Dataram Executes Agreement with AMD for Radeon RAMDisk, to launch Q4 '12

[caveman-jim]

Dataram Corporation [NASDAQ: DRAM], ) a leading international manufacturer of computer memory, storage and software products, announced today that it has entered into a formal agreement with AMD (NYSE: AMD) to develop an AMD-branded version of Dataram’s popular RAMDisk software. Dataram will market the product under the name Radeon RAMDisk and will target gaming enthusiasts seeking exponential improvements in game load times leading to an enhanced gaming experience. AMD intends to offer special Radeon RAMDisk incentives for those purchasing AMD Value, Entertainment, Performance and Radeon Edition memory products.

RAMDisk use has recently stirred great interest and expanded into corporate environments for accelerating specific applications and is being integrated into other commercially available products for which performance is critical. Quality and reliability, a hallmark of Dataram’s enterprise-grade memory products, is a key characteristic of its RAMDisk software that contributes to its exceptional recognition in the market.

“Dataram RAMDisk is one of the top RAMDisk software products in the Windows market. With the increase in memory capacity and reduced cost per gigabyte, now is the best time ever to utilize DRAM to create a lightning fast disk drive. Like all Dataram products, we have not only focused on speed and value, we have applied years of experience with data protection and reliability”, said Jason Caulkins, Dataram Chief Technologist.

Various benchmarks have shown that using RAMDisk results in up to 525% faster game load times, substantially improving the gaming experience. Used in conjunction with AMD memory products, gaming enthusiasts can gain distinct advantages when competing against their fellow gamers. Commenting on the launch of the AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk product in early fourth quarter, Roman Kyrychynskyi, Product Director at AMD said, “With the importance that memory plays in the overall PC experience, eliminating bottlenecks is crucial for avid PC gamers. Our collaboration with Dataram looks to provide the answer with an enhanced storage solution that reduces possible performance plateaus and provide a superior PC gaming experience”.

Dataram Press Release

[Redeemed]

Very interesting. Not sure how this would really work though. I mean the game is installed on the HDD or SSD. If you have an SSD already I'm not sure there'd be a huge gain in load times. And since the HDD stores the game files, they'd have to be loaded to the RAM disc. That takes time.

Maybe I'm missing something?

[bman212121]

I could see using the software as a fix for games that weren't properly coded. Things like stuttering while loading map data (TDU) and incredibly high I/O (minecraft) can potentially benefit from it. I suppose another could be games like BF3 where if you can make it onto the map faster than everyone else you can get the best vehicles. Back when I was playing BF2 I was always one of the first people on the map because of my faster pc and RAID array, so I could always get to stuff first. Now with SSDs more widespread the amount of time waiting to load files is going to be less for a lot of players.

I would agree though that normally a ramdisk provides little function if you have to first load the software into memory. Their software likely can do this for you upon startup if you specify a folder to load, but it would need to be done after everything else is loaded otherwise you're just making it take longer for the pc to boot up.

[caveman-jim]

This software works as a persistent cache, including presenting a fixed drive to the OS. It saves to disk and is loaded from disk at each startup. Applications running on the RAMDisk are much faster... once the RAMDisk loads up.

[Redeemed]

I could see using the software as a fix for games that weren't properly coded. Things like stuttering while loading map data (TDU) and incredibly high I/O (minecraft) can potentially benefit from it. I suppose another could be games like BF3 where if you can make it onto the map faster than everyone else you can get the best vehicles. Back when I was playing BF2 I was always one of the first people on the map because of my faster pc and RAID array, so I could always get to stuff first. Now with SSDs more widespread the amount of time waiting to load files is going to be less for a lot of players.

I would agree though that normally a ramdisk provides little function if you have to first load the software into memory. Their software likely can do this for you upon startup if you specify a folder to load, but it would need to be done after everything else is loaded otherwise you're just making it take longer for the pc to boot up.

That's exactly my point.

I guess if the power savings features evolved enough- you could have an "off" mode which was basically nothing more than keeping power to a RAMDisk. Meaning your computer is always on. But for this to be pheasible you'd need a ridiculous amount of RAM. So you'd install windows and I guess the primary features you use the most would be permanently stored on your HDD/SSD but would also be copied to the RAMDisk. Same with the programs you use most. And your HDD/SSD would be mostly for a data backup in the event of power loss. This would allow for near instant "boot" times as the computer never fully shuts down.

But again, for that to be practical today you'd need at least 128GB of RAM- storing the OS and apps you use the most. That's a lot of RAM. And then having it so when you "power the system off" really it keeps the RAM operational while turning most everything else off.

I can see this happening down the road but now? I dunno. Also, if SSDs ever do go fully mainstream I see even less advantage to RAMDiscs, at least for most scenarios.

[Redeemed]

This software works as a persistent cache, including presenting a fixed drive to the OS. It saves to disk and is loaded from disk at each startup. Applications running on the RAMDisk are much faster... once the RAMDisk loads up.

But how does this not increase your boot times? And surely to properly take advantage of it you need large amounts of RAM. I've got single games that are 8GB+.

[guest]

But how does this not increase your boot times? And surely to properly take advantage of it you need large amounts of RAM. I've got single games that are 8GB+.

Why not make an SSD boot disk?

We use 8GB SSDs in at work that use DDR3 RAM and use battery backed up flash for storage when the power is cut off. The stuff is pretty fast. In this case I can see performance being really nice on a much larger scale.

[Redeemed]

Why not make an SSD boot disk?

We use 8GB SSDs in at work that use DDR3 RAM and use battery backed up flash for storage when the power is cut off. The stuff is pretty fast. In this case I can see performance being really nice on a much larger scale.

It still doesn't address the issue of quantity. Sure if you have an SSD boot times wouldn't be affected much. But if you have an SSD you'd probably not see much of a boost to game load times anyways.

Furthermore, as I've already mentioned, I've got games with install folders that are 8GB+. You'd need a minimal of 64GB of RAM to really take advantage of this I'd say. Even still, if you have an extensive library you'll be constantly swapping files from the SSD to the RAMDisk when you want to play other games.

I just fail to see this as even remotely beneficial to most gamers. Maybe if you only play one or two titles this could help you but this makes it about as niche a product and 3D Surround w/Physx (tri or quad SLi).

[Dr. Zhivago]

RAM it, RAM it, RAM it.