Ram Disk

[Tinker1947]

I'm thinking about sticking more ram in a PC and wondering if running a Ram Disk with the likes of DSS would speed things up, so is there a good free Ram disk program out there.....???/

[ChrisLX200]

Can't advise without knowing the OS and specs of the PC.

ChrisH

[Tinker1947]

Can't advise without knowing the OS and specs of the PC.

ChrisH

Windows 7, 64 bits, memory 24gig, i5 CPU

[NickK]

Just to clarify RAM disk in the PCI slot or RAM based external hard drive or flash based SSD?

[Tinker1947]

Just to clarify RAM disk in the PCI slot or RAM based external hard drive or flash based SSD?

It will use System Ram, i found this with a Google......

http://blog.laptopmag.com/faster-than-an-ssd-how-to-turn-extra-memory-into-a-ram-disk

[Psychobilly]

I have 64GB in my desktop and have thought about doing it but just for temp files...

My OS and some of the more useful apps are on a Fast SSD, Other apps are on dedicated  Fast HDD/Fast SSD cached pair , Data gets stored on WD Black Drives...

I guess it depends on how well the apps are written... Apps that rely on temp files and "swap space" will probably benefit the most - especially if they can be pointed to the ram drive...

I haven't got round to tuning my setup yet... it's pretty nippy for most things ... Biggest astro related speed  improvement I got was moving over to AS!2 for stacking solar videos especially as I was doing 20-40 pane mosaics with anywhere from 15-40 GB of video...

Peter...

[ChrisLX200]

Problem with the RAM disk is everything is temporary and lost when re-booted (except in special circumstances - RamDisk Plus will save an image to disk before it reboots and reload it on booting). So you'll have to copy all needed files to the RAM disk that DSS needs to work with. A better option is an SSD drive which you can store data on and also use as scratch workspace, and with your OS installed on it too you will see an overall improvement with everything. I use a Crucial 500GB SSD and the difference is significant. However, from what I recall DSS is also a single-threaded application so the benefits of faster data access may not be that great anyway, I've watched it run on mine with just one core @ 100% and the other 7 idle

ChrisH

[Tinker1947]

Thanks for the info ChrisH, i have a SSD drive installed, i just thought the PC needs more memory so why not install a Ram Disk the one i listed is free up to 4gig around £12 for a licence so i will buy  the ram and might just have a  play.

[Psychobilly]

If the app can be configured to use more of the available memory then that may  be more efficient than it using the Ram via a Ramdisk...  Once your using a 64 bit OS and 64 bit native version of the app then you might be able to tweak there..

The Ramdisk option should speed up anything that can't make use of the extra ram... provided you can point it in it's direction...

I'll be interested to see how you get on...

Peter...

[billhinge]

Ramdisk's, how quant ;-) remember those from many years ago

Just did a test in OS X

Set up a 16GB ramdisk (out of 48GB)

(sorry, forum doesn't seem to allow adding code even in code box ?

 

Unmounting disk

Erasing

Initialized /dev/rdisk5 as a 16 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume

Mounting disk

Finished erase on disk5 ram disk

 

Running BlackMagic Disk test App

Averaging about 2200MB/sec - still running

 

Over x4 faster than a good SSD and not even tuned up

[NickK]

Have you used program manager to see what is maxing out when you're doing the processing?

Most modern OSes will use free memory as a file cache for the filing systems anyway. If you're sequentially processing a file - then a RAM/SSD/RAID0 would work better because you're forcing the entire file into memory before processing. This assumes that the processing will not use available memory whilst in progress.

Remember the CPU is limited by the caching factor against memory.. so in short you'll become limited again with the CPU cache getting "thrashed" by the large expanse of memory it has to cover.

I'm only slightly jealous as the MBP I have is already at it's max of 16GB and I sometimes max it out.. but for me, at the moment, it's the 1GB of GPU memory I'm having fun with

[Psychobilly]

I have 8GB of GPU VRAM to play with...

About the only thing that maxes out my system at the moment are the more complex DX11 and OpenGL and OpenCL benchmarks which I use for torture testing when I am tweaking settings...

[NickK]

I have 8GB of GPU VRAM to play with...

About the only thing that maxes out my system at the moment are the more complex DX11 and OpenGL and OpenCL benchmarks which I use for torture testing when I am tweaking settings...

Well I use the GPU OpenCL/GL for my image processing .. the first thing my app does is load the camera image into the GPU…

[ChrisLX200]

We need a CUDA app for the processing

ChrisH

[NickK]

We need a CUDA app for the processing

ChrisH

OpenCL works across platform  

[Psychobilly]

AS!2 makes the best use of my system resources for processing Video files.. even then it varies depending on what it's doing...

Adobe PS CC isn't too bad... It seems quite happy with what I can give it... unfortunately my preferred Raw development app isn't written to support CUDA or OpenCL...

Peter...