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- jakethecake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+37It's called the Gigabyte 'I-RAM'. 'mesh'? It's at version 1.3 now, but I'm holding out for 2.0. Which will support eight DDR2 memory modules and SATA2 at 300MB/sec. It will have a 5,25" formfactor and eSATA connectors. http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3052 & http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/9312
- navvvv, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35I want one.
seriously, I'd happily drop $200 on a 10gig solid state ramdisk for windows... someone please innovate and release it, you'd steal away thousands of raptor customers! - R4wBon3, on 10/28/2007, -3/+32You must be lazy and not have done your biannual format/resinstall
- Ignorant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26On boot up, the Windows XP slash screen doesn't even go one bar. If it was just speed up video, you'd still see the bar it'd just go fast.
- phidong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18It was delayed and delayed and made a really quiet entry when it finally did come out. The problem is everyone projected it to be ~60-100 and it's closer to $200 without ram. Add 4GB of ram to it (~$260) and you're paying close to $500 for a 4gb hard drive, albeit very very fast. I just don't see it as worth it right now despite the amazing performance gains.
- Godric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Is this out yet? An article from June 2005 said this:
"The iRam will be available in July and will be priced at around $60 without DRAM."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/01/HNxpwindows_1.html
edit: newegg has it
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815168001 - Sube6491, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19I don't care if this is a dupe, it's still amazingly fast. My computer won't even bring up a folder or My Computer anymore..... I have to go the the run/browse menu ;(
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15it's not fake. i know a friend's dad who uses a ram disk. not sure if it's I-Mesh, but anyway, it allows windows to run at a similar speed as seen in this video. it's basicly the same as coming in and out of standby mode.
it won't make as much a difference with applications that require a lot of processor power, and insignificant disk accesses. - LandonG, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16isnt imesh a p2p program?
- BugMeNot2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/07/can_gigabyte/
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I think it could be possible, however the computer is likely also as bare-bones as possible with as few other peripherals installed as can be managed (likely with all of the other I/O disabled, as far as ethernet, etc). This would also help the boot process as no extra hardware/drivers would have to be scanned/loaded.
- xptical, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14More like $2000 for a solid-state drive.
Right now, you can buy a card of some sort that will hold 4GB of commodity RAM. I don't know if it's bootable. So, $100 for the card and $400 for RAM. You'd have a 4GB C: drive which should be just enough for WinXP.
You can move the "Documents and Settings" folder to another drive, but I don't know about moving "Program Files".
You'd have quick boots and fast access to most of your stuff, but you'd still have to deal with going to a RAID0 array for all your programs.
When it's all said and done, a 4-way Raptor array would probably be just as fast. And less likely to fail. - cybernetic798, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This is not BS, all installations of any OS onto a RAM Disk are incredibly fast. I mean it makes sense right? The latency and bandwith to memory >>> latency and bandwith to disk.
- tsunamisteve, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14I'm not saying that this video is a fake, but the ambient background noise sounds like regular fan noise sped up. In video editing apps, when you speed up video, the pitch of the audio raises. It would be entirely possible to move the mouse and camera extra slow so that it looks like regular shakes and movement when sped up. Just throwing it out there.
- jakethecake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=62094 forum thread where the guy posted the video. 12/23 -05
It's not fake. - aleahey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9the camera motion does seem a little odd, but i wouldnt totally rule this out as fake.
- kitejumping, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I remember reading the reviews for this when it came out a while ago...
and the performance wasn't that much better than a WD Raptor, its good for lots of small files, but other than that if you have a system with 2gb or more of ram windows stays cached in the ram anyway and would run just as fast if not faster.
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2480
I call BS too on this one, loaded the bios a little bit too fast....
also and the anandtech article, it has boot times...
Gigabyte i-RAM (4GB) 9.12s
Western Digital Raptor (74GB) 14.06s - leoCT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7It is bootable. It is seen by the BIOS/OS as a regular IDE drive. As long as the power cable is connected (computer can be off) and there is no interruption of energy for more than 12 hours (a battery keeps the RAM on), you are safe. I think the big advantage of this is not really to boot windows, but to work with large files and lots of I/O. Once you are done, back to a more permanent storage. Swap file probably benefits of that too.
- sgi02, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The video was made by Jakup , he is a mod over at www.nvnews.net . He is a sharp shooter , no BS here.
- microsoftpwner, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Um, no you cant so next time you want to post something pointless don't do it.
- Bahwoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5They used to have this setup at this place I worked at. The computers, didn't have hard drives instead the tech guy bough extra ram and win98 was downloaded at boot time into a virtual ram disk and then startup up. Everything was instant and now with the 1GB network you could propably do the same using this method and WinXP and get even faster responce then the one seen in the video, since ram will always be faster.
- jakethecake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I would give you just about 0 latency on all disc operations, and it blazing fast 130MB/sec. I would use it to speed up program starts, and game loading times and not store windows on it.
- MephistoX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6For lack of better words... that is ***** insane.
- tacos4me, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I know the guy that took this. He's a member on the forums at NVnews.net. He got one of these cards to test out, I guess. Here's the forum post..
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=62094&highlight=I-RAM - theuber1337, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Not, thats what the backup batteries and all that are for. If the battery dies however, you're probably screwed. I wouldn't worry though, those backup batteries generally last over a decade.
- gcnaddict, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Screw those benchmarks. Windows boots on my raptor in less than 10 seconds. My later installation (Raptor RAID0) does it in less than 6.
This video is entirely plausible. 150MBps (yes, megabYtes) for an SATA I connection can load the OS in about a second (essential system files GUI extras... only about 100 MB in RAM on a fresh installation). Double that speed on SATA II systems (this one might be SATA II, not sure). The point is, the load times seen here are entirely plausible. - The_Dude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Yeah, but what'll it do for my Battlefield 2 game? Someone get one and make a video of map load times and running for the jets first.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It connects to PCI (not express) for power, and SATA for transfer.
- NeilM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Would it help load programs like Mozilla Firefox faster if you installed it along with Windows on the I-Mesh?
- diggnationdevon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6It doesn't matter even if it is a fresh install of Windows. It will still run that solid and fast with that kind of power. XP doesn't take heavy requirments to run. I'd like to see this done with Windows Vista!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If they were smart, they would make a backup with Ghost or TrueImage.
- phidong, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4They pop up just about as fast on my system (w/o any registry hacks), maybe it's time for a new computer.. heh. :)
- TheCount, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The product has been reviewed, like others said. I'll take a legit source like anadtech over a random video posted on google. Call me a skeptic.
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I am on a 74gb Raptor and while it is fast it doesn't touch on the speed of that video. I would buy one of these in a 30 - 50gb model but anything less is just a novelty because if I can't load my applications at those speeds why bother? I don't care how fast Windows will respond until I load the software I use or how fat I can browse my lousy boot drive if nothing else is on it.
Lets face it, if this thing is so small that only windows fits on it then as soon as we put our mandatory antivirus (of any flavor) on another drive we will still be waiting for the other drive. - mirzmaster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5My plain jane PC can run through BIOS just as fast as in this video, and that without a ramdrive. I believe most BIOS' these days come with a rapid POST feature that skips the RAM check and all. Plus, if you disable any onboard SATA controllers or other such devices on your motherboard, you're bound to come up with a very fast boot.
- forgetfulca, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5erm, and if you follow those links through and see the bench marks vs traditional hard drives, iram only carves off a few seconds. The thing to keep in mind is a solid state hard drive still connects through p-ata or s-ata controllers, and those have a throughput limit.
- 12340987, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm talking about the card itself. $164? That's crazy. You can get a mobo+processor+some RAM for that, and they can address more than 4 gigs of RAM.
- Godric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Thanks for the info Phidong. This is an incredible device but like you said, it's a bit expensive. But who knows, maybe in 5 years spinning platters will be antiquated technology.
- cheshire76, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If it's anything similar to the Gigabyte card, the PCI bus supplies the power. It has a SATA connector to hook up to the motherboard.
- MateyO, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Everything old is new again. Ramdisks have been around FOREVER. I remember using the ram DOS couldn't access (above 640k? 720k? I forget) to do this. I remember the State Govt Department I worked for buying a 128mb solid state disk to speed up it's Sybase lookups at a cool $240k.
I still remember being astounded that Autocad 2.12 would load in 6 seconds with my 32 Mb hard disk, vs. 30 seconds via floppy. - SloppyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Somewhat.. but your PC is limited alot by I/O, your processor can do a lot in a little bit of time.. but if it has to pause execution of your program while files from the HDD are loaded into memory it slows things down a bit.. While this is cool, I'm waiting for something else.. I caan't justify$500 for a 4gb drive.. makes it feel like the mid 90s again..
- spacenettnet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6not fake i have a friend that has one of these and his comp screams !!!
- microsoftpwner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Are you serious? You have to buy 4 gigs of ram and the card. Well u don't "need" 4 gigs but that's why it would cost so much,
but if you want the card, go here and buy it and buy some ram while your at it to find out if its real for yourself.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815168001 - tange1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I've seen a ram setup like this w/ linux instead. Excluding bios load the boot was 2 seconds to command line (no gui loaded)
- intoflatlines, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5it could have been sped up but the boot screen didn't seem to have the loading bar move extra fast.. in fact the loading bar didn't even really.. load? of course the boot screen could have been modified, too. and they could have unplugged the inputs or something to the monitor during the shut-down. or this could be authentic.
- dtrinh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Meh - I'd go with a 36gb Raptor over a 4gb expensive solution. Maybe after the price goes down, I'll consider it :P
However, I think there is an obviously large amount of potential. Undoubtedly, spinning disks will be antiquated in the near future :P - GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Um, I'm not sure if you are having trouble understanding this concept, but its basically an adapter that turns RAM modules into a hard drive. If you had any idea how much faster RAM is access time wise vs. a rotating magnetic platter storage device, you wouldn't be at all surprised that the thumbnails for his pictures cached and loaded that fast.
Everyone keeps saying "well the throughput speed isn't that much better than a Raptor". That's definitely true, but throughput isn't everything. If you factor in the time it takes a regular hard drive to move the actuator arm in order to BEGIN giving you the 150 MB/s, plus your files are probably fragmented anyway so it has to keep moving the arm you're really not getting 150 MB/s. Because this is RAM and there are entirely no moving parts, your files (especially the small ones) are read off the "drive" at insane rates compares to a hard drive.
Huge files that are defragmented would definitely be in the ball park read time of a high end hard drive, but this is still faster. - w00ters, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Here is an excellent article,
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480&p=1
It would be nice to have the OS boot twice as fast and games and apps launch 3x as fast but really that's all it is, nice. The cost is hardly worth it considering the performance gains won't be system wide. Money would be better spent on a new GPU, CPU or more RAM. - cheztir, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3haha. wow i forgot about that one. nice call.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well since bios runs from a ROM module on your motherboard, and has nothing to do with hard drive access, this is to be expected
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