AMD RAMDISK: RAMDisk is back!

[Theo Gottwald]

Speed up your compile-times: Copy include files here:

Radeon-Memory

I have just tested this. On my system it brings no speedup.
Possibly the files are already cached here.

Ramdisk or not ... i get:

Code Select Expand

Compile time:  3.9 seconds, at 5831400 lines/minute

CPU: Core i7 975 @3.33 Ghz

What are your results?

[Guy Dombrowski]

Don't need RamDisk.

With my SSD drive I get 15,069,900 lines/minute Compile time

[José Roca]

Compile time:  0.4 seconds, at 32372250 lines/minute

[Theo Gottwald]

Here HD Tune shows the RAMDisk as slower then my Rapid Raid.





PS: Jose, what CPU do you use? Possibly you have 90% Comments in your code? :-)

I have an CPU: Core i7 975 @3.33 Ghz

[José Roca]

I thik that the change that did Bob to boost speed has more to do with the disk than the CPU.

[Jim Dunn]

I didn't have the $$$ to buy new SSD drives... but I already had 16 gig of ram...

SO...

I got this free utility:

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/System/cb/Freeware.htm

And I'm now cached out the wazoo... and everything is fast!  : )

[Theo Gottwald]

Good idea, Jim. I'll test it!
Question, which OS do you use?
(See attached Picture)

[Guy Dombrowski]

Jim,

Now, try to move your Windows Paging Files to your Ramdisk...

[Theo Gottwald]

I thik that the change that did Bob to boost seed has more to do with the disk than the CPU.

As long as the disk is the bottle-neck, Jose.
I have tried both systems that you see above.

In both cases i get exactly the same compile time.
Now looks like that we are compiling from RAM to RAM.
Then the Memory and CPU is possibly the bottleneck.

OR you code is that much structured, that the compiler can use some sort of prediction :-).
In this case my code needs much longer to compile because its totaly unpredictabel :-).

Possibly my average line-lengt is longer cause i often concatenate lines with ":"?
Possibly my files are more scattered over more include files?
And i use more deeply nested macros?

Code Select Expand

743072 bytes compiled code, 105344 bytes RTLibrary,
31648 bytes string literals, and 47052 bytes dgroup.
Executable stack size:  1048576 bytes.
Disk image: 939536 bytes   Memory image: 184044 bytes.

Anybody something larger?

[José Roca]

Nested macros must be a nightmare to decipher. I never have been able to decipher your code 

I use clean and structured code, and never use macros. This also applies to the include files. For example, although my headers are much bigger than the PB ones, if you use #INCLUDE "Windows.inc" instead of #INCLUDE "Win32Api.inc", your program compiles faster that with the PB ones. "Win32Api.inc" forces the parsing of a lot of include files, just to save some typing.

[Jim Dunn]

Jim, Now, try to move your Windows Paging Files to your Ramdisk...

Hey Guy, I know you're just exercising that incredible sense of humor... but my POINT is that, with enough DISK CACHING, I rarely hit the slow PAGEFILE.SYS

Win-Win!  : )

[Theo Gottwald]

Which OS do you use, Jim?
As showed the Tool seems to be for Win98.

Found something that could also be interesting:

Samsung Express Cache 32 bit

Samsung Express Cache 64 bit

Express Cache is not originally from Samsung but an oem-product.

[Guy Dombrowski]

Jim, I am still using WinXP and as you must surely know, the maximum effective ram is 3 gigs.
So, no way to increase cache size like you did.  Also true if your Win7 is 32 bit.

When I bought my SSD drive, I was going to install Win7 in it but was put off because of the slow lan transfer speed.
so I stayed with my trusted old WinXP   

I simply added the SSD as another disk and configured the Paging files to it with a 16 gigs fixed size.
The speed increase I got was amazing.  And no need to reinstall Windows in a new disk.

I also moved my Steam game folder to the SSD and now Far Cry 3 load almost instantly.

So, if you want to give a new life to your old computer, just pick up a bargain SSD and set it up as an external disk.
This is the most bang for the buck you can buy.

And, Theo, this technique with the Paging Files could also be used with a ram disk if you have unused ram with a 32 bit OS.

[Jim Dunn]

Ah, you have XP, yeah, won't work.

I have Win 7 and 64-bit.

Worked for me.

[Raymond Leech]

There is a site that provides CrystalDiskMark stats for 12 Ram Drives. The Radeon driver seems to compare pretty favorably to the others in raw stats.
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-ram-disk-software-benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/