Gigabyte PCI Ram Card

Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
edited August 2005 in Hardware
Gigabyte Brings Solid State Storage to the Mainstream
In an effort to differentiate themselves from other motherboard manufacturers, Gigabyte has introduced a number of interesting add-ons for their motherboards, the most interesting of which is their $50 RAMDISK PCI card.

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.
=============================
WOOHOO!! FINALLY!! I've been wanting something like this for ages!
:celebrate
«1

Comments

  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2005
    Yah I plan to get one as soon as it come out and install windows on it :D put 4gb of corsair value in there :).
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    Other than the data life problem (only 16hr backup), it looks like a cool toy :)
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2005
    GrayFox wrote:
    Yah I plan to get one as soon as it come out and install windows on it :D put 4gb of corsair value in there :).

    It'd erase itself everytime you shut down...
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    There's a battery that lasts for 16hrs.
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited June 2005
    Yeah, I read that now. But eh. It'd be fun to play around with, like dual booting. But I wouldn't trust my main system on a puny battery pack. It sure as hell would be fast, though, wouldn't it? :eek:
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited June 2005
    All youneed is a dedicated backup HD for it. :) Also it looks like the card has 3 AA NiMH batteries on it. How hard would it be to mod in a 12 battery array for a 64hr backup time. In any event my comps are on 24/7. ;D

    Some company needs to take this idea and make a device with 8 or 16 slots that sits in a 5.25" or 3.5" bay with a bigger battery pack.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2005
    Wont it still get power from the 3.3V when the pc is off (but switch still on)

    But anyways I also plan to have a backup of windows too :P
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    It shouldn't be hard to jumper from a hot line to keep it powered.
    How long will memory hold a static value without a rewrite? There is a limit to that isn't there?
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2005
    As long as its powered it.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    It's about time this was brought to the mainstream. Wish they would have used cheaper SDRAM though. That'd still be more than enough transfer for the PCI bus to handle.

    I think I'd install apps and games with long load times on it. I can't friggin' wait. :D
  • MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
    edited June 2005
    Aha they should make one on PCI-E! :D
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited June 2005
    TheGr81 wrote:
    Aha they should make one on PCI-E! :D
    Ditto! - I like to see a 4x or 8x version
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2005
    Very cool device, although you are looking at a very very expensive toy with 2GB storage, or perhaps 4GB if you really have some cash. I'm guessing the device would cost about $150-200, and for 4GB of ram, you are looking at another 600+ dollars.

    BTW, PCI bus wouldn't limit you here, it'd be the 300MB/s of the SATAII (assuming you have a chipset based controller)
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    Does it support SATA II? I didn't see that. If not, SATA's limit of 150mb/s is still a hell of a lot more than my hard drive is pumping out :D

    The card is supposedly only going to cost $50. Might get a second one just for a windows swapfile :D
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    lemonlime wrote:
    Very cool device, although you are looking at a very very expensive toy with 2GB storage, or perhaps 4GB if you really have some cash. I'm guessing the device would cost about $150-200, and for 4GB of ram, you are looking at another 600+ dollars.

    BTW, PCI bus wouldn't limit you here, it'd be the 300MB/s of the SATAII (assuming you have a chipset based controller)

    if the device only costs $50 ... you can currently get 2GB of ram (4x512) for less than $150 - (I don't know how CAS latency would affect the performance, but getting DDR200 with low latency shouldn't be that hard). You can also get 4GB of of decent RAM (remember, it only needs to run ddr200) for about or under $400

    But I think it'd just end up being an expensive toy for some users. The cool factor would definitely be there.
  • McBainMcBain San Clemente, CA New
    edited June 2005
    Oh man this thing is sweet.....imagine just using a full tower and keeping a UPS at the bottom of it and runnning a direct 3.3 volt line to it....you could have a TON of 'down-time' and still have it act completely non-volatile. Possibilities are endless with this sort of system......only drawbacks are the cost of ram.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    bump - anyone heard anything on availability dates?
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    OMG!? I was just about to start a thread asking about possible solid state HDD"s I could buy!!!!

    I'm buying one with the money I was saving for a Laptop :D That is a promise! I don't care about the transfer rate, but the fact that seek times would be so damned quick are good enough for the OS to just FLY.
  • test_tube_tonytest_tube_tony Dallas TX Member
    edited July 2005
    4 gigs isnt really enough for games. they take up sp much space any more its crazy. then yea, $50 for the card, but then u need to get the ddr. 4 gigs is expensive. id rather get a couple 74 gig sata wd raptors and raid them.
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited July 2005
    Tony, that'd cost a whole crapload more than this card and 4 gigs of RAM, and still wouldn't be as fast. :rolleyes:
  • test_tube_tonytest_tube_tony Dallas TX Member
    edited July 2005
    more storage for the money. and itd be pretty fast. granted, not as fast as the ram, but still...
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited July 2005
    Rather than a drive used to install the OS, you could use it for carring the system's virtual memory, basicly making your VM just about as fast as your RAM!

    I'd love to see the manual for this thing. Does it need all slots filled? What's the fastest DDR RAM it supports? If I were to use DDR2700 rather than DDR3200, would I expirence a slowdown, or does the SATA interface make both DIMMs perform the same?
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    You couldn't feel a slowdown between DDR200 or DDR333 or even DDR400. You'd basically be getting a SATA HDD with an AMAZING seek time measured in nanoseconds rather than milliseconds, and of course the FULL bandwidth of SATA unlike it's mechanical counter part.

    The performance difference between a real SATA drive and this Solid State SATA drive is enormous. I'm sure Tex would say the same as I think he's used them before and I recall a post by him mentioning the sheer responsiveness of Windows being amazingly quick.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited July 2005
    Oh wow I missed this. Looks sweet!!
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Since no one seems to have heard anything - I fired off an e-mail to gigabyte. We'll see if they respond...
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited July 2005
    There is a huge thread at 2cpu.com in the storage section on this product with links to reviews etc..

    Tex
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited July 2005
    HKepc.com :Gigabyte i-Ram (P)review

    A SATA connection isn't fast enough for this card.... :D
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    TheSmJ wrote:
    Rather than a drive used to install the OS, you could use it for carring the system's virtual memory, basicly making your VM just about as fast as your RAM!

    I'd love to see the manual for this thing. Does it need all slots filled? What's the fastest DDR RAM it supports? If I were to use DDR2700 rather than DDR3200, would I expirence a slowdown, or does the SATA interface make both DIMMs perform the same?

    That seems to be a really good idea. You wouldn't need to do any modding or anything to the card, because it really wouldn't need power if it was the VM. Then again, if you can afford to populate this thing with 4GB of RAM, you'd probably have enough RAM in the PC that it wouldn't need to use the VM very often... ?
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited July 2005
    TheSmJ wrote:
    Rather than a drive used to install the OS, you could use it for carring the system's virtual memory, basicly making your VM just about as fast as your RAM!

    I'd love to see the manual for this thing. Does it need all slots filled? What's the fastest DDR RAM it supports? If I were to use DDR2700 rather than DDR3200, would I expirence a slowdown, or does the SATA interface make both DIMMs perform the same?
    NO, You can use 1, 2, 3 or 4 slots with 256MB, 512MB or 1GB DIMMS. All memory works at PC1600 (100mhz) Speed.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited July 2005
    You would be better adding ram to your PC rather then using this for a pagefile.
Sign In or Register to comment.