performance

[Djsliq]

Hi guys, i really need sum light on ASRock's XFast Ram utility. I'm running:
1. ASRock H61M vs R2.0 MoBo...
2. Intel core i3 - 2120 cpu @3.3Ghz...
3. Ddr3 1333 2gb ram...
4. 750gb western digital HDD...
5. LG Flatron E1941 LED monitor...
6. 512mb onboard graphics.(sometimes i reduce to 256mb).
7. Windows 7 Ultimate x64
.............
So my main problem is, when i install and start the Xfast ram. My pc gets tobe soooooo damn slow and pc games like NFS-MW, medal of honor, splinter cell - double agent and burnout paradise 2 just closes within the first two - four minutes from starting due to low memory. If xfast ram is NOT active, my pc uses 49-78% of the 1.7gb ram when i play games. But xfast ram on uses almost all my ram(86-94%)... So should i just run my pc without xfast ram?.

[profJim]

With only 2GB of total memory, don't install or run XFast ram.
Your windows pagefile is probably slowing your system to a crawl when XFast Ram is running.
You can verify this by running windows Resource Monitor from the Task Manager button and selecting the Memory tab in Resource Monitor.
Moving your browser cache, TEMP and TMP folders, and possibly your pagefile to the ram disk should speed up your system if you have 8GB of installed memory.
Your system should be stable if you buy a 2 x 4GB memory kit and sell your current memory to offset the cost.
Mixing different memory brands and or models is asking for problems with system stability.
It's safest to buy a memory kit that is listed in the Memory Compatibility List for your motherboard on the ASRock web site.

8GB of ram with XFast ram using up to 2 or 3GB (depending on your needs) would be ideal.

[Djsliq]

Okie dokie... Tnx hey, i dd jus dat nd i saw dat da page file was used completely ... I jus removed xfast ram nd things are okay... :) .... Sweet!!!.

[profJim]

Thanks for the update, glad to hear that everything is now OK.
Next time you need to give us a harder problem to solve.

[pedeb]

My Question is about XFast RAM.
I have just built a HTPC with 8GB RAM and the 120GB SSD is the only harddrive (I archive tv programs to server if I need storage & for silence).
ASRock claim that XFast RAM will extend the life of SSD. But I am thinking that the virtual ram drive will be on the SSD so it won't be extending the life ie it will still be reading & writing to SSD.
Am I correct with my logic?
If not, what settings should I set for the ram drive ie size,browser cache, TEMP and TMP folders, pagefile etc.

[parsec]

If I understand you correctly, in theory if the XFast RAM drive (which is strictly on RAM memory) causes the amount of overall RAM memory available to be so low, that Windows uses a pagefile (your virtual RAM drive) on the SSD to compensate for that, then yes, it would defeat the intended purpose.

That situation would be similar to that of the OP of this thread, whose RAM drive was created on only 2GB of total memory (OMG...), which forced the use of a pagefile, and brought the memory speed down to that of disk I/O, which is 50 - 100 times slower.

Two things determine if that would happen: The amount of overall RAM available, and how much is being used for your situation. The 8GB that you have is likely enough to allow you to have a 1 - 2GB RAM disk, with ~6GB remaining for OS and application use, without causing a pagefile to be written to on your SSD. 4GB total RAM is not enough IMO for that scenario to not happen, and 6GB total RAM is barely enough to guarantee no pagefile writes.

Regarding settings for the RAM drive:

The main usage of a pagefile is virtual memory, or "fake", substitute memory for use when the amount of system RAM is low. Then consider putting the pagefile on a RAM disk. If a pagefile is a substitute for RAM memory, but we then put it in RAM memory, how does that make sense? Or, we create a RAM disk, reducing the amount of available memory. If we run out of RAM, the pagefile is used... but it's actually in the RAM memory we took away from the system. So why not just give the system the memory used by the RAM disk in the first place? It is claimed some programs must have a pagefile. I can't name one that will use a pagefile, while multiple GB of RAM are available. It makes no sense. It also makes no sense putting the pagefile in a RAM disk, IMO.

Browser cache is faster in a RAM disk of course, but unless you backup the RAM disk when you shutdown the PC, the browser cache contents are lost. I moved my Firefox browser cache to a separate folder, not on the OS drive. After a few days, it is 250MB in size, with about 15 hours of actual use. You can limit the size of a browser's cache, but that may take some experimentation to get it working right on a RAM disk. Also, some browsers have cache type files that are always written to the OS drive, so you can't get all of them off the SSD.

Temp files are great on a RAM disk, IMO one of it's best uses. But you may not use temp files that much, so if you are low on RAM, allocating RAM disk space for them can be a waste of RAM. Lately I noticed that a driver installation program, which was a .exe file, created a folder that it put expanded archived/compressed files in, which was written to disk. When it was done, that folder was still there, but of no further use. A RAM disk scratch folder would be a great place to run programs like that, super fast and no disk writes. But how often do we install drivers, etc?

Finally, IMO the fear of writing excessively to, and wearing out a SSD is very exaggerated, and not an issue. Testing by people like us at ExtremeSystems.org has shown that SSDs commonly can withstand 10's of Terabytes written to them, and most of them are into the 100's of Terabytes written. What was the endurance king?... a Samsung 830 that finally died after over 1 Petabyte (1000 Terabytes) written as I recall. Reading from a SSD is not a wear issue.

[pedeb]

Thanks for the info.
I thought the XFast RAM was a virtual ram drive, I didn't realise it uses part of actual RAM.
Makes sense now.

[profJim]

That's why it's called a virtual ram drive.

I'm not familiar with windows &
Windows 7 wants a pagefile that is at least 400MB for creating mini-dump files when you have a BSOD.
With my 8GB system, I've moved the pagefile, TMP and TEMP folders and some other folders to my D: disk, the first partition on my hard drive.
My pagefile setup uses 400MB minimum and 1,000MB maximum.
I recently ran CrystalDiskInfo to see how much data I've written to my ssd boot drive since it was installed 4 months ago.
The total size of the data written to my ssd in this time period is 1.10TB.

If my ssd will be "used up" after writing 400TB the math works out to:
1.10TB divided by 4 months = 275GB written per month.
400TB divided by 275GB = 1454 months
1454 divided by 12 = 121.17 years
Even if I wrote 10 times as much each month, my ssd would still live for just over 12 years.

The picture below shows a snapshot of how many bytes per second were written to my TEMP folder while my anti-virus was scanning my boot drive.