RAMDISK Benchmarks WIN7
(the most complete RAMDISK shootout 2009)
Test system: Nehalem Core i7 950 and 4 GByte RAM
Software OS: WIN7 32-bit (max 4Gbyte RAM)
Setup: 2 GByte RAMDISKs from different software vendors
Hypothesis: RAMDISKs have different performance due to their implementations
License:All material, pictures can be freely reused with proper attribution (CC-by)
Author: Tobias Kind / FiehnLab 2009 / fiehnlab.ucdavis.edu
Used disk benchmark tools:
CrystalDiskMark crystalmark.info
HDTach (trial) www.simplisoftware.com
HDTune (trial) www.hdtune.com
Atto www.guru3d.com
Direct IO Disks
- can be mounted as virtual disk and can be used with drive letter
- are not seen by Windows Disk Manager or HDTune/HDTach
- faster than direct disk mode (SCSI)
Comments:
- Error may be as high as 20%;
- Older unsupported tools such as ATTO may have caching issues
- Direct IO is faster than direct disk mode
- Two test with two repeats, fastest result taken for table
- FAT and FAT32 and NTFS results mixed
Read the full report (36 pages) absolutely for free as Adobe PDF and Office 2003 PPT or Office 2007 PPTX
For free reuse (commercial and non-commercial) please use CC-by license with proper attribution :
Author: Tobias Kind / FiehnLab 2009 / fiehnlab.ucdavis.edu
Ramdisk performance results for Windows 7
| Sequential [MB/s] | Random 512k [MB/s] | Random 4k [MB/s] | Average (ALL) | |||||
| Num | Name | Read | Write | Read | Write | Read | Write | Score |
| 1 | QSOFT Ramdisk Enterprise | 5362 | 6460 | 5574 | 6582 | 1063 | 924 | 4327 |
| 2 | VSuite Ramdisk (prof.) | 4544 | 5269 | 4731 | 5247 | 1000 | 795 | 3598 |
| 3 | Gili Ramdisk | 3684 | 4684 | 4213 | 4857 | 610 | 541 | 3098 |
| 4 | Virtual Hard Drive 2 Pro | 4654 | 4006 | 4365 | 4186 | 719 | 623 | 3092 |
| 5 | StarPort iSCSI Initiator | 4441 | 5179 | 3992 | 4493 | 186 | 188 | 3080 |
| 6 | SuperSpeed RamDisk Plus | 4409 | 4995 | 3995 | 4492 | 199 | 193 | 3047 |
| 7 | ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver | 3923 | 4500 | 3176 | 3556 | 81 | 63 | 2550 |
| 8 | Cenatek Ramdisk | 3215 | 3573 | 2902 | 3054 | 225 | 197 | 2194 |
| 9 | RamPhantom 7 | 3414 | 3835 | 2717 | 2871 | 53 | 57 | 2158 |
| 10 | Gavotte Ramdisk | 3314 | 3531 | 454 | 460 | 4 | 4 | 1295 |
| 11 | Everstrike DiskBoost | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 12 | AR RAM Disk | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 13 | StarWind iSCSI 4.0 | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 14 | Moio Systems RAMDisk | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 15 | Cenatek RAMDISK XP | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 16 | ERAM for Windows | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 17 | Microsoft KDMF/DDK | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
Testsystem: Core i7 @ 3.5GHz; DDR3 RAM; WIN7 32-bit; CrystalDiskmark 2.0; Error +/- 20% |
||||||||
- A fast Ramdisk or ramdrive can deliver more than 5 GByte/sec seq. throughput
- Good support and signed drivers are important; Backup option is important
- Easy installation and de-installation as well as convenient GUI are a large plus
- CPU penalty for Ramdisk use is one CPU core - due to RAMDISK and FS overhead
- Commercial and free versions can be used (performance is not ultimate measure)
- How about consumer SSDs? They can reach several hundred MByte/sec but not more.
- IOPS for RAMDISKS: 30000-40000 @ 512 bytes and 4 kBytes
- How about external or PCI-X based SSDs like Fusion IO? The can reach 1000 Mbyte/sec.
- Cheapest DDR3 4Gbyte ~ 200 Dollars ; a 64 GByte RAMDISK would cost 3200 Dollar (4RAM)
- A fast SSD or disk RAID array (RAID10 or RAID6) should be used for the production system
- A small RAMDISK with few GBytes can be used when top performance is needed.
- Using a RAMDISK has a penalty of one CPU core in use due to filesystem and ramdisk overhead.
Read the full report for free, including installation issues, GUI pictures and more.
Check above links for PDF, PPT and PPTX material.
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Thank you.