Looking for a Silent Client?

[dbfresh23]

I just got this from giga-byte today - i'll be trolling these sites and ordering a couple when they are listed!

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your interest in the I-RAM product. They have started to ship to distributors. It will be available from dealers early December. These online retailers will the be the first:

Newegg.com
Pcclub.com
Mwave.com
ewiz.com
Zipzoomfly.com

Thank you for using Gigabyte products

For those of you that don't know what it is here ya go... http://www.giga-byte.com/Peripherals...Rev%201.1).htm

[stanger89]

[teknubic]

Ditto. Sucks that it occupies a valuable PCI slot though. Wonder why they aren't pursuing the IDE or SATA-only connectors.

[mc2wheels]

I know that the ramdrive will be faster with access time, but wouldn't it be more cost effective to buy a notebook hard drive for your OS? You are really unlikely to ever hear the seeks on a newer notebook hard drive. I use my notebook for video editing, so I just recently bought a 5400 rpm Seagate momentus 100GB drive to replace my 60GB toshiba drive. I cannot hear the thing at all. I know they currently have a 120GB drive, but it is really expensive right now, and 160GB drives are right around the corner. For those who don't have a closet media center, these drives seem like a nice way to get a decent amount of storage that runs way cooler (draws less power), and are really quiet.

[dbfresh23]

Faster is an extreme understatment. For a machine that is ONLY a client, more then 2-3 gigs of drive space is unnecessary. No need to worry about fragmentation either. It would be basically the equivilant of running XP as an RTOS. Also this could equate to an almost instant on client as boot times would be virtually nothing. As quiet as a laptop drive may be, it still couldn't compare to an OS running in RAM.

Maybe the title should have been Silent and Ultra Fast instead. I'm actually looking at 2 of them, 1 for a client and one for my desktop.

[blade]

Any idea on the price?

[dbfresh23]

Last thing I read on it said in the $70 range w/o RAM modules.

[dbfresh23]

Ordering tonight!

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-RAMDISK

[JasonJoel]

Read the RAM Drive review at Tom's Hardware that came out just a few days ago, it was barely faster in booting XP or in normal use.

Seems like a huge waste of money over a notebook hard drive to me...

Jason

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Faster is an extreme understatment. For a machine that is ONLY a client, more then 2-3 gigs of drive space is unnecessary. No need to worry about fragmentation either. It would be basically the equivilant of running XP as an RTOS. Also this could equate to an almost instant on client as boot times would be virtually nothing. As quiet as a laptop drive may be, it still couldn't compare to an OS running in RAM.

Maybe the title should have been Silent and Ultra Fast instead. I'm actually looking at 2 of them, 1 for a client and one for my desktop.

[dbfresh23]

Interesting, The THG review I just read indicates that it is more then 50% faster then a Raid 0 15K RPM WD Raptor system and a Raid 0 U320 15K RPM SCSI system.

The boot time doesn't look quite as good as giga-byte claims, but running apps off it, the review shows a clear advantage to the I-RAM.

I guess I'll know soon enough!

[olyar15]

There is also a review on Anandtech, and overall I am not sure it is worth the cost. For a simple Sage client, the client would already be loaded and in standby mode, so it starts up very quickly. with a notebook drive, I doubt that you would be able to notice a difference in noise.

[dagar]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

XP as an RTOS

That's a bit of a stretch but I think I know what you're trying to say I think Wind River marketing would enjoy it