ACARD Review Competition: 9010 RAM Disk

[JasonACARD]

Fellow XS forum members,

As promised, I am here to deliver you the testing sample event. Upon discussion with forum members and our team here, we have decided to give out 9010 RAM Disk for 10 forum members to review. I honestly wish to have more reviewers but given the current production schedule and shortage, this is the best I can do. My apologies on that guys.
The ACARD RAM Disk 9010 was originally discussed in the XS forums:
Here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=201723), and Here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=202150).

Now the details:

Details
• Please PM the following to JasonACARD
• Your System spec
• RAM Module spec
• Intended testing applications
– For a sample application review, please refer to 2SAN.com (link of Photoshop application case)
• Portfolio of reviews done (if applicable)
• Application is received from December 5th, 2008 to December 12th, 2008
• Evaluation/competition period open from December 13th, 2008 to January 8th, 2008 (Happy New Year! yeah :D). Winner will be announced on the 18th.
• Participants automatically authorize ACARD the right of reference with credit given to the reviewer
• Upon posting reviews, please submit a link to JasonACARD

How to Win
• Quality Quality Quality (quality of review will be the utmost important criterion)
• Number of posts to various forum/topics (with direct links submitted) such as: RAM-based drives, HDDs, or SSDs, hard drive cooling, threads on backup solutions, networking storage, RAM operation, or even the news section
• Reviews does not limited to Storage section. We actually encourage posting of reviews to various topics
• Number of different threads created, posted, and submitted
Prize
• All participants will be given a free sample of ANS-9010 for review ($399 value)
• All participants who posted and submitted reviews will receive an APC-2200 ($45 value) Multi Interface Bridge
Winner
• Winner will receive an additional unit of 9010 RAM Disk (YAY for higher RAID setup)
• Winner will also receive an external 5-bay hardware RAID(0, 1, 5) sub-system (ANS-9050) ($750 value).

The reading is long, I know, but that’s the only way I can convince the people up there to give out more samples. Please PM for any questions or concerns.
Forum admin please contact me should this violate any forum rules. :)

Jason

[Buckeye]

PM sent

[Ket]

I'm up for this :D Can you guys open reviews written with MS Office 07?

[sno.lcn]

Sent you a PM :)

[[XC] gomeler]

Oh man I am SO down for this! Sending you a PM with my specs and experience.

[Ket]

PM'd too :D I tried to keep things as short as possible, if you would like more detailed information let me know :up:

[XC] gomeler; SHENANIGANS :p:

[Trouffman]

w000T ! Interesting things !
I'll try to convice you soon :D

[Serra]

PM on the way :D

If anyone is wondering what an ANS-9050 is as listed in the prize area, check out this link (awesome little unit for anyone with an eSATA port):
http://www.acard.com.tw/english/newstabpop.jsp?idno=69

[kylepaddock]

do you want me to send my specs of my notebook or desktop?

[Serra]

do you want me to send my specs of my notebook or desktop?

I'm going to field this one and suggest desktop, as the 9010 uses 2x SATA ports and looks like it draws power from a SATA power connector (or molex... there's just a molex/SATA adapter shown and I haven't really seen anyone discuss this yet)... probably not much good in a laptop either way ;).

[kylepaddock]

that what i thought

[Ic3man]

PM Sent:cool:

[gumballguy]

Wonderful :)

[kylepaddock]

PM sent

[slugbug]

Any updates on which of us were chosen?

[cirthix]

My understanding is that we all sent PMs to him with our qualifications as reviewers and the best-qualified individuals would get a ramdisk. Then, the chosen ones will write a review and the best reviewer will receive another ramdisk and raid box.


As the competition is supposed to open on the 13th, I'd expect that the reviewers have been notified. A public list would be nice, but that was never made clear.

If anyone has been contacted to be a reviewer, please post saying so.

[[XC] gomeler]

Haven't been contacted yet. Wonder if a decision has been made or not :shrug:

[gumballguy]

Indeed, I haven't heard anything from Jason.

Perhaps the contest was undersubscribed and the qualifications of everyone was not quite what Jason expected.

Perhaps he's just busy :) I would like to hear from him.

[Charles Wirth]

This contest was supposed to start 2 days ago?

[[XC] gomeler]

Yup

Evaluation/competition period open from December 13th, 2008 to January 8th, 2008 (Happy New Year! yeah ). Winner will be announced on the 18th.

[eligray]

damn, wanted to see this thing happen =P

[slugbug]

How many of us PM'd Jason expressing interest I wonder.

[K404]

I honestly dont think im up to the standard required for this kinda review, but thanks to Acard and Jason for being willing to do this at all :D

[JasonACARD]

Update guys:

I have receive more than double of the quota; so... I am sure I will be disapointing some of you :(
Sorting through the applications now. Selected participants will receive my PM before Friday.

[[XC] gomeler]

Better to have too many than not enough :up:

[gumballguy]

Ah, thanks muchly.

I had thought there were <10 applicants so only half who applied must have posted.

Eagerly awaiting the news :D

[cirthix]

I am reviewing a unit and should have it in a few days.

[Buckeye]

I have one here now. Just need to load it up with some 4gig RAM chips.

[kylepaddock]

who won?

[Ket]

I don't think anyone has won yet. Awaiting my unit :up:

[slugbug]

I guess the 10 reviewers have been chosen then.

[kylepaddock]

I don't think anyone has won yet. Awaiting my unit :up:

what unit?

[sno.lcn]

The unit for review, as mentioned in the first post :)

[kylepaddock]

but i thought they haven't chosen anyone yet?

[slugbug]

Perhaps Jason should have made a post in this thread mentioning that the 10 people had been chosen.


• All participants will be given a free sample of ANS-9010 for review ($399 value)
• All participants who posted and submitted reviews will receive an APC-2200 ($45 value) Multi Interface Bridge
Winner
• Winner will receive an additional unit of 9010 RAM Disk (YAY for higher RAID setup)
• Winner will also receive an external 5-bay hardware RAID(0, 1, 5) sub-system (ANS-9050) ($750 value).

It appears the 10 participants have already been chosen, and whoever writes the best review will also get an additional 9010 RAM Disk as well as an ANS-9050 5 bay RAID enclosure.

[sno.lcn]

My unit arrived a few minutes ago, can't wait to play with it in the morning :D

[josh1980]

Damn me. I just read about this today! Dec 29th. I so would have participated, and then I could have done a 4xRAID0 on the thing for testing. O well. No reviews for me :(.

-Josh

[kylepaddock]

i guess i wasnt one of those 10

[RADCOM]

I have one here now. Just need to load it up with some 4gig RAM chips.
4GB RAM chips :eek: they pay you far too much lol. I struggled to get 2GB chips and I've not seen hide nor hair of the Drive unit yet:( I wonder if the final date for the review will be put back:shrug:

[cirthix]

Yes, I think we need a few more days considering some of us had delays in receiving them.

I loaded mine up with 8x2gb sticks and did a buch of synthetic tests, but no real-world stuff yet.

[Buckeye]

4GB RAM chips :eek: they pay you far too much lol. I struggled to get 2GB chips and I've not seen hide nor hair of the Drive unit yet:( I wonder if the final date for the review will be put back:shrug:

No I ended up with 2gig sticks. 4gig sticks was just to costly :(

[[XC] gomeler]

4GB was way too costly, I was looking at them also. Would need to work for a memory manufacturer to make it a viable option which unfortunately puts a dent into what can be done with the ACARD.

[gumballguy]

Indeed, I haven't received my unit yet (tho I'm not in the US, so not entirely unexpected).

[Buckeye]

Just completed my review and posted here
http://www.411overkill.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=4397

Others on this board better understand all the tech behind these units much better than me and I love to see all the different stats. Josh did a great job of doing this here on XS. Thanks so much Josh you did really great work there !

Much of that information is over my head tho, or used for a different purpose that I would use this product for, which would be Gaming, Productive Apps like Photoshop etc. With only one user high IOP's are not that important to me, but Access Time and Bandwidth are. This drive provides both !

[sno.lcn]

The date was pushed back in case anyone didn't get the email.

Good thing too, because I've only done synthetic benchmarks so far, still need to do some real world testing :)

[Buckeye]

The date was pushed back in case anyone didn't get the email.

Good thing too, because I've only done synthetic benchmarks so far, still need to do some real world testing :)

Yes I wanted to get mine completed, I can add more. But with CES coming up real quick so time was short.

[Chosen.]

Just completed my review and posted here
http://www.411overkill.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=4397


Nice, mate. I bet you didn't realise that you can put a jumper on the first set of pins and make your ANS9010 two drives, RAID0 them and get double transfer rates in everything! I can't believe that you could double its performance and you didn't want to :D

[Buckeye]

Nice, mate. I bet you didn't realise that you can put a jumper on the first set of pins and make your ANS9010 two drives, RAID0 them and get double transfer rates in everything! I can't believe that you could double its performance and you didn't want to :D

Oh I want to... I only had 16gb RAM and I wanted to run a OS on it so I needed the full amount of RAM for that. If I was running the full amount of RAM I would do that, but that was pretty costly.

I would rather run 2 drives with 16gb installed in each, then RAID them together for a full 32gb in RAID 0.

[Chosen.]

You can install 16Gb of DDR2 on one 9010, set the jumper to dual mode, and you will have 2x 8Gb "disks". When RAID0'd you will get the same capacity you have now (16Gb) but double the performance.
If you get a 2nd unit, you repeat the same and end up with one 32Gb disk, comprised of 4x 8Gb drives in RAID0 and 700Mb/sec speed :)

[Buckeye]

You can install 16Gb of DDR2 on one 9010, set the jumper to dual mode, and you will have 2x 8Gb "disks". When RAID0'd you will get the same capacity you have now (16Gb) but double the performance.
If you get a 2nd unit, you repeat the same and end up with one 32Gb disk, comprised of 4x 8Gb drives in RAID0 and 700Mb/sec speed :)

Thanks Chosen. I must have miss read that in the manual. I was in a big hurry doing a lot of stuff before CES, I will relook at that.

Thanks again

[sno.lcn]

Nice, mate. I bet you didn't realise that you can put a jumper on the first set of pins and make your ANS9010 two drives, RAID0 them and get double transfer rates in everything! I can't believe that you could double its performance and you didn't want to :D

Yep, it's a beast with RAID enabled :up:

[Serra]

Yep, it's a beast with RAID enabled :up:

Ain't that the truth. I had a bit of a giggle earlier reading a thread where some people were commenting on how they *only* see 2-3 of the boot "bars" in Windows... with a single one of these in RAID-0 with itself I don't see any. I'll admit that's using a tweaked OS, but impressive as hell nonetheless.

They're pricey, but excepting the FusionIO or something similar they are the fastest "single" drive a person can own. My only concern is that they've ruined me for other drives.

[Chosen.]

My only concern is that they've ruined me for other drives.

This happened to me a year ago with my first Memoright SSD :(
Since then I have spent approx $200 on conventional HDDs and about $3.5k on SSDs...
Truth be said, the ANS-9010 is simply amazing. I just wish Acard could get a better deal for 4Gb DIMMs with a memory company and sold it populated with 32Gb for the same price as an X25-E ($700+)
It would be awesome + there would be no excuse to go for any other performance SSD :)

[Buckeye]

So have any of you guys done a review yet ?
Lets see some links :)

[sno.lcn]

So have any of you guys done a review yet ?
Lets see some links :)



Going to try and finish up this weekend.

[[XC] gomeler]

So have any of you guys done a review yet ?
Lets see some links :)

Never got mine :D

[Particle]

Really? In RAID-0 performance on mine actually decreased quite a bit except for stuff where there is large, sequential I/O. Windows boot and such slowed down by average of ~2 seconds. Windows install also increased. Maybe it's my RAID controller. I might switch it over to my Areca ARC-1220 and see how it performs then instead of using SB750 RAID. Frankly speaking though, the results were as I expected with RAID-0 increasing task time for stuff where it's lots of little bits of I/O.

[gumballguy]

Ack. My unit half died last night, before I finished testing.

I can get it partially working but I think I have to redo all the results to satisfy people. Not good :/

[Serra]

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

[Serra]

Sorry, double post

[cirthix]

my review will be posted today in the xtreme reviews section. Time to get cracking on it. dammn procrastination :(.

[DonNiger]

Does anybody have a setup to compare and to create a review about ANS-9010 versus ANS-9010B in single and RAID mode? Would be interesting to see those two units competeing against each other. I have a freaky thought that the cheaper units in RAID mode would won - don't ask why. (Haven't touched by myself-not sold in EU yet :( )

[Buckeye]

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

Nice review Serra. Best one yet !! :up:

[fiveprime]

Damn it I had more ram I'd enter but I only have 2 gigs and no review writing experience.

[Particle]

I've had the damnedest time getting consistent results. I have to reboot the damn machine to clear out the disk cache.

[fiveprime]

You seem to have problems running much of anything :p

[Particle]

Motherboards mainly. heh I've blown through my fair share of them, but I blame build quality. Most of my failures were MOSFET related. And I don't think you can blame the Catalyst problems I've been having on me either.

[gumballguy]

My review can be found at: http://forums.primelogic.com.au/index.php/topic,758.0.html

I decided I'd be special by posting elsewhere. Seems like I'm not the only one :) People can pm me here as well for questions or testing requests.

It's a bit long. I felt it was justified. There's a lot to discuss :)

Cheers,
gbg

[cirthix]

My idea was to use software raid to get it to show up as a single logical volume, then use vmware to effectively boot from the software raid and do real world tests within vmware ,but the performance hit isn't negligible. I'll have to do the tests with a real os.

this will take another day, sorry.

edit: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3618180#post3618180

[gumballguy]

Does anybody have a setup to compare and to create a review about ANS-9010 versus ANS-9010B in single and RAID mode? Would be interesting to see those two units competeing against each other. I have a freaky thought that the cheaper units in RAID mode would won - don't ask why. (Haven't touched by myself-not sold in EU yet :( )

I think you would find performance to be identical, with only the maximum size of the disk varying (6 dimm slots vs 8). There's no difference in speed between having 1 and 8 sticks of ram in the 9010, so having 6 sticks in either system should be the same too.

I doubt the models have any physically different components, so I am making that assumption in my answer.

[gumballguy]

I'm quite disappointed by how many people didn't do the review... there are 4 links here, and we know Particle's is on the way.

I really hope 5 people didn't take the unit and run. That's quite awful if true

[sno.lcn]

I'm quite disappointed by how many people didn't do the review... there are 4 links here, and we know Particle's is on the way.

I really hope 5 people didn't take the unit and run. That's quite awful if true

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=593841

[Chosen.]

I'm quite disappointed by how many reviewers (including TechReport) managed to get the same scores with the ANS-9010 in dual mode, as in single mode.
I mean, come on! :rolleyes:

[gumballguy]

I'm quite disappointed by how many reviewers (including TechReport) managed to get the same scores with the ANS-9010 in dual mode, as in single mode.
I mean, come on! :rolleyes:

It does depend on what theyre testing. Read/writes go up, IOPS/seeks stay the same. The benchmark application also may not work (I found at least 2 that didnt) on such fast drives. If the benchmark app screens the actual speeds behind a silly number (eg: if you couldn't look into individual speeds in pcmark you'd just get a meaningless end number) it will also hide that the app is failing.

[Buckeye]

I'm quite disappointed by how many reviewers (including TechReport) managed to get the same scores with the ANS-9010 in dual mode, as in single mode.
I mean, come on! :rolleyes:

I thought that was strange also. Mine was in single mode which was the same as what others said was dual, very close numbers.

I tried in dual mode with my ARC-1231ML and had problems with that, so I kept it in single as I was off to XS and short on time.

[Particle]

Mine was posted at OCF on the 31st:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=594189

It isn't in the review, but I ordered some Fujitsu 15K RPM SAS drives that I'll be comparing the ACARD to as well. Testing will start tonight, actually.

Folks, RAID-0 isn't a magical thing that will double all performance. It's going to matter when you're doing lots of large, sequential I/O but not much of anything otherwise. For real-world usage like boot drives and program loads, RAID-0 will probably even slow you down versus a single drive.

[Serra]

Any word on who ever won the second 9010 + eSATA enclosure? We must be a bit past the extended evaluation day by now.

[Ket]

So everybody got their unit apart from me despite being sent a email just before christmas saying I'd be getting some to test, thats great. If I had some kind of notification then fine, as I didn't, this company now = blacklisted in my books.

[Chosen.]

Any word on who ever won the second 9010 + eSATA enclosure? We must be a bit past the extended evaluation day by now.

Evaluation period was extended due to the delayed deliveries, as far as I remember.

[Serra]

Evaluation period was extended due to the delayed deliveries, as far as I remember.

Well he said it would be extended accordingly with the review period. The review period was extended until the end of January, and the original evaluation period was going to be 10 days... so... should be ~Feb 10 or so...

[Particle]

Ket, if you're still interested in reviewing the product (though probably too late for review), I could ship you my unit now that my review is done. I'd want it back of course, but you'd still get to play with it that way. :)

[cirthix]

*poke*

[[XC] gomeler]

I received my 9010B for a press review last week. Corsair kindly loaned me 8GB of DDR2 for the review, it is in the queue of products to be reviewed. Will link to the review when it is complete.

[Serra]

So still no word on a winner? Has anyone sent an e-mail to Jason to inquire?

[gumballguy]

So still no word on a winner? Has anyone sent an e-mail to Jason to inquire?

I did about a week and a half ago, at which point I was informed that half the reviews had been read, and that it would take about another week.

Personally I'm not too worried, it'd be nice to win something of course, but that's out of my hands now.

[cirthix]

bump

[Chosen.]

Rather disappointing that Acard canceled the competition without warning... or at least that is what appears that have happened.