Ram Drives

D

Davis Goertzen

New Member
I heard about these things from my former high school teacher, who is very much into computers; he told me that they are "the fastest thing on earth," but also that they require about 4-8 Gig!!! of RAM. Apparently you can run programs off these Ram drives, presumably the most demanding programs you have. My questions are, has anybody else heard about these things, how do they work, and are they worth the price you'd have to pay for the amount of RAM you'd need? Thanks in advance.

Davis Goertzen
 
It is a PCI card that uses RAM to act as a HDD. You can install windows one one in less than 5 minutes, and once you do, startup takes 5-10 seconds. They have limited capacity (4-8GB, like you said) but they are fast. They are only limited by the PCI bus speed.
 
Burgerbob said:
It is a PCI card that uses RAM to act as a HDD. You can install windows one one in less than 5 minutes, and once you do, startup takes 5-10 seconds. They have limited capacity (4-8GB, like you said) but they are fast. They are only limited by the PCI bus speed.
Click to expand...

Oh you're talking about NVRAM (non-volatile). And no they don't require constant power, heyman.
 
Technically, they do, but they have a battery, so you don't have to worry about it.

heyman421 said:
they also require a constant power source

i cant imagine a use that would require it, i think its just for fun
Click to expand...

I don't know... maybe if you were into heavy image making or something, it would be worth it to have windows, photoshop, and whatever you are working on at the time loaded onto it, and keep everything else on a second hard drive.
 
Okay, thanks, that answers a few of my questions, but where you most likely use it? Stuff like high-end gaming, movie-editing, that kind of thing? I'm also wondering, how much faster would they be than a dual-core machine (or something else comparable)? Also, would you end up killing yourself with the cost of RAM you'd need? Thanks for all the input.

Davis
 
i can't think of a single use for it

it's too small for audio or video editing of any kind

i suppose the best use would be to load a cd/dvd image onto it and use it as a virtual drive.......
 
So then, if I want the speed that a RAM drive would (apparently) give, I would really be better off just to save up for a dual-core processor or something like that?

Davis
 
There is no way to match the crazy speed of a RAM drive with anything other than a RAM drive. And a faster processor doesn't have anything to do with this kind of speed... it's the read/write speed of the memory. The only thing close to it would be a 15K RPM SCSI hard drive.
 
So then, what kind of practical applications would there be for a RAM drive? Because I'm thinking it doesn't matter how blazing fast it is, if you don't have a use for all that speed.

Davis
 
It depends on what you mean by practical... like I said, maybe if you was into heavy image or video editing, it could be useful, but only if you have a lot of bucks to waste.
 
What David mentioned here:the Ram Drives is completed beyond my understanding.But why you need the speed that "the fastest thing on earth" ?
if you have special job,yes it is your pursuit aim.if not,let it be a real topic here.
 
Olive, I was trying to gather information so that when I get a high-end machine, I'll know if this is something to pursue or not.

Thanks, PohTayToez, I think that answers my question. Thanks to all for the input.

Davis Goertzen
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top