News : i-RAM 2 coming

[Cooper]

Hope everybody knows what is i-RAM. If somebody still doesn`t - read this (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480&p=1)
VR-Zone (http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3052) reports about upcoming second version of this device. It`ll support DDR2 and SATA2. DDR2 surely would make it data looseless with on-board batteries for a longer period. And SATA2 interface would improove I/O speed. Also DIMMs` count will be increased to 8 - totaly up to 16 GB per device.
Rev. 2.0 expected to launch at February source reports.

[eva2000]

:slobber: :slobber: :slobber: :cool: :woot:

Excellent news - great for decent database servers too if reliability is there :D

[Charles Wirth]

It should be shipping by December 24th and may hit the shelves of Frys for about $185

[Cooper]

It should be shipping by December 24th and may hit the shelves of Frys for about $185

Isn`t that Rev. 1.2 you are talking about ?

[Charles Wirth]

DDR version

[[XC] leviathan18]

ddrII ram is cheaper too

[Mr. Tinker]

can't wait

[krille]

So, will you be able to use this in non-Gigabyte mobos?

[Cooper]

So, will you be able to use this in non-Gigabyte mobos?

Of course ;)

[nn_step]

I like it... I will own it...

[Qkjhfhaiguihfma]

the only benefit of ddr2 will be improved battery life, correct? sata2 can't touch ddr, right?

[Karma]

the only benefit of ddr2 will be improved battery life, correct? sata2 can't touch ddr, right?

DDR2 has higher thoroughput / bandwidth.

At times, one of iRAM1's limiting factors was SATA1's 150 MB/s bandwidth (it never got faster than 130 MB/s in practice). Moving to SATA2 with a new controller and 300 MB/s will certainly help.

Last time around it was limited by size & speed (200MHz max). This time the size/volume was quadrupled from 4GB to 16GB and is more than enough to fit an OS onto it, and the speed also goes up from 200MHz to 800MHz (if that's the speed they choose, although DDR2 goes up to 1000MHz).

Good stuff, though it'll still cost a heck of alot more than a conventional hard drive. But this looks like the bridge between now & the Hybrid hard drives, whenever they come out.

[ahmad]

Now comes the use for those 5 PCI slots.

[Magnj]

flash HS's here we come

[vapb400]

ddr2 is alot cheaper too

[J-Mag]

Now comes the use for those 5 PCI slots.

Well the iRam2 is external and doesn't even use PCI anymore, so... :stick:

[Karma]

External compared to the motherboard. Internal compared to the case. It'll probably use a molex to keep the power. The last one got its power from the PCI slot.

[saaya]

ddr2 consumes more power than ddr1 though afaik, no?
it runs at lower volts, but the high end stuff consumes more power than high end ddr1... or am i wrong?

but sounds very nice!

[ahmad]

Well the iRam2 is external and doesn't even use PCI anymore, so... :stick:

Ah ok. I just looked at the picture and assumed it works off the PCI bus, but I guess that really wouldn't make a whole lot of sense...

This is what you get for only looking at pictures :slapass:

[iddqd]

ddrII ram is cheaper too
Not for long :(. There was an oversupply, but there's a shortage now. And according to Samsung, will continue through Q1 and Q2 2006. I'm guessing prices will soon match that of DDR, and maybe even surpass it.

[Bar81]

I'm sure 8-16Gig of RAM should be cheap :rolleyes:

[biohead]

fun stuff. I would only use it for a blazing fast windows and benchmarks. Ill stick to a trusty harddrive when it comes to important things like games and documents.
Besides that I'm interested on how fast a game will install compared to a raptor.

[iddqd]

fun stuff. I would only use it for a blazing fast windows and benchmarks. Ill stick to a trusty harddrive when it comes to important things like games and documents.
Besides that I'm interested on how fast a game will install compared to a raptor.
Just as fast. You're limited by very slow optical drives.

[biohead]

Just as fast. You're limited by very slow optical drives.
ohh ofcourse :slap: But if u made ISO(s) of the game and put it on a raptor (fast seek times, nothing else involved)... or even better, put it on the i-RAM aswell...

iso... *wink*... torrent... *wink*...

[Cooper]

ddr2 consumes more power than ddr1 though afaik, no?
it runs at lower volts, but the high end stuff consumes more power than high end ddr1... or am i wrong?

but sounds very nice!

I`m not quite sure about the power consumption with DDRII800 or DDRII1000 - but i-RAM won`t require high-end modules. It will be limited with SATA2 B/W. So even DDR2 400 will be fine - still we don`t know does the timings play important role.

[Daytime Dreamer]

Will I-RAM 2 be faster than a hard drive? I dont quite see the reason to get this at least for the average joe. You will also need to spend a lot on ram modules to get max 16gb space. Not quite worth it IMO.

[Mr. Tinker]

Who cares about Average Joe? He's boring.

[Daytime Dreamer]

Who cares about Average Joe? He's boring.


:D :D :D :D :D :D

[Cooper]

Will I-RAM 2 be faster than a hard drive? I dont quite see the reason to get this at least for the average joe. You will also need to spend a lot on ram modules to get max 16gb space. Not quite worth it IMO.

If you work with rendering/encoding this little baby can faster yr work with big files ALOT.
Average Joe still uses IDE drives :p:

[MaxxxRacer]

hmm.. Can we say two I-ram 2's in RAID 0 with 32gb of DDR2... 600mb/s theoretical bandwidth...

[Daytime Dreamer]

I see a point there but isnt 16GB (even 32GB) a bit too little for todays encoding needs? Especially if you're talking about uncompressed DV video.

[Cooper]

It would be great if this one could transfer through pci-e 4x :)

[Qkjhfhaiguihfma]

what's to stop a company from putting a bunch of ram chips on a card, like 40gb worth, and just selling it as a solid state hdd? other than price, which some people don't care about, wouldn't that just be the ultimate storage device? like mentioned above, if they interfaced it with pci express, we'd have insane data transfers. but pci express couldn't function as a root drive, unless gigabyte did something to their bioses so it worked just with their motherboards, and even then i don't know if windows would like it.

[Mikesta]

Cooper, what would the difference be between using PCI-e x4 and using normal SATA-2 Ports?

[Cooper]

Cooper, what would the difference be between using PCI-e x4 and using normal SATA-2 Ports?

3.3 times more transfer rate.
PCI-e 4x max rate is 1K MB/s ;)

[biohead]

what's to stop a company from putting a bunch of ram chips on a card, like 40gb worth, and just selling it as a solid state hdd? other than price, which some people don't care about, wouldn't that just be the ultimate storage device? like mentioned above, if they interfaced it with pci express, we'd have insane data transfers. but pci express couldn't function as a root drive, unless gigabyte did something to their bioses so it worked just with their motherboards, and even then i don't know if windows would like it.
the i-RAM can't offer permanent storage

[biohead]

hmm.. Can we say two I-ram 2's in RAID 0 with 32gb of DDR2... 600mb/s theoretical bandwidth...
I think u'd need an amazingly fast raid-controller for that... but it would atleast max everything out :)

[Piper]

Power concerns;

The original I-Ram draws it's power from the PCI Bus card slot and as long as the mobo is powered the card is powered meaning the battery backup is for emergencies and moving the system around when unplugged. Under most circumstances 16 Hrs is enough time to get power restored for your normal power outage.

If a PCI-X interface is used instead of SATA then you loose the RAID capability of the cards which the greatest benefit of is increased volume size and large file transfer speeds. SATA2 on the new cards will be very nice though effectively doubling theoretical bandwidth.

The real speed of the I-RAMs comes from rapid small file access for the OS and any primary application, (like my favorite game of the month). Esentially the HD interface is the same whether your using SATA with a HD or a Ramdisk, but the Ramdisk eliminates the seek times and such associated with mechanical hard drives and the actual transfer speed is equivalent to reading and writing to the buffer and never having to read or write to a platter.

XP requires about 1.5 Gig under a normal install I believe so even 2GB on the card will handle an OS. If you want to add a game or two then look at two cards in RAID0 for 6-8GB of DDR Ram.

The new card eliminates that issue, SATA2 increases the bandwidth just fine and the increased capacity of the card gives you enough room for OS and primary apps. And there is still the RAID0 option if a single card isn't big enough for you.

As soon as you get one set up right tho you will want to burn an image for easy reinstall and keep regular back-ups.

[Mikesta]

I'm waiting for SATA3 already.......

Cooper, it IS too bad that they don't interface with PCI-e 4x (or even PCI-e 8x)

My Girlfriend is involved in Movie Editing (using AVID etc) and wants me to builder her a system in around 8-12 months time.

I plan on using I-RAM2 (or maybe 3!) for this system.