Thoughts, HEXUS.awards and HEXUS.right2reply
Look at the figures for the Gigabyte i-RAM and you could very easily be blown away by them and talked into buying one. We do, however, have a few reservations. Firstly, we think the i-RAM is being held back. Yup, you read right. The 1.5Gbps SATA controller isn't fast enough. Get a 3Gbps PHY on there. Hell, stick it on a 4x/8x PCIe interface and give it some real bandwidth.
Our next issue, and this is a real concern, is that of using volatile memory to store data. There's the battery backup, of course, but even on the revisions with the level indicators it's hard to get to, and we feel a bit too easy to forget about, the result of which could be data loss. We're not sure how long the 1600mAh battery will keep RAM ticking over for either, but it will no doubt depend on the modules and the number present.
Gigabyte has produced a backup utility that allows an image of the i-RAM to be made and restored quite easily. However, it's interactive, so cannot be scheduled, we don't think. Therefore, we'd still say the i-RAM's uses are limited to storing data that's relatively unimportant, like page file, temporary files and scratch space. Clearly its performance will hugely benefit these areas, unless you've got plenty of free RAM anyway.
So, Gigabyte's i-RAM is extremely fast, but its usage is, we feel, somewhat limited. Firstly, you've got to need it, i.e. not have any RAM slots left and find disks being thrashed around a lot. Then, you're limited by what you can confidently do with it. Perhaps, though, that's just a prejudice towards RAM and battery backup talking. Let's not forget to ask ourselves whether the performance this will deliver will actually be worthwhile; will something else in the system simply holds things back? Finally, it costs around £110. Add in the RAM, and it ain't cheap. You could have a lot of (admittedly slower) disk storage for the same money.
To wrap things up, how could we get away with not giving the Gigabyte i-RAM an award for speed? It deserves it, for sure. However, we'll hold back on recommending it; the people who really could do with (and afford) it are probably getting their plastic out already anyway.
