Gigabyte recently showed off it's new PCI ram drive card which is basically, a pci card that functions as a SATA HD.

The card is a regular 32-bit PCI card that features four standard DIMM slots on board. The card also features a custom Gigabyte FPGA that is programmed to act as a SATA to DDR translator, which convinces the SATA controller you connect the card to that the memory you have on that card is no different than a regular SATA HDD. As long as you have memory on the card, the card will be available at POST as an actual SATA drive, with no additional drivers necessary.

That's a pretty cool concept!
Even though you'd loose anything stored after +/- 16 hours (as it says), still be cool for older machines that have slow bus speeds an no SATA that could benefit from faster *disk* access (page files on machines that don't support DDR spring to mind). Least you could make use of your old RAM when you upgrade eh?

Like the article said, look forward to seeing how the technology evolves.



last edited by HERMITech at 19:53:53 21/Jul/05

Would this be good for loading games on to it to play?

^^ Hell yeah..

heck - I'm just looking forward to ditching Ramdisk!


now... if only someone over at sold.ausforums.com would buy my spare kidney :P

Would this be good for loading games on to it to play?

you'd load Windows on it - games/aps/etc if you have the space. Windows will load in about 4-5 seconds apparently

finally a use for all those old ddr266/333 sticks we have lying around :)
since it doesnt go anyfaster than ddr200 they'll be perfect.

they mention for use in gigibyte boards but should be aite for other boards aswell i hope.
also if people show interest in this then we'll soon have ones that just use a normal powermolex connector for power instead of pcislot. chuck em in a 5" bay or something awesum

you could totaly put your swap file/virtual memory on that, oh wai....

actualy, what I dont get is why dont they provide a molex connector for alternate power instead of using the PCI BUS, then you could mount the card anyware.

Edit: or unless the PCI slots provides standby power when the soft power is off?

last edited by scuzzy at 14:38:37 22/Jul/05

Edit: or unless the PCI slots provides standby power when the soft power is off?

If you bothered to read the uber-short article, you'd know that the ram is refreshed by an onboard battery that lasts about 16 hours.

I first thought "why not hook up the card to the power supply's standby voltage source", but after a bit of research I realised that DDR memory drains an order of magnitude more current than power supplies provide for 'standby use' ... so that's out of the question.

If you bothered to read the uber-short article, you'd know that the ram is refreshed by an onboard battery that lasts about 16 hours.

I was unaware of how much voltage is in a PCI slot when the computer is soft powered off ok.

scuzzy you IDIOT!

cant wait for the extreme battery mods and overclocked pci ram cards

either case as it is will be awesum for virtual memory, since as soon as it get power again from pc turning back on the drive is there again for windows to chuck its crap on.

scuzzy you IDIOT!

I'm so banned :(

either case as it is will be awesum for virtual memory, since as soon as it get power again from pc turning back on the drive is there again for windows to chuck its crap on.

Buy 2 gigs of ram and disable the page file.

yea ive been thinking about that Scuzzy but ive heard that some programs are writen to use a page file reguardless?
obveously its wrong if u said otherwise scuzzy im not questioning you but would like the confirmation none the less.

google tells me this way and that way so eh

I don't really like to reopen old threads, but since this update came along today..

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=1&id=1725

The product is now known as 'Gigabyte i-RAM'

This product would appeal to me if it didn't have to be mounted in a PCI slot for power, since data is transfered via SATA (ie it had molex power cable) consuming a PCI slot is a tad wasteful.

Edit: O fuk, i said this above, carry on people.

Edit: Hay, these graphs sure are pretty

last edited by scuzzy at 15:55:49 07/Oct/05

The product is now known as 'Gigabyte i-RAM'

It's been known as i-RAM for a couple of months :)

I'd still love to see it sold somewhere in Aus. I'd line up for one.

Yeah, I'm thinking it has lotsa cool potential and of course, if managed correctly, minimum chance of data loss

According to Gigabyte, the battery can keep the data in the DDR modules for up to 16 hours. Even when the PC is shut down, as long as the PC's power supply is turned on, the standby current on the PCI bus will continue to power the memory modules - thus, the battery won't kick in only until there's absolutely no power going to the PC.

Personally, I'd schedule a ghost (or whatever flavour of drive imaging software you prefer) image on a fairly regular basis that was written off to a storage drive for a quick rebuild in the chance that it loses power for longer than it can handle.

Just wondering, surely with a decent or even semi decent UPS wouldn't you be able to set up a script of sorts that allowed you to perform a quick image dump prior to end of battery life?

iRAM RAID ftw.

I wonder if you could mod it so you could hook up an old psu to constantly run to power it.