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Virtual RAM Disk - Compare performance with and without SSDs and Swap Files

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InfinityzeN1 Posted: Wed, Jan 5 2011 12:58 PM

With the current extremely low prices of RAM, more and more people have systems with 8GiB, 12GiB, or even 24GiB of ram.  In addition, more and more people are switching to a SSD as their system drive, which does not take kindly to things like swap files.

So using a 64bit OS, a SSD system drive, and varies ammounts of system memory, bench different configurations using varies ammounts of ram, no swap file/swap file on ram drive/swap file on SSD, and if enough ram then cache/temp folders on ram drive.

I think a lot of the people here will be very surprised with the results.  From my personnel testing (980X CPU, 24GiB Ram split 12GiB system and 12GiB ram drive), hosting my swap file and temp/cache folders on the ram drive has shown the most performance gain.

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realneil replied on Tue, Jan 11 2011 9:56 AM

It sounds interesting, but how would you split up 8GB?

 

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InfinityzeN1 replied on Fri, Jan 21 2011 12:07 PM

If your only running 32bit programs?  4GiB of system memory and 4GiB for the drive.  Put your swap file on it and set its max size to 4GiB (you can leave it dynamic since the ram is so fast), along with possibly putting your temp folders on it.

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analogmonster replied on Mon, Feb 7 2011 8:11 PM

What utility do you use for your virtual drive?

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digitaldd replied on Tue, Feb 8 2011 9:38 AM

analogmonster:

What utility do you use for your virtual drive?

Write up here not sure if it works in Vista or Windows 7 though.

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acarzt replied on Tue, Feb 8 2011 11:08 AM

I played around with the page file a bit, I even went as far and removing i and disabling the service.

I noticed no change in performance no mater where I stuck it.

The page file is not supposed to be used until you run out of RAM.

The prefetch however, will make an impact if removed, and I could see it benefitting from a RAM drive.

I still have a page file anyway tho, it is just offloaded to a secondary HDD. I don't want my SSDs acting as RAM, as that would cause unnecessary wear.

 

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Papapak replied on Fri, Feb 11 2011 10:21 PM

this is interesting, i wanna try too =(( but i need money for new components

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lornfate replied on Wed, Mar 30 2011 1:13 PM

The capacity is very higher and so is the price... Need to cope up with the technology trend though.

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CDeeter replied on Sun, May 1 2011 9:30 AM

Here is an interesting article from Tom's Hardware dealing with this subject:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-8.html

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