Acard ANS-9010 DDR2 RAM-drive review

[[XC] Oj101]

*looks at iRAM*

[gOJDO]

Nice review!
Also nice product, but it is very overpriced. IMO it should be no more than $150(150 eur in Europe). If it was priced like that, I was going to buy one for sure. I can buy 2GB DDR2-800 Micron OEM modules for 14eur(inc VAT) and 16GB are enough to instal 2 OS-es and most of the frequently used apps.

[LaMpiR]

Excellent review. Would there be performance increase in using CL4 DDR2 800 sticks rather then CL5 or 6?
But then again, are there any 4GB sticks with such low latencies?

[Levish]

Excellent review. Would there be performance increase in using CL4 DDR2 800 sticks rather then CL5 or 6?
But then again, are there any 4GB sticks with such low latencies?

performance is not limited by the memory sticks, ddr2 bandwidth is likely over 4000MB/sec, if this was a SATA6Gbps device it'd still be limited by SATA6Gbps or its own controller and misc latencies

[Chosen.]

@ Chosen

Nice review!

How much are these modules? (Kingston KVR800D2N6/4G (4Gb modules))

About £80/ea from UK.

[Levish]

With respect to memory chips:

2nd thought each individal bank of ram would probably have in the neighborhood of 2000-2500MB/sec in RAID0 mode, however still its around 15Gb/sec and per bank it would still be limited by the bus and misc latencies and would have about 2.5-3 times the bandwidth of the upcoming SATA6Gbp/sec if you factor in overhead.

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

Reviews seem to be popping up all over; but has anyone know how a couple of these these perform with hardware raid cards (e.g. adaptec, areca, highpoint etc...) vs. ICHR9/10

If you end up picking up that 2nd unit, I would love for you to update the testing results, chosen.

Also, have you heard any rumors of a revision (what improvements and ETA)? Jason from Acard was hinting, but nothing concrete ?

[F.E.A.R.]

About £80/ea from UK.

You are a greek?
Where do you bought your X25-E? In germany the SSD is out of stock (384€ or US-$ 501)

[Chosen.]

You are a greek?
Where do you bought your X25-E? In germany the SSD is out of stock (384€ or US-$ 501)

Yes, I am a Greek living in Ireland. I bought my X25-E from UK for £495 about a month ago but it's out of stock now.
A greek shop brought the X25's in stock now, €400 for the MLC and €430 for the SLC (the SLC went out of stock 24 hours after they put that price)

[Levish]

the x-25e is starting to show in the US well here and there for 416$ is the lowest i've seen and 384 for the x-25m

[F.E.A.R.]

@ Levish

416$ with VAT?
I heard all US-Shop sell their products without VAT!?!?!?

[IronWarrior]

Very good review, awesome job.

It seems that the tech is still very limited, it is more worth it to just to buy a SSD as they cost pretty much the same and maybe cheaper and you get more space, am thinking of the Intel 160 GB version here, which is about 600 quid, roughly the same price as this or abouts.

The insane loading time for the CF to backup the RAM sticks, really puts me off, was thinking of using this as a OS drive, but 15 minutes is too much. :p

[Ket]

You mean people got their samples? Mine never turned up.

[F.E.A.R.]

The insane loading time for the CF to backup the RAM sticks, really puts me off, was thinking of using this as a OS drive, but 15 minutes is too much. :p

You need a power supply, when PC shut down. Then the OS loads from the modules an not from CF

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=242

[Levish]

@ Levish

416$ with VAT?
I heard all US-Shop sell their products without VAT!?!?!?

i don't remember exactly but in the US its possible to get things with no tax and free shipping

[Chosen.]

Here's something interesting: there seems to be a performance drop going from the ICH10 of the P45 (Asus P5Q-Deluxe) to the ICH10 of the X58 (Asus P6T).

Asus P5Q Deluxe (P45/ICH10) - The one used in the review:


Asus P6T (X58/IXH10) - My new motherboard:


Besides the different CPU (i7 965 XE), the motherboard (Asus P6T) and the system memory (Crucial 3x1Gb 1333MHz) there is no other difference in the setups. Fresh installation of the same OS (Vista Ultimate SP1 x64), same RAID driver (8.7.0.1007) and same IMSM (8.7).

It's pretty obvious that Intel dropped the ball here, as I put the ANS-9010 back on the P45 board for a quick test and got the same results as before (375Mb/sec read & 300Mb/sec write).

So the question is: what did Intel change on the ICH10 of the new motherboards and is there a workaround to get this performance back?
I will keep investigating and post back my findings.
In the meantime, if anyone has anything to add/suggest, feel free to post here

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

Dumb question: Did you try switching ports on the P6T?

Is the trend the same with HDTune?

[Chosen.]

Dumb question: Did you try switching ports on the P6T?

Is the trend the same with HDTune?

Yes, I just moved them from ports 0-1 to 0-2 (different pair), removed the DVDRW and moved the OS disk on the Jmicron controller. They're all alone now on the ICH10 and it's as bad:

P45/ICH10:


X58/ICH10:

[XS Janus]

@ Levish

416$ with VAT?
I heard all US-Shop sell their products without VAT!?!?!?

No VAT in US... different tax system.
They bleed them less obviously so it doesn't cause a riot!

Back on topic: Those 2 Acard results you just posted are exactly what I like to see! ~650MB/s !!!
Capped by ICH10, no?

[Froggy]

Did you guys see the little brother? It's only $250USD instead of the $400 of the big brother. All you lose is 25% of RAM capacity and the ability raid the two channels.

9010B Link

[josh1980]

It's pretty obvious that Intel dropped the ball here, as I put the ANS-9010 back on the P45 board for a quick test and got the same results as before (375Mb/sec read & 300Mb/sec write).

So the question is: what did Intel change on the ICH10 of the new motherboards and is there a workaround to get this performance back?
I will keep investigating and post back my findings.
In the meantime, if anyone has anything to add/suggest, feel free to post here

An ICH10 is an ICH10. They should be identical in benchmarks. So the person that dropped the ball isn't Intel at all. I'd point to your motherboard manufacturer. Call Asus and ask them why their stuff isn't working right. This could be some sort of driver issue with the new motherboard, but whatever the result is, I don't think it's Intel. It's the same hardware and same driver you used on both motherboards. I posted in another thread some of the bottlenecks motherboards have. If your ICH10 is connected via a 1x pcie connection, then yeah.. your benchmarks are what they are and they're not going to change either. That would be called poor design and implementation. Find the block diagram for your motherboard, that'll tell you if this is the case.

There's a reason I've been buying Asus since around 2000 - probably bought 15 or more motherboards from them over the years. But not this year. This year I've made the switch to Gigabit. I have no regrets whatsoever either. In fact, I've already got 2 more motherboards for other people on order, both are Gigabit. To each their own though.

With respect to memory chips:

2nd thought each individal bank of ram would probably have in the neighborhood of 2000-2500MB/sec in RAID0 mode, however still its around 15Gb/sec and per bank it would still be limited by the bus and misc latencies and would have about 2.5-3 times the bandwidth of the upcoming SATA6Gbp/sec if you factor in overhead.

They aren't in a RAID0. This is obvious by the fact that you can put any size in any slot in any random order you want and the box works. This is actually a plus for the end user because we aren't forced to buy all identically sized ram sticks. You can use 2x512MB, 2x2GB, and 4x4GB if you wanted(and in any order). So yes, you are right. But no, that's not how it's set up. Kudos for the concept though.

[Duh]

very nice review , I am a tad late :p

[Cold Fussion]

I believe he means SSD performance is closing in on this and the Iram, not referring to durability

The SSD isn't even close to the speed of ram, the only reason it looks close here is because the sata interface is limiting the speed.

[F.E.A.R.]

The SSD isn't even close to the speed of ram, the only reason it looks close here is because the sata interface is limiting the speed.

it is anyway faster than any flash-ssd (4k and smaller). THAT is the reason for iRam or Acard

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=242


And why ist a high bandwidth NOT important?
Cause a OS ist NOT dependent of that
The magic word is accesstime!

You don´t see iRam or Acard in action? Don´t talk bad of them!

[Cold Fussion]

it is anyway faster than any flash-ssd (4k and smaller). THAT is the reason for iRam or Acard

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=242


And why ist a high bandwidth NOT important?
Cause a OS ist NOT dependent of that
The magic word is accesstime!

You don´t see iRam or Acard in action? Don´t talk bad of them!

I'm sorry but what the hell are you on about? I just ing praised Ram drives...