndreasM - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Ah yes, use a ramdisk for the swap file so the computer doesn't slow down when swapping data to it from ram. Or not.#17 has a point though, this would be useful for Intelists that have moved to DDR2 and still have their old DDR-sticks around. Though it would probably be a better idea to just sell those sticks and buy more DDR2 :P
stevty2889 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#12 I think using that gigabyte ram drive for the swap file would be an excelent use for it, good idea!Icehawk - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I want that RAM-Disk. Here's why - I have a gig of older DDR ram that is essentially worthless. How about using the Ram-Disk for your virtual memory swap file? Ah... now you see the possible benefit?:)
Tanclearas - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I thought the idea behind BTX was to improve cooling through better air flow. Why would they place the IDE cables directly in-line with the CPU, and the power and SATA cables all nearly in-line with the CPU?!Matthew Daws - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
What I don't quite get with the solid-state drive is: Why not just increase the amount of ram you have, and let the O/S use it as it sees fit, either for a huge disk cache, or for applications if they need it. This should actually be faster, as the OS can intelligently decide what data to buffer in ram; and with 64-bit nearly mainstream, you don't have a 4GB limit.The only issue might be that you'll have to spend a lot more on RAM you want to put on your motherboard than the dirt-cheap stuff you'd put on the Gigabyte board; but surely 2GB of extra system ram would be better than a 4GB Ram-Drive?
mjz - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
yea, maybe if they have 8 slots and ram is 50 dollars a gig.mattsaccount - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
The solid state drive would also be useful for photoshop/video editing scratch disks, or for the windows page file.MDme - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
hey, you can put winXP onto that ramdisk and just have that. I mean if you use that as your OS partition, it will rock. maybe use a minimal XP install without the bloat-ware...maybe even a 512mb swapfile there. (I wonder how fast will boot times be???)OR
just use the ramdisk as the swap file. that would still be a boost. (you won't have to worry about the volatile ram either)
AnnihilatorX - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
2GB should be enough for just Windowbut if you want "a" game on it... 4GB is just enough
KayKay - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
G70 in second Week of June??! Take That ATI! ;)ryanv12 - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Yeah, it doesn't seem there's enough capacity to make it worth getting one of these. Even if you got 4x1GB, with the cheapest 1GB sticks on newegg costing ~ $80, You're looking at $320 for 4 Gigs. I'm sure there'll be will uses for this, but it's not enough space to put an OS or Games. With that said, I wonder who's going to be the first person to buy two of these, fill them up with 4GB each, and then run a Raid 0 :Pmrwxyz - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#2 and #5you would need a lot of memory to install games and windows or whatver you wanted onto it, and even then its limited to 4 slots. How much memory would you be willing to buy for that? Awsome idea...but i can't see how someone could actually use it (unless u were willing to get 4x1gb modules)...
Dukemaster - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
I think Ati is playing it smart here. I wouldn't be suprised if the G70 is a 24 pipes gpu and when their almost on the shelve then Ati announces it's R520 is a 32 pipe gpu.davecason - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
That Gigabyte DDR RAMDISK looks a lot like an updated/improved version of the Cenatek Rocket Drive:http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm
The advantages are a much lower price and no OS/driver dependency.
mjz - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
#2.. just have a batch file run during the shutdown.. i soo want a solid state drive too!Visual - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
ECS are nutsxsilver - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
$50 for the cpu upgrade card when a whole nforce 4 board can be had for under $100? surely they must be joking.... needs to be nearer $25 to have some real useCrassus - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
if you could put that Gigabyte card in tandem with a harddisk, so that data would be written to the HDD at power-down - or that battery could get a direct connection to a power socket - that would truely transform computing. Imagine having your OS on that one instead of a Raptor :c)Is there any info on its intended availibility for retail?
shabby - Monday, May 30, 2005 - link
Yay g70 :)