Colloquially, a RAM Disk is a storage space that takes up space in RAM. However, this practice seems increasingly to be falling into oblivion… However. In fact, some little rascals have been having fun exploiting the 3D V-Cache memory of their Ryzen processors . The results are clearly mind-boggling!
3D V-Cache: up to 175 GB/s sequential writing!
To create a RAM Disk on the cache memory of your Ryzen X3D CPU, you’ll need to use the OSFMount software, based on the FAT32 format. Then, to bencher this storage, we had to do a lot of fiddling in CrystalDiskMark by entering the following parameters (Nemez method on x.com):
- Test values: SEQ 256K
- Queue depth: 1
- Threads : 16
- Data fill: 0
From what we understand, this is a rather random process, since it may not work the first time, and several attempts seem necessary. However, when it does work, performance is breathtaking.
On a Ryzen 5 5800X3D, sequential read speeds reached 182 GB/s, compared with 175 GB/s for writes. On a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, strangely enough, results were slower, with 178 GB/s read vs. 163 GB/s write.
In any case, while it’s fun and allows you to display high data rates, in practice, there’s no real practical use case. For one thing, the amount of memory is really too small: 128 MB at best with a Ryzen 7000. Secondly, it’s not foolproof, but it’s interesting all the same.