AMD RAMDisk

[SamCR3]

Give your PC a boost with AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk

October 10th, 2012Natasha SampsonGraphics

Over the past year, AMD has entered the memory pool fray with an array of AMD-branded memory modules, to the surprise of many. During this time, we’ve been looking for new ways to both enhance the breadth of our memory offerings, and to keep AMD memory top of mind when it comes to your next memory purchase.

Recently we teamed up with Dataram, a top developer of RAMDisk software, to give systems more flexibility and performance with a RAMDisk. A RAMDisk is a software package that reserves a block of your system memory and turns it into a virtual hard drive that is recognized by Windows® with a drive letter (like C:\). Using this RAMDisk can help free your hard drive from unnecessary temporary files, limit unwanted writing to your SSD, and when used correctly, can dramatically accelerate the loading and processing times of games, demanding software suites and web browsing.

This collaboration has also allowed us to develop a free, no-strings-attached trial of the AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk for you to download. This version allows anyone to create a RAMDisk that can reserve up to 4GB of your RAM, while users with AMD Radeon™ memory will automatically be able to reserve up to 6GB. Finally, enthusiasts have the option of upgrading to the AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk Xtreme, which allows users to create RAMDisks up to 64GB for under $20USD1. When creating a RAMDisk drive with this software, it is important not to use up all your available system memory for your RAMDisk. In order for Windows® and other applications to function properly, they need at least 2GB-4GB set aside depending on the amount of system memory you have installed. Key Benefits:

Get gaming in as low as 4 secs or up to 1700% faster than an HDD2
Get significantly faster reading and writing speeds vs HDDs and SSDs3,4
RAMDisk read performance: Up to 25600 MB/s with DDR3-1600, and even higher with faster RAM!5
Protect your data with load and save features
Now, AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk isn’t a replacement for your current storage device(s), but it is a fast and affordable solution that uses hardware you already have to enable faster storage performance. Take it for a test drive today!

Never Settle!

Natasha Sampson is a Product Marketing Specialist at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.





Footnotes:

AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk is designed to work with any AMD or Intel-based platform with at least 512MB RAM and can be created using system RAM not already assigned to the O/S. Although RAMDisk is software, Windows Management treats it as a Hard Disk Drive. There is a chance that the disk may become fragmented much like a hard disk however the performance issues are less than if physical hard disk were to become fragmented. AMD plans to provide AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk support to future generation system memory specifications. AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk requires a minimum of 1GB of system memory for Installation (Minimum 4GB of RAM recommended for RAMDisk creation.)

AMD Radeon™ RAMdisk Xtreme allows a user to create a RAMdisk larger than 4GB up to 64GB if sufficient memory is installed. This version of the software requires a license. The cost of a Xtreme license is $18.99USD (Radeonramdisk.com). Licenses can also be ordered directly through the AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk configuration utility.
Test conducted in AMD Labs using a timer to measure download speed of ArmA II. Methodology: Loading the first campaign mission. Download from AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk took 4 seconds; download from Hard Disk took 74 seconds or 1min 14 secs. Specifications: AMD FX8120, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 motherboard, 32GB DDR3-1866 AMD Performance Edition Memory, GPU AMD Radeon™ HD 7750, HDD WD2500KS-00MJB0 250GB SATA DRIVE (7200 RPM), Windows 7 RTM 64-bit.RMD-3
Test conducted in AMD Labs measuring read and write speed performance of AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk using Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.1 benchmark versus the HDD. Hard disk had sequential read speed of 72.7MB/s and write speed of 70.92MB/s versus the RAMDisk sequential read speed of 6150MB/s and write speed of 8694MB/s. Specifications: CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K RAM: 16 GB AMD Entertainment Edition Memory 1600 Mhz 8-9-8-24, Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-VDeluxe, System: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition: HDD: Western Digital Raptor 10000 RPM 73 GB: RAMDisk: 8GB. RMD-2
Test conducted in AMD Labs measuring read and write speed performance of AMD Radeon™ RAMDisk versus the SSD using Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.1 benchmark. SSD had sequential read speed of 426.9MB/s and write speed of 379.2MB/s versus the RAMDisk sequential read speed of 6150MB/s and write speed of 8694MB/s. Specifications: CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K RAM: 16 GB AMD Entertainment Edition Memory 1600 Mhz 8-9-8-24, Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-VDeluxe, System: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition: HDD: Western Digital Raptor 10000 RPM 73 GB: RAMDisk: 8GB. RMD-9
RAMDisk performance is dependent upon the system’s memory configuration. Peak performance can be calculated as the product of a single memory module’s bandwidth in GB/s, multiplied by the number of memory channels active in a system (e.g. 25.6GB/s for the dual channel AMD FX platform configured with DDR3-1600). Memory must be installed in a multiple of the available channels to achieve optimal throughput.


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[Drdeath]

You do not need AMD to set up a virtual drive with memory. Ramdisk is available for free but you can only use 1G withought buying the software. here is some pwerformance results using some of your ram as a virtual drive. Load your favorite program(s) to the drive and have faster loading times.

[criss_glitch666]

this is too funny

[SamCR3]

Yeah, well with AMD's version you can use up to 4GB for free (6GB if you have AMD memory). Pretty cool. See: Radeonramdisk.com

I'm gonna download the trial version and see how it works.

[Drdeath]

Yeah, well with AMD's version you can use up to 4GB for free (6GB if you have AMD memory). Pretty cool. See: Radeonramdisk.com

I'm gonna download the trial version and see how it works.

ASRock has their version that you can use any amount call xFast Ram.

[SamCR3]

ASRock has their version that you can use any amount call xFast Ram.

this is too funny

Doesn't it only work if you have an AsRock board? AMD's works on any platform with any memory, or so they say. What the ****, why are you guys jumping all over AMD for entering the market with this product? It's a good idea if you ask me.

[realneil]

Doesn't it only work if you have an AsRock board? AMD's works on any platform with any memory, or so they say. What the ****, why are you guys jumping all over AMD for entering the market with this product? It's a good idea if you ask me.

It is a good idea. But there are a few other options out there as well.
Thanks for the post Sam.

[criss_glitch666]

why are you guys jumping all over AMD for entering the market with this product? It's a good idea if you ask me.

I just expected this ever since I first heard of ramdisks. It is a good idea

[Solara2xb]

This is a great product, even though there are a few options out there. This kind of software has become rather popular as of lately.
Also its isn't only for AMD Modules. if you purchase the high end Chips A10 or new FX series they are suppose to included a FULL version of the software and takes some of the limitations out.

IMO, this is great and seeing multiple companies providing this as part of there hardware package.
Thanks for the info Sam!

[TeeBlack]

i give it a try since i have amd ram and never used ramdisk or anything before. and ill try out the xRam on the trooper

[MattyMatt]

Yeah, thought XFast was ASRock only. Theres ImDisk. I have a license for ramdisk somewhere.

[najiro]

This is very interesting! Good find

[criss_glitch666]

For those of you looking for a RAMDISK, I found this

RAMDisk : High-performance RAM Disk for Windows

[Doctor_Death]

Thanks for the post Sam, try it out and show us your results.

[Cyberburnout]

ASRock has their version that you can use any amount call xFast Ram.

I am using this on my pc now. It does make things run a lot faster. I do think I will switch to the AMD ramdisk software though.

[SamCR3]

Thanks for the post Sam, try it out and show us your results.

You're welcome Stan. I'll install it tomorrow and post some benchmarks. Gonna be a busy day. I have two second interviews today. One at Riverside Ford in Sumner, WA, and another at Sunset Chevy right down the street. I interviewed at both stores Wednesday and they liked me enough to call me back in for another round of interviews. Wish me luck guys. Trying to step up to the big leagues and sell at a new car lot. Both stores are awesome, but if I have a choice I want the job at Sunset Chevy. They really rock - sold over 250 units last month and from what I hear even lazy salesmen make well over $6K a month. I am NOT lazy so I should do well there.