ACARD RAM Disk 9010 series [Archive]

JasonACARD

09-15-2008, 04:08 PM

Dear XtremeSystems Forums community members and admin,
My name is Jason Shek, I am charged with the responsibility of Marketing and Community Relations in ACARD Technology, US.
It is an honor to be accpeted as a member here.
Should the admin find this post inappropriate or being posted at the wrong section, please feel free to move/remove my thread.

It is exciting to see that our 9010 RAM Disk series have generated much enthusiasm.
We are receiving calls on a daily bases inquiring about the release date of this product.
And this leads to my main purposes here: to provide access for community regarding product information, evaluation, as well as development, while collecting community feedbacks.

I went through the threads on 9010 and I'd like to provide some answers here:

Models
Two official Ram Disk model will be released:

1. RAM Disk 9010

240-pin DDRII DIMM module slots x 8
Support ECC/Non-ECC DDRII 400/533/667/800
Support up to 64GB of total storage
2 x SATA 3.0Gbps port, 1.5G downward compatible (Yes, you can RAID the two SATA ports)
CF socket in front panel
IOPS 20,000 per SATA port
Automatic data backup/restore between DDRII memory and CF card
Built-in Lithium Battery(Stand by 2Hr , backup 1Hr)
LED indicators for battery capacity, power status, SATA ports activity, backup status

2. RAM Disk 9010B

240-pin DDRII DIMM module slots x 6
Support up to 48GB of total storage
Support ECC/Non-ECC DDRII 400/533/667/800
One SATA 3.0Gbps Interface port
CF socket in front panel
IOPS 20,000 per SATA port
Automatic data backup/restore between DDRII memory and CF card
Built-in Lithium Battery(Stand by 2Hr , backup 1Hr)
LED indicators for battery capacity, power status, SATA ports activity, backup status

Initially, 9010 is designed for enterprise grade equipments and HD content markets.
9010B is designed for extreme workstations, SMB servers, and game machines.

A lot of members here are experts in storage and memory usage so I'd leave the application part to your imaginations.
What I can say with confidence is that, as a PC gamer myself, I am thrill to see a drive that finally breaks my system bottleneck.

Release Date
The official launch is scheduled in mid October, exact date of release is pending to be announced.

Pricing
I see a lot of questions in this part. While the final MSRP is not confirmed, I can confirm that the MSRP will be below the $500 mark.
I will have a confirmed MSRP in a week.
Thank you for all your support and feedbacks.

Jason Shek
ACARD Technology, US.

Eternalightwith

09-15-2008, 08:00 PM

Dear XtremeSystems Forums community members and admin,
My name is Jason Shek, I am charged with the responsibility of Marketing and Community Relations in ACARD Technology, US.
The official launch is scheduled in mid October, exact date of release is pending to be announced.

Pricing
I see a lot of questions in this part. While the final MSRP is not confirmed, I can confirm that the MSRP will be below the $500 mark.
I will have a confirmed MSRP in a week.
Thank you for all your support and feedbacks.

Jason Shek
ACARD Technology, US.

Awesome. Thanks for stopping by and annoucing this upcoming product. I'm very excited about a new RAM disc competitor to the current market.
And it's coming out right after my birthday in the first week of October :D
One question, is the MSRP of below $500 for both models or only the 9010B?

Thanks,

David

dinos22

09-15-2008, 08:07 PM

good to see ddr2 based ram drives mate
good luck with it all :up:

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 06:14 AM

WOW!

*very* interested! :yepp: :up:

& a big :welcome: :toast:

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 06:18 AM

*psst*

could u post a web addy?

also could u tell us what exactly the CF card is for? - back-up?
& how does it 'mount' in the PC? slot? drive-bay?

thank u!

Polizei

09-16-2008, 06:19 AM

Automatic data backup/restore between DDRII memory and CF card
Built-in Lithium Battery(Stand by 2Hr , backup 1Hr)

:welcome: :)

If the card has automatic backup, one shouldn't have to worry about how long the batter lasts, right? As long as the battery has enough juice to get all the data out of the RAM and onto the CF card, battery life isn't a problem?

Waiting for some benchmarks. :up:

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 06:24 AM

where does one find 8GB ecc dimms? :D

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 06:31 AM

lol - kingston have a 8gb fb dimm (incompatible i presume) - with a rrp of approx. $2400 :( :lol:

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 06:36 AM

is REG mem ok? cause if it is, kingston have a 2x 8GB kit of ECC+REG DDR2... for ~$3500 :rofl:

naokaji

09-16-2008, 06:45 AM

where does one find 8GB ecc dimms? :D

Actica Inc has 8GB DDR2 REG ECC Dimms avalaible, good thing that no price is mentioned though:p: link (http://www.acticainc.com/products.html), but then its reg ecc, not just ecc, so woudnt work.

two ram disks in raid 0 each with 8 2GB dimms would definitly be nice though:shocked:

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 06:45 AM

me has sooo many questions! :D

is the 20K IOPs sequential or random (i hope random ;) )

if its random, what are the figures for sequential? :D

JasonACARD

09-16-2008, 09:07 AM

Thanks for the questions and warm welcome guys!:) And here we go:

And it's coming out right after my birthday in the first week of October :D
One question, is the MSRP of below $500 for both models or only the 9010B?

Thanks,

David

BOTH models will come under $500 mark, I hope by then you can have yourself a birthday gift :D

good to see ddr2 based ram drives mate
good luck with it all :up:

Thank you!

*psst*

could u post a web addy?

also could u tell us what exactly the CF card is for? - back-up?
& how does it 'mount' in the PC? slot? drive-bay?
is REG mem ok?
is the 20K IOPs sequential or random (i hope random )
if its random, what are the figures for sequential?

Thank you Tiro
I am not sure if I am allow to post links here so let's hold on to that.
The CF card slot is designed for backup purpose.
Both 9010 and 9010B comes in a 5.25" form factor which takes up 1 slot like your DVD burners.
About memory type that you can use, from regular inexpensive DDRII RAMs to ECC RAMs are all compatible.
Great question about the IO tiro, it does not matter for RAM disk whether it's random or sequential.
From our tests, they appeared to be the same, or a barely noticeable.
About the settings on IO meter please allow me to get back to you.
If you think 20K IOPS is fast, I would love to surprise you with our testing results on RAID 0.
I am gathering some testings results done internally, will post them in a couple of days.

:

If the card has automatic backup, one shouldn't have to worry about how long the batter lasts, right? As long as the battery has enough juice to get all the data out of the RAM and onto the CF card, battery life isn't a problem?

Waiting for some benchmarks. :up:

The battery is in place so that any power outage or unexpected shutdowns are covered.
Correct, as long as battery last long enough to dump all data onto CF card, there will be no worries.
The battery included is more than enough in our testings.
I will be back with screen shots. :)

One_Hertz

09-16-2008, 10:33 AM

~30bux for cheapest 2GB stick. Need at least 32GB of space to be useful at all. Two 8slot devices = under 1k. 32GB of ram in 2GB sticks = ~500. $1500 for 32GB... A little on the expensive side when looking at $/GB

4GB sticks would be cheaper. If using 4GB sticks it is ~95 bux for one. One device = $500, 32GB of Ram = $750. $1,250 for 32GB. Two times slower then the first config though...

For 64GB of space it would be 2 devices = 1k and 64GB of ram - ~$1500. Overall $2,500. Costs the same as 80GB IODrive. As far as I understood, this setup would mean 4 sata cables? So 80k random iops and 1.2GB/s read/write? Would need a very expensive card to raid two devices properly though...

Looking forward to an ATTO benchmark!

alfaunits

09-16-2008, 10:42 AM

MadHacker

09-16-2008, 11:07 AM

this is sweet...
My question is... with better cooling... is it overclockable?

One_Hertz

09-16-2008, 11:54 AM

WTF would need 1GB/s for a 64GB device? Can't you wait 30 secs vs 60secs to fill it up? :D
IMO, we need greater capacity in a single slot thing (i.e. 2 SATA ports are more than enough for the bandwidth/IOPS), but 32 GB... it's small. Doable, but small.

Nothing, but like you said, capacity would indeed be an issue so multiple devices would need to be stacked. 32GB is a little small...

And no you can't overclock it. For very obvious reasons.

JasonACARD

09-16-2008, 01:36 PM

... As far as I understood, this setup would mean 4 sata cables? So 80k random iops and 1.2GB/s read/write? Would need a very expensive card to raid two devices properly though...

Looking forward to an ATTO benchmark!

Thank you One_Hertz :up:

Yes, deploying 2x 9010, you can fully utilize the bandwidth with 4 SATA ports.
There are speculations on the performance with 4 port RAID 0 on motherboards.
Like I said on the previous responses, I should gather the data on RAID 0 @ 4 port or even 6, or 8 ports.

The assumptions are that:
with the mid-range/high end motherboards that most professional users own, depends on user deployment, 9010/9010B can utilize onboard SATA ports.

For server/workstation applications, compare with IODrive, RAM Disk is different on the bases of interface (PCIe vs SATA).
Depends on application, clients may see the usage differently. Preference may become a factor here, when cost and performance are similar.

There is a very basic, yet critical difference between SSD and RAM Disk made of DDRII RAMS.
The write cycle of SSD is still limited even on enterprise grade SLC SSD.
I don't think, however, they are better or worse than each other.
It will come down to the application environment.

Thank you all for the post again, your thoughts are valuable to us.

Nanometer

09-16-2008, 04:33 PM

2hr stand by, ouch. Don't plan to do any long distance moving, what a pain in the arse to work with.

Polizei

09-16-2008, 05:02 PM

The battery is in place so that any power outage or unexpected shutdowns are covered.
Correct, as long as battery last long enough to dump all data onto CF card, there will be no worries.
The battery included is more than enough in our testings.
I will be back with screen shots. :)

2hr stand by, ouch. Don't plan to do any long distance moving, what a pain in the arse to work with.

Once power is restored, the battery is recharged. It's only there to get the info from the RAM onto the CF card, nothing more. It's not needed during boot.

NeedMoMegaHurtZ

09-16-2008, 05:44 PM

Thanks for taking the time to provide us with information, Jason

I'm looking forward to seeing the benchmarks.

A few questions:

1) Does Windows "see" this device as a hard drive?

2) Is this bootable?

3) Estimates on power consumption? What kind of connector is used?

alfaunits

09-16-2008, 08:18 PM

How fast is the CF card? (i.e. how fast will the RAM be backed up?)

spazoid

09-16-2008, 10:49 PM

I too am interested in how the system would see the drive. If you connect both connecters, logic tells me that the BIOS and therefore the OS would see two drives, but both "drives" would have the same data because there is infact only one drive. :confused:

And how do you set up a RAID then? The controller sees 2 drives of (fx) 64 GB, and it would then believe that there would be 128 GB available, but obviosly this would be wrong.

How did you go about this issue? Or am I just completely wrong?

tiro_uspsss

09-16-2008, 11:19 PM

If you think 20K IOPS is fast....

well actually.... MTRON Pro 7500 model is rated @ 83K/19K : sequential/random; thats what MRTON rate them @ ;).. I have nooo idea how correct this is or how relevant... someone else care to step in & help me here?

it just seems 20K for this ACARD is not all *that* impressive *if* MTRONs figures are correct - yes, 20K IOPs random is *very* good, but...... any one follow my train of thought here? :shrug:

alfaunits

09-17-2008, 08:39 AM

Eternalightwith

09-17-2008, 09:33 AM

Jason,

Does Acard plan to quickly release a SATA 6gbit/s upgrade?

As they are coming out next mid-year.

JasonACARD

09-17-2008, 12:23 PM

Thanks guys, a lot of good questions here!! Though I might not be able to answer them all, I will definitely come back with answers.

1) Does Windows "see" this device as a hard drive?

2) Is this bootable?

3) Estimates on power consumption? What kind of connector is used?

Consider the RAM Disk as a hard drive, OS sees it as a hard drive; you have to allocate it, format it, use it, love it... etc.

It is bootable.

I have to get back to you on power consumption.
My list of "getting back to..." is getting bigger. This is exciting.

I follow and agree. Sequential 20K IOPS @ 4K would be 80MB/s - that's rubbish, and probably is more. @16K, it would make sense to max out @ 20K, because it would oversaturate the SATA2 bus :D So seq. must be >80K IOPS @4KB block to make it useful.
For RAM, 20K Random is also too low. (depends on buffer size, of course, but I presume we're talking 4K/512b, not 16K for random :D)

I think benchmark and screenshots should explain a lot.

About 6G SATA, let’s just say we’re aware of it. Thanks for bringing it up :D

NeedMoMegaHurtZ

09-17-2008, 01:53 PM

I downloaded the manual from the Acard website, it looks like capacity is 1/2 for when each port is used (which makes sense if it's going to work in Windows)

Open: Single mode (default)
Through the SATA port0, we can access the total capacity of DDR2 SDRAM DIMM.
SATA port1 will be disabled.
Short: Dual mode
Each SATA ports can be accessed to one disk with half capacity of total DDR2 SDRAM
DIMM. With this mode enabled, we can double the data transfer rate by configure them
as a RAID0 (stripping) logical disk if the SATA host supports RAID function.

It looks like 1 sata power cable powers it

Jason - can you also please check on noise level and confirm if any fans come with this model? or is it passively cooled? I ask because a similar looking DDR1 drive, the Hyperdrive4 is quite loud with it's fans

MadHacker

09-17-2008, 02:12 PM

also wondering what is the load times from the CF card.
would make a nice boot drive to switch OS's easily...

tiro_uspsss

09-17-2008, 02:53 PM

I follow and agree. Sequential 20K IOPS @ 4K would be 80MB/s - that's rubbish, and probably is more. @16K, it would make sense to max out @ 20K, because it would oversaturate the SATA2 bus :D So seq. must be >80K IOPS @4KB block to make it useful.
For RAM, 20K Random is also too low. (depends on buffer size, of course, but I presume we're talking 4K/512b, not 16K for random :D)

thank goodness someone understands my mad ramblings! :D :up: :toast:

@ JasonACARD: u sir are doing one helluva good with providing us with info! :bows: :bows: :bows:

Polizei

09-17-2008, 03:14 PM

@ JasonACARD: u sir are doing one helluva good with providing us with info! :bows: :bows: :bows:

:yepp: :up:

More companies need to do this.

JasonACARD

09-17-2008, 03:42 PM

You're very welcome guys.

How fast is the CF card? (i.e. how fast will the RAM be backed up?)

Alfaunits, it depends on the speed of CF cards.

It looks like 1 sata power cable powers it

Jason - can you also please check on noise level and confirm if any fans come with this model? or is it passively cooled? I ask because a similar looking DDR1 drive, the Hyperdrive4 is quite loud with it's fans

*Opens up the chassis. Nope, no fans :D

also wondering what is the load times from the CF card.
would make a nice boot drive to switch OS's easily...

The main purpose of CF card is for data security, but that's a great idea. :)

thank goodness someone understands my mad ramblings! :D :up: :toast:

@ JasonACARD: u sir are doing one helluva good with providing us with info! :bows: :bows: :bows:

Same goes to you all :) Great feedbacks!
Below are some pictures of the last engineering sample I have on hand. Very close to mass production. IO meter is from a RAID 0 setup. I do not have data on IO meter setup however, a more comprehensive benchmark and test report is being prepared.

tiro_uspsss

09-17-2008, 06:26 PM

read & write IOPs = me has wet pants :D

Polizei

09-17-2008, 08:19 PM

Me too. :D

Looks sleek too... not flashy. I like it. :up:

alfaunits

09-17-2008, 09:22 PM

QL IOPS!!! You were right, tiro ;)
/me goes looking for lots of 4GB sticks...

tiro_uspsss

09-18-2008, 12:57 AM

QL IOPS!!! You were right, tiro ;)
/me goes looking for lots of 4GB sticks...

:D:D:D

I so badly needs to get a job so I can get $$$ to buy :(
*sigh*

so what u thinking - ECC ram or not? ECC 4GB dimms are hell expensive :(

non-ECC 4GB dimms are far more affordable..

if I were cashed up i'd get 2 units, & a 2GB ECC dimm in each slot for a total of 32GB (spread over 4 SATA ports) :)

:up:

[XC] gomeler

09-18-2008, 05:43 AM

Oh wow.. I imagine it's limited by the SATA2 interface, is SATA3 the same connector but a different protocol? Would love to know if SATA3 will simply be a firmware update, that would make these amazing file manipulation(ZIP/RAR anyone?) drives. Glad to have an ACARD rep here :up:

One_Hertz

09-18-2008, 06:30 AM

that benchie is just one unit (with two SATA cables)???

That is really nice... ATTO benchmark please!

Hmm this is looking to be better than the iodrive for gamers. Need more benchies and info about future SATA 3 implementation!

Technically 32GB isnt TOO bad hmmm lol. Windows XP (not vista, it is too big lol) and a few games.

Levish

09-18-2008, 07:11 AM

very excited about this device, just need a way to source limitless quantities of 4GB DDR2-800 sticks :D

MadHacker

09-18-2008, 07:39 AM

Cheapest ram I can find at new egg is 2x 4GB @ $189.99
link (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227354)

I got wondering of the timing or voltage on the ram can get tweaked inside the ram-disk.

it would suck if the ram-disk was set for 1 specific voltage, and the ram needed different voltage...

One_Hertz

09-18-2008, 07:54 AM

The timings/speed of the ram doesnt matter AT ALL... Even the cheapest sticks are many MANY times faster than what the device offers. They are not the bottleneck.

G.Foyle

09-18-2008, 08:14 AM

Technically 32GB isnt TOO bad hmmm lol. Windows XP (not vista, it is too big lol) and a few games.
In fact 32 GB is perfectly enough for Vista x64 + Program Files + 4GB of swap file.

MadHacker

09-18-2008, 08:21 AM

unfortuatly not for me...
After vista64 is installed, Visual studio, Office, Photoshop, and a bunch of needed SDKs, and a few other apps
it eats up 46 GB.

I suppose i could run it on a compressed drive and it would fit...
but that would be taking away from the speed of the ram drive...

edit:
Turning off system restore Dropped me down to 35GB
moving my 4.5GB page file to another drive would make it small enough

p8ntslinger676

09-18-2008, 08:55 AM

only one question, does it come in a matte black bezel for those of us with matte black cases :D

Polizei

09-18-2008, 08:56 AM

In fact 32 GB is perfectly enough for Vista x64 + Program Files + 4GB of swap file.

I've got a 30GB boot RAID0 slice for Vista Ultimate x64... after MS Office, Firefox, Adobe suite and other misc programs like Pidgin and itunes, I have 1.5GB free. No games installed.

Vista Ultimate x64 eats like 22GB off the start.

WangChung

09-18-2008, 09:00 AM

I've got a 30GB boot RAID0 slice for Vista Ultimate x64... after MS Office, Firefox, Adobe suite and other misc programs like Pidgin and itunes, I have 1.5GB free. No games installed.

Vista Ultimate x64 eats like 22GB off the start.

Your OS takes 22GB for install??? :eek:

Glad I'm still on XP x64. No I'm not trying to turn this into a XP/Vista bash fest either. :ROTF:

coo-coo-clocker

09-18-2008, 09:02 AM

This is very intriguing...
Hmmm so many ways to use it:

o/s boot
o/s swap file
browser cache
low-power headless F@H cruncher :)

So Jason,
you said the device is bootable. Does this mean it has a bios or some type of bootstrap code whereby it can load from CF on startup? How does this work?

JasonACARD

09-18-2008, 09:40 AM

Thank you for the inputs :)
I have some media test results from my colleagues in Taiwan. I'll start a new post on the test results tomorrow when I put them together.

This is very intriguing...
Hmmm so many ways to use it:

o/s boot
o/s swap file
browser cache
low-power headless F@H cruncher :)

…Does this mean it has a bios or some type of bootstrap code whereby it can load from CF on startup? How does this work?

Also, for virtual machines, video editing, or index servers, there are countless bottlenecks out there that RAM Disk can help.

System can be bootup from the RAM Disk itself, not the CF :D

only one question, does it come in a matte black bezel for those of us with matte black cases :D
That’s a good idea :D
We have no plan in place to modify the outlook yet, however.

:D:D:D

….so what u thinking - ECC ram or not? ECC 4GB dimms are hell expensive :(

non-ECC 4GB dimms are far more affordable…

:up:

A little hint on the type of memory to use, performance wise, ECC and non-ECC are on par. Speed of DDRII RAM may not make a big difference. The clock speed of DDRII RAM needed to saturate SATA port is not that high. ;)

MadHacker

09-18-2008, 09:41 AM

Eternalightwith

09-18-2008, 11:24 AM

I would think it would depend on what CF card you put in there. Obviously you would need the capacity to be the same.

also wondering what is the load times from the CF card.
would make a nice boot drive to switch OS's easily...

alfaunits

09-18-2008, 01:12 PM

If the pricing sticks @ 500$, then it will be worth buying 4GB sticks and a single unit. Seriosly, at that price, it should have 32 slots :D

if I were cashed up i'd get 2 units, & a 2GB ECC dimm in each slot for a total of 32GB (spread over 4 SATA ports) :)

Polizei

09-18-2008, 01:29 PM

So, if this was a boot drive, if I pressed the power button to turn the computer on, would your RAM drive load the info from the CF into the RAM and then boot the computer? How would that work?

Oliver

09-18-2008, 01:41 PM

welcome to xs and awesome to see ram drive @ ddr2 will be released

Thanks for the information you have posted

which voltage is supplied to the DIMMs, ddr2 jedec standard or?

thanks

NeedMoMegaHurtZ

09-18-2008, 01:52 PM

So, if this was a boot drive, if I pressed the power button to turn the computer on, would your RAM drive load the info from the CF into the RAM and then boot the computer? How would that work?

Jason can confirm, but it's probably "always on" like i-ram and hyperdrive4. If the power goes out, it uses the battery. UPS is nice for extra comfort :)

Polizei

09-18-2008, 04:26 PM

How would it be always on though... drawing power from the 5vsb? How? I see no wires.

tiro_uspsss

09-18-2008, 06:14 PM

How would it be always on though... drawing power from the 5vsb? How? I see no wires.

I see Sata power connector and some kind of 4 pin power connector thing at the back... ;)

Sunayknits

09-18-2008, 08:22 PM

In less than a year flash memory will meet and probably exceed even SATA-II bandwidth. Most OEMs will figure out how to parallelize flash like the FusionIO drive and flash-based SSDs will have completely overtaken the market, replacing mechanical hard drives in workstations and laptops.

Magnetic hard drives will be used exclusively for backups, just as tape is relegated to those duties now. You will probably see one, maybe 2 drives in RAID 1 included for backups in systems because people will have much greater expectations for data availability and reliabililty.

Call me Nostradumbus, but I see this only as a novelty solution. The inherent problems of using DRAM to store data with any kind of longevity are just too great and I doubt this device will solve that problem.

Benchmark queen? Check.

Interesting and fun to mess with? Check.

Useful and valuable? Fail.

m^2

09-18-2008, 11:49 PM

What are expected access times with onboard and external controllers?

One_Hertz

09-19-2008, 05:29 AM

Most OEMs will figure out how to parallelize flash like the FusionIO drive and flash-based SSDs will have completely overtaken the market, replacing mechanical hard drives in workstations and laptops.

They won't replace HDDs for a while... Speed ultimately means little in workstations. There are still WAY too many BIG problems with SSDs that can not be sovled in 1 year. Maybe 3-5 years.

Levish

09-21-2008, 06:33 AM

JasonACARD

09-22-2008, 09:32 AM

So, if this was a boot drive, if I pressed the power button to turn the computer on, would your RAM drive load the info from the CF into the RAM and then boot the computer? How would that work?

Good thinking there. When you turn off your PC the backup mechanism will start, when you turn it back on, data will be fed from CF card.

welcome to xs and awesome to see ram drive @ ddr2 will be released

Thanks for the information you have posted

which voltage is supplied to the DIMMs, ddr2 jedec standard or?

thanks

Thank you :) I'll try my best to explain here.
DDR2 RAMs varies a bit on voltage base on, partly, DDR speed and CL timing.
Internal controller will synchronize the difference so all RAM onboard will operate as one. I hope I answer your question?

What are expected access times with onboard and external controllers?
For ACARD RAM Disk, access time is too fast and the benchmark software cannot evaluate the speed since it enters ns (nanosecond?) access time instead of ms.

Sorry Nostradumbus but its already in use and critical for the enterprise (not this particular solution, but its more expensive relative).

Users have different preferences and I respect everyone's opinion. :up:
Like I said before, SSD has huge advantages in a lot of applications, but it also bares the drawback of write time and write cycle limitation.
I don't see why this cannot be solved with the advancement of technology.

As far as cost of SSD goes, it will become dramatically user friendly within a year or two, depending on how the giant players plan their marketing.

Back to RAM Disk, there is a fine line between DDR RAM Disk and SLC/MLC SSDs.
Info on SSD are everywhere online; so I will stop here and not to make myself appearing incompetent going into the technical.

There are a lot of RAM Disk applications, already deployed, in video editing, HD microscope video capturing, and enterprise grade solutions. RAM Disk is absolutely not perfect, but it does have great values.
What ACARD is trying to do is to introduce something different, an option for the user, with 9010 RAM Disk. :)

m^2

09-22-2008, 11:39 AM

For ACARD RAM Disk, access time is too fast and the benchmark software cannot evaluate the speed since it enters ns (nanosecond?) access time instead of ms.

Nanoseconds...nice.
Other RAM SSD manufacturers measure it somehow. Hyperdrive claims 1100 ns read/250 ns write.

Buckeye

09-22-2008, 12:00 PM

I think I just found what to use my other 4 SATA connectors on my ARC-1231ML for :)

I like it !!

tiro_uspsss

09-22-2008, 03:26 PM

Sorry Nostradumbus but its already in use and critical for the enterprise (not this particular solution, but its more expensive relative).

QFT

while DDR based SSDs arent used for super-long term storage, they still definitely used, & in a rather sizeable solution.. Sunayknits, ever heard of terra ramsan? ;)

http://www.thinkcp.com/products/terraramsan.asp

:up:

crackhead2k

09-22-2008, 03:51 PM

QFT

while DDR based SSDs arent used for super-long term storage, they still definitely used, & in a rather sizeable solution.. Sunayknits, ever heard of terra ramsan?

http://www.thinkcp.com/products/terraramsan.asp

Notice 2500 watts:eek:

Sunayknits

09-22-2008, 04:06 PM

QFT

while DDR based SSDs arent used for super-long term storage, they still definitely used, & in a rather sizeable solution.. Sunayknits, ever heard of terra ramsan? ;)

http://www.thinkcp.com/products/terraramsan.asp

:up:

Yeah I've seen the Texas Memory Systems devices and they are very impressive. I suppose there is still a niche for this kind of thing. Still, I believe flash will soon be so fast as to eliminate this market entirely.

I guess time will tell! :shrug:

tiro_uspsss

09-23-2008, 07:23 AM

Notice 2500 watts:eek:

:eek: I must admit I missed that part :D :up: - my eyes got all misty when I read: " Over 3.2 million random I/O requests per second " :rofl: just imagine, ACARD has ~95K (read) IOPs, so thats the equivalent of... almost 34 ACARDS! :shocked: :up:

m^2

09-23-2008, 09:11 AM

This system is very old.
RamSan 440 offers 512 GB @ 650 Watts peak.
RamSan 500 - 2TB of flash + 64 GB RAM cache @ 300W.
And each takes 4U, not 24.
ADDED:

:eek: I must admit I missed that part :D :up: - my eyes got all misty when I read: " Over 3.2 million random I/O requests per second " :rofl: just imagine, ACARD has ~95K (read) IOPs, so thats the equivalent of... almost 34 ACARDS! :shocked: :up:

IO meter is from a RAID 0 setup

# IOPS 20,000 per SATA port

WangChung

09-23-2008, 07:23 PM

I just had a great idea for Acard's new drive, and how I'm thinking about setting up my system. I'm thinking 1 RAM disk totally dedicated to OS and bare essentials like codecs and hotfixes. Then, a second "image" RAM drive. Then as big storage (here's where it gets good, I think anyway), 3x750GB (or whatever size you want) standard HDDs, that store ghost images of the second RAM drive. So what you do is boot into windows, install your game onto the 2nd image RAM drive, take a ghost image of it and stick it in the big storage. Write a simple .bat file and any time you want to play like CS, the image is transfered from the big storage to the image RAM drive and played from there. That way you don't have to worry about maxing out the storage on any of the RAM drives or having to pick and choose which games to keep installed on there, and while your initial "load" time would be slightly longer, it would definitely pay off while in game. Hmmm.... :)

/beardstroke

m^2

09-24-2008, 12:46 AM

Levish

09-24-2008, 08:45 AM

my bet is that the acard solution is even better than expected when paired with a quality controller is used as opposed to the onboard stuff, as IOPs and latency is at its mercy at a certain point (barring of course your own dram controller isn't holding the performance back)

also

JasonACard my reply was for SunayKnits, more specifically clarifing that a solution similar to ACard's device is already in "mission critical" type use.

ewitte

09-27-2008, 02:28 PM

Lol those types of RAMSAN drives cost more than most peoples houses.

Levish

09-29-2008, 09:55 AM

but they are not in any way shape or form designed / intended for home users.

JasonACARD

09-29-2008, 03:41 PM

RADCOM

09-29-2008, 04:00 PM

Apart from here lol

Anandtech, toms hardware and hardocp are the ones I really like although many here will now spit on and deride me. I m looking forward to testing one myself if you'll sell me a sample :)

nox_uk

09-30-2008, 12:26 AM

Are there any good review websites that you guys recommend?

in addition to Anandtech, I like reading the reviews at hexus too, but for a drive i'd look at www.storagereview.com

Nox

Levish

09-30-2008, 05:21 AM

I'd go with StorageReview and Anandtech

tiro_uspsss

09-30-2008, 05:40 AM

www.techreport.com

dicecca112

09-30-2008, 06:02 AM

legitreviews.com

Johnny Bravo

10-01-2008, 03:14 AM

storagereview would be a good choice

IanB

10-01-2008, 08:23 AM

storagereview would be a good choice

Not really - do they even DO reviews any more? :(

Look at the date of the last one: http://www.storagereview.com/articles.sr

nox_uk

10-02-2008, 02:43 AM

26th July last time their database was updated, only a few months ago - they have only done a couple of fairly old SSD's, would be my only hesitation, what i'd like to see is a head to head vs the intel X25-M ;)

Nox

Buckeye

10-03-2008, 06:54 PM

Hi Guys,
glad to see the conversation goes on :)
I was having hands-on testing with our units in the past few days and it's ready to go.
Soon we'll be seeing some reviews.
Are there any good review websites that you guys recommend?

I have got a rig right here ready with 4 spare SATA connectors on a ARC-1231ML all set to test 2 of these :)

I am looking forward to seeing some reviews of these babies !

Speederlander

10-28-2008, 08:45 PM

Boogerlad

11-01-2008, 08:25 AM

i think it's now on sale according to the site. Not bad. Top end model 350. 2 gig dims from newegg.ca is 30 bucks. Not bad for a 16 gig ssd.

Speederlander

11-01-2008, 09:27 AM

i think it's now on sale according to the site. Not bad. Top end model 350. 2 gig dims from newegg.ca is 30 bucks. Not bad for a 16 gig ssd.

Looks like one place has it, 2san. I would like to see some independent reviews...

Big investment w/o a major rundown from a good reviewer.

Also, pretty limited RAM compatibility list and none of them are ECC, unless I am mistaken. ECC seems a MUST...

coo-coo-clocker

11-02-2008, 10:18 AM

I had asked Treadlayers (http://www.treadlayers.com) when they were planning to do an SSD review. Here's the response I got back:

SSD tests are coming soon we hope. Because of their high price, manufacturers rarely ever send them out for reviews. But what I can say is that they have little advantage in my book over top-end HDDs. Less space, limited write cycles, and equal power consumption doesn’t amount to a compelling reason to upgrade. As you will see in our upcoming super ultraportable article, I opted for a WD Scorpio Black 320GB 7200 RPM over any SSD not because of space, but rather SSDs didn’t offer enough advantages. Read speeds are great, but at too high a $/GB cost.

Speederlander

11-02-2008, 10:31 AM

I had asked Treadlayers (http://www.treadlayers.com) when they were planning to do an SSD review. Here's the response I got back:

Huh? This is NOT a (nand) SSD. It's a DRAM based drive.

*fixed*

m^2

11-02-2008, 10:50 AM

Huh? This is NOT an SSD. It's a DRAM based drive.

It is a SSD. Search for a definition in any source. SSD != flash.

Speederlander

11-02-2008, 11:04 AM

It is a SSD. Search for a definition in any source. SSD != flash.

Misspoke, I meant NAND SSD. Note their comment:

limited write cycles
Doesn't apply. They are thinking of the wrong technology.

Levish

11-04-2008, 07:23 AM

4GB Kingston JDEC Validated ECC 667mhz sticks for 66$ let you run 1/2 as many drives for the same capacity (or just add capacity) there are 800mhz sticks too for around 75

http://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-kvr667d2q8p5-4g~7KIN90UR.htm

found404

11-04-2008, 11:26 AM

Looks like it'll be $399
http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=270&prod_no=ANS-9010&type1_title=%20Solid%20State%20Drive&type1_idno=null

Quite a bit seeing as you still need to add ram and SLC SSDs are coming down in price

Levish

11-04-2008, 01:35 PM

249$ for the 4x Ram slot / 1 Sata port model, which is what i'll be getting two of when they are confirmed to be generally available and working with raid controllers

IanB

11-04-2008, 07:36 PM

249$ for the 4x Ram slot / 1 Sata port model, which is what i'll be getting two of when they are confirmed to be generally available and working with raid controllers

If RAID0 speed matters more over absolute storage capacity, then the bigger model with the 2 SATA ports is the better buy and easier install. $399 < (2 * $250). It has the option to split the installed RAM equally into two separate disks each with their own port. :up:

Reading the product PDF and the website I am confused. Some of the info says ECC RAM definitely IS supported, but the compatability list says not. I'm also bemused by the fact that they claim up to 64Mb storage capacity, but that's only possible with 8Gb modules, and there are none tested in that compatability list.

However, I am sold on the quasi-ECC feature that kicks in when you don't have ECC RAM - it uses 1/10 of the total storage for ECC/parity info, so you lose a bit of storage but gain security against any odd bit error. Very neat, and simple.

At that price and with these features, this looks like a worthy i-RAM successor. ;)

Serra

11-04-2008, 07:47 PM

If RAID0 speed matters more over absolute storage capacity, then the bigger model with the 2 SATA ports is the better buy and easier install. $399 < (2 * $250). It has the option to split the installed RAM equally into two separate disks each with their own port. :up:

I was going to respond back in the same way about the better buy until I saw one thing - the $250 model on the website says it actually has SIX dimms instead of four. So it is $100 more to get two 9010b's instead, but it seems you will get a total of 4 more dimms for storage as well, making it actually worth doing this way.

One thing that bothers me about these though is the product brief suggests the 9010b has a max throughput of 200MB/s (1.6Gb/s) and the 9010 has 400MB/s (3.2Gb/s, but presumably that's 1.6Gb/s per SATA port). The problem with that is that it is just over half the maximum speed allowed by a SATA 3.0 port. Someone else had questioned whether the device would be upgradable when SATA 3.0 comes out... seeing as it doesn't offer near full SATA II speeds, I'd say "no". It's not a problem per-se, but I would like to see a faster throughput potential.

IanB

11-04-2008, 08:43 PM

So it is $100 more to get two 9010b's instead, but it seems you will get a total of 4 more dimms for storage as well, making it actually worth doing this way.
Depends on your POV: as I said, if capacity isn't your over-riding concern... For anyone coming from 2 x i-RAM like me (for an 8GB XP OS drive) 28GB would be sheer luxury... :ROTF: There's also the extra 5 1/4" form factor to consider in limited cases.

Financially the issue will be stuffing it with suitable RAM, though, not the cost of the boxes. :rolleyes:

B.E.E.F.

11-04-2008, 10:05 PM

So ACARD Ram Disk Speed > SATA Bandwidth?

Wouldn't the SATA port bottleneck it?

IanB

11-04-2008, 11:02 PM

So ACARD Ram Disk Speed > SATA Bandwidth?

Wouldn't the SATA port bottleneck it?

No, it's the other way around. The thing has a compatability mode for the SATA ports that puts them in SATA1 mode (200MB/s = 1.5Gb/s) but in SATAII mode it seems to have the same speed (that's the quoted maximum). So it's not taking advantage even of the increased bandwidth of SATAII, which is a bit of shame for a pure memory drive. IE., it's no better than the much older i-RAM in that respect. :(

Speederlander

11-04-2008, 11:08 PM

I was going to respond back in the same way about the better buy until I saw one thing - the $250 model on the website says it actually has SIX dimms instead of four. So it is $100 more to get two 9010b's instead, but it seems you will get a total of 4 more dimms for storage as well, making it actually worth doing this way.

One thing that bothers me about these though is the product brief suggests the 9010b has a max throughput of 200MB/s (1.6Gb/s) and the 9010 has 400MB/s (3.2Gb/s, but presumably that's 1.6Gb/s per SATA port). The problem with that is that it is just over half the maximum speed allowed by a SATA 3.0 port. Someone else had questioned whether the device would be upgradable when SATA 3.0 comes out... seeing as it doesn't offer near full SATA II speeds, I'd say "no". It's not a problem per-se, but I would like to see a faster throughput potential.

I'm curious if they will run on the major controller cards and how they look in RAID.

Serra

11-04-2008, 11:18 PM

Depends on your POV: as I said, if capacity isn't your over-riding concern... For anyone coming from 2 x i-RAM like me (for an 8GB XP OS drive) 28GB would be sheer luxury... :ROTF: There's also the extra 5 1/4" form factor to consider in limited cases.

Financially the issue will be stuffing it with suitable RAM, though, not the cost of the boxes. :rolleyes:

Oh, no doubt... just saying that there actually is an argument for doing it that way (though the original poster you were responding to didn't know it).

The fact that the lower end model does have 6 memory slots instead of 4 is interesting though, I may have to pick up one of them (4 slots wasn't enough for me, but 6 slots should be good... and I can always buy another if I need).

So ACARD Ram Disk Speed > SATA Bandwidth?

Wouldn't the SATA port bottleneck it?

It seems that:

ACARD Ram Disk Speed >>> SATA Bandwidth

- - - BUT (per ACARD website) - - -

SATA II Bandwidth (375MB/s) >> ACARD Ram Disk controller speed (200MB/s max)*
*SATA overhead takes SATA II realized speed to 300MB/s, but one would assume it would equally take its toll on the Ram Disk controller, reducing it to 160MB/s. However I couldn't say whether the 200MB/s is meant to be the *realized* speed or the gross speed without more in-depth product details or a unit to test.

I don't say that to poo-pooh this device mind you, but I would prefer it if the maximum transfer speed of the ACARD RAM disk device was higher. It will still be the fastest thing on wheels, even for the cost... but is it *as* comparable with SSD's as it could have been? On paper it still seems that the answer must be "no" - cheaper SSD's should have higher than a 200MB/s transfer speed before too long (though whether write speeds will match...), though the ACARD should still have even lower access times (which is funny to think of talking about, the difference between 0.1 and 0.0001 or w/e instead of 13ms vs 8ms like it used to be). Add in the cost/GB of this product and... well... we'll see.

What is clear from the specs on this is that some rigorous testing needs to be done on one of these things, preferably both models. Fortunately for ACARD the results in terms of speed are likely to be favorable... the question is more whether the results will be "good" but surpassable by SSDs in another 5 months or "great" and worth buying now by anyone interested in having the best disk subsystem for awhile.

IanB

11-04-2008, 11:34 PM

I'm curious if they will run on the major controller cards and how they look in RAID.

This is driverless, it should look just like a normal hard drive. Just a very, very fast one. The problem may be if the controller expects the speed of response of a normal hard drive and cannot cope somehow with information being returned orders of magnitude more quickly. SATA should be a generic interface, after all you don't usually need a new mobo BIOS with specific data to install a brand new hard drive... but there is obviously room for quirks given the occasional mobo incompatability.

Think

11-05-2008, 08:23 AM

Will there be an xtremesytems discount?:clap:

Levish

11-05-2008, 10:03 AM

This is driverless, it should look just like a normal hard drive. Just a very, very fast one. The problem may be if the controller expects the speed of response of a normal hard drive and cannot cope somehow with information being returned orders of magnitude more quickly. SATA should be a generic interface, after all you don't usually need a new mobo BIOS with specific data to install a brand new hard drive... but there is obviously room for quirks given the occasional mobo incompatability.

Doesn't mean the device will work with raid adapters (or rather one over the others). If it does end up supporting major raid controllers this device can actually possibly find its way into enterprise use rather than being limited to "desktop enthusiasts" like ourselves.

Come to think about it, using 4GB sticks I would be fine with a single dual sata port model. ~32GB of storage and 400MB/s

I wonder if there will be another revision of the device with a better dram controller than can give closer to the full SATAII bandwidth per port in the works.

IanB

11-05-2008, 10:25 AM

Doesn't mean the device will work with raid adapters (or rather one over the others). If it does end up supporting major raid controllers...

Huh? :confused: Do you ask if a new hard drive supports a specific RAID controller? The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability. Controllers don't need tables of data to speak to every different hard drive make and model, else they'd need to be software-updated every time a new one came out. Same for drives talking to controllers. Do you update drive firmware every time you plug an old drive into a brand new mainboard? :confused:

As long as they use a common subset of the available commands and don't do anything unexpected, there should be no problem linking any SATA device with any controller, short of a bug in the implementation somewhere. No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

Levish

11-05-2008, 11:29 AM

Huh? :confused: Do you ask if a new hard drive supports a specific RAID controller? The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability. Controllers don't need tables of data to speak to every different hard drive make and model, else they'd need to be software-updated every time a new one came out. Same for drives talking to controllers. Do you update drive firmware every time you plug an old drive into a brand new mainboard? :confused:

As long as they use a common subset of the available commands and don't do anything unexpected, there should be no problem linking any SATA device with any controller, short of a bug in the implementation somewhere. No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

In theory you are right, in practice not all hard disks work well with all controllers and the other way around.

Thats why some storage systems are qualified to run with some hard drives and so on.

Speederlander

11-05-2008, 04:22 PM

Huh? :confused: Do you ask if a new hard drive supports a specific RAID controller? The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability. Controllers don't need tables of data to speak to every different hard drive make and model, else they'd need to be software-updated every time a new one came out. Same for drives talking to controllers. Do you update drive firmware every time you plug an old drive into a brand new mainboard? :confused:

As long as they use a common subset of the available commands and don't do anything unexpected, there should be no problem linking any SATA device with any controller, short of a bug in the implementation somewhere. No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

No, I got the new Areca 1680ix-16 card, fairly high end, and it didn't support SSDs for boot until the third firmware revision. It handled them fine for a data drive, but wouldn't boot. "SATA standard" doesn't guarantee compatibility.

Buckeye

11-05-2008, 07:04 PM

I am very much looking forward to these. As I have 4 spare SATA connectors on my ARC1231ML these units would be Great for that spot.

4x 9010 with full RAM load would be a great test against my 8x MTRON's

IanB

11-05-2008, 09:29 PM

No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

No, I got the new Areca 1680ix-16 card, fairly high end, and it didn't support SSDs for boot until the third firmware revision. It handled them fine for a data drive, but wouldn't boot.

Er, isn't that what I said? :shrug: Levish's suggestion was that these drives should support specific controllers, not the other way around. If a specific controller can't use these drives, then they are not at fault, the controller card is.

Speederlander

11-06-2008, 06:31 AM

Er, isn't that what I said? :shrug: Levish's suggestion was that these drives should support specific controllers, not the other way around. If a specific controller can't use these drives, then they are not at fault, the controller card is.

Actually, no, that's not what you said. Both the controller AND the drive can be at fault when things don't work. There's more going on than just meeting the SATA standard. The WD 640GB harddrives that came out several months ago also had issues with several controllers. That turned out specifically to be a harddrive firmware issue from WD. But whatever, what people want to know is if the drives will work with the major controllers. Doesn't matter who didn't support who (controller or drive), doesn't work = doesn't work. That's why we need the tests and being a first time buyer is to be a beta tester in this case.

IanB

11-06-2008, 09:43 AM

Speederlander

11-06-2008, 10:07 AM

What we are disagreeing on is the word "support". Having a bug in the firmware doesn't mean drives don't "support" some controllers. It means the drives had a bug, that will affect multiple controller hosts.

"Support" implies special firmware code or handling for specific hardware. In your Areca example that's clearly what they fixed to allow booting from SSDs. So you proved my point, that controllers need to support specific drives, not the other way around. :rolleyes:

Since the 9010 series has a SATA1 compatability mode, I think we can assume that ACARD are interested in making the thing as widely compatible as possible, otherwise they wouldn't be getting that many sales of what is already a niche product...

The WD 640s had issues. This ACARD may have issues. The new Arecas had issues with some drives, just like they may have with these. My point is, just because these things are sata means squat. While I certainly appreciate a good argument degenerating into semantics, in this case it's pointless. All that matters is that major controllers will play well with it. Problems could exist on either the controller or the ACARD side. That was the only point. Without results we don't know.

You earlier said:

The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability.
As though as long as ACARD is SATA it will be problem free. In reality that's simply not the case. "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility" is a pretty absolute statement considering I have seen many incompatibilities on many different drives between many different controllers.

Eternalightwith

11-06-2008, 11:43 AM

so when are these going to hit retail? I found two on ebay. Gosh I hope they are cheaper than that. :(

Think

11-06-2008, 12:11 PM

so when are these going to hit retail? I found two on ebay. Gosh I hope they are cheaper than that. :(

No and those are the less expensive versions. I think the others are around $400:eek:

http://www.acard.com/upload/200810300437212109010%20web%20EN%20150x150.gif

ANS-9010
5.25 inch SATA x 2-to-DDRII RAM Disk
(RAM module not including)
more information
Price:USD399.00 Pre-Order

http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-batcar.jsp#

The 9010B are $299

josh1980

11-06-2008, 06:03 PM

Hello guys. Here's my first post:

I have a 9010(8 slot) box with 16GB of ram in it, probably 32GB tomorrow. I'd be more than glad to run some benchmarks. Any requests on what programs to use or benchmarks to perform? I'm doing some tests with HD Tach and PCMark05 and I'll post results tomorrrow.

IanB

11-06-2008, 07:46 PM

In reality that's simply not the case. "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility" is a pretty absolute statement considering I have seen many incompatibilities on many different drives between many different controllers.

If you're going to nitpick aggressively about my phrasing, I prefer the obvious stress intended when I wrote it: "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility". I believe that was the sense of my argument. If there IS incompatability with a particular drive or controller, it's clearly a bug, it's not a case of "support" or no "support".

Speederlander

11-06-2008, 09:30 PM

If you're going to nitpick aggressively about my phrasing, I prefer the obvious stress intended when I wrote it: "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility". I believe that was the sense of my argument. If there IS incompatability with a particular drive or controller, it's clearly a bug, it's not a case of "support" or no "support".

Heh, I felt you were nitpicking mine. ;) I don't care if it's due to bad support or no support or a bug or a calculated choice, either it works or it doesn't. There is a better than vanishing chance that it may have troubles, which ever side those troubles might come from. My original point was the sata standard it follows won't matter. Theoretically, sure, if both sides perfectly implement it would be peachy, but practical experience has proven time and time again that both controller manufacturers and hard drive manufacturers will find a way for something not to work, either by mistake or omission. Hence, I want to see the results of reviewers trying this thing on some controllers before I spend hundreds of dollars to beta test it.

B.E.E.F.

11-07-2008, 08:50 AM

tiro_uspsss

11-07-2008, 05:06 PM

cant remember if this has been asked: can u use diff capacity DIMMs?

wmaciv

11-07-2008, 07:13 PM

Will the ANS-9010 work with 512x64 HD memory on 4gb sticks? My I-RAM works fine with the cheaper, high density modules. That would make it a lot nicer trying to populate this thing with enough memory to make it usefull.

josh1980

11-07-2008, 08:31 PM

So here's the long story on the troubles I've been going through.

The manual that comes with it says the following:

The ANS-9010/9010B supports both ECC and none ECC DR SDRAM DIMM. However, it is strongly recommended to use ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM to ensure data integrity. ANS9010 supports both ECC and Non-ECC registered DDR-2 memory. Users can obtain full capacity when ECC registered memories are used.
The manual for download at the Acard website says:

The ANS-9010 supports both ECC and Non-ECC DDR2 SDRAM DIMM. It does not support Buffered nor Registered DDR2 SDRAM DIMM.
The bad English is copied from the manual. It reads like it was written in Japanese and then quickly translated to English. I can't figure out if it means to say you need registered memory from my manual or not. First it says you can't use it, then it says you can. ECC does not mean it's Registered. I called Acard about this, and the guy barely speaks English. He couldn't really tell me much of anything I didn't figure out on my own after almost 7 hours of troubleshooting this thing. Needless, don't try to call them for help. Your dog/cat can probably help out more than they can.

I was unable to get my 8 4GB sticks of ram to work. The ANS-9010 does NOT work with cheaper high density modules. Took only 7 hours of troubleshooting and 3 phone calls to finally prove that I'm screwed and I'll have to return the memory I just got in the mail. Putting the ones I bought in cause completely unexplainable results. Errors both on reads and writes, and crazy crazy memory sizes like 15.462GB when there was 32GB of RAM installed. So no, don't try the high density modules or you'll be doing a big fat return for lots of $$$ like I am doing today.

I tested both DDR2-533 and DDR2-800 memory sticks. Both performed to within 2%. I think the 2% is within the tolerance of the test. I will be buying whatever is cheaper this weekend :P.

You can populate any size stick in any slots. Choose any combination of sizes and fill whatever slots you feel like filling, it all works the same.

Before I give the results, I would like to mention that using PCMARK and h2benchw would max out one of my cores(I have a q6600) for the tests, so these may be CPU limited.

Here's the Benchmark results:

Single Port tests
----------------

HD Tach -

Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization:3%
Average Read: 167.8 MB/sec
Average Write: 140.3 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 171.9MB/sec
The graph was perfectly horizontal, as expected.

h2benchw -

Interface transfer rate w/ block size 128 sectors at 0.0% of capacity:
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 157501 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.45 ms): 149527 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 157399 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 131372 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.54 ms): 125681 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 129962 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 159140.5, min 82580.7, max 166318.5 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 124803.8, min 61775.2, max 138881.6 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.07 [ms]

Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec

PCMark05 -

XP Startup - 124.747MB/sec
Application Loading: 109.865MB/sec
General Usage: 81.776MB/sec
Virus Scan - 102.181MB/sec
File Write - 119.448MB/sec

Next I ran benchmarks using the 2 port operation. I couldn't use RAID mode because the C drive is not RAID, so the drive would not be bootable. Software RAID0 was used to perform the tests. HD Tach cannot test software RAIDs.

First I ran benchmarks on the 2 "drives" simultaneously to see what would happen. Most people would choose to test them sequentially. When run simultaneously, each drive shows the full performance of single port mode. This would hint that when I set them up as a RAID, the performance will approximately double. That is actually not the case.

Results for RAID0 software:

PCMark05 -

XP Startup - 184.984MB/sec
Application Loading: 101.014MB/sec
General Usage: 106.912MB/sec
Virus Scan - 129.055MB/sec
File Write - 143.953MB/sec

h2benchw -

Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 157501 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.45 ms): 149527 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 157399 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 131372 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.54 ms): 125681 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 129962 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 159140.5, min 82580.7, max 166318.5 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 124803.8, min 61775.2, max 138881.6 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.07 [ms]

Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec
As you can see, some benchmarks changed, others did not.

Next I decided to plug the ANS-9010 into my RAID controller. I used a Highpoint Technology 2320 PCI-Express card to perform the tests.

RAID0 using hardware:

HD Tach -

Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization: 3%
Average Read: 222.9MB/sec
Average Write: 183.6 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 325.5MB/sec
The graph looks like waves from an ocean. See the attachment HDTACH.jpg to see for yourself.

PCMark05 -

XP Startup - 217.013MB/sec
Application Loading: 143.856MB/sec
General Usage: 150.068MB/sec
Virus Scan - 196.521MB/sec
File Write - 170.235MB/sec

h2benchw -

Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 166471 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.42 ms): 166272 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 166620 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 138353 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.51 ms): 138472 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 138405 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 167238.2, min 166625.9, max 167782.4 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 138959.6, min 138269.7, max 139480.7 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.10 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.09 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.12 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.11 [ms]

Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec

As you can see, some benchmarks changed alot, some didn't change at all. PCMARK05 seems to have increased in all tests by using the RAID card. This makes me wonder if there is some kind of bottleneck when using my onboard controller. I'm thinking the SATA controller has a 1x PCIe lane to the southbridge, which is probably nearing saturation when I run RAID0. Strangely this doesn't show itself when I benchmarked the 2 drives independently

Overall, this thing is crazy fast. I don't care what others say, this thing is wicked fast. Most people here will admit that if you tried to copy 7000 little files totaling less than 500MB, it would take a while because of the number of files, not the actual size of data. I extracted about 7000 files totaling about 500MB from a .7z file using maximum compression to the drive in less than 10 seconds. I then duplicated the data on the drive in less than 10 seconds. I don't know anyone that has copied 7000 files in 10 seconds, let alone even 1 minute. I'm impressed!

I don't know if this box can use registered memory or not, but I am going to find out. ECC memory is cheaper online if it's also Registered, so I'm looking for the cheapest solution to fill this drive with 4GB sticks.

Also, the drive name in the BIOS will clue you in on what this drive is doing. If you look at BIOSPICT.jpg, you'll see how it works.

Each "field" is separated by an underscore.

The ANS9010 is the model.
The first 0 is the port. If you use the dual port mode, the first drive is 0, the second drive is 1.
The last one is the slots used. In my pict slots 0 and 1 were populated. The *'s indicate empty slots.

Also, for anyone playing around, here's the slot numbers for the slots from left to right when the front of the box faces you:

7,5,6,4 <Center> 0,2,1,3

I'll let everyone know how the Registered memory works and hopefully we can all find a cheap supplier for 4GB sticks.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

wmaciv

11-08-2008, 04:12 AM

Josh, I would certainly like to see the results with an onboard chipset in RAID mode if you get around to it. I have an ANS-9010 due in the mail Monday; glad I waited on the RAM purchase. I currently have an old Platypus QikDrive8 and two Gigabyte I-RAM Box style drives on my system, and the ACARD looks like the Holy Grail....

Wade

josh1980

11-08-2008, 10:53 AM

Ok, I can confirm that Registered memory does NOT work. I also investigated buying registered memory and removing the register chip, but that won't work either. Looks like we're stick buying either 2GB sticks on the cheap, or 4GB sticks at about $110 or so each :(. Anyone else know of any place that sells 4GB memory sticks that are unregistered and low density for less than $100 a stick?

I'll see about getting that done for you today wmaciv.

Just for giggles, I tried using one of those SATA to USB converters and benchmarked the box. I get a cool, crisp 30MB/sec. WOOHOO! ROFL. I did this to see what the actual maximum speed for USB2 is because USB2 wasn't designed for transferring data like is commonly used for thumbdrives and memory sticks.

Also, on my box is a sticker that tells you what all the jumper settings are. There is only 3 on the chart(there's 5 jumpers). But 1 of the 3 jumper descriptions is covered with a sticker that says "RESERVED". If you put a jumper in that location, it disables the ECC feature that takes non-ECC memory and makes it ECC. You lose 1/9 of your RAM size for this ECC feature. I think that they chose to not show this feature because of some kind of problem they had requiring the ECC feature to work.

B.E.E.F.

11-08-2008, 11:24 AM

Wow great results.

I read the device has enough battery to back up its contents on a CF card. Have you also tested this? Do you have more info on this feature?

josh1980

11-08-2008, 11:36 AM

I haven't bought a CF card for it, but the battery lasted about 2.5 hours when I tested it after leaving it to charge overnight.. that should be plenty of time to back up to CF.

IanB

11-08-2008, 01:34 PM

Also, on my box is a sticker that tells you what all the jumper settings are. There is only 3 on the chart(there's 5 jumpers). But 1 of the 3 jumper descriptions is covered with a sticker that says "RESERVED". If you put a jumper in that location, it disables the ECC feature that takes non-ECC memory and makes it ECC. You lose 1/9 of your RAM size for this ECC feature. I think that they chose to not show this feature because of some kind of problem they had requiring the ECC feature to work.

Sorry, can you clarify that, as it seems you are contradicting yourself... :confused:

Are you saying the quasi-ECC feature with non-ECC memory IS working and the jumper to DISable it doesn't work, or that the quasi-ECC feature ISN'T working and the jumper to enable it doesn't work?

josh1980

11-08-2008, 10:25 PM

Sorry, it does sound confusing. The normal operation for non-ECC memory is to enable the quasi-ECC feature. This feature uses 1/9th of the total size of the memory, so whatever size you have installed you will lose 1/9th. If you put a jumper over the "RESERVED" jumper, which is the second jumper from the right when looking at it, this disables the quasi-ECC feature giving you the total capacity of the RAM sticks. I have a copy of their manual from 2 months ago, and it did have a feature to disable the quasi-ECC feature, but they strongly recommended you use it. I disabled it and ran read/write tests all night with no problems.

I would still recommend you not use a jumper there since they seem to have intentionally wanted to remove the 'feature' by not explaining the jumper in the manual.

I just had to know what was the purpose of the jumper since they deliberately covered up the sticker on the case for the jumper configuration.

Speederlander

11-09-2008, 08:19 AM

wmaciv

11-09-2008, 01:28 PM

From what you said earlier, I'm thinking of splurging for 2 4gb sticks at an unsavory cost, then finishing out the slots with 2gb sticks for a rough total of 20 gig, since 16 is cutting it a little close for what I want to install (OS and a few key apps). I really wonder how this thing will behave with the Intel ICH9R chipset on my MB (Supermicro C2SBX). It had some early issues with the I-RAM's, before a BIOS update.

josh1980

11-09-2008, 02:31 PM

Speederlander

11-09-2008, 03:14 PM

Speederlander, why 8GB? What happens at 8GB that makes ECC important? Or are you just trying to say that if you use it as a permanent RAM drive you should use it? I wouldn't recommend ever disabling the feature. 1/9th of your capacity isn't much to lose to prove your data is correct via ECC.

Me personally, I intend to buy 4GB sticks for all 8 slots and make it my boot drive, with 2x1TB hard drives for storage space. I have a RAID5 array consisting of 8x1TB drives, so I don't really need to keep alot of storage space on my workstation.

I'm sorry I haven't had a change to test the RAID0 using the onboard RAID chipset. Work has kept me busy this weekend, but I intend to get results as soon as I can. I'm just as curious as others to see what the RAID chipset can do. My motherboard is an Asus P5E if anyone wants to look up the RAID chipset. I think it's the ICH9R.

I say 8GB only because people tend to add in 4GB increments. At 4GB, RAM suffers from the occasional transient bit error but probably not enough to worry, especially when used as simple volitile memory (though I would, since I really value my data).

The original Corsair rule I recall is: 1 bit error occurs in 256MB of ram every month.
4GB = 15 bit errors/month
8GB = 31 bit errors/month
16GB = 62 bit errors/month
32GB = 125 bit errors/month

However, other more recent sources maintain 1 bit error per gigabyte per month, so that cuts those numbers by a factor of 4, i.e.:
4GB = 4 bit errors/month
8GB = 8 bit errors/month
16GB = 15 bit errors/month
32GB = 31 bit errors/month

Which is more correct? My guess is that it's somewhere in between, governed by the quality of the RAM, the luck of the draw, and a host of other issues.

There is a reason that server boards only use ECC RAM.

At 8GB, is the incidence still acceptable? You have to decide. But if that RAM is now operating as an always on, permanent drive, to not use ECC when you will probably be using 16GB or more would be nuts.

IanB

11-09-2008, 03:49 PM

But if that RAM is now operating as an always on, permanent drive, to not use ECC ... would be nuts.

+1 QFT. Which is why the software quasi-ECC feature is such a brilliant idea, at the cost of a small amount of capacity, if the cost of ECC memory is too high.

wmaciv

11-10-2008, 03:54 PM

My ANS-9010 just arrived this evening. I have to go out of town tomorrow morning for 10 days... argggghhhhh! Anyway, I don't have any memory for it yet, think I may go with 16 gigs of 4 x 4gb dimms initially... And will spring for the 32 meg CF card also... wonder if it's worth spending the premium on high transfer rate CF memory? Bet not...

Hopefully I can post some Platypus to ACARD and IRAM to ACARD transfer stats in the near future.. I can't WAIT to see this as my boot drive...

Wade

RADCOM

11-10-2008, 04:19 PM

Who has it in stock? Website still saying pre-order!! Here's an interesting thread re the Acard on the Anandtech forum.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=63&threadid=2165057&FTVAR_STKEYWORDFRM=&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

tiro_uspsss

11-10-2008, 05:41 PM

Here's the Benchmark results:

Single Port tests
----------------
[INDENT]HD Tach -
[INDENT]Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization:3%
Average Read: 167.8 MB/sec
Average Write: 140.3 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 171.9MB/sec
The graph was perfectly horizontal, as expected.

:( I thought single port would have maxed out 1x SATAII port = ~300MB/s ... why is it only 168? :(

B.E.E.F.

11-10-2008, 07:50 PM

So only ECC memory can be used with it. That sounds pricey.

Speederlander

11-10-2008, 08:37 PM

So only ECC memory can be used with it. That sounds pricey.

No one should be surprised. ECC is the only serious option for larger RAM drives.

Serra

11-10-2008, 11:19 PM

:( I thought single port would have maxed out 1x SATAII port = ~300MB/s ... why is it only 168? :(

I hope I can eventually get my hands on a unit to give it a thorough investigation, but I currently theorize that the reason is the controller on the ram disk. Technical specs show that it provides ~200MB/s throughput maximum (which is one reason it's sure not going to hit 300MB/s), but the question is whether that includes SATA overhead or not.

If it does, then something else is to blame and that bears further investigation.

If it does not, then 168 is pretty close to right if the controller can provide a little over 200MB/s performance.

tiro_uspsss

11-10-2008, 11:34 PM

I hope I can eventually get my hands on a unit to give it a thorough investigation, but I currently theorize that the reason is the controller on the ram disk. Technical specs show that it provides ~200MB/s throughput maximum (which is one reason it's sure not going to hit 300MB/s), but the question is whether that includes SATA overhead or not.

If it does, then something else is to blame and that bears further investigation.

If it does not, then 168 is pretty close to right if the controller can provide a little over 200MB/s performance.

mm.. well.. personally I had hoped for more considering the price :(

*sigh*

josh1980

11-11-2008, 09:50 AM

The unit does not require ECC memory, but can use it. If ECC memory is installed, the unit will use the ECC feature to fix errors. If ECC memory is not installed, then 1/9th of the total capacity of the RAM is used for ECC functions, and is not used. The big difference between ECC memory and non-ECC memory is a 9th chip on a RAM stick. This 9th chip is identical to the other 8, but the data stored in the 9th chip is similar to a checksum of the RAM bank. If you chose not to buy ECC memory for this unit, then it will create it's own ECC function utilizing 1/9th the space.

I agree with tiro_uspsss that 168MB/sec is somewhat limiting, but it could be a limit from something else besides the box. I do own a Gigabyte I-RAM card, and I benchmark it at 120MB/sec(the limit for SATA 150).

I also did order 4x4GB of RAM today for my box. I'll buy 4 more 4GB sticks next week when I get paid again. This box is going to make my core i7 computer boot at light speed. :D

Also, the motherboard RAID benchmark's I've been promising to do will be performed tonight. I'll post the results when I get them done. :)

Buckeye

11-11-2008, 10:07 AM

Just catching up on this thread and have a question. I see reading back a bit that Access time is 0.1ms ?

I thought that these units are faster than that ?

B.E.E.F.

11-11-2008, 12:42 PM

No one should be surprised. ECC is the only serious option for larger RAM drives.

I'm surprised. They can increase sales by making it non-ECC compatible.

RADCOM

11-11-2008, 02:10 PM

I'm surprised. They can increase sales by making it non-ECC compatible.
:fact:Features:-
Supports up to 64GB amount of memory
Supports ECC/Non-ECC DDR2 400/533/667/800**
Automatic data backup/restore between DDR2 memory and CF card
Built-in Lithium Battery
LED indicators for battery capacity, power status, SATA ports activity, backup status
Driver less: need no driver on host side
**Note: Please refer to Compatibility List for DDR2 RAM Module
source:
http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?prod_no=ANS-9010&type1_title=%20Solid%20State%20Drive&idno_no=270

Speederlander

11-11-2008, 03:59 PM

I'm surprised. They can increase sales by making it non-ECC compatible.

Running a big RAM drive without ECC means the person has no concern whatsoever for data integrity.

wmaciv

11-11-2008, 05:00 PM

Josh, what kind of ram and where are you getting 4gb density sticks? Are you paying a premium, or have you found an inexpensive source? I would sure like to find some for my 9010 without spending what I think I am going to have to.....

Wade

josh1980

11-11-2008, 05:52 PM

Just catching up on this thread and have a question. I see reading back a bit that Access time is 0.1ms ?

I thought that these units are faster than that ?

You are correct. But most benchmark programs are written to give the results for the hard drive access time in ms, and they can't calculate below 0.1ms. They all round, and in this case, they round up to the smallest possible division of 0.1ms.

The h2benchw tests showed the following:

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]

Even at 0.1ms, you wouldn't hear a peep out of me. I don't know of any other hardware out there with these kinds of seek times. These are 100ths of a millisecond. All I can say is "Awesome".

I was playing around some today, and I figured out something else that I figured I would share. My BIOS has SATA options of Disabled/Compatible/Enhanced. If I chose "Enhanced" I lose about 10% performance vice "Compatible". Also worth mentioning is disabling ECC feature does not result in any change in performance.

I spent some time attempting to use the onboard RAID controller for my motherboard, and I was unable to get it to work. Unfortunately I do not have a spare hard drive to install another copy of Windows on, so we'll have to wait until either I get my new core i7 computer next week, or someone else can perform some benchmarks.

Speederlander

11-11-2008, 06:29 PM

You are correct. But most benchmark programs are written to give the results for the hard drive access time in ms, and they can't calculate below 0.1ms.

Absolutely not. These are my RAM drive.

B.E.E.F.

11-11-2008, 08:11 PM

Running a big RAM drive without ECC means the person has no concern whatsoever for data integrity.

That's right.

:fact:Features:-
Supports up to 64GB amount of memory
Supports ECC/Non-ECC DDR2 400/533/667/800**

My bad. Thanks.

Serra

11-12-2008, 02:58 AM

Absolutely not. These are my RAM drive.

Yes, but I assume that is a drive carved out of your system RAM, not a peripheral. To speak with your physical RAM there is effectively no wait time... but the question is, does the program perhaps perceive that there is a "non-zero" wait-time to a hard-drive (or SSD) and therefore just round up to 0.1? I personally think it is likely.

Speederlander

11-12-2008, 06:15 AM

Yes, but I assume that is a drive carved out of your system RAM, not a peripheral. To speak with your physical RAM there is effectively no wait time... but the question is, does the program perhaps perceive that there is a "non-zero" wait-time to a hard-drive (or SSD) and therefore just round up to 0.1? I personally think it is likely.

I was responding to:

they can't calculate below 0.1ms

Also, I-ram shows as 0.0ms, and it's a peripheral, not directly created from system RAM. And IIRC, doesn't it also use the SATA interface, just using PCI for power? Not that .1ms is a lot.

Buckeye

11-12-2008, 07:04 AM

Great ! Thanks for that info on access time.

I am looking at 2 of the 9010 installed onto my ARC-1231ML and set in Raid 0. From what I gather the 9010 has 2 SATA ports on each unit, so I would need 4 SATA ports total. This matches up just fine with the 4 SATA ports I have left on my controller card.

I wounder now how well these will scale in a setup like this. That would be 128gig total and a OS installed on that. I am thinking that would be in the range of 800mb/sec bandwidth with 0.05ms access time. Pretty fast.

However with my current SSD Raid 0 I am in the range of 950mb/sec bandwidth and 0.1 access time.

Side by side these 2 setups should perform pretty close but with the ACRAD mopping the floor with writes and small file access.

Should be an interesting test thats for sure.

I-RAMS are looking rather interesting to me also, I don't like the fact that they need a slot for power. I can just see 12 I-RAMs connected to my ACR-1231ML as a Raid 0, but as far as being usefull for anything other than a bench is not good.

tiro_uspsss

11-12-2008, 04:09 PM

I-RAMS are looking rather interesting to me also, I don't like the fact that they need a slot for power. I can just see 12 I-RAMs connected to my ACR-1231ML as a Raid 0, but as far as being usefull for anything other than a bench is not good.

i-rams dont work with areca cards :down:

Buckeye

11-12-2008, 05:37 PM

i-rams dont work with areca cards :down:

Bummer :down:

tiro_uspsss

11-12-2008, 08:36 PM

Bummer :down:

:yepp:

wmaciv

11-13-2008, 05:31 AM

Josh, I only had time to pop the cover on mine before I left on my trip... The slots for the RAM looked pretty tightly spaced. Do you think many heat spreader equipped DIMMS are too big to place adjacently? It almost looks that way, just curious about your thoughts on the matter. BTW, any playing around with the CF slot yet?

Wade

josh1980

11-13-2008, 09:05 PM

Ok, I got 4x4GB in my box along with 4x2GB sticks. I ordered the Gskil 4GB sticks from newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231181). Strangely(or maybe not) the heatsinks aren't glued to the RAM at all. In fact, I turned the box upside down while I was talking on the phone, and a heatsink fell off. I haven't ever seen this before. They have always been firmly glued onto the chips. All 4 sticks are like this, so I had a great opportunity to see about heat problems inside the box both with and without heatsinks.

I tested the temps using the slots that have RAM installed on both sides and after heavy use of the drive to ensure the sticks got as I could resonably expect.

Overall I noticed no significant difference in temperature between the sticks with the heatsink and the sticks without a heatsink. However the center chip on the board with the heatsink gets extremely hot.

I have decided that I am going to look into installing a fan somehow to keep some air flowing through the box to keep everything cool. Since these RAM sticks have heatsinks that are easily removed, I have removed all of the heatsinks from the 4GB sticks. There is some room, maybe 1.5mm tops, between the memory sticks when the heatsinks are installed. I just think that there is more opportunity for cooling without the heatsinks. Besides, if the heatsinks aren't securely fastened to the ram chips, how much heat can you reasonably expect to be transferred?

I do not have a CF card to test in my box. Right now I'm not planning to get a CF card. I did buy the external power supply for the ANS-9010, and I do have a UPS that the computer will be hooked up to, so I don't expect to have any problems with losing data in RAM. I also plan to do periodic backup images of the drive for safe keeping just in case. When CF get's a bit cheaper or there is a fire sale I'll get a good CF card. I'd just rather continue to put money into more RAM for the box before I get the CF card.

Levish

11-14-2008, 10:41 AM

KVR667D2E5/4G, KVR667D2E5/2G and KVR667D2E5/1G are Kingston ECC Unbuffered/Unregistered sticks according to kingston sales dept

the 1GB and 2GB variety are very reasonably priced and will let you avoid any processing overhead of running the virtual ecc mode

josh1980

11-16-2008, 11:27 PM

The difference between the non-ECC and quasi-ECC feature was not significant(test results between the two were less than 1%). With this knowledge, I would avoid buying ECC unless the price is less than 1/9th the difference of non-ECC memory, or you do have a need for that 1/9th more RAM.

Now, there may be something unique to the design of the box, where ECC memory will perform faster than non-ECC(or using the quasi-ECC feature), but as I do not have ECC memory to test this theory, it is unproven.

I honestly wouldn't expect ECC memory to perform any faster than non-ECC(see above), but stranger things have happened.

Levish

11-17-2008, 06:40 AM

the kingston 1gb sticks are ~14.00$, the 2GB sticks are ~27.00$ and quite unfortunately the 4Gb sticks are around 330.00$

josh1980

11-19-2008, 08:48 AM

Well, the 4GB sticks on newegg are $109 each.... If you price shop, you can find some good deals where 2Gb sticks are <$27 each.

Obviously though if you are getting 4GB sticks, you'd be crazy to buy ECC at that price. Today my core i7 computer will be assembled. The motherboard is the GA-EX58-UD5. I'll be installing Windows XP on the drive, and you bet I'll be performing benchmarks shortly after. I'll post them as soon as I get them.

josh1980

11-19-2008, 10:53 PM

Here's the new benchmarks for those interested. These were performed using the hardware RAID-0 of the ICH10R chip(in this case on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard). I did the full benchmarks for h2benchw and HDTach using all available stripe choices. It appears that the ideal stripe size for these boxes are 16k. Since there was so many results, I decided to provide zip files of them instead of pasting it all here. The 16k stripe benchmarks for h2benchw are show below.

I did install Windows XP Pro on the box. This thing is so freakin' fast I can't believe it. I updated a program, and the update screen flashed so fast that I didn't even realize the program updated. I was able to install Windows XP in less than 10 minutes, then upgrade from SP2 to SP3 in 117 seconds. That's just AMAZING!

Ok, here's the results for 16k stripe size.....

nterface transfer rate w/ block size 128 sectors at 0.0% of capacity:
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 304925 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.23 ms): 311081 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 304936 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 262211 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.27 ms): 266516 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 261967 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 306144.9, min 285985.0, max 309198.2 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 262580.0, min 243938.3, max 265505.7 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.06 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.06 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.06 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 2.56 [ms]

Application profile `swapping': 116846.4 KByte/s
Application profile `installing': 351531.5 KByte/s
Application profile `Word': 253346.4 KByte/s
Application profile `Photoshop': 250514.4 KByte/s
Application profile `copying': 386762.0 KByte/s
Application profile `F-Prot': 168442.1 KByte/s
Result: application index = 229.8

If you look at the HDTach benchmarks, you'll notice that the benchmarks become really odd at larger stripe sizes.

Sorry if the attachments aren't fancy. I'm tired and stayed up to make sure to get these benchmarks done tonight. Enjoy everyone!

Buckeye

11-20-2008, 06:26 AM

Thanks Josh !

I really like these babies :)

Spoiler

11-20-2008, 06:49 AM

Thanks Josh1980!

From your previous posts, I see you have used a number of different memory configurations. What you are using now and how much? Are you using ECC? Also...is it possible to throw for example 4 x 4GB sticks with 4 x 2GB sticks in the box?

And one more question for everyone... has anyone tried using two 9010a or b's off an onboard or discrete raid controller?

josh1980

11-20-2008, 06:54 PM

I have 4x4GB, 2x2GB, and 2x512MB sticks. Some are 533 and some are 800. There is no requirement for pairs, and you can put different sizes in the box in any order and any speeds. None of the chips are ECC. The cost versus benefit wasn't worth it(cost is quite high for 4GB sticks).

Spoiler - There is a set of benchmarks I did with a pci-e RAID card I had. Not sure if that helps you at all since you wanted onboard and discrete. The benchmarks I posted yesterday are from an onboard card, while the first set I did was using a software raid as well as pci-e card.

Does anyone else notice that when you post messages it says it got posted, then it shows you the thread with the new message. Yet when you go and check later the thread is missing the post? I've had this happen at least a half dozen times on several different computers using both IE and Firefox.

Speederlander

11-20-2008, 08:08 PM

aoch88

11-20-2008, 11:16 PM

This thing seems to be so much faster than any other hard disks out there. The only drawback is we need to spend on lots of RAM :(

josh1980

11-21-2008, 04:51 AM

What card?

My card is a Highpoint RocketRAID 2320.

One_Hertz

11-22-2008, 09:41 AM

Application profile `swapping': 116846.4 KByte/s
Application profile `installing': 351531.5 KByte/s
Application profile `Word': 253346.4 KByte/s
Application profile `Photoshop': 250514.4 KByte/s
Application profile `copying': 386762.0 KByte/s
Application profile `F-Prot': 168442.1 KByte/s
Result: application index = 229.8

As comparison my 2x core v2 ssds in raid 0 on ICH9R get about half of those rates at app index 125.9.

josh1980

11-24-2008, 06:38 AM

Ok, so here's my latest and greatest thoughts on this hardware....

I will have spent over $1000 on this little box with 32GB of RAM by the time all is said and done. I have a UPS connected to my computer, with the ANS-9010 connected to a second power supply. I bought one of those IDE/SATA to USB convert kits and used the power supply for the ANS-9010. The cord comes in through the back of the computer to the ANS-9010. This gives me UPS power to the drive and it has power even when the computer is off. There is a power supply kit you can buy for it, but it costs $30 and my idea is identical to theirs but less expensive. The internal battery lasts about 2.5 hours if the box loses external power.

This drive is my boot drive. I installed the software that usually has alot of boot time loading requirements like Yahoo IM, MSN IM, Defrag(defragmenting this drive is essentially pointless), Antivirus, etc. Any other software that doesn't have high boot loading requirements I install onto my 1TB drive. My boot times have suffered very little from this method. Even with all of my software installed my boot times are less than 1 minute. It's still so much fun to load Windows and watch all of the programs in the toolbar load in seconds. I also have a Gigabyte I-RAM card with 4GB of RAM on it. I chose to use the I-RAM as a swapfile location.

I am quite impressed with the performance of this box. Being that I had money to throw at it, I find it a worthwhile investment(I could have spent it on alot more things that do less for me). I can't help but wonder if this was really worth the $1000 I'll spend on it. I don't really do video editing, or any of the stuff that would see the biggest performance boost from this drive. It's for my workstation that I do everything on from games to programming to Office related work. I will say that I do not fear the 5 minute reboots like I used to.

This box is amazing, but I would venture to say that 2GB sticks would have probably sufficed for my goal.

This box is definitely not for those with small pocketbooks. These things are not cheap to set up, and there is a higher probability of losing one's data since the box losing power = wiped drive.

Spoiler

11-24-2008, 07:27 AM

I am quite impressed with the performance of this box. Being that I had money to throw at it, I find it a worthwhile investment(I could have spent it on alot more things that do less for me). I can't help but wonder if this was really worth the $1000 I'll spend on it. I don't really do video editing, or any of the stuff that would see the biggest performance boost from this drive. It's for my workstation that I do everything on from games to programming to Office related work. I will say that I do not fear the 5 minute reboots like I used to.

Now that the Intel X25-E is being released, I would have some mixed feelings too about spending $1000. The intel drive is somewhat comparable in speed, but cost almost $300 cheaper.

One_Hertz

11-24-2008, 07:54 AM

Now that the Intel X25-E is being released, I would have some mixed feelings too about spending $1000. The intel drive is somewhat comparable in speed, but cost almost $300 cheaper.

it is not comparible in speed in any way shape or form.

Spoiler

11-24-2008, 08:18 AM

For what Josh will be doing with it, I would believe that the speed of the two devices would be very much comparable. I would definately agree that the ACARD device surely wins in the benchmarks, but I can't imagine myself noticing much difference between the two devices when the main usage would be for gaming and general office work.

Speederlander

11-24-2008, 08:23 AM

it is not comparible in speed in any way shape or form.

Well, once you get fast enough, doubling the speed isn't easily noticed anymore by the user. It only becomes an issue of faster benchmarks. It might feel a little snappier, and a few non-critical things like boot time may be faster, but somewhere down the line you are bottlenecked by the requirement to push things through the CPU, etc.

I would like to see this drive benched for real-world feel and compared to SSDs on anand or somewhere else using their full suite of apps.

One_Hertz

11-24-2008, 09:07 AM

the fact that this ram drive doesnt get raped by random writes or just a simple combination of reads and writes means a lot. The agree that the STR means very little.

Spoiler

11-24-2008, 09:28 AM

the fact that this ram drive doesnt get raped by random writes or just a simple combination of reads and writes means a lot. The agree that the STR means very little.

Where do you see the X25-E getting raped in random writes? For one, I am only basing my opinions off the latest review from the techreport.com And second, I could be wrong, but I thought the SLC devices didn't suffer from random writes nearly as bad as the MLC ones.

josh1980

11-24-2008, 10:58 AM

http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106

When they run benchmarks, the drive showed it as top of the line in seek times, read and write performance. BUT, when it comes to random writes, it was horribly slow(4IOPS ROFL!). This was a MLC drive, not SLC. I'm very interested to see a similar breakdown in an SLC drive. If anyone finds a good benchmark for random writes of an SLC drive an link would be appreciated.

I've always been a little skeptical of SSDs ever since reading that article. Tom's Hardware did a big review of a bunch of SSD drives in August, and the 1 benchmark they didn't provide was random writes. When I can see SSD boot as fast as my computer does, i'll be a believer again. A ramdrive would make a significantly better pagefile drive than an SSD just because you don't 'wear out' ram drives.

Of course, SSD is new, and it will only improve. I see SSD drives being made with 2 principle purposes:

1. MLC - Drive that are designed for backup and long term storage(think your video collection, pictures, application zips, etc).
2. SLC - Drives that are your boot drives(your installed OS, Programs, User Profile).

Of course, some company could invent a 3rd hybrid that uses a combination of both chips.

I'm expecting that in 5 years I'll be buying MLC drives for that "big drive" need, and SLC for boot drives.

m^2

11-24-2008, 11:41 AM

RADCOM

11-24-2008, 11:48 AM

One_Hertz

11-24-2008, 12:01 PM

Where do you see the X25-E getting raped in random writes? For one, I am only basing my opinions off the latest review from the techreport.com And second, I could be wrong, but I thought the SLC devices didn't suffer from random writes nearly as bad as the MLC ones.

We are looking at the same place. Look at this page:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15931/7

It dips down to 50-60mb/s. Do the test on josh's setup and you will see 150+mb/s. I do not see how you can call that comparable performance, but maybe that is just me. Windows boot time would be A LOT faster on the ram drive and program load time would be somewhat faster.

Spoiler

11-24-2008, 12:22 PM

It dips down to 50-60mb/s. Do the test on josh's setup and you will see 150+mb/s. I do not see how you can call that comparable performance, but maybe that is just me. Windows boot time would be A LOT faster on the ram drive and program load time would be somewhat faster.

I might be looking at this the wrong way, but I figure the ACARD would be a tad faster than the old i-RAM. With that reasoning, I woud imagine the Intel SLC SSD would be right around the same speed in game/system load times. Take a look here at the i-Ram boot and load times :

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312/3
I know it's not a fair comparison, but it give us a good idea.

The ACARD 9010 does seem like a real screamer though. I thought about purchasing one last week, but nobody had them in stock. Lucky for my wallet I guess. :)

One_Hertz

11-24-2008, 06:49 PM

I might be looking at this the wrong way, but I figure the ACARD would be a tad faster than the old i-RAM. With that reasoning, I woud imagine the Intel SLC SSD would be right around the same speed in game/system load times. Take a look here at the i-Ram boot and load times :

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9312/3
I know it's not a fair comparison, but it give us a good idea.

The ACARD 9010 does seem like a real screamer though. I thought about purchasing one last week, but nobody had them in stock. Lucky for my wallet I guess. :)

ACARD should be about 2x faster than the old IRAM (which was limited by the PCI bus)... Although there is nothing to back that up, just what I think.

IanB

11-24-2008, 07:30 PM

Nope, not limited by the PCI bus, as it doesn't use that to transfer data, just supply power. It connects via SATA1, same speed as the ACARD now appears to (even in SATAII mode). So they are almost on par in performance. That's the disappointment, really, that 4 or 5 years of massive tech advances hasn't produced a faster RAM drive, simply becase it's being bottlenecked by poor interfacing. :(

IanB

11-24-2008, 07:40 PM

Ironically HyperOs have released a 64GB £269/$399 drive....looks very similar to the Acard too.......lets play spot the difference :) This is just after this months custompc magazine review put a "crazy but cool" and ""recommended tag on the Acard 9010 and 9010B. The older HyperoS drives cost in excess of £1200 and used registered PC2700 DDR1 memory.
http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/

Well, well. That IS a comedown from their crazy stupid prices on the old models. But for my money, with otherwise identical specs (and it IS odd, look at the design, and the spec for transfer rates!) the ACARD wins with the quasi ECC feature. It's just more reliable over time as long-term storage.

nox_uk

11-25-2008, 02:38 AM

ACARD should be about 2x faster than the old IRAM (which was limited by the PCI bus)... Although there is nothing to back that up, just what I think.

The IRAM was not limited by the pci bus, but limits by sata I. The acard uses sata II, so should not be as limited there, but look here:

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~dcason6634/Acard.html

comparable

Nox

Levish

11-25-2008, 06:56 AM

Well, well. That IS a comedown from their crazy stupid prices on the old models. But for my money, with otherwise identical specs (and it IS odd, look at the design, and the spec for transfer rates!) the ACARD wins with the quasi ECC feature. It's just more reliable over time as long-term storage.

I could be wrong but i believe they are just reselling the Acard produced device and possibly have pictures of slightly different revisions of the same device.

One_Hertz

11-25-2008, 07:52 AM

The IRAM was not limited by the pci bus, but limits by sata I. The acard uses sata II, so should not be as limited there, but look here:

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~dcason6634/Acard.html

comparable

Nox

I see two IRAM devices being put against one 9010? The benchmarks are right in this thread as well. 270mb/s versus the 135 of the iram. Access times should be similar.

IanB

11-25-2008, 12:43 PM

I see two IRAM devices being put against one 9010? The benchmarks are right in this thread as well. 270mb/s versus the 135 of the iram. Access times should be similar.

The ACARD has a similar streaming speed to the i-RAM PER SATA PORT. The bigger model has two SATA ports which you can access separately, each offering half the installed RAM as a disk device. So two ports in RAID0 is roughly equivalent (a little faster) to two i-RAMs in RAID0. If the single-port option is used, then you will get a disk the full size of the RAM, so bigger but not much faster than an i-RAM.

One_Hertz

11-25-2008, 02:36 PM

The ACARD has a similar streaming speed to the i-RAM PER SATA PORT. The bigger model has two SATA ports which you can access separately, each offering half the installed RAM as a disk device. So two ports in RAID0 is roughly equivalent (a little faster) to two i-RAMs in RAID0. If the single-port option is used, then you will get a disk the full size of the RAM, so bigger but not much faster than an i-RAM.

Who the heck is talking about the one port version? It is pure garbage more or less. The fact remains, the proper version is 2x faster than the old IRAM.

IanB

11-25-2008, 11:20 PM

Who the heck is talking about the one port version? It is pure garbage more or less. The fact remains, the proper version is 2x faster than the old IRAM.

NO, it's not. You are missing the point. It's not about the unit, it's the fact that you have to use TWO SATA ports to interface to the bigger unit in RAID0. So equating this to a SINGLE i-RAM that interfaces to a SINGLE SATA port is just ludicrous. It's also twice the cost and takes 2 to 4 times the memory. :rolleyes:

Using the bigger unit in two-port mode is effectively having two half-size units similar to an i-RAM each, needing the same interface requirement, so it's only fair to compare this to two i-RAMs similarly RAIDed. :shakes:

nox_uk

11-26-2008, 12:23 AM

Who the heck is talking about the one port version? It is pure garbage more or less. The fact remains, the proper version is 2x faster than the old IRAM.

The point is, it *should* be twice as fast per SATA port!!!! The SATA II on the acard appears to be no faster than the SATA I on the IRAM, well OK a little faster, but certainly not up to double the speed. That ACARD is like having two IRAMS in one box, near enough, and it should be faster, nearer double the speed. If you use your sata ports on your mobo, you could plug in 2 acards, or twice as many irams, net result - roughly the same, give or take.

The REALLY annoying thing is I was holding off for this tech, and may still get one, but the top end SSD's are starting to get into the same ball park for comparisons, if you take into consideration capacity and retaining data i'm now leaning towards those... If I do get an acard, then I can see it being used as a page file drive to try to help the lifespan of any ssd's i get. Had the ACARD been released 2 years ago, or even 1 it would of been a no brainer...

Nox

Spoiler

11-26-2008, 05:25 AM

The price of the single port ACARD device is pretty nice, it's just too bad the maximum transfer rate through that single SATA connection isn't anywhere close to the theoretical maximum of SATA II.

As someone posted earlier, it sounds like the ACARD controller isn't fast enough. I saw something about another ACARD device coming out scheduled for early next year. Could this be a revision?

nox_uk

11-26-2008, 05:32 AM

if it is, it's just in time for SATA III :D (or whatever they plan to call it)

Nox

m^2

11-26-2008, 06:08 AM

if it is, it's just in time for SATA III :D (or whatever they plan to call it)

Nox
As it's been already mentioned (i.e. 1 post above:rolleyes:), it's a fault of ACARD, not SATA2.
Intel could get well over 200 MB/s from the same interface.

nox_uk

11-26-2008, 06:17 AM

yep, which is pretty much why i'm leaning towards SSD at the moment...

Market on this area is changing so fast though I do plan to wait 6+ months, see where things like the iodrive and this are standing compared to SSD's when the dust begins to settle. Was very tempted with a couple of OCZ Core V2's, or could get 3 or 4 now for the same price as one of these & eight 2gb sticks... then again the v3's are around the corner...

Nox

One_Hertz

11-26-2008, 09:10 AM

NO, it's not. You are missing the point. It's not about the unit, it's the fact that you have to use TWO SATA ports to interface to the bigger unit in RAID0. So equating this to a SINGLE i-RAM that interfaces to a SINGLE SATA port is just ludicrous. It's also twice the cost and takes 2 to 4 times the memory. :rolleyes:

Using the bigger unit in two-port mode is effectively having two half-size units similar to an i-RAM each, needing the same interface requirement, so it's only fair to compare this to two i-RAMs similarly RAIDed. :shakes:

Do you not have any empty sata ports? What is your point? What does it matter if it uses another one? Equating two hardware devices to one and saying that it is the same is ludicrious. Why dont you take two 4850s put them into CF and say that 4850 is comparable to 280gtx(which would take up the extra slots with its huge cooler)?

IanB

11-26-2008, 11:26 AM

If it costs pretty much the same and gives pretty much the same results, then it's not ludicrous. :shrug: In both cases the single box is merely more convenient.

As others have just pointed out, this isn't revolutionary tech, it's barely evolutionary tech equivalent to putting two i-RAMs in a box using DDR2. For the market it's aimed at (boot device), no-one would use a single i-RAM, it's too small, you have to RAID anyway to get a usable drive size. So the comparison is obvious. The killer feature here isn't the streaming speed as we might have hoped, it's merely the memory capacity and ECC feature, and a neat integrated backup gizmo.

nox_uk is right, it's still a great product, but there's nothing here that couldn't have been produced years ago, and it may be too late to make a niche with faster and cheaper SSDs widely available. And since I have two i-RAMs, there's simply not enough difference in the performance to justify a switch to this. :(

nox_uk

11-26-2008, 05:17 PM

Do you not have any empty sata ports? What is your point? What does it matter if it uses another one? Equating two hardware devices to one and saying that it is the same is ludicrious. Why dont you take two 4850s put them into CF and say that 4850 is comparable to 280gtx(which would take up the extra slots with its huge cooler)?

I would say my 4870x2 is more comparable to two 4870's in crossfire, than one on its own...

cost is near enough the same, performance, near enough the same, just one takes up half the space and is more convenient...

Nox

wmaciv

12-05-2008, 04:54 PM

Spoiler

12-05-2008, 05:22 PM

I was just browsing the memory compatability sheet listed on ACARD's website. It looks like more sticks have been added! :up:

Levish

12-10-2008, 09:14 AM

Josh (and whoever else)... Have 24 gig and a 32 gig flash card installed and running on the 9010 via ICH9R. Was a little trouble at first, but smoking now. Holy smokes, the flash card backup takes FOREVER! I will try to post some relative times, but definitely going the way josh did for fulltime power backup. What an awesome kit, but really want to go for the full 32gb.

Wade

I was backing up a 8GB ramdisk on shutdown (to the hard disk) and it'd take roughly 15 minutes. Most CF doesn't write nearly that speed (even though it wasn't a particularly fast HDD) and you might be dealing with more than 8GB of storage.

wmaciv

12-14-2008, 05:34 PM

Speederlander

12-14-2008, 06:26 PM

C2SBX w/Q6600 @ 3.0 gHz 1333 mHz FSB 2GB RAM

ANS-9010 has 24GB of ddr-2 800, and a 32mb Transcend CF card (133x)

After playing with the ACARD for about a week now, I pulled my two I-RAM box drives out, and left in my Platypus Qikdrive8. I may end up pulling it too when my last 8GB for the ACARD shows up this week. This drive is everything I had hoped for. OS is XP sp3 w/ all recent patches, Office 2007 Enterprise, Adobe Reader 9, WinRar 3.71, assorted Malware, Symantec AntiVirus corporate, video and sound drivers, etc. All major applications are on a WD Velociraptor 300GB.

Wade

Interesting, I'm not hyper impressed by the HDTach numbers. That's a dual sata RAID 0 so it's actually 140 per sata port. Not drastically better than the raptor (or a pair of raptors with a small fast OS partition). I understand the random I/O capability is the key here, but it just doesn't seem compelling given the cost-to-capacity issue compared to the raptors or even several SSDs out now. I DO like the ECC function for data protection. To me that's a primary selling point. Something a typical RAID 0 or single drive would not enjoy the benefit of. An array of these would certainly be impressive, but so very expensive.

Serra

12-14-2008, 07:33 PM

Who the heck is talking about the one port version? It is pure garbage more or less. The fact remains, the proper version is 2x faster than the old IRAM.

I personally like the 1 port version, and for one simple reason: non-RAID drive size. The 1 port version offers 6 DDR2 slots (in the pictures anyway), and @ 2GB/stick density (best bang for your buck right now) 12GB vs 8GB is - to me - a huge difference in usability. Plus being cheaper is a bonus.

Would I buy it? With a faster controller - yes, undoubtedly. As it stands though the controller speeds just aren't enough for my excessive e-peen requirements which is why I'm eyeing a regular 2-port 9010 and 2x 4GB ECC sticks of DDR2-5300 (and hoping to all get out that the prices on those sticks drop dramatically as time goes on). We'll see whether I end up pulling the trigger or not, Nehalem-EP is right around the corner and I may need to see prices on motherboards for that first.

Levish

12-15-2008, 09:06 AM

I personally like the 1 port version, and for one simple reason: non-RAID drive size. The 1 port version offers 6 DDR2 slots (in the pictures anyway), and @ 2GB/stick density (best bang for your buck right now) 12GB vs 8GB is - to me - a huge difference in usability. Plus being cheaper is a bonus.

Would I buy it? With a faster controller - yes, undoubtedly. As it stands though the controller speeds just aren't enough for my excessive e-peen requirements which is why I'm eyeing a regular 2-port 9010 and 2x 4GB ECC sticks of DDR2-5300 (and hoping to all get out that the prices on those sticks drop dramatically as time goes on). We'll see whether I end up pulling the trigger or not, Nehalem-EP is right around the corner and I may need to see prices on motherboards for that first.

probably because people would like to setup the two port model with the onboard raid0 for nearly double the throughput

wmaciv

12-15-2008, 05:10 PM

Serra, you can set a jumper on the 9010 to allow all memory on one port.... of course at non-raid speed.

Wade

josh1980

12-16-2008, 11:54 AM

I still love my 9010. I find it a very worthwhile investment. Although, I'm starting to get the feeling Acard released this product now, only because it wanted to recoup the development costs for this device. They showed the ANS-9010 for 2 years at various conventions, always giving us a new release date. I think they intended to tweak the hardware for more performance, but decided to release it to recoup costs before SSDs take over the market. I was intending to purchase a second box for another computer, but i have decided to hold off on account of SSD. SSD is dropping so fast in price, I expect I'll be able to find 32GB SSD drives with comparable performance benchmarks next year for <$200. The ANS-9010 with no ram is twice that price. I expect that next year I'll be buying a 128MB SSD drive with similar benchmarks to the ANS-9010 and I'll be using the ANS-9010 for temp files and swap file.

The only advantage I see in this hardware in 12 months is it has infinite durability(ie. it can be written to indefinitely without degrading).

If this box had been released 2 years ago, it might have set the stage for a performance revolution that will now be seen with SSD becoming mainstream. The seek times of SSD/RAM makes all the difference. I installed Windows XP on my box using the 1 port setup vice 2 port, and I could not measure a difference in boot times.

Those of you looking at the 1 port and 2 port versions, the big difference(IMO) is only the number of RAM slots. Benchmarks don't tell a story that reflected real world application. Don't let the 'lower' performance numbers fool you. If I had to buy all over again, I'd look at the number of ram slots of each, not the lack of dual port support. You will ultimately be limited in size by the number of RAM slots. I think that reason for there being little real world performance, is that there are very few sources of data at these speeds to begin with. If you copy files over gigabit LAN, you are limited by LAN, if RAID0 the hard drive seek/throughput, if CD-ROM/DVD-ROM then seek/throughput...etc(I think I made the point).

I'm thinking that when 32GB CF disks are cheaper, I'll shut down my computer and let it do a backup to CF, then make a duplicate of the CF to another CF. If I kill the OS, I'll always have the "backup CF" to just plug and play.

Levish

12-17-2008, 07:47 AM

Josh, did you get a chance to check latency on it? (preferrably something that measures to the hundreths or thousands)

josh1980

12-17-2008, 08:56 AM

I didn't. The latency with h2bench was hundredths of a ms(0.05ms or so)... I haven't found a program that gives quality numbers for hundredths of a ms(or better). If you know of one, I'd be more than happy to run it. I tried searching for programs that give latency in microseconds, but I couldn't find any.

Serra

12-17-2008, 09:58 AM

Serra, you can set a jumper on the 9010 to allow all memory on one port.... of course at non-raid speed.

Wade

Awesome!

The 9010B is still a better deal on a slot-per-dollar basis tho (which may/may not be offset by the lack of RAID speeds, depending on setup of course).

Spoiler

12-24-2008, 08:26 AM

I'm thinking back to several discussions we all had
when the Gigabyte i-RAM Box was released with a SATA-I
interface:

Many of us were saying that "RAM should SATURATE the SATA interface".

In other words, using any RAM regardless of age (DDR, DDR2, DDR3)
should automatically increase the transfer speeds in a manner
proportional to the interface speed e.g. from 150 to 300 MB/second.

Then, along those same lines, we expected that
running 2 such devices in RAID 0 should nearly
double throughput.

What was missing from those discussions, imho,
was a realization that each end of a SATA cable
is controlled by firmware, software and harware logic
which varies considerably in efficiency, but we haven't
developed very good tools to isolate measurements
of that particular effiency.

Just to illustrate with a very simple example,
we scaled an inexpensive 16GB Super Talent SSD
from 1 to 2 drives, the latter in RAID 0, and
the "raw reads" increased from 130 to 150MB/second --
not even close to a linear scaling result.

The controller is the Highpoint RocketRAID 2340
using x8 PCI-Express lanes in an ASUS P5W64 WS Professional.

And, using these SSDs eliminated seek times and rotational
latencies inherent in conventional rotating disk drives.

So, what is the cause of the "penalty" that prevented linear
scaling from 130 to 260 MB/second with that simple configuration?

If RAM is truly "random access" -- as it should be --
the quantity of RAM present should have no significant
effect on the transfer rates in either direction (read or write).

What needs to happen, in my professional opinion,
is a 4-port SATA/6G ramdrive that is designed -- in advance --
with logic at both ends of the SATA cables that scales efficiently
i.e. in near-linear fashion.

I'm not asking for 100% perfection here, OK?

However, there are plenty of measurements already
reported on the Internet of 4 x i-RAMs in RAID 0
(e.g. see youtube.com for video illustrations).

I think it is reasonable to accept 10-20% raw overhead
from 4 such ramdisks wired to Intel's ICH10R, provided
that the logic overhead inside the ramdisks is not any larger
than that.

Thus, using Intel's latest single SATA/3G SSD,
250/300 = 83.3% or ~17% overhead.

Allowing that overhead to reach 20%, we should be able to
design and manufacture controllers at each end of the SATA cables
that achieve the following scaling with SATA/3G interfaces:

300 MB/second x 4 devices x 0.80 efficiency = 960 MB/second

And, we should also expect linear scaling with the arrival of SATA/6G:

960 x 2 = 1,920 MB/second

Anything less than these target rates would indicate
controller logic with efficiencies that are unnecessarily
inferior.

Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Systems Development Consultant

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

That was a lot of writing just to say that certain controllers are inefficient. I do agree with you though. :yepp: Why produce a device that can can take advantage of such high bandwidth such as DDR2, then limit it through crappy interface design? :shrug:

NapalmV5

12-24-2008, 12:51 PM

id be all over this ram disk if acard would come up with a pcie controller of their own

similar to pcie ssd.. but better/faster/flexible by sporting multi ram disk ports

can you guys see 8x ram disks connected to a full x16 pcie2 fledged controller ?

i certainly can.. up to acard to bring it :D

nFo

12-26-2008, 01:57 PM

i-rams dont work with areca cards :down:

Works fine :shrug:
http://infomb.googlepages.com/RaidsetHierarchy2.png

wmaciv

12-27-2008, 05:26 PM

Here is an odd one.... I formerly had the 24GB of DDR2 backed up to a Transcend 32GB 133x CF card with no problem. Now, after installing the last 8GB of DDR2 for a total of 32GB, the "Backup to CF" LED illuminates solid red, which, according to the manual indicates that the CF card is damaged, or that the capacity is not equal to or greater than necessary to back up the on board RAM. After talking to ACARD tech support, they seem to think that since the overall RAM size shows as 28.4 GB out of 32 physical (ECC functionality stealing 1/9th of total available RAM), that a 32 GB flash is enough to backup a 32GB bank of onboard RAM. I have a nasty suspicion that I will have to jump to a 48gb card to b/u a 32 gb drive. I have my questions in with ACARD right now... will see how this goes.

Wade

Speederlander

12-27-2008, 05:48 PM

wmaciv

12-27-2008, 10:30 PM

Yeah, I love that program... so much better than Ghost... I bought a copy of Acronis TrueImage 9 a while back, and use it quite often, especially now with the 9010. I think everyone is thinking along the same lines with this product - really fast and nice, but NAND flash drives sre so quickly overcomming their limitations, in less than a year, this device will seem quaint.

Wade

josh1980

12-30-2008, 09:32 AM

About the long comment above about the inefficiencies in the controllers. There's alot of variables involved here:

1. CPU - faster transfers do use more CPU. If your CPU is loaded, I'm sure that affects performance.
2. Drivers - Are the drivers optimized well enough to give you actuall access to the full bandwidth allocated to SATA?
3. OS - I know that all Windows OSes to date do not write data in 4k blocks. Writing data in 4k blocks for system writes is very important for SSD performance, which is why Windows 7 has it built in. MacOS has been using 4k blocks for system writes for quite some time. (this is off the top of my head, but I could be mistaken, got this from somewhere where they compared OSes to SSD to see if the OS affected performance)
4. SATA has 8 bit to 10 bit encoding, resulting in an immediate loss of 20% of your possible bandwidth. If someone understands the encoding and that it does not cause an immediate 20% decrease in performance, then I stand corrected. I believe this fact alone is why the i-ram performance wasn't 150MB/sec, but was limited by just a little over 20%.
5. Some motherboards gave the SATA controller(read: all SATA devices, ie 4, 6, 8 etc) a 1xpcie connection. That's an instant bottleneck of 250MB/sec for all SATA devices combined. Who knows if the northbridge/southbridge bottlenecks any further based on the design. This is why I have a corei7 :). WHen I was shopping for a motherboard for my new computer, this was a factor in my choices. Sure, using a 1x pcie wasn't a limitation 2+ years ago, but it will be in the future.
6. I'd bet money that the RAM is operated at DDR2-400 speeds with a CAS6 latency. Since that's the slowest RAM according to the JEDEC standard, everything should be able to perform at those speeds.
7. Possibly some other limitation none of us fully understand.

Remember data from the ramdrive to the CPU has to go through many parts to get to the end result. Yes. I think the ans-9010/b should be able to perform alot better, even in single port operations, but who really knows where the limitation really is? Or is it simply an exponentially larger problem as data goes from beginning to end to eventually get to the CPU, like someone throwing a small rock over a mountain that causes an avalanche?

Just as an analogy, how many of you have benchmarked your RAM transfer rates and gotten anything close to the theoretical maximum for your computer? I don't know that I've ever hit 80% of the theoretical maximum. I was always so disappointed by how far off the theoretical maximum was from actual that I never looked at the numbers after the first or second time.

I got quite a few private messages as to which RAM I have in my box. The following links are all of the RAM that I have tested personally in the box. I mixed and matches sizes as well as brands in all sorts of random orders, and I never had a problem with compatibility. Choose name brand and do not buy high density DIMMs and you should be fine. Having alot of RAM from old computers helped me build this list.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231181

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134863

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227334

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220269

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146565

josh1980

12-30-2008, 12:10 PM

5. Some motherboards gave the SATA controller(read: all SATA devices, ie 4, 6, 8 etc) a 1xpcie connection. That's an instant bottleneck of 250MB/sec for all SATA devices combined.

Found a good example of this...

I went and looked at my motherboard(Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5) block diagram more closely. The ICH10R chipset uses the QPI Interface. However the Gigabyte SATA2 chipset has 4 SATA 3Gb/s plugs and has 1x PCI Express lane for data transfers. For me, that means I shouldn't ever use more than 1 SSD drive on all 4 of those SATA plugs. Even then, 1 SSD could saturate the 1x pci-express lane. If I had set up the ANS-9010 I own on the Gigabyte SATA2 instead of the Intel ICH10R, I wouldn't have gotten the benchmarks I have shown here.

Remember, this is a motherboard that was released less than 60 days ago. This is the stuff I look at when I build a computer. The gigabyte SATA2 would be perfect for using CD-ROMs and other lower performing devices. Add to this the fact that some 3rd party chipsets aren't bootable. Fortunately mine is though.

Just goes to show how deeply involved effective planning for a powerful computer needs to go.

Some people think i'm some kind of maniac for looking into this much detail. I call it being thorough.

;)

Buckeye

12-30-2008, 07:52 PM

Thanks Josh for all the info :up:

4gig RAM's is not cheap. The ones you posted come to $767.92 for a full load :(

Speederlander

12-30-2008, 09:23 PM

Thanks Josh for all the info :up:

4gig RAM's is not cheap. The ones you posted come to $767.92 for a full load :(

Yeah, pretty expensive. Add in $400 for a unit and that's a ton of cash for 32GB (actually 29.7GB in windows).

wmaciv

12-31-2008, 12:42 AM

Ok, this is getting frustrating. Originally, for the first two weeks, I had 6 x 4GB sticks in a RAID0 config, with a (recommended) Transcend 133x 32GB CF card, and everything working as advertised. When my last 8GB arrived, I backed up via Acronis to a spare HD, powered down, and removed the CF card. I opened the ANS-9010, disconnected the battery backup pigtail, installed the new memory (all memory from same manufacturer; all mached sets). After reversing the whole process, rebuilding the RAID0 in Bios, and cloning the OS partitin back to the ACARD, I tried reinstalling the CF card. Now I get a steady RED LED, which according to the manual menas either the CF card is corrupt, or it is too small to backup the amount of DRAM on board. Here is where all of this begins to break down. ACARD tech support swears that a 32GB CF is enough to back up a 32GB mem install, especially with the ECC function enabled. OK, i'll buy that. Second, the card formats flawlessly to FAT32 and NTFS, and reads and writes effortlessly through my USB2.0 card reader and formats to full capacity (no problem here). Finally, I went back, removed the "newer" 8GB mem set, reimaged the drive once again, and I still get the RED LED. WTH? I have run out of ideas. The crazy thing is, it worked like a champ for the first run install. I noticed the rev. 3.3 MB has a wider DIMM compatibility list; could PCB revision play a part in this drama? Any ideas from you smart folks? 32GB CF is just too spendy to be playing these games with. Early adopter penalty?

Wade McIntyre

wmaciv

12-31-2008, 01:03 AM

Josh1980, any experimentation with cluster size on your end? I used to fool with that on the Platypus Qikdrive8, and still not sure of the right answer. I have seen and a review where the smaller the cluster size, the greater the CPU utillization, but the deduction of the reviewer was that the increased CPU utilizaiton came from keeping the CPU busy with near instantaneous data feed. Not sure about that logic, but the graph seemed to give some merit to the idea. Overall trnasfer rates dropped precipitously, though. Any thoughts?

Wade

Speederlander

12-31-2008, 01:24 AM

Honestly, why did you even bother with the 32GB card? Skip it. Acronis the base install and forget about it. It's faster anyway.

josh1980

12-31-2008, 10:20 AM

It's funny how many of you went WOW at the price for 8x4GB sticks. That's what I have. Expensive, but I have the cash to experiment. I've always lived on the bleeding edge. I think they call it bleeding edge because it bleeds your wallet fast. I had a dual processor Xeon workstation years ago, before anyone could buy a dual core computer. I had the latest and greatest at 800Mhz FSB. The system cost me almost $5k for everything.

Yesterday I bought 2xANS-9010B and 12x2GB sticks to populate those with. I bought the RAM drives from 2san, and they have a christmas special where you buy 2 ANS-9010Bs and get a free ANS-9012... So now I'm looking at 16GB SD cards... hehe. I bought 12x2GB sticks from newegg for $14 each. These ANS-9010Bs are perfect for running a virtual OS using VMWare Workstation. Fast seek and transfer rates to help offset the performance penalty for running 2 OSes.

@wmaciv-

I have questioned the usefulness of CF for my purpose since day 1. I still don't have a CF card, so I can't really provide much troubleshooting help. What I would recommend you try to do is zero out all of the sectors on the drive. This would wipe out all data on it, and possible some location that the ANS-9010 uses to keep data stored for it's purpose.

My thoughts are that the CF is actually a backup of the total userspace on the RAM. If you have 32GB of non-ecc ram, then that would be 8/9th(ECC enabled). So you are really backing up about 29GB of data. I'd bet there's something on the CF card that the ANS-9010 uses to identify how much data is backed up. You have more than you had, so the box doesn't want to use your card because it's not the right size. Formatting likely won't erase those bits since formatting doesn't really write data. If writing zeros to all sectors doesn't fix it, I don't have any other ideas to try, except RMA your CF stick.

I use acronis and do an autobackup every night. In the event I lose power and my UPS doesn't last.. acronis is cheaper and probably faster to recover my data.

I did experiment with stripe size for RAID0... look back at my post for benchmarks in RAID0 mode. 16kb was optimum for my setup using an ICH10R chipset. I left the sector size at 4kb though. I am formatted for NTFS running Windows XP Pro. I didn't see much of a reason to optimize my drive much further because when i run programs and such, the hard drive is not my limitation. My corei7 goes to max CPU usage for the associated core when programs are loading. Using HDDLED, I rarely exceed 50MB/sec when doing anything on my computer(aside from copying files). The only exception is playing World of Warcraft. WoW loads up all those graphics and such, and that goes ALOT faster, and the transfer rates go to about 80MB/sec for 2 seconds.

Serra

12-31-2008, 05:37 PM

It's funny how many of you went WOW at the price for 8x4GB sticks. That's what I have.

Yeah, it's funny when we have problems with the rent too. We say WOW because the percentage of people that can afford this level of hardware are not just slightly off the tip of the bell curve (I know you didn't mean it like that, but I think this is a fair retort).

Seriously though, let us know how that 9012 works out. It's certainly an interesting little device, but just doing some numbers off the top of my head based on the last time I looked up SD speeds it seems like an investment for particularly specialized areas. My hope is that you've looked into it a bit more than I have (which isn't hard, I haven't looked up max speeds on SD cards in quite awhile) and can wow us with some interesting speeds at a decent GB size.

nFo

01-01-2009, 03:11 AM

I got the Acard ANS-9010 yesterday.
With 1mb to 8mb blocksize you get uber write results.
http://infomb.googlepages.com/8mbblocksize.jpg

josh1980

01-07-2009, 07:22 PM

I tested my ANS-9012 tonight with 1x8GB Sandisk Ultra II SD card. I used the SD card from my HD camcorder for these tests. The SD card says Class 4. For any of you familiar with the SD classes, Class 4 requires 4MB/sec. I have no idea why Sandisk would market a product as class 4 when it's performance is 15MB/sec... That's almost 3x faster than Class 6(6MB/sec). Anyway, the Sandisk performed a solid 17.5MB/sec across the board. This was using a SATA->USB dongle!

Now I just have to figure out what size/speed/brand to buy. I was thinking if I buy a brand of SD with lifetime warranty, that's a guaranteed size forever. Just have to deal with RMAs and such. This does prove that 1 SD card will operate this device, for anyone that was wondering. That allows someone to add SD cards as time goes on. That's actually a pretty good deal for us folks that want to buy 32GB cards, but want to buy 1 or 2 to start, and the rest when they are cheaper.

One of my ANS-9010B arrived broken. One of the RAM clips was broken, so I'll be testing just one in the next day or 2, and then 2 ANS-9010B in RAID0 as soon as I get the other ANS-9010B in the mail. I just might try doing a RAID0x4 using both ANS-9010B and both ports on my ANS-9010. Just depends on how silly I want to be next weekend.

wmaciv

01-11-2009, 03:09 AM

Was having the devil's own time with the 9010 getting a corrupt volume on Port 1 (secondary port). Tried all sorts of RAM configs, still it would soon error on me either while running or between boots. Decided to get a little crazy, and put a jumper on the "RESERVED" block, a.k.a the ECC funtion disable, and I have had no problems since. I plan to leave the ECC functionality disabled, not for usable RAM, but it truly seems that it causes problems, at least in my RAID0 setup. I have a feeling there is something happening in the ECC that my motherboard's implementation of the ICH9R does not like, or vice-versa. Still working on getting another CF card; a full "erase" vs. just a format did not fix that problem either. Wonder if HW rev. 3.3 has these problems?

Wade

wmaciv

01-11-2009, 03:18 AM

I should have captured this in the previous post, but here goes...
When I remove the ECC function, and effectively enable "all" the memory, no matter what combination of RAM I use in what DIMM slot, Port1 ALWAYS reports itself as 15GB even though Port0 shows the proper 16GB. And remeber, this is prior to any formatting, or even building a RAID set in BIOS. Is the ACARD bootstrapping some sort of real-time kernal or OS and using a portion of RAM at boot to run its protocols? Even one stick of 4GB ram in any given slot (Port0 or Port1), has 1GB take from it. Now, I did NOT try to see if it steals 1GB from the top when the 9010 is set to single port mode, i.e. all the RAM in one contiguous block accesable through Port0. Maybe it would hand over all the RAM then. Jason, any thoughts?

Wade

josh1980

01-12-2009, 11:13 AM

My guess is this. Keep in mind that the 'disable ECC' function is not really supported by Acard for some reason. It's 'reserved', but that was it's original intended function. I have a PDF of the original version that shows that jumper's function.

It sounds like the RAID0 function always accounts for the ECC function being enabled, and when it's not you still can't really use that space for RAID0. I'm guessing that when you use the RAID0 function it uses the equation:

Port1 RAM allocated = Total RAM/2 - Total RAM * 1/9
Port0 RAM allocated = Total RAM - Port1 RAM allocated

This would give the exact results you are seeing. It seems that jumper disables the ECC function(maybe it really doesnt???, but I'll talk about that in a sec) but the Port1 mappings equation still subtracts the ECC memory size.

Ok, now to elaborate on the ECC function idea. What happens if you partition that extra 1/9th memory and actually put data there. I'm wondering if the "ECC disable feature" isn't really completely disabling the function. Maybe the 9010 gets confused and says the RAM is free, but is actually still using the ECC function(and using that space). If this were actually the case and you format that space and fill the space with data, then your drive would suddenly be corrupt because you overwrote the ECC data that was actually there with your data. Weird idea huh? I'll have to try this out and see what happens sometime.

I would strongly recommend you not disable ECC. The ECC feature, at least IMO, doesn't seem possible to be 'incompatible' with your RAID controller. The ECC feature is purely handled by the ANS-9010. All hard drives made in the last 25+ years(if not from day one) have built in ECC. It's handled entirely at the hard drive level. If it is not working correctly with the ECC feature enabled, I would start pulling the RAM out and testing it in a computer as system memory to determine if there is 1 or more bad sticks. Maybe your RAM isn't compatible with the 9010 or the 9010 is bad. This sounds more like a problem with the RAM/9010 than an incompatibility between the motherboard and 9010. All hard drives end up correcting data by the ECC pretty regularly. I was surprised at how often the ECC is actually used even though the sector isn't considered 'bad'. ECC can only improve the reliability of the data, and disabling it could result in corrupt data(not to mention possible undesired results due to the function being 'reserved').

I got my ANS-9010b's set up. One is going to be RMAd for a broken RAM connector. The RAM will stay in the slot on it's own, but since I haven't used the box yet, why not fix it now while I can RMA it? The 9010b internals look exactly like the 9010, minus the added RAM slots, SATA port, etc. They use the same physical board for both. I'm wondering what would happen if someone soldered on the missing components. Would a 9010b become a 9010?

Can you elaborate on the 1GB missing when using a 4GB RAM stick? You said "Even one stick of 4GB ram in any given slot (Port0 or Port1), has 1GB take from it. " There's more than 2 ports for 4GB ram sticks to go :P. Just wanting to understand your comment on the "missing 1GB". What exactly happens with ECC enabled and disabled with 1x4Gb stick of RAM? If possible what about if you are in RAID0 or 1 port mode.

wmaciv

01-14-2009, 06:13 PM

I still am convinced that the error on volume one (port 1) shown at boot time was COMPLETELY eliminated by jumpering the ECC function/RESERVED jumper. I'm not saying WHY it worked, but it fixed my problem, and I have been running continuously for about 5 days with no problem. I could barely make it a dozen boot cycle before throwing an error before.

The comment about the single stick of RAM was just that... Any of my 4gb sticks (out of 8) show only 3gb when installed in any slot (as the only stick of ram). Whatever slice it is taking from the pool of RAM, it takes it from 4gb or 32 gb or any amount in between.... I'm not sure, but it would seem if I put in a 2gb stick, it would probably show up as 1gb. Anyway... still learning the box here... still like it, but it has its quirks.

I still have no joy with my 32gb CF card that worked so well early on with 24gb, but now, no matter what erase or format tool I use, notheing but a red LED. One of these days I will get another card, but not right now...

Wade

Chosen.

01-18-2009, 01:02 PM

I just finished a video for my review and I can't publish it on Youtube, as it's 12:30 long. It's a video of a fresh Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit installation on the ANS-9010.
The installation took under 8 minutes, but with the 2.5 minutes of the system performance benchmark and some minor fiddling around in the desktop and a couple of restarts, the video turned out to be too long for Youtube...
I'm uploading it to GoogleVideo as we speak =]

F.E.A.R.

01-20-2009, 12:17 PM

Don´t use reg ECC!!!
Only ECC or Non-ECC.

josh1980

01-21-2009, 11:30 PM

What happened? The fact that you used 3 exclamation points makes me wonder if you had a beautiful fireball occur when you applied power or something. If you look at posts 119 and 121(both from me), you'd see that the box is not compatible with registered memory.

After reading about how registered memory works, I figured out that it is impossible for registered memory to operate in this box. The signals for registered are different. Normally, any signal on the input pins is directly placed on the output pins. With registered memory this is different. Any signal on the input pins is not on the output pins. The inputs go to the registers on the RAM stick. During the following clock cycle, the signal will be duplicated on the output pins. Basically, if a given device works with 'unregistered' memory(the quotes are there because there really is no such thing as unregistered RAM, the correct term is asynchronous RAM), then the fact that the device requires the output signal to be present on pins on the same clock cycle means that the 1 clock cycle added to registered memory would throw off the hardware, and would not work. :).

Unfortunately Acard's manual for this is effectively crap. If you read my comment in post 119 of this thread, you'll see how the manual at their website conflicts with the manual that was provided with the hardware. If I had bought registered memory and had to RMA it, I would have called Acard and demanded a refund for my restocking fee for the RAM because they would clearly be at fault for providing incorrect information in the manual. I totally would have gotten it too, even if it meant getting a lawyer. I see no reason why the manual could be so horribly wrong with identifying the correct RAM to use. That's like selling a vehicle, and the manual tells you that the vehicle uses Unleaded gasoline, but it really requires Diesel.

Particle

01-22-2009, 09:59 AM

No, it doesn't catch on fire with registered memory. I tried it. :) It wasn't until I found the fine print in the manual that I understood why eight 2GB ECC Reg DIMMs weren't working in the thing. It's not very common to have ECC memory that isn't registered, so it hadn't..."registered" (heh?) with me that reg wouldn't work after reading it had ECC memory support.

Chosen.

01-25-2009, 08:05 PM

My review (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=215670) is ready :)

Serra

01-29-2009, 09:21 PM

My review posted here (www.coolingreview.com).

josh1980

01-29-2009, 10:15 PM

Strangely, I must have 'rev1' of the box, because my 'lid' on my ANS-9010 is a solid piece of metal. There's no holes in it at all. What would be great is a fan for these things. They get kind of warm, so I left my cover off.

Serra,

Nice review. I just have one comment. I'd research more before you take my word for this...I tried to look this up quickly before work, but i couldn't get all the info to verify this for myself. Based on what you can research about ECC, your review might be inaccurate as to the ECC calculations being performed on the RAM stick itself ;).

If i'm not mistaken, ECC is 72 bit RAM instead of 64 bit.

- For non-ECC RAM, 64 bits of data are sent via the RAM to the motherboard.
- For ECC RAM, 72-bits of data are sent via the RAM to the motherboard. The 8 additional bits are handed off to the memory controller, where the ECC checking is performed.

If you think about it, most ram are even number of chips(2,4,8,etc). You'll see an extra 'missing' chip slot on alot of RAM. The missing slot is because the PCB is made to support anything. The ram manufacturer solders on the number of chips and size for the amount of ram they want, and if the stick is intended to be ECC, the extra chip is added. In my example above, the chips would have been 8 bit, with the 9th chip being identical to the rest providing the 72 bits of data.

Several people have noted using ECC and non-ECC RAM(with the ECC feature enabled) and could not find a performance difference. The answer is simple. The board has to perform the ECC calculation regardless of the type of RAM used. The real difference is that ECC ram has 1/9th more RAM on the stick, but is not user available space because those memory locations are designated for ECC checking. So really, if you buy a 2GB stick of ECC RAM, it's technically 2.25GB, but your available space is 2GB.

I believe(of course, i'm not the designer so I have no information to prove this) that the ANS-9010 detects the total quantity of RAM available(this includes the ECC space, so 2x2GB ECC sticks would really be detected as 4.5GB). But since the box uses ECC we'd still see the 4GB.

This could have changed. I looked at pictures on newegg and stuff, and they were showing pictures of ECC ram with only 8 chips, but it could be they were just using a canned picture for all memory made by the same manufacturer. I'm not sure if its changed, that's why I think you should research it further.

Also, if what I said above is true, then the implications for using the pseudo ECC feature are more pronounced. This means that any RAM request would actually be 2 requests. 1 for the data, and a separate request for the additional ECC data. This would effectively mean that the RAM's theoretical max is 1/2 of the speeds. I'm sure they aren't using RAM at the DDR2-400 speed, probably more like DDR-200 or something along those lines. I believe the Gigabyte I-RAM was DDR-83 or DDR-100... It was underclocked whatever it was.

m^2

01-29-2009, 11:14 PM

F.E.A.R.

01-30-2009, 12:00 PM

I believe the Gigabyte I-RAM was DDR-83 or DDR-100... It was underclocked whatever it was.

I think, iRam uses PCI 2.0 - 33MHz...
My bandwidth with iRam is max. 133MB/s.

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_361210x.jpg

Serra

01-30-2009, 06:54 PM

"What I find most encouraging is just how close we get to the 200MB/s maximum per-port throughput"
Sounds like you mean SATA2 maximum, which is 300 MB/s.

But overall, a very nice review. Especially the "Under the hood" part. :)

Nah, I was talking about the processor max... but I can see how that would easily be missed. Maybe I'll have to take a swing at re-wording it.

lowfat

01-30-2009, 07:15 PM

I think, iRam uses PCI 2.0 - 33MHz...
My bandwidth with iRam is max. 133MB/s.

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_361210x.jpg

The iRam doesn't use PCI for bandwidth, just to power the card. All the data is over SATA1.

F.E.A.R.

01-30-2009, 11:43 PM

@ Chosen

In cooperation with a french forum (Nokytech.net) we start a collective order for Acard 9010 (365$ of piece - normaly 532$)
But it´s hard to get cheap 4GB-Modules in germany (less than 64$ of piece). Qimonda (Aeneon) are broken!?!?
Now, i bought 16x 2GB Kingston-Modules (320$) and wait for 2x Acard 9010. :yepp:
I hope to break the 700MB/s.-Wall @ 0,02ms with the ARC-1261D-ML :D

@ lowfat

You´r right :yawn:
PCI is only for electricity supply

Chosen.

01-31-2009, 07:29 PM

I think, iRam uses PCI 2.0 - 33MHz...
My bandwidth with iRam is max. 133MB/s.
Your 133Mb/sec are basically SATA150's theoritical bandwidth (150Mb/sec) minus a 10% overhead.

@ Chosen
In cooperation with a french forum (Nokytech.net) we start a collective order for Acard 9010 (365$ of piece - normaly 532$)
But it´s hard to get cheap 4GB-Modules in germany (less than 64$ of piece). Qimonda (Aeneon) are broken!?!?
Now, i bought 16x 2GB Kingston-Modules (320$) and wait for 2x Acard 9010. :yepp:
I hope to break the 700MB/s.-Wall @ 0,02ms with the ARC-1261D-ML :D

Very nice, do you use Live Messenger by any chance? If so, PM me your MSN address :)

The cheapest 4Gb modules I found, were some Kingston N2E6/4G for £79 :eek: so I didn't fill up my ANS-9010...

F.E.A.R.

02-01-2009, 05:33 AM

The cheapest 4Gb modules I found, were some Kingston N2E6/4G for £79 :eek: so I didn't fill up my ANS-9010...

Yes... Infineon/Qimonda/Aeneon have big problems :(

So i will buy 2x Acard 9010 to get this :D --> http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/5994/acardtest008ye6.th.jpg (http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=acardtest008ye6.jpg) (it´s only onboard - ICH9R) <-- 2 Acard´s

With a separate controller you get better 4k-benches http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/3652/in1ans3hu4.th.jpg (http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=in1ans3hu4.jpg) (1x Acard 9010 with LaCie-Controler) <-- 1 Acard

And no, i haven´t a messenger. But you can PN me ;)

Boogerlad

02-01-2009, 12:28 PM

why is a raid controller worse than the onboard one for seq?

F.E.A.R.

02-01-2009, 12:53 PM

It´s only one Acard on a raid controller. Onboard 2 ;)
I red-marked it only for you :D

A good raid-controler + 2 Acard´s must be the hell on earth :yepp:

wmaciv

02-09-2009, 07:19 PM

First e-mail....

Hi,

1. For ANS-9010 8*4GB total 32GB,

Memory total capacity: unit:1024Byte
32GB=32*1024B*1024B*1024B=34,359,738,368Byte

ANS-9010 has ECC simulation function and it needed total capacity of 1/9,

so it will be 34,359,738,368 *1/9=3,817,748,708Byte

According to calculate, we can use data of RAM Disk is

RAM DISK - ECC = DATA
34,359,738,368-3,817,748,708=30,541,989,660Byte

CF Card capacity: unit:1000Byte
32GB=32*1000*1000*1000=32,000,000,000Byte

Therefore, we know RAM Disk capacity is less than CF card capacity, so you can feel free and use 32GB CF card to backup / restore data with ANS-9010.

If you are use DIMM with ECC for ANS-9010, we will suggestion move up to next size of CF card. For example, if total RAM Disk capacity is 32GB, please use 48GB CF card for backup / restore.

2. For that button, it is for engineer debug use only, please do not press that button in any time, because it may take risk or cause data lose.

ACARD Technical Support Dept.
FAE-Jack
Mail: support@acard.com
Tel: 886(2)85122290
----- Original Message -----
From: supportrc
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 8:43 AM
Subject: <<9700080531>>Help!!--English--ANS-9010

Second e-mail...

Hi,

1. No need do format on CF card before you insert it into ANS-9010 and backup data.

2. The new CF card will copy all ANS-9010 data (included disk partition) if you pressed backup to cf button or auto backup data to cf when power off ANS-9010.

3. When restore data in progressing, CF be removed suddenly, you may see "Backup to CF" LED solid red. 2 solutions for this situation:
A. You can try to remove all power source from ANS-9010 (include battery) and install power source again.
B. Insert CF card to ANS-9010 again.

If you read previous mail, you will find out uses 32GB CF card to backup / restore data from ANS-9010 with 32GB DDR2 DIMM (NON-ECC) should be no problem.

ACARD Technical Support Dept.
FAE-Jack
Mail: support@acard.com
Tel: 886(2)85122290
----- Original Message -----
From: supportrc
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 8:41 AM
Subject: <<9700080662>>Re: Help!!--English--ANS-9010

Third e-mail...

Hi,

If your DDR2 is non-ECC and disable ANS-9010 ECC function (jumper on ECC), too, your ANS-9010 total size will be 32,768MB, but CF card is 32,000MB only, that's why you can not backup and see Backup to CF LED are steady red.

ANS-9010 are provided ECC function (no jumper on ECC) already, it makes date more safety and security, this function take total size of memory * 1/9, meaning 32768-(32768*1/9)=29127, and CF card can fully backup ANS-9010 32GB without any error because CF card size big than ANS-9010 now.

If your DDR2 DIMM is ECC type, ANS-9010 total size will be 32,768MB, but your CF card is 32,000MB only, that's why you can not backup and see red light on Backup to CF LED, so please use 48GB CF with ANS-9010 32GB or downgrade ANS-9010 to 28GB with 32GB CF card for complete backup.

Please beware that power source (include battery) must remove or press button battery connector nearby when you are install DDR2 DIMM.

Please provide your DDR2 DIMM model and ANS-9010 firmware version to us for check more information.
Here is how to check ANS-9010 firmware version:
1. Right click on "My Computer"
2. Click "Properities"
3. Check ANS-9010 on "Device Manager"
4. Refer to attach file "9010-FW 31 32.jpg"

ACARD Technical Support Dept.
FAE-Jack
Mail: support@acard.com
Tel: 886(2)85122290
----- Original Message -----
From: supportrc
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 8:51 AM
Subject: <<9800004593>>Help!!--English--ANS-9010 R 3.1

F.E.A.R.

02-13-2009, 08:43 AM

I´m ready for the fight!!!
16x Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 2GB PC2-6400U CL6 (DDR2-800) (KVR800D2N6/2G) :yepp:

http://www.abload.de/thumb/pict056832va.jpg (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=pict056832va.jpg) http://www.abload.de/thumb/pict05772jzi.jpg (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=pict05772jzi.jpg)

josh1980

02-16-2009, 02:15 AM

So.. today I hooked up my ANS-9010(using both ports) and my 2 ANS-9010B in RAID0. The speeds were....wait for it... 702MB/sec on HD Tach. I couldn't tell the difference in speed between this setup and my 1 ANS-9010 using both ports. It booted in about the same time, copying was a lot faster, that was about it. I'd post the benchmark results, but I deleted them on accident :(. Grr.

F.E.A.R.

03-05-2009, 05:22 PM

Which controller?

Look this test with ICH9R, Areca ARC-1210 and ARC-1231ML (german)

http://www.hyperossystems.de/Erfahrungsbericht_Hyperdrive_5.pdf

josh1980

03-07-2009, 01:31 AM

*Update*

Well, I now own a 9010 and 2x9010B models. I decided to buy my first CF card for one of my 9010B drives since it was going to be the boot drive for my server. Got a Kingston 16GB card (only have 12GB of RAM in it). Plugged it in, and the backup light turned green, hinting that all is well. That was a mistake assuming all was well. I decided to move my server into another room. After getting it there, I looked and the light was blinking and all seemed right. However things were about to go wrong.

Due to a busy day, I decided not attempt to plug the computer back in and boot it up. I woke up this morning and noticed that all 4 battery lights were still lit. I was shocked as the battery isn't supposed to last 12 hours. When I got home from work, again all 4 lights were still lit. I just plugged in the computer and turned it on. Surprise! There's no data on the drive. The backup light is red. Not happy right now as I didn't make an Acronis image because it all seemed okay until the next morning when I woke up to find 4 lights lit.

There is a firmware update for the ANS-9010B (of course, the website says it's 'Beta' and to not install it until it has been thoroughly tested). There is also a software tool for download. Again, with a catch. The drive cannot have any partitions on it per the instructions with the software tool. Note the underline. It tells you to backup the data (obviously as a warning), but it also tells you that you cannot have a partition on the drive. The software tool allows you to test the RAM to verify compatibility. I see no ability to test the functionality of the CF card, so my situation is still not solvable.

Currently, I'm stuck with having to reload Windows Server 2003, and now I have a CF card that I am unable to prove will work in a 9010B. Guess for me I'm lucky enough to have a spare 9010B, so I'll be duplicating data from 1 to the other to determine what the heck is wrong.

My advice: Be sure to back up your data, and not trust the CF feature. Someone else in this thread had a similar issue where their CF just wouldn't work. I'd expect that if the backup failed then I'd see the red backup light BEFORE I turn the computer back on, and I'd see the battery level drain slowly to zero while the battery powered the RAM. It appears that what happens when power is lost is the CF backup starts.

If the CF backup fails for any reason then the battery just gives up completely, dumps the contents of your RAM and sits there with 4 power lights on. Not the kind of design I'd call 'high reliability'. I'd expect a big fat red backup light telling me something is wrong and the battery power the RAM until the battery died. This obviously isn't the case because my server sat with all 4 lights on and the computer was unplugged for almost 24 hours before I finally got it reconnected.

Edit:

After giving up for about 45 mins I turned the computer off. 1 light is currently lit for the battery power. Remember, I had 4 lights lit for the last 24 hours.