The concept of RAM discs or RAM drives is not exactly a new one. And the idea
behind it is pretty simple. If you have more system memory than your
applications require, you can use software to allocate some of it to make
a lightning fast storage device that your system sees exactly the same way it
would any other standard hard drive or solidstate drive. Meaning you could use
it for anything. Sounds cool, right? Well, we do lots of cool stuff on this
channel. We've even got a Razer Siren review coming soon. So stay tuned for
that. But for now, roll the intro, then we'll tell you more.
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now to learn more. Now, the first time pretty much anyone hears about RAM
drives, their mind starts buzzing with ideas like, "Oh, snap. I could put my
operating system on it or like I'm gonna put all my games on it so I'll be the
first one to the heli in Battlefield. But life is never that simple, is it?
System memory is usually at least an order of magnitude more expensive than
even high-end storage drives. So those multi- gig application and game installs
get really expensive real fast. And even if you did want to buy as much RAM as
you can fit in your motherboard, unless you're buying a server grade board, that
won't be as much as you might hope. And
the list of disadvantages actually keeps on trucking here. RAM is what is known
as volatile storage, which means every
time the system powers off, it empties.
That means that most RAM disk utilities need to essentially recreate the drive
when they're launched. And every time you boot, the drive needs to be refilled
with whatever you want to store on it from a reserved spot on your system
drive. A process that is bottlenecked by the aforementioned system drive and can
therefore be quite slow. Then if you update anything while using the RAM
drive, it will need to commit those changes back to your system drive when
you shut down by dumping them from the RAM disk. And then of course if the
system shuts down unexpectedly then you're in for a real problem because any
changes not committed like a a save game or a file are just gone. But in spite of
all those challenges many performance enthusiasts and gamers remain committed
to trying to make RAM drives as practical as they can be. And one such
enthusiast startup Tim on Twitter thinks he's finally done it at least for gamers
with a product called Dim Drive. Now, to be clear, the underlying technology is
exactly the same here. There's no voodoo magic, but the claims that Dim Drive
makes about simplifying the process and optimizing the application itself for
gamers intrigued me. So, I got on the phone with Corsair, had them send me a
32 gig kit of their Vengeance LPX DDR4 2400 MHz RAM, which I ran in quad
channel on an ASUS X99EWS motherboard for a basically as good as it could
possibly get scenario for DIM drive to really prove to me if it's worth the
money. So, first a quick tour of the product, though. On the main screen is
an autopop populated list of the Steam games that you have installed. The star
allows you to easily sort whichever ones you want to the top. The size shows you
how much RAM you'll need to cache that game. The wrench to the far right lets
you choose whether to autoload that game and whether to enable real-time file
synchronization, which should, knock on wood, protect you from progress loss in
an unexpected shutdown scenario and a less RAM option to show DIM drive where
the important files are to cache for this title. So you can boost performance
potentially without caching the entire game and therefore getting a little bit
more mileage out of your RAM. Finally, the slider next to the wrench tells that
game whether to cache or not. In the apps tab, you can add non- Steam games
or any other applications you want by manually uh dragging them onto the
window or right-clicking and clicking add. Then the settings tab lets you
configure your drive letter, the size of your DIM drive, your startup options,
and your color scheme. Finally, at the very top of the window is the master
slider to turn DIM drive on and off. And I'll give this to Tim. This is a lot
simpler to configure than RAM disk software that I've used in the past. But
even if it works as intended, is a RAM disk really a sensible upgrade for
gamers. Storage speed is well documented
as having literally zero impact on your FPS. So, the thing to look at then is
loading times. We ran four different scenarios. a one terabyte 7200 RPM WDD
black hard drive. A one terabyte Samsung 850 Pro SSD. That same SSD with
Samsung's rapid RAM cache enabled. We
needed to show several results for this one, by the way, to show how it learns
over time. And finally, DIM drive with the full game loaded into memory.
And this conclusion probably won't surprise anyone who has fooled around
with RAM drives before, but it was still an interesting experiment for me to run
and make a video about since I wanted to play around with the software anyway. I
really think that DIM drive has made enormous strides towards making RAM
drives easier to use, but that doesn't change that the most compelling storage
type for an enthusiast PC or gaming PC is still an SSD. It's only a few times
more expensive than a hard drive and makes your entire system much more
responsive, not just game or application loading times, and it costs about
onetenth what you'd spend per gig to put your games in RAM every time you boot
up. Now, if DIM drive was like 10 bucks
and you're the kind of person who really only plays one or two games and enjoys
being the, you know, the first one to the heli, like I said before, then it
would actually get a pretty strong recommendation. At $30 though, it's a
little too much for me to buy for personal use, though. Speaking of things
that cost too much, razors. But fortunately, today's episode sponsor,
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Check it out. It's linked in the video description. And I think we're pretty much done here. Can't believe I was
talking about butthole shaving. I mean, what is this? What does this show come to? Anyway, guys, like this video if you
liked it. Dislike it if you thought it sucked. Leave a comment below and let me
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