Ramdisk test, for fun! : Specs | CPU | Hashrate | Review | Config

Why ?

Hello !

A few days ago, I received a Kingston HyperX Beast 1866Mhz CL10 32GB kit, most of you will say to yourself that there is absolutely no point in having so much ram, in 90% of cases I would be totally disappointed. ‘agreement with you, except when we come across a good plan at 80 € all !!

I then wondered what I was going to be able to do with all this RAM, seeing the 29gb of free space on the Windows desktop, something had to be done in order to put all these Gbs to contribution! The idea occurred to me to make myself a small Ramdisk, for the pleasure of the disproportionate figures displayed at the end of the benchmarks!

What is a RAMDisk?

A RAMDisk is a virtual disk that uses part of the random access memory (RAM) as a system partition, it will then be displayed as a normal partition and it will be possible to use it like any partition.

You should know that RAMDisks are not new and that they were already used in the 1980s, which made it possible to start the computer in a few seconds instead of a few minutes!

How to create a RAMDisk on my pc?

Although there are Serial ATA adapters capable of creating a RAMDisk, the speeds will be limited to the transfer rate of this same Serial ATA port, thus making the main purpose of the maneuver completely useless, as much to fall back on an SSD which will return less and expensive.

There is free software that allows you to easily create one, I chose to use Softperfect RAM Disk which is very easy to use while being very powerful!

Configuration de test

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500k at 4Ghz

Graphics card: Sapphire 7950 DualX

Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V

RAM : Kingston Beast 1866Mhz CL10 32GB

SSD System: Samsung 830 128Gb

Alimentation : Seasonic X-650 80Plus Gold

OS : Windows 7 64Bits Ultimate

Make way for the tests!

In order to highlight the differences that there can be between an SSD and a RAMDisk, I decided to do the tests on the Samsung 830 and then on the RAMDisk.

Let’s start with ATTO Disk Benchmark:

Samsung 830 128Gb

RAMDisk

Maintenant CrystalDisk Mark:

Samsung 830 128Gb

RAMDisk

I think that in view of these results, you will have all understood that the SSD can go to get dressed … I have not found other benchmarks capable of detecting the RAMDisk, HDTune as well as AIDA64 do not allow it to be done, if you know any, do not hesitate to point it out in the comments .

Yes it’s fast … but

Because there is a but of course! Due to its nature of RAM, restarting, shutting down the PC deletes the contents of your RAMdisk!

There is an option in Softperfect RAM Disk which allows you to save the content on another disk when unmounting the drive, but if your pc crashes or you turn it off without having done this you will lose all data!

Edit: Softperfect also allows you to save your data every X minutes by creating an image that you can mount / unmount at your convenience, thank you to n4tURL

Conclusion

After spending some time using the RAMDisk I have to say it’s cool, but as much as it needs to be useful, if you already have an SSD you will see very little difference in common tasks.

You can copy a game on it in order to reduce loading times and at the same time reduce freezes due to micro-loading of textures, copy greedy software on it etc … but you must be careful not to leave important data on it otherwise to lose everything!

There are also many other possible uses (why not a virtual machine directly on the RAMDisk?), If you use one on a regular basis do not hesitate to share them below or on the forum.