Acard ANS-9010 DDR2 RAM-drive review

[Chosen.]

Introduction:
Welcome to a review of the Acard ANS-9010 DDR2-based RAM-drive.
This is a review for a high-end storage component, so I feel that I have to set the expectations early: this is not a replacement for your terabyte drive, so if you start reading this expecting me to recommend it as an alternative to anything other than a super-fast SSD or 15k rpm SCSI/SAS array, you will be disappointed


Any person who had a Gigabyte i-Ram in his hands in the last few years (including myself), which is the only other mainstream RAM-based solid state drive (the term "mainstream" leaves products that cost $$$$ out of this condition) and was excited by its performance, eventually would have been through the "Why?" phase:
- Why won't Gigabyte release an updated model in 5.25" form factor, so that we are not limited by the PCI slots in our motherboard?
- Why won't they update their product with cheaper DDR2 ram?
- Why won't they update their product with one that can take more than 4Gb of ram?
- Why won't they release a SATA300 model, so that we are not capped at 133Mb/sec?
- Why won't they release a dedicated backup module for the i-Ram, now that flash memory is really cheap?
and so on.
A search in the XSystems forum for "i-ram" could show you some of the expectations people had.

From of all these "Why's", Gigabyte answered only on the first one, by releasing a 5.25" version of the i-Ram, but left all other problems unresolved.

So, before I start this review, I would like to thank Acard not just for giving me the opportunity to review the ANS-9010, but mostly for listening to us, enthusiast users, and releasing an exciting product like this.

Amongst the thousands of terabyte 3.5" drives produced daily and 500Gb 2.5" drives sold to countless everyday-Joe's, it's not very often that companies take time to listen to what this small percentage of "Xtreme" users want, need or just would like to play with, so cheers to all the R&D guys and decision makers in Acard for this product


So, on to the main character of this review, the ANS-9010.
With a 5.25" form factor, 8x DDR2 DIMM slots (64Gb max capacity), SATA300 interface, embedded battery & CF backup solution, the ANS-9010 is basically promising that it can be the fastest mainstream storage device to date.
But can it keep its promises in reality?
This is what I will attempt to illustrate through the next few pages full of benchmarks and videos.

But first, some photos of the ANS-9010

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The contents of the box:


A photo of the ANS-9010's front panel:


Here you can see the Backup to CF & Restore to CF buttons, the power and battery LEDs, the CF slot, and some air input slots.

The back of the unit:

Here you can see the SATA power connector, the 2 SATA300 connectors and a set of jumpers. The unit ships with a default "single" drive operation and virtual ECC on. The former means that all 8 DIMM slots are seen as a single drive and you can only use SATA port0, while the latter means that 1/9th of the total capacity will be used for error correction.
Dual mode was on and virtual ECC was off during the tests.

The Compact Flash slot:


The battery:


Lets start installing the DIMMs:


All aboard:


Loaded up:


Connecting the battery immediately gives us the battery status:


Ready to roll:



Installation is extremely easy: as long as you can use a screwdriver and have installed a desktop DIMM in the last 10 years, you should have all the skill needed to install the ANS-9010

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The opponent
For a storage unit that claims to be the fastest mainstream product, there is no point in comparing it with mechanical 7.2k, 10k and 15k rpm disks.
I'll therefore have the ANS-9010 compete with the fastest SLC SSD available to date: the X25-E 32Gb SLC, Intel's debut in the SSD arena.


The rest of the setup
All tests have been performed on my main PC, which comprises of the following:
CPU: E8400 running at 4500MHz
Motherboard: Asus P5Q-Deluxe (all disks on ICH10R, RAID mode)
Memory: Transcend 2x2Gb DDR2-1066
PSU: Corsair HX620
GPU: Asus 280GTX
Case: Cosmos S
OS: Vista Ultimate SP1 x64

Compatibility note
I have tested the following modules on the ANS-9010 with positive results
Kingston KVR800D2N6/4G (4Gb modules)
Kingston KVR800D2N6/2G (2Gb modules)
Gskill F2-6400CL6D-4GBMQ (2Gb modules)
OCZ OCZ2P10004GK (2Gb modules)

For the test and for my everyday usage, I am using 2 KVR800D2N6/4G modules and 1 KVR800D2N6/2G module on each side of the ANS-9010 for a total of 2 10Gb "drives" set up in a 20Gb RAID0 array on the ICH10R.

Applications used to measure and compare the performance between the ANS-9010 and the X25-E:
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34
CrystalDiskMark 2.2
CrystalMark 9 (2004R2)
HDTach 3.0.1
Roadkil's DskSpeed 1.0
Roadkil's DskSpeed 2.0
HDTune Pro 3.5
PCMark 2005
PCMark Vantage

In the sections to follow, you will see the screenshots from the ANS-9010 results first (left or top) and the ones from X25-E after (right or bottom, depending on your screen's resolution)

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ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34


CrystalDiskMark 2.2

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CrystalMark 9 (2004R2)


HDTach 3.0.1

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Roadkil's DskSpeed 1.0


Roadkil's DskSpeed 2.0

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HDTune Pro 3.5 - Read speed


HDTune Pro 3.5 - Write speed

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HDTune Pro 3.5 - IOps/Access (read)


HDTune Pro 3.5 - IOps/Access (write)

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HDTune Pro 3.5 - Filesystem


PCMark 2005 - HDD suite


PCMark Vantage - HDD suite

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Some videos:

Running HDTach 3 on the ANS-9010:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqj3OL1WTyA


Running the PCMark 2005 HDD test on the ANS-9010:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=cCZFAUzwx7s


Editing 20 12MPixel photos (~5Mb each) with PaintShop Pro on the ANS-9010:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=kDZsuD686Mw


*If there is a program/application that uses the HDD exensively and you want me to test it on the ANS-9010 and post a video, let me know in this thread and I will do so in my earliest convenience

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Conclusion
Is the ANS-9010 the fastest mainstream storage drive in the world? Yes.
No matter how many times I run the benchmarks, or even by using Vista daily on it for the last few weeks, the answer is always the same.
I have a "thing" with solid state technology and I have bought, tested and used most of the SLC SSDs that have been available to the public since September 2007 (Memoright, Mtron, Sandisk, Intel, Samsung and OCZ) as well as the Gigabyte i-Ram.
The fact that it is using RAM, automatically means that it does not suffer by the issues that some (if not all) SSDs have to live with (wearing off, limited write cycles, performance hit with filesystem fragmentation, etc.)
Leaving the pagefile on, doesn't hurt it. Enabling or disabling indexing doesn't make a single difference, search results appear faster than your gfx card can render ;o
Also, fitting it with Lifetime warranty DIMMs, means that I don't have to worry about "bad sectors". DIMM fails, pull it out, restore the OS on a slightly smaller partition, replace it.


So what stops everyone from getting the fastest storage into their systems? As quickly and simply the previous answer was given: the cost.
Not the cost of the device itself, rather than the total cost for getting the ANS-9010 populated with enough DDR2 gigabytes to make it usefull as an OS drive.
I do not consider the limited capacity to be an issue, as it can be resolved by getting 4Gb modules and of course by getting as many ANS-9010 units as your PC case can fit. The common factor in all senarios ends up being the total cost.
The ANS-9010 costs $399 and the shipping costs for EU were $28. The import tax that I had to pay, was €70. The 2Gb Kingston DIMMs I bought for €17 each and the 4Gb Kingston DIMMs go for €95 each.
If you do the math quickly, someone in Europe would have to pay a total of €550 for a 16Gb ANS-9010 or €1150 for a 32Gb one.
The numbers are quite similar in the US as well ($600/16Gb or $1200/32Gb).

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Some further impressions/comments, in the format of advantages and disadvantages, from my own perspective:


Advantages:
- The fastest mainstream storage you can put in your high end PC/Workstation.
- Based on RAM, means no wearing off, no need to "disable stuff" like you would do on an SSD.
- Based on the cheapest form of RAM to date (DDR2)
- Embedded, self-contained backup feature with a CF card mechanism that senses a power loss and starts backing up automatically and and a battery that lasts 9+ hours with all 8 DIMMs populated; more than enough for the CF backup unit to finish its job.
- Easy installation, fits in a 5.25" expansion bay.
- Does not require any software installation, or web-based management for configuration; true P&P.


Disadvantages:
- Total cost including RAM.
- Its form factor again, works as a disadvantage if you own a laptop or a desktop without an available 5.25".
- The fact that it takes power from the SATA power cable. If you turn off your PC at midnight, go to work the next day and come back by 5PM, the ANS-9010's battery is drained and even though the CF has kept a full backup of the data in its RAM, it still takes 15 minutes to fully restore its contents back to the RAM. Kind of eliminates the advantage of the faster booting time. A free workaround is to put the computer to standby/sleep, but it doesn't work very well on all motherboards. A not so free workaround is the optional accessory of the power adapter, that can be purchased separately.
- My only real complain is the fact that the full potential of the SATA300 protocol was not used. The SATA150-based i-Ram would use its interface's full potential (150Mb/sec - 10% overhead = 135Mb/sec). In theory, the DDR2 inside the ANS-9010 can deliver several Gb/sec, with the bottleneck becoming the SATA controller in the unit. Being a SATA300 controller, one would hope that 270Mb/sec should be feasible (SATA300's 300Mb/sec - 10% overhead), however the ANS-9010's SATA300 controller can "only" deliver 175Mb/sec. In RAID0 mode this number becomes 350Mb/sec while it could have been 540Mb/sec. That said, it's still the fastest drive out there and Acard R&D lads are on the right track


As previously stated, I would like to thank again Jason and Acard for giving me the opportunity to review the ANS-9010, but mostly for actually releasing such product!
It's kind of bitter when a company is ignoring the voice of their enthusiast customers for years, but on the other hand it's very rewarding when another company has the guts to step in and put the checkmarks on the wishlist

Thanks for reading this, I hope the nights I spent over number crunching and typing, provided a usefull or at least enjoyable result for you!

Chosen.

[Hyperhorn]

Awesome review, so many benchmarks there!
That's a very good alternative to i-RAM considering the advantages you mentioned and low prices for DDR2-RAM today.

[chuchnit]

First class review there


I wish more companies would follow this model.

[eva2000]

Nice review indeed! roadkil app looks interesting too

[TheKarmakazi]

very nice review, and after selling my 3 irams I will be buying two of these

[Roger_D25]

I agree with everyone, great job with the review! You clearly put some time into this review and it shows in the comprehensive benchmark results you posted along with the great conclusion. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into this, the amazing performance almost justifies the high cost!

[jcool]

Amazing review, thanks for that. And I agree with you, the only thing to be improved here is the SATA controller.. I was kinda expecting to see 500+ MB/s in raid, especially since the ICH10R can handle ~650MB/s throughput easily.
Cost might not be as bad as you think though, there are Aeneon-made 4GB sticks out that cost roughly 50€ a piece.

[chispy]

Great review , thanks for sharing. Much better than i-Rams

[exe163]

Amazing review!

This thing is definitely not cheap. With only 32max per unit, might as well get a intel SSD. SSD capacity will grow a lot faster than RAM. I specualate SSD being more mainstream and affordable as win 7 hits the shelf. This RAM drive is a great alternative for SSD but hate to say it, it won't last more than a year.

[IanB]

This RAM drive is a great alternative for SSD but hate to say it, it won't last more than a year.

Huh? I think you have this the wrong way around.

It's the SSD that has a limited lifespan (max writes per cell) while a DRAM-based device will keep on ticking, year after year, OS after OS. It's an investment that does NOT have a limited lifespan, like an SSD.

[Levish]

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

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

Nice review Chosen.

You should do more reviews!

Would love to see an optimized version that could make better use of the DRAM performance potential (maybe interface or controller improvements)

Unfortunately, given the global economic situation, the market for this or future similar products is probably very small

[Chosen.]

Nice review Chosen.

You should do more reviews!

Would love to see an optimized version that could make better use of the DRAM performance potential (maybe interface or controller improvements)

Unfortunately, given the global economic situation, the market for this or future similar products is probably very small

Yes, SATA seems to be the bottleneck now. It was ok for the 7.2k and 10k rpm drives, but with devices like the Acard ramdrives etc. it's starting to show its weeknesses.
Ideally, I can imagine a 5.25" drive using RAM, much like the ANS-9010, but instead of SATA interface to have a fiber optic cable of something else with a high throughput, connecting it to a host card on a PCI-E 16x slot, taking full advantage of the PCI bandwidth.
But I mentioned technologies in the above sentence that would raise the cost 5x compared to the ANS-9010 just by introducing R&D for them.

So for the time being, I am more than happy with my ANS-9010, and needless to say that I sold the X25-E of the review, a little less than a month since I bought it.

Next plan is to get another ANS-9010 for some emotional quad RAID0 action.
The way I see it, it costs the same buying 2x ANS-9010 and filling them up with 2Gb modules, than buying just 1 and using 4Gb modules. The only difference is that the former scenario (2x ANS-9010) offers double the performance

[F.E.A.R.]

@ Chosen

Nice review!

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