Endless Paradigm

Was looking for something to do, so decided to give this a try.
How much faster would booting Windows XP x86 from RAM be over the HDD? (sorry, I don't have the RAM to test Vista)

Here's my important system specs:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
- 2x2GB DDR2 RAM 1066MHz (running at 800MHz - I followed the instructions on KingMax's site to get it running at 1066MHz, but the thing was rather unstable :/)
- Samsung 640GB SATA2 HDD

I've basically set up a fresh copy of XP64 with some drivers installed, along with:
- VirtualBox 2.0.4 (x64)
- SuperSpeed RamDisk Plus 9.0.4.0 (x64)

Set up a 3GB (static, not dynamically sized) disk image with VirtualBox, and a system with 256MB RAM and installed an original XP x86 SP1 on it.
Also set up a 3GB (FAT32) RAMDisk.
After setting everything up, I rebooted my computer then made a copy of the disk image then booted WinXP in VirtualBox and timed it.
Following that, I deleted the disk image I used, rebooted, then copied the other (unmodified) copy of the disk image into the RAMDisk and booted WinXP through VirtualBox on that and timed it.

The times are as follows (times don't include BIOS/POST loading times - they start from when the OS loads, and ends when the hourglass cursor goes away):
Boot from HDD image: 19.5 seconds
Boot from RamDisk: 16.2 seconds

Kinda surprised by the lack of speed improvement from a RAMDisk...  Did notice that after the desktop was loaded, it did take a while for the cursor to go away, so decided to test how long it took until the "Welcome" screen disappeared (after a reboot):
HDD: 14.2 seconds
RAM: 10.5 seconds

Better improvement, but still a fair bit worse than I had expected.

(By the way, if anyone's interested, it took 35.7 seconds to copy the 3GB image to RAM)

So is RAM really faster than the HDD for booting?  In more real situations, you'd unlikely get a 19.5 second boot time for XP, due to having additional drivers/applications installed.  However, this also means there'll be more disk seeks, thus the improvement from a RAMDisk will be more prevalent.
Also, XP was optimised more to be booted from the HDD than from RAM (ie prefetching), so that could be a factor too.

Basically, as SSDs get faster, this is the sort of performance gain you're probably going to get for boot times.

just whot i was looking for,. ;p i am planning to buy a 60gig SSD.

9 seconds makes alot of difference to me,. also note that when using win you also have speed changes,. and when your PC is on for a long period it saves alot of seconds, .>!?

Vegetano1 Wrote: just whot i was looking for,. ;p i am planning to buy a 60gig SSD.

9 seconds makes alot of difference to me,. also note that when using win you also have speed changes,. and when your PC is on for a long period it saves alot of seconds, .>!?

Yes, this was only a test of boot times - your apps will get a boost from an SSDs.  Current gen models have stuttering issues, which upcomming SSDs like these will fix.

So personally, I'd wait a short while for SSDs

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Vegetano1 Wrote: just whot i was looking for,. ;p i am planning to buy a 60gig SSD.

9 seconds makes alot of difference to me,. also note that when using win you also have speed changes,. and when your PC is on for a long period it saves alot of seconds, .>!?

Yes, this was only a test of boot times - your apps will get a boost from an SSDs.  Current gen models have stuttering issues, which upcomming SSDs like these will fix.

So personally, I'd wait a short while for SSDs

wanted to buy this :SSD (Does say v2)
but now i prob wait,..

Dunno, from what I've found: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showth...p?t=737630
OCZ SSDs have generally been meh though...

(I'm a little weary over that video though.  I'm pretty sure you can't skip the Vista welcome screen, unless he changed something - I suspect it is hibernate)

That's a very fast boot/start-up,. O_O!

does look liek he is starting from boot,..

in his specs it says Core v1 (SATAII) the drive i "wanted" to buy is V2 but if OCZ is crapy brand i try and find a nother brand,..

want to buy the best SSD,.. because i don't have to much $$$$ ;p

Hope there will be new SSDs soon!!

Vegetano1 Wrote:That's a very fast boot/start-up,. O_O!

does look liek he is starting from boot,..

in his specs it says Core v1 (SATAII) the drive i "wanted" to buy is V2 but if OCZ is crapy brand i try and find a nother brand,..

want to buy the best SSD,.. because i don't have to much $$$$ ;p

Hope there will be new SSDs soon!!

The Titan will easy beat the OCZ anyway.
If it's a true boot, he must've ripped out a heapload of drivers or something.  Typically, you'll only be adding drivers to a stock Windows install, and I can tell you that 800MHz RAM running in dual channel is far faster than any SSD RAID setup out there.  Yet still, he's getting slightly faster boot times than I am.
I'm quite confident that I could beat his with a stripped XP booting from RAM, but that wasn't the point of the test here :P

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Vegetano1 Wrote:That's a very fast boot/start-up,. O_O!

does look liek he is starting from boot,..

in his specs it says Core v1 (SATAII) the drive i "wanted" to buy is V2 but if OCZ is crapy brand i try and find a nother brand,..

want to buy the best SSD,.. because i don't have to much $$$$ ;p

Hope there will be new SSDs soon!!

The Titan will easy beat the OCZ anyway.
If it's a true boot, he must've ripped out a heapload of drivers or something.  Typically, you'll only be adding drivers to a stock Windows install, and I can tell you that 800MHz RAM running in dual channel is far faster than any SSD RAID setup out there.  Yet still, he's getting slightly faster boot times than I am.
I'm quite confident that I could beat his with a stripped XP booting from RAM, but that wasn't the point of the test here :P

i get the point you trying to make,. SSD is't much faster as expected,.

prob is a true boot,. and yes he prob got a different set-up,. he also prob got the same time difference if he did the same test you did,. ;p

(V1 waits and see whot the best SSD buy is,. )

hmmmhmmm.... SSDs.... interesting.. still, it isn't a killing difference, definitely not worth it yet..