memory as a ram disk

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Profile Paul D Harris
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Message 1190629 - Posted: 1 Feb 2012, 9:06:49 UTC

I was wondering if I could change my memory to start using some of it as a ram disk. So I was wondering what memory I should go to and if it was worth the effort.
I have in my system
motherboard=asus 6pt x58 ich 10r
cpu=i7 920 bloomfield 1366lga
memory=
ddr3
1024 m bytes
pc3-10700h (667 mhz)
g.skill
f3-10666cl7-1gbpk
xmp-1334=667mhz7-7-7-19-31-2t-1.600v
jedec #3=666mhz 9-9-9-24-33-1.50v
jedec #2=592mhz 8-8-8-22-30-1.50v
jedec #1=444mhz-6..6.6.16.22-1.50v
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Profile Wiggo
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Message 1190632 - Posted: 1 Feb 2012, 9:25:40 UTC - in response to Message 1190629.  

This question has been asked twice recently and the answer is that it will not help crunching.

Cheers.
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Profile Andy Lee Robinson
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Message 1191018 - Posted: 2 Feb 2012, 18:46:33 UTC - in response to Message 1190632.  

Not quite true... might gain an extra couple of seconds per day!
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Message 1191027 - Posted: 2 Feb 2012, 19:36:32 UTC - in response to Message 1191018.  
Last modified: 2 Feb 2012, 19:43:20 UTC

Not quite true... might gain an extra couple of seconds per day!

...and you lose much more just by having boinc shut down during the whole procedure of setting it up.
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Message 1191051 - Posted: 2 Feb 2012, 21:10:59 UTC - in response to Message 1190629.  

I was wondering if I could change my memory to start using some of it as a ram disk. So I was wondering what memory I should go to and if it was worth the effort.
I have in my system
motherboard=asus 6pt x58 ich 10r
cpu=i7 920 bloomfield 1366lga
memory=
ddr3
1024 m bytes
pc3-10700h (667 mhz)
g.skill
f3-10666cl7-1gbpk
xmp-1334=667mhz7-7-7-19-31-2t-1.600v
jedec #3=666mhz 9-9-9-24-33-1.50v
jedec #2=592mhz 8-8-8-22-30-1.50v
jedec #1=444mhz-6..6.6.16.22-1.50v

Being worth the effort depends on what you want to accomplish.

If you are thinking it will be a big gain in processing tasks then no it would not be worth the effort. As the gains for processing tasks would be <= 1%.

If you are try to save power by having your hard disk spin down or something of that nature then yes it probably is worth the effort. I do that on a few systems for that reason.
However using a flash drive of some kind could give you about the same gain. In one of my notebooks I run BOINC from a SDHC drive. This allowed the hard drive to stay spun down in it's lower power state making less heat & using less power.
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Dave

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Message 1191053 - Posted: 2 Feb 2012, 21:18:27 UTC
Last modified: 2 Feb 2012, 21:19:25 UTC

Please see other threads on this subject.

Edit: HAL: @ the expense of SDHC write-cycle life ;).
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Profile HAL9000
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Message 1191054 - Posted: 2 Feb 2012, 21:31:10 UTC - in response to Message 1191053.  
Last modified: 2 Feb 2012, 21:32:13 UTC

Please see other threads on this subject.

Edit: HAL: @ the expense of SDHC write-cycle life ;).

I have never own out a flash device other than some old EEPROMs. So I kind of want to try and kill the SDHC. So I can see if it starts marking sections as unusable or if the whole thing becomes trash all at once. If it just start marking sections as unusable then I should be good since it is 16GB & BOINC is the only things on it.
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Profile Paul D Harris
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Message 1191267 - Posted: 3 Feb 2012, 20:00:06 UTC

I was just considering of updating my memory to say 6 sticks of 4gb at 16000 at low cl I could find and using some of the memory as a flash drive. It sounds like the gain in crunching would be minimal as compared to the money I would be spending to by the memory for under 200 us dollars.
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Message 1191323 - Posted: 3 Feb 2012, 22:35:31 UTC

Yeah, it's really just not worth it. Best thing you can use a ramdrive for is some service/daemon that makes a bunch of writes to/from log/config files. It won't make the service/daemon any faster, but it will save the HDD.

As stated in one of the other ramdisk threads recently, I did that on my linux laptop since the HDD in it was a really old IBM TravelStar. Given the track record for those going into click-of-death (more prevalent in the DeskStar line), I did a 'mnt -t ramfs /dev/ram0 /ram' and moved all the log files to there for each service. The HDD didn't spin up for 3 months at one point. Then the power flickered, the UPS went into "I don't know what to do" mode and cut power to all the output plugs, and after I found it, I turned the laptop back on and it was fine for 33 days, then click-of-deathed.
Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)
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Message boards : Number crunching : memory as a ram disk


 
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