Windows - Ramdisk's

[sirsloop]

So I've been thinking up ways to improve performance when editing photos. There's the obvious pocket heavy mods like better processor, more memory, RAID arrays... but how about Windows performance upgrades? I've been thinking about ways to speed up the windows page file. Most home users don't use it all that much, but when editing like 1500+ images you can use upwards of 2GB in windows page file! If you are using vista, its even worse. Even with tons of available memory, windows and some windows applications loads up tons of stuff into the page file.

My initial thought was to add the page file to a raid 0 array that also hosts a batch of images that I'm going to be working on. That should decrease read/write times over a single drive, and in the rare case that a drive pops all you have on there is a copy of pictures that you are working on and a pagefile that has no special data. I was looking into ram disk's and figured I could just slap the page file on one. Now this will only work if you have an excessive amount of available physical memory, I'm thinking 4GB being the bare minimum. This means 64 bit windows. I'm not sure about Mac users and how that works. If you have 8GB worth of system memory on a 64bit OS, dedicate like 2.5-3GB worth of RAM to the page file RAM disk and you're set! Load it up!

I suppose in the (near) future ram will be even cheaper and more available... so inside of 2-3 years we may have access to cheap solid state drives, and ram drives large enough to support editing a batch of images. There are already PCI bus RAM disk boards available with battery backups too... so you can reboot and not lose the data. IDK... just throwin the idea out there. I'll put it into action next weekend...

[swjim]

I seem to recall this being an idea that sounds good in theory but doesn't perform as well as expected in reality. Page 2 of this Fred Langa article summarizes the result at least in W2K and XP. http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57704017&pgno=2&queryText=&isPrev=

[sirsloop]

He makes good points, but they are dated (2005). These days a machine with 8GB of system memory can EASILY sacrifice 2-3GB worth of system memory for a RAM drive and completely eliminate hard drive usage of the page file. Furthermore, RAM prices have come down significantly since 2005. Having 8GB of physical memory can be less than $200!! If there are significant performance benefits with high page file users such as photo editers, then this could be a hellavu performance upgrade! Paired with a RAID 0, 0+1/10 array and a quad core intel... you can have a serious editing machine!

-(From the January 31, 2005 issue)
"If your system is toward the lower end of the recommended RAM amounts for your version of Windows (e.g. 128 Mbytes for XP), then you should either avoid RAM disk use altogether, or use only very small RAM disks--a few megs at most. Anything more, and you may start to cut into the RAM requirements of the system as a whole.

On the other hand, if you have abundant RAM, you can create more sizeable RAM disks without affecting performance. For example, a system with 512 Mbytes of RAM might be able to support a 256-Mbyte RAM disk without significantly affecting pagefile/swapfile activity. A system with 2 Gbytes of RAM might easily afford a 1 Gbyte or perhaps even a 1.5-Gbyte RAM disk without any pagefile/swapfile performance issue.

Unfortunately, there's no hard and fast rule for exactly how much system RAM you can assign to a RAM disk without affecting overall performance: It depends on the exact mix of software you'll be running. Fortunately, most RAM disk software makes it relatively easy to experiment with different-sized RAM disks, so you can find a size that works for your own unique situation. (We'll provide a list of RAM disk vendors later.) "

The point he made about the page file not being accessible when windows starts up is a good one. It may be worth while to leave a 25-50MB hard drive swap file on the system, so Windows can use. I guess I'll have to play around with that. I mean what does windows do if you turn off the page file? That will require some tweaking... but sounds like it could work given this amount of memory...a fun challenge!

[bohdank]

If you have that much memory, I seriously doubt the image you are working on is going to get swapped to disk, or Photoshop for that matter.

Most of this stuff made sense when memory was scarce, actually, and you didn't have enough to keep all your processes in memory.

I doubt RAM disks are all that usefull these days.

[sirsloop]

well, do you have a computer with more than 4GB of memory? What happens when you open canon digital photo pro with 1500 RAW images in the folder? Your page file goes to 1GB. What happens when you load up "send to smugmug" with 1500 images? Your page file goes to 1.5GB. Just starting windows will use up 200-300MB worth of page file. Granted you still have to copy everything to the page file, but in theory it should be much faster just being a read operation, and once its on the RAM disk it will be much faster.

[bohdank]

Watch your total/limit/peak Commit Charge... that will give you a good idea how low you can go with the the size of your page file..... you only need a few meg for Windows to start up. Enough memory...... 4 gigs should be quite sufficient, and you can set your page file size to, let's say 5 meg for XP and there will be no swapping (nowhere to swap to). If you start getting out of memory warnings, increase the page file size until it stops.

You send to Smugmug 1500 images in one shot ?

[sirsloop]

heh heh.. yeah... or more than 1500...

hmm... Photos uploaded: 64376 | Disk space used: 292 GB :lol::lol:

[Moppie]

If you have that much memory, I seriously doubt the image you are working on is going to get swapped to disk, or Photoshop for that matter.

Most of this stuff made sense when memory was scarce, actually, and you didn't have enough to keep all your processes in memory.

I doubt RAM disks are all that usefull these days.


Photoshop CS3 (and earlier) is limited by how much RAM it can use. Once it reachs that limit it starts useing a hard disc instead for a swap file.

If you have a 64bit OS and lots of RAM (6-8+GB), then setting up a ramdisc to be used for the Photoshop swap file can have a large impact if your doing extensive RAM heavy work.

There are excellent examples in this thread: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=170063


The catch with photoshop is some of its features are RAM intensive (the blur filter for example) and some are processor intensive (converting files) and some make heavy use of both (layers), so the ideal photoshop computer is one with lots of RAM and a high end processor.

[tim]

I've been reading about RAM disks on DWF, it seems for some applications they can make a massive difference. I think someone put their lightroom catalog onto a ram disk, or their ACR cache, I forget exactly, and it made a huge difference. If you do a lot of interactive editing on big files in PS then a RAM disk as swap will help too.

I wouldn't bother with a RAM disk unless you have 8GB of RAM, that way you can have 4GB for the system (which is plenty), and 4GB for the RAM disk. You might do 5GB/3GB depending how much memory your apps take up.

If you put a LR catalog or ACR cache on the RAM disk you probably want it backed up to disk, really just cached on the RAM disk. Some RAM disk software does this for you.

[CyberDyneSystems]

I seem to recall this being an idea that sounds good in theory but doesn't perform as well as expected in reality. Page 2 of this Fred Langa article summarizes the result at least in W2K and XP. http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57704017&pgno=2&queryText=&isPrev=

Oh I beg to differ,. read our own benchmarks threads on this forum (in the stickies) and see what 4-8GB of solid state page file will offer,.

It works wonders for many operations.

[CyberDyneSystems]

...

I wouldn't bother with a RAM disk unless you have 8GB of RAM,

Or more, yes I concur,. which does mean 64bit OS.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Also, check out this link to see how a Ramdisk can really remove the most common bottleneck (hard drive speed)

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5018150#post5018150

[sirsloop]

Yeah, my system is:

Asus P5Q Deluxe
Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz Quad core
8GB Corsair XMS PC-3200 4-4-4-12
Windows XP 64bit

More than enough room to make a ram drive...

[sirsloop]

Also, check out this link to see how a Ramdisk can really remove the most common bottleneck (hard drive speed)

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5018150#post5018150


great info... exactly what I plan to do and its great to see it kicks ass!!! :lol::lol::lol:

[Faolan]

Why bother with software when there is these solutions?

GA RAMDisk (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2180&ProductName=GC-RAMDISK)

GA RAMBox (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2678&ProductName=i-RAM%20BOX)

Fair enough you're capped at Sata 1.5Gb but that's more than fast enough for most applications...

[Moppie]

Why bother with software when there is these solutions?

GA RAMDisk (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2180&ProductName=GC-RAMDISK)

GA RAMBox (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2678&ProductName=i-RAM%20BOX)

Fair enough you're capped at Sata 1.5Gb but that's more than fast enough for most applications...

2 problems:

Good luck finding 400mhz DDR ram at a reasonable price, it has been virtually discontinued from production it is so out of date.

1.5gb/s (which is only SATA 1) is slower than a SATA 2 hard drive, which will transfer data at 3gb/s.


If you had an old system with IDE drives and some spare ram then those devices might help, but you would be better of simply buying a faster PC.

[bohdank]

Find me a SATA drive that will go much faster than 1gb/s continuous.... unfortunately drives haven't kept up with the interfaces. Most can't use the full bandwidth of IDE, let alone SATA1.

[sirsloop]

Well, those are still maxxed out at whatever bus it uses. Sata running at 1Gb/s is still roughly 6 times slower than PC-6400. Also, they look like they use slow(er) ram. If you can have a mobo that does 8-16GB, you're set... no need for any additional purchase other than RAM itself.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Why bother with software when there is these solutions?

GA RAMDisk (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2180&ProductName=GC-RAMDISK)

GA RAMBox (http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2678&ProductName=i-RAM%20BOX)

Fair enough you're capped at Sata 1.5Gb but that's more than fast enough for most applications...

I've got the Gigabyte ramdisk as well, it's cool. If they would make a DDR2 one with SATA 3G it would rock, especially at that killer price point. Then you could make a RAID0 array with a pair of them for a 6GBs swap file or boot drive!

1.5GBs is still fster than any hard drive can sustain for now.. but the software method uses your more available and more affordable modern system RAM, and runs at the RAMs full speed.

[sirsloop]

FYI,

I just got my new machine built...

Q9550
P5Q Deluxe
8GB Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX
500GB 7200.11 Seagate C:
500GB WD RE2 D:
2x 400GB RAID0 WD RE2 drives on a Promise controller
MSI 9800GTX+
stock clockings so far...

Anyways, I ran the machine for a day with no ramdisk, must more responsive than my old 939 4200+...expected. Windows will page files regardless of how much free memory is hangin around. If you turn off the pagefile windows will just default and make one out of your control. I was running with like 7GB free memory and 500-700MB paged. So I fired up RamDisk Plus, chewed up 3.5GB of my available ram and made a ramdisk, pointed 20MB worth of pagefile at my RAID0 scratch drive, and ~3475MB at the ram disk. Not only did the machine process through images much faster after the initial load, hard drive usage is greatly reduced making my machine much quieter. No more chugging and chugging as the machine strains to load up 16+GB worth of RAW thumbnail files into editing software.

[tim]

Some people put image caches in ram disk too, or the lightroom catalog. You might need a bigger ram disk for that though.