Dave Cason's Acard ANS-9010 and ANS-9012 versus Gigagbyte iRAM Comparison

Acard ANS-9010 vs. ANS-9012 vs. Gigabyte iRam (gc-Ramdisk) Benchmarks

Updated: March 24, 2009

Test System (now updated with a pair of new Perc 5i RAID controllers; sorry for the delay, I accidentally shorted out my server's motherboard during testing):

Motherboard: Supermicro H8DCE.
RAM: 8GB DDR - Thank you eBay!
Processors: 2 x Opteron 856 (3GHz) - Thank you eBay!
Windows 2008 x64 Service Pack 1 using storport drivers.
RAID Controller 1: Promise ex8350 PCIe (4x slot) using Write Back cache with a write cache battery installed.
RAID Controller 2: Dell Perc 5i with the latest MegaRAID SAS 8480E firmware via PCIe (8x slot) using Write Back cache (Sections 1,2 & 6).
SSD #1: 1 x Acard ANS-9010 with 8GB of DDR2 (4 x 2GB) or 16GB (8x2GB) in both single and dual port mode (both SATA ports were enabled for striping) and ECC-mode disabled and SATA II mode enabled (unless otherwise specified). RAM: 4 sets of newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
SSD #2: 2 x Gigabyte iRAM (gc-Ramdisk) with 4GB of DDR each (4 x 1GB).
SSD #3: 1 x Acard ANS-9012 with 24GB of HDSC (6x4GB Sandisk Extreme III 30MB/s).

Early testing reveals that the Acard ANS-9010 is comparable if not slightly better than the Gigabyte iRAM.
Preliminary test results (sorry about switching the colors):

ANS-9010 in CrystalDiskMark using first software striping + two Dell Perc 5/i's, then hardware RAID 0 on only one Perc 5/i. The last picture is of two Gigabyte iRams using hardware RAID 0 on a Promise ex8350:
PassMark Performance Test 6.1 32-bit in Vista using Acard ANS-9010 on a pair of Dell PERC 5/i controllers using software RAID 0 mode with 1MB stripe and two (dual-mode) ANS-9010 drives on two controllers (duplexing). Software RAID + Duplexing seems to prove my theory that the RAID controller is still the bottleneck when using a solid-state drive that is as fast as the ANS-9010. Notes: I did not re-test the two iRam's I have this time because the two Dell PERC 5/i's I bought did not support SATA I so the iRams' would not work as they are first-generation SATA. All array's shown below with 4 or more drives are using 7200RPM 2.5" SATA drives:
PassMark Performance Test 6.1 x64 Acard ANS-9010 vs Acard ANS-9012 vs Gigabyte iRam (gc-Ramdisk) all using the Promise ex8350 in RAID 0 mode with 128KB stripe with one (single) or two (dual) drives. Note: The ANS-9012 does very poorly on the Random Seek test:
Acard ANS-9010(blue) in single drive mode SATA II 8GB vs. iRam (red) 4GB both using Raid 0 with only one drive on Promise ex8350 using a 128K Stripe (note: I did not use JBOD because, for whatever reason, the drive ran a lot slower; I blame the ex8350):
RAID0 with 64K Mirrored Stripes (blue is Acard ANS-9010; red is iRAM) and please notice that is not running at double the rate of a single drive... which is probably due to the controller (I will try another disk controller or two, soon):
I went out and bought a Dell Perc 5i on eBay and upgraded it to the latest MegaRAID SAS 8480E firmware. This controller, although based on the same IOP333 as the Promise ex8350, was much better when the stripe size was set to 1MB using RAID 0 and Write Back cache + Adaptive Read-ahead settings. This chart shows both ECC and non-ECC modes:
Acard ANS-9010 with 16GB comparing SATA II (300) vs SATA I (150) mode jumpers on Promise ex8350:
Acard 16GB Dual Drive Mode(8x2GB) Raid 0 on Promise ex8350 128K Stripe vs Single Drive Mode on JMicron controller:
Acard ANS-9010 in dual drive mode 2x4GB write benchmark using Raid 0 with two drives on Promise ex8350 using a 128K Stripe:

The advantages of the Acard device over the iRAM are:

It uses DDR2 instead of DDR which is much less expensive.
It has 8 RAM slots and is expandable to 64GB where the iRAM only has 4 and is expandable to only 4GB (I tried 8GB in the iRAM and it did not quite work).
It can back up to Compact Flash either manually or automatically.
It can operate in both SATA I and SATA II modes.
You can force ECC operation without ECC RAM (you sacrifice some space when you do).
The battery works just like the iRam.

The disadvantages of the Acard device over the iRAM are:

It cannot draw from PCI power so you must either have it powered directly or make sure you turn your computer on occasionally before the battery dies. I think this problem can be solved by simply putting the thing in an external eSATA enclosure (which is what I plan to do) and just leave it powered on all the time.
You can use a very large Compact Flash module instead of constant power but you must have a Compact Flash module of greater size than the size of your RAM for the device to remember data when the system is powered down. A 16GB flash card does not cover 16GB of RAM as the card will not be exactly 16GB but slightly less (which I found out the hard way). You can set the drive to ECC mode which shrinks the disk size by about 1/8 to get around this.