AMD Radeon RAMDisk Released

[bearcatrp]

The way I read it, it was to improve page file speeds (ie, for me, cache the RAM). In my experience, if you have enough RAM to create a RAM disk for page file, just turning off Page file would be more benefitial . I can see how installing programs on the RAM disk for quicker loading would be nice...

Been reading this thread with interest. Do have a few questions as am unsure of a few things. Your saying if I have plenty of ram, currently have 48GB, I can shut off my page file and Win7 will force the page file to my ram without any ramdisk or anything else? Am currently using a 128GB SSD as my page file, which seems to have sped my computer up a little bit. Currenly showing about 150mb in page file under task manager.

[Sailindawg]

What's pretty interesting using FancyCache is that because of the ability to cache to ram, there is little to no page file usage. One can see this by running a page file intensive program. In my case, I like to play Arma2. Without a ram disk or FC, as the game world is streamed, there is a lot of preloading of texture file to the page file. With FC, all that data is loaded to ram with no PF usage. The result is a smoother game play experience. Using such a program reduces or eliminates PF usage. So it's becomes a moot point if your PF is enabled. In my case, I leave the PF enabled.

[zir_blazer]

What's pretty interesting using FancyCache is that because of the ability to cache to ram, there is little to no page file usage. One can see this by running a page file intensive program. In my case, I like to play Arma2. Without a ram disk or FC, as the game world is streamed, there is a lot of preloading of texture file to the page file. With FC, all that data is loaded to ram with no PF usage. The result is a smoother game play experience. Using such a program reduces or eliminates PF usage. So it's becomes a moot point if your PF is enabled. In my case, I leave the PF enabled.

FancyCache and Windows Pagefile doesn't seems to be related in any way. If you experience smoother game play is because FancyCache is doing its job:

FancyCache caches data on a logical block basis (offsets within a volume/disk) while windows cache manager caches on a virtual block basis (offsets within a file).

And it doesn't looks like if it has anything to do with system memory management.

I never used W7 so I can't really comment on how it works, but WXP is dumb as hell in that regard. You can throw it all the RAM on the world and it will STILL offload data from RAM to the Pagefile, something that it seems to do based on how much time an application was sitting Idle and/or minimized. This means that if you leave your machine Idle with applications minimized then come back in a few hours, you will notice a lot of Hard Disk usage as it has to read all the data it send to the Pagefile and put it on RAM again as you begin to restore the minimized applications.
This should have been useful at WXP launch era because if your RAM usage was reaching max capacity at the time where 256-512 MB was the standard, it should save some measurable time that Windows did that beforehand and send a recently unused application that was open to the Pagefile to have free RAM in case you suddently wanted to launch another application, something that it could do then inmediately, while if it didn't send the unused data to the Pagefile earlier, you would have to wait for it to do so first PLUS more time of Hard Disk activity to load the actual application. However, that behavior was absolutely not thought with abundant Hardware resources in mind: While that was useful with low RAM machines, if you had only 1 GB in use of your 4 GB and it still sends data to Pagefile, it adds stupid and useless overhead and HD usage.
Moreover, Windows seems to also do this in a stupid fashion. I suppose everyone knows that if you open an application, close it, and open it again, the second time it does so quite faster, and on light applications I would say almost instantly, with nearly no Hard Disk activity. This should be because when you open an application for the first time, Windows has to read ALL of it from the Hard Disk, while after you close it, Windows simply "unclaims" (Not erases or inmediately replaces) the RAM used by it but seems to remember where it was in case it has to use it again. If you compare this to what I stated before of Hard Disk activity when resuming from Idle, it seems than that data DOES get moved from RAM and onto the Pagefile, while it would have been more intelligent to hold a Pagefile copy and a unclaimed RAM one to resume from.
Basically, the only way to make sure that Windows uses only RAM instead of the Pagefile when it has not the need to, is to disable it, and I don't see how FancyCache would change that behavior. Besides, if you want to truely preload something, you need to use a RAMDisk and put it there. This is because not exactly Windows, but the games themselves (As they are the ones that should know WHAT they should preload and when) doesn't do it.

[kuroikenshi]

I think this would be much faster actually.

I can pull about 9000MB/S on ramdisk read rates...... it is a ton faster

[StAndrew]

Been reading this thread with interest. Do have a few questions as am unsure of a few things. Your saying if I have plenty of ram, currently have 48GB, I can shut off my page file and Win7 will force the page file to my ram without any ramdisk or anything else? Am currently using a 128GB SSD as my page file, which seems to have sped my computer up a little bit. Currenly showing about 150mb in page file under task manager.

Most avg users can safely turn off page file with 8GB. It really depends on what you do. If you exceed your ram capacity and dont have a page file setup for your system to empty some of your ram data onto, it will be forced to kick one of your running programs out, causing that program to crash. With 48GB of ram, I dont think you would have this issue.

[Sailindawg]

FancyCache and Windows Pagefile doesn't seems to be related in any way. If you experience smoother game play is because FancyCache is doing its job:



And it doesn't looks like if it has anything to do with system memory management.

I never used W7 so I can't really comment on how it works, but WXP is dumb as hell in that regard. You can throw it all the RAM on the world and it will STILL offload data from RAM to the Pagefile, something that it seems to do based on how much time an application was sitting Idle and/or minimized. This means that if you leave your machine Idle with applications minimized then come back in a few hours, you will notice a lot of Hard Disk usage as it has to read all the data it send to the Pagefile and put it on RAM again as you begin to restore the minimized applications.
This should have been useful at WXP launch era because if your RAM usage was reaching max capacity at the time where 256-512 MB was the standard, it should save some measurable time that Windows did that beforehand and send a recently unused application that was open to the Pagefile to have free RAM in case you suddently wanted to launch another application, something that it could do then inmediately, while if it didn't send the unused data to the Pagefile earlier, you would have to wait for it to do so first PLUS more time of Hard Disk activity to load the actual application. However, that behavior was absolutely not thought with abundant Hardware resources in mind: While that was useful with low RAM machines, if you had only 1 GB in use of your 4 GB and it still sends data to Pagefile, it adds stupid and useless overhead and HD usage.
Moreover, Windows seems to also do this in a stupid fashion. I suppose everyone knows that if you open an application, close it, and open it again, the second time it does so quite faster, and on light applications I would say almost instantly, with nearly no Hard Disk activity. This should be because when you open an application for the first time, Windows has to read ALL of it from the Hard Disk, while after you close it, Windows simply "unclaims" (Not erases or inmediately replaces) the RAM used by it but seems to remember where it was in case it has to use it again. If you compare this to what I stated before of Hard Disk activity when resuming from Idle, it seems than that data DOES get moved from RAM and onto the Pagefile, while it would have been more intelligent to hold a Pagefile copy and a unclaimed RAM one to resume from.
Basically, the only way to make sure that Windows uses only RAM instead of the Pagefile when it has not the need to, is to disable it, and I don't see how FancyCache would change that behavior. Besides, if you want to truely preload something, you need to use a RAMDisk and put it there. This is because not exactly Windows, but the games themselves (As they are the ones that should know WHAT they should preload and when) doesn't do it.

I'm using Win7 64 bit. You cannot compare XP 32 bit to how Win7 64 bit functions. And yes, FC greatly reduces / eliminates page file usage.

There's no need to write to a physical drive with FC intercepting those requests and writing to ram. Comparing to a ram disk, FC gives a whole system boost where a ram disk can only be helpful to one program. From reading the original post, AMD has put out a program, for cost, that seems to function comparably to FC. I was trying to point out a similar software, that's free, without the limitations of the AMD software. I like what AMD has done. It's great software for the right person. FC is very good software, with fewer limitations, and free. Choice is good.

[zir_blazer]

Comparing to a ram disk, FC gives a whole system boost where a ram disk can only be helpful to one program. From reading the original post, AMD has put out a program, for cost, that seems to function comparably to FC.

In the same way that you say that I can't compare WXP to W7, you can't compare FancyCache and a RAMDisk. They are similar tools as they reserve system RAM for their purpose, but you're comparing a tool that does caching against one that just have to function as a dull Hard Disk for storage capacity. I still think your Pagefile usage values should be bogus somewhere, FancyCache should have no reason to change how Windows uses the Pagefile. In fact, in their forum they say they disabled Pagefile caching...

[Sailindawg]

[QUOTE=zir_blazer;5143621]In the same way that you say that I can't compare WXP to W7, you can't compare FancyCache and a RAMDisk. They are similar tools as they reserve system RAM for their purpose, but you're comparing a tool that does caching against one that just have to function as a dull Hard Disk for storage capacity. I still think your Pagefile usage values should be bogus somewhere, FancyCache should have no reason to change how Windows uses the Pagefile. In fact, in their forum they say they disabled Pagefile caching...[/QUOTE

I appreciate skeptics, but this is annoying. I validated the fact my page file usage with Win7 resource monitor. Both with FC on and off while doing Arma. I know what the results were. You can continue to be skeptical, but instead of debating in a forum, get some hardware and try it. I'm not flaming or otherwise. I've used ram disk and the cache program. The cache program works well. I'm actually using my full 16G ram. If it makes you happy to turn off the PF and run a ram disk, then that is a solution that works for you.