What does everyone think of Giga-byte's iRam?

[arablizzard2413]

Giga-byte's iRam sounds like a good idea, but there is just one thing bothering me... the data is lost after the 12 hour backup battery runs out if the computer is unplugged.

Doesn't sound all that safe to me, but if they had a boot loader type thing that can backup/restore the os from the hard drive automatically via an option or something, it might be good. A more practical use for this would be for storing the virtual memory file, that way you would have more speed than having it on the hard drive, and have 4 more gigs to play with (assuming you buy that much).

The article is here, but it's also on the msfn front page:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/01/HNxpwindows_1.html

Anyone got any thoughts on this? (besides the release date, it's sometime in July)

[Delprat]

- RAM is faster than iRAM, so virtual memory on iRAM is slower than the same amount of RAM

- many BIOSes can boot from USB devices (cd, dvd, flash, hard drives), and it's much more powerful than iRAM (datas does not fly to heaven after 12h)

- many BIOSes support the "suspend to RAM" functions, wich allows XP to "restore" in less than 5 secs (on my computer, the screen takes longer than that to power on !)

I can't see any usage for this thing...

@+

[jobz]

Why are people still wasting their time on boot times? I've been using hibernate on win2k for years now, and it really does take seconds to boot!

[arablizzard2413]

Why are people still wasting their time on boot times?

This isn't just about boot time, overall system performance can be increased by simply moving the virtual memory paging file to something like this. It can also provide a temporary storage space for when you're editing a video or sound.

- RAM is faster than iRAM, so virtual memory on iRAM is slower than the same amount of RAM

- many BIOSes can boot from USB devices (cd, dvd, flash, hard drives), and it's much more powerful than iRAM (datas does not fly to heaven after 12h)

- many BIOSes support the "suspend to RAM" functions, wich allows XP to "restore" in less than 5 secs (on my computer, the screen takes longer than that to power on !)

I can't see any usage for this thing...

@+

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

True RAM is faster than the iRAM device (which uses a SATA connection), but the iRAM would be faster than the IDE hard drives most people are using (for example: my computer has the SATA connection, but I didn't splurge to get new hard drives to use it; the motherboad was an upgrade). So it WOULD increase performance because the paging file would be on it's own dedicated "partition" that has a faster connection (SATA instead of IDE).

Booting from a USB device has it's own advantages, but for some people, they really don't need them. Originaly this device was designed to provide a temporary space for video editing and such, in that case it makes sense. I wasn't saying that I would trust using this as a boot drive, like I said in my first post.

It's called hibernate, and yes I use that on occasionally. But faster performance overall (not just during boot time) can be expected. In the case of moving the virtual memory paging file over, you move to a higher speed media which can dramatically increase system performance for memory intensive programs (Photoshop when using large images). You also neglect to realize that not all motherboards support 4 gigs of memory (My current computer can only use 3 gigs, and my old one could only handle 512megs) so they rely on the virtual memory a lot. Having a faster space for the paging file will make those systems run faster. All systems have a paging file, even if they have 4 gigs of RAM unless you have turned it off manually, and I doubt everyone has a separate hard drive completly dedicated to a paging file.

Other thoughts?

[Clint]

Everything thats new is fun, gotta have gotta try...thats the way it is.

I see the use for this in my CarPC, nice to have instant boot when fire up the car...also

less moving parts..

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Why are people still wasting their time on boot times?  I've been using hibernate on win2k for years now, and it really does take seconds to boot!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree, partly.

The very fact you're posting that remark lets me know that you have 256-512 MB RAM. Any higher amount takes VERY long to write to the HDD, so long that you'll prefer not to use hibernation!

[sheiksoft]

hi

virtual memory speaking truely it is very good when it comes to the matter of paging. i have increased mt virtual memory page file size to 1024kb and it working fine and faster in xp than before.

regards

sheik...

[jobz]

You got me there. I used to have 512MB and it hibernates in seconds. But after seeing how insanely cheap ram is nowadays, I added another 512MB. Now it takes longer to hibernate and bootup, but still take much less time than booting from scratch. I don't care about that anyway, what now with 1GB of ram, everything is so much smoother!

[HyperHacker]

Yes, Hibernate is nice. It takes me a whopping 4 seconds to start up. I really like the sound of this though. I don't think I'd want to have my OS installed on it if it's going to get wiped out every 12-hour power failure, but it would make a great RAM disk. (Literally! )

[isaacc]

Hibernation is a great idea.

Instead of use a regular harddrive for saving/loading the hibernation file, has anyone tried IRam for just saving/loading the hibernation file?

It should speed things up because IRam is faster than harddrive. In the rare case that IRam loses its power, losing the hibernation file isn't a big deal provided you installed the OS on a regular harddrive and saved all your data before hibernation.

[kc0jsf]

I’ve seen the card itself on another website…the battery has a very standard connector. It would take very little thought and work to attach a much bigger bat to it. And maybe a second plug for hot swapping… so basically if you care to use the brain you have losing your data wouldn’t be a problem