Dimmdrive - RAMdisk for gamers at $37 USD.

[Puntosmx 304]

Hi.

I just watched a Linus video.

Yes. Yes. I know. Yes, I enjoy his jokes. Don't judge me.

Anyway, he featured this new RAMdisk called Dimmdrive:

http://dimmdrive.com/

Vid in in spoiler.

It looks ridiculously simple to setup and manage, and it claims it's fully integrated into Steam for automatical detection of games.

The best part is that it backups (backs up?) the contents of the Ramdisk into the HDD while it's being executed, to prevent data being lost due to power failures.

The bad part seems to be the price.

It claims to be discounted from 37 to 29 american greens.

So, I have to compare to AMD's RAMdisk and notice... well... there's no comparably expensive verision.

Actually, my GPU included a (still to arrive) discount on AMD's PRO RAMdisk of over 50% the listed price.

Suddenly, Dimmdrive looks rather expensive......

Thoughts?

[illutian 98]

RAMdisks are meh unless you have a lot of RAM.

 

Like right now, I have 12GB of RAM, 52% is in use according to Task Manager. But, if I open Resource Manager I have 0MB free memory, 9MB Hardware Reserved, 6.2GB in use, 273MB modified, and 5.7GB in standby.

Standby is essentially Windows "ramdisking" programs you were using "a bit ago". Along with some other cached programs.

 

On sure, if you have less RAM Windows will adjust how much is on Standby. But then...you're kind of defeating the whole point of the RAMdisk, which was to speed up programs. Because now you're taking away from what Windows would have loaded up into memory in order to execute programs faster.

 

Plus, "Less Ram" -> Dimmdrive only the files that I select.

Well, funny you should mention that. Because most games pack most of the game into a single file, which acts like a ZIP file (folder hierarchy inside of a single file).

Let's take a look at League of Legends. It's like a 4GB install. Well, the 'data2.cab' file is 3.3GB and contains all of what is needed to make the game work.

Or how about WoW. The 'data' folder is ~30GB. Good luck guess which 'data.###' you need for each zone; so you'll have to load them all into Dimmdrive.

How about PlanetSide 2. I'm pretty sure the 'game' (all the music, textures, maps, etc) are in the 'Assets' folder. That's 14GB.

 

So ya, Dimmdrive (along with all other RAMdisk) are gimmicks that only work if you have a small footprint program. Like a 3rd party web browser (unless you want to have fun trying to move Internet Explorer). Those typically need about 2GB for both the program and the temporary internet files.

[ThE_MarD 150]

Heyyo,

Yeah RAMdisk is a cool idea, but it sounds a lot like Windows ReadyBoost or Intel's RST with a caching SSD... nowadays a 64GB SSD is dirt cheap and easy to setup for caching...

I recently bought a Seagate 4TB SSHD cause they had pretty epic sales (newegg had it for 40% off haha win) and it's the same idea. It's essentially a 4TB HDD with a built in SSD for caching. It works great as long as you play the same games a lot and such.

So? As neat as RAMdisk's sound? 64GB SSD setup for caching is a more reliable method due to larger storage.

[illutian 98]

eww...Seagate.

[ThE_MarD 150]

Heyyo,

eww...Seagate.

Still better than Kingston doing ye ol' "putting in cheaper parts in future builds" lol.

Oh wait... I have a Kingston 120GB SSD... DOH! lol

[Puntosmx 304]

I haven't had any Seagate HDD fail on me.

And my old 8088 DID have a seagate HDD