 Well guys, I've been promising to do something with a RAM drive for quite a while, so check this out. In this system, this is with a P9X79 Deluxe from Asus and 64 gigs of G.Skill RipJaws Z memory. So here I'm going to try and show you guys the memory. Ah yes, there we go. You can get in there. So this is an 1866 32 gig kit times 2, it's rated at CL9 and 1.5 volts. This is an extremely, extremely binned, extremely high performance kit. However, I'm running them at 1600. I haven't tried them in 1866 because when you pair them up, sometimes you have to go a little bit less aggressive on things. So designed for Intel LGA 2011 processors, an X79 platform. So why would you need 64 gigs of memory? See there's the spec on that right there. So I've got 8 sticks, 2 kits. Why on earth would you need 64 gigs of RAM? Well if you're doing some really hardcore 3D work, I guess you could need them. Obviously not for gaming. So just so that's real clear guys, obviously not for gaming. Hardcore 3D stuff, hardcore video editing, really hardcore photo editing. There you go, that's what the system looks like with 64 gigs of RAM in it. Sweet. For an alternate use, and this is what I'm actually using it for, is if you wanted to set up a RAM drive. So I'm going to show you guys how I used the AMD software, which you can get for just a couple bucks. It's actually not that expensive. It's called Radeon RAM Disk. Radeon RAM Disk Configuration Utility. So this just runs in the background. Nothing out of the ordinary. This is just a branded, this is just a branded RAM Disk software. It's not actually developed by AMD. So here you go. You set how much of your memory you want. Oh yeah right, I wanted to show you guys. So we've got a 3960X at 4 gigahertz in here. You can't see that because it's not actually under load, but don't worry about it. Here we go, so memory. I guess you can call it 65 gigs at this point instead of 64 gigs, but there we go, 1600 megahertz, 99924, command rate 2T, 1.5 volts only. So just blah, crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. Anyway, so back to the configuration utility. So I set aside 48 gigs of memory as a RAM Disk. So what happens is when the system loads up, we load the disk image off, which is saved to the C drive, which is an SSD. Then when the system shuts down, we save to that same image and we can actually autosave it at any moment. It doesn't take that long to save. So I'll just show you guys how long it takes to save. It's not that bad. And the RAM Disk is actually full now. So I have a whole whack load of games installed on it, as well as actually, oh, that means since I last saved it, I have added almost the full 50 gigs worth of stuff. So it might actually take a little while. I guess we're going to find out how long it takes. Let the record show the time is now 921. Okay, so here we go, computer, RAM Disk. So I've loaded up 40 gigs of it with a bunch of stuff, including a few Steam games, as well as the full Adobe CS6 Master Suite. So that's what I meant to do. Oh, it's not letting me access it right now because it's saving. So I'll be back in a moment. Let's find out how long that takes. That took about 10 minutes, which means that guys, it will take a little longer to shut down your computer than normal. And if you want to set up the autosave option, I would probably run a separate disk for your RAM Disk cache, like a small SSD, maybe a 60 or 64 gig, so that you don't have to worry about the slowdown on your boot drive while it's doing it. You can see that on your boot drive, I'm just saving to my boot drive, there's now a ramdisk.img, that's an image that takes up, well, the bulk of my boot SSD now. So here you can see also though that I have a 46 gig RAM Disk available with about six gigs free, and the image only takes up around 41 gigs. So it only uses as much space as you're actually using on the RAM Disk to cache it. It doesn't just store blank space as occupying your boot SSD. So now that we've done this, let's have a look. Oh yeah, I wanted to show you guys where to get it as well. So download, that's a different one. Radeon RAM Disk, so you just go to radeonramdisk.com, and you can see here they actually say this is a data RAM product, so it's just rebranded. You can get it for free for up to four gigs of RAM Disk. And if you have AMD memory installed, you can create up to a six gig RAM Disk for no extra charge. So that's pretty cool. And then to actually buy the software, only costs a few bucks. I think it's 20 bucks or something like that. Yeah, not that bad. 20 bucks to get the full version, which allows you to create up to a 64 gig RAM Disk. So that's what I'm using, the full version. So let's do a couple quick demos, shall we? Let's go ahead and close all this stuff down. Space Sniffer is awesome, by the way, guys, if you aren't using it already, you should. Allows you to track down where all your space is being used up. So here is my Steam Drive, but here's a cool demo. So I installed CS6, and we are going to launch Photoshop CS6 64 bit. Here we go. Boom, done. Holy crap, that was Photoshop. Don't mind this, this is because I'm just using a trial. So that doesn't count. That doesn't count in our load time. So let's go ahead, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. You know what, here, here, just to ensure that it wasn't a fluke, I'm going to fire up something that I haven't opened yet. Illustrator CS6. And Illustrator, oh shoot. Okay, yeah, there we go. Nevermind. Illustrator is open. All right, last but not least, Adobe Premiere. So these are all actually, oh, now Office is installed on a different drive. So these are all installed directly on the RAM drive. So Premiere Pro, and I mean, look at those loading screens go. Done. Well, okay, it was done, but I exited it. So now let's fire up some Steam games. So Crisis. Crisis is a good one because the load, the saved games actually take quite a while to load. Now, I don't know that I'm actually saving the saved games to the RAM disk, but the game itself is loading off the RAM disk. So any textures or whatever else are going to be able to load off of that RAM disk. Come on, game, let's go. Go Crisis. It's like, yeah, my system has 46 gigs of memory-based storage. And then the joke is, but can it run Crisis? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Okay, I haven't seen it do this before. Systems lock up outright. Number lock not working. We'll be back. All right, so if you guys have played Crisis at all, we're back, by the way. It took a little while. Got everything working again. If you've played Crisis at all, you have some idea that the game takes a little while to load. I mean, is it the difference between not waiting for it to load at all and waiting for it to load for a billion hours? No, but that is a lot faster than I'm sure you guys have ever seen a Crisis game load because it is loading off the RAM, which is very, very, very cool. So let's go ahead and sort of can that. Of course, everything is super responsive because everything is running off of RAM, which is of course very fast. So we can go ahead and fire up another game. Another game that I also enjoy the long loading times of is The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. So let's go ahead and play the game. See, this is the thing that kills me. No matter how fast your system is, you're always going to wait for stupid loading screens. Just freaking ridiculous. Okay, so let's find a game loaded. I think that's the test game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. And here we go. So does the RAM drive make a difference? The answer is absolutely it does. It definitely makes a difference. Is it the difference between your computer being usable and your computer being totally not usable? No, it is not. However, it's very, very cool. RAM is so cheap these days that it's not necessarily a terrible upgrade, and honestly, while I really like the idea and while I really am sort of enjoying the experience while I'm playing around with it, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this particular configuration where you actually have a dedicated RAM disk for the applications that you use very frequently because there's a couple things. So number one, you saw me corrupt the RAM disk already on my own here. So there is the potential for things to go wrong, so I wouldn't use it for anything mission critical. And number two is the fact that it's just not that useful. It slows down your shutdown. It slows down your boot up, and you can't really do anything with the stuff that's on that drive until it's done. Whereas if you were using it as a cache, so there's another application called FancyCache that looks very cool as well because it allows you to use that RAM disk to cache your boot drive. So you could actually have, instead of using an SSD to cache your hard drive, you could be using RAM to cache your SSD, which would obviously be very, very snappy. So I think that pretty much wraps this up. I haven't tried the other one yet, although I've heard very good things about it. Thank you for checking out my sort of performance test of what it's like to run things off of a RAM disk using like a ludicrous amount of 64 gigs of G-Skill memory on my test bench here. I'm going to turn up the gain here so you guys can actually see what they look like. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.