[SOLVED] Optane Vs RAM Disk

[drkarasheed]

Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega Graphics
RAM: Corsair DDR4 32 GB

I want to see that my Desktop runs at the best speed possible by tweaking the hardwares and softwares.
On the above Motherboard I have 2 Nos of M.2 NVMe sockets.
On the first M.2 socket I have a 512 M.2 SSD installed for the OS .
On the second socket I intent to install a 32GB intel Optiron SSD, to exploit its Cache properties and capabilities.

My question is:
Should I install RAM Disk software and utilize a portion of the 32GB DDR4 ?
or
Go for 32GB intel Opteron?

 

[arlandi]

I would go with Ram Disk. and use the budget to buy Optane to buy additional RAM instead. Ram will always be the fastest choice.

 

[geofelt]

I don't think a amd motherboard supports Optane devices as a cache.
I think it would work as a fast 32gb ssd
Regardless, a ramdisk is considerably faster.

 

[drkarasheed]

I would go with Ram Disk. and use the budget to buy Optane to buy additional RAM instead. Ram will always be the fastest choice.

That is my feeling as well. The cost of a 16GB Corsair RAM module is almost the same as a 32GB Optane. So buying another 2 RAM modules of 16GB each, to make my RAM status to 64 GB, and dedicating about 25% of it(16GB) as RAMDisk is more rational?

 

[geofelt]

Do not buy two different ram kits.
They are likely to be incompatible.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
The internal workings are designed for the capacity of the kit.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards, can be very sensitive to this.
This is more difficult when more sticks are involved.

Check the ram QVL list for your selected motherboard.
pick a single kit from that support list.

 

[TerryLaze]

You guys have to keep in mind that a ram disk loses all it's content every time you reboot, and you will only get the speed benefit once it's done re copying all the content from a disk at every re boot,yeah you need as much free space on a ssd (or conventional) drive as you have allotted to your ram disk and you will lose a lot of speed on boot up and down procedures.


Also Ryzen 5 2400G ,I doubt it even has fast enough disk access and I/O in general for a substantial difference between ssd and ram drive or optane.

 

[geofelt]

Ram disk apps will record the contents of the ram disk before a pc is shut down.
For critical data, using a ups with a ram disk might be in order to prevent loss of data.
I expect the app has a way to checkpoint ram on command.
I normally use sleep to ram and not shut down.
If I used a ram disk I would take a checkpoint first.

 

[popatim]

You still can use the Optane drive as a really fast SSD and run a caching app on it, like AMD's StoreMI.
Then add in more ram and setup tiered caching using Primocache for the best of the best.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Honestly, just getting like a 64GB or 128GB NVMe drive and using StoreMI might be cheaper...

But, if you are already running an SSD and don't have a HDD the caching won't improve anything much at all.

 

[drkarasheed]

You guys have to keep in mind that a ram disk loses all it's content every time you reboot, and you will only get the speed benefit once it's done re copying all the content from a disk at every re boot,yeah you need as much free space on a ssd (or conventional) drive as you have allotted to your ram disk and you will lose a lot of speed on boot up and down procedures.


Also Ryzen 5 2400G ,I doubt it even has fast enough disk access and I/O in general for a substantial difference between ssd and ram drive or optane.

I have Radeon RAMDisk already running. The application has a facility to save the files or data on a folder, some where. I have this on a small SSD, and I believe that it is working well.
But can we manage RAM Disk and Opteon work simultaneously?

 

[SkyNetRising]

But can we manage RAM Disk and Opteon work simultaneously?

Opteron is AMD's x86 former server and workstation processor line.
Opteron is not the same thing as Optane.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

If you are already running a RAM disk then adding an Optane drive might actually hurt performance. Faster storage is generally a good thing, but you aren't going to get any faster than a RAM Drive. Chances are that you'll just be adding latency by adding layers of caching. You'll be loading from the hard drive or SSD to the cache, then pulling from the cache to load to RAM disk, then pulling from RAM disk to active RAM, and going the other way for things being stored. All the while that data will be moving over the system bus and PCIe lanes that might have better things to do. Not to mention that with 32 GB of RAM anything being loaded into memory can be loaded in its entirety. You don't really need to accelerate an SSD, it does that for you assuming it has DRAM on it, which most performance drives already do.

What are you even trying to do that you think you need so much speed from your storage? Anything that needs the kinds of speed you are trying for really needs dedicated hardware like a 900 series Optane based SSD, and those cost A LOT.