Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/79

Quarterdeck MagnaRAM '97

by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 29, 1997 7:45 AM EST


When I first heard about Quarterdeck's RAM compression utility, MagnaRAM, I just laughed and went about my way. I remembered the almost hoax-like attempts at RAM compression I had seen in the past, and automatically associated with it the same performance hits as before. Boy was I wrong! MagnaRAM truly is different from the RAM compression I have seen before: it is smart. Let's see how:

HOW IT WORKS

Applications today are huge. A common application such as a word processor can demand up to 8 MB of memory. Well, given that just Windows 95 takes almost that much, how can we load many different applications without running out of memory? Windows 95 helps us out with a nice little trick called Disk Swapping. It takes a part of the memory that doesn't look like it's being used presently, and writes it to the hard disk. Then it gives that memory to the program being loaded. It "swaps" parts of memory on and off the hard disk depending on what is being used.
Well, that's nice, but as you may know, writing to the HDD is rather slow in comparison to writing to the RAM. This is where MagnaRAM comes in. MagnaRAM takes part of the system's free memory and creates what it calls a buffer. In this buffer, it stores memory that Windows would normally swap to the hard disk. But when it stores it here, it compresses it, so that it can fit more into it. If Windows fills up this buffer and still needs to swap to disk, MagnaRAM compresses the data before writing it to the Hard Drive, so that the write time is less. Somewhat like writing notes down in shorthand to save time and keep up.
Another way MagnaRAM speeds up performance is by freeing RAM up from Windows' Hard Disk cache memory. This memory is where Windows stores data being read from the Hard Disk in order to access it faster. Often, the memory reserved for this is not being totally used up. MagnaRAM frees the memory that Windows does not need, increasing once again the capacity of your memory.
A feature that comes with MagnaRAM is TurboLoad. You can activate this feature separate of the compression. TurboLoad analyzes how applications load and calculates optimal ways to load them (it does this the first time you load the application while it is active). Then, each time you load the application, it uses these calculations to load the program faster.

Quarterdeck MagnaRAM 97 is very simple and easy to use, as there is not much to it. The main screen, shown below, shows reassuring statistics: it shows the amount of memory added, an estimate of the amount
[ SCREENSHOT OF MAGNARAM SCREEN ] of time that MagnaRAM has saved you, and the amount of disk swapping it has avoided. The Setup screen contains a few check boxes in which you choose whether or not to enable MagnaRAM compression and/or TurboLoad. In addition, this menu gives the option of choosing the compression buffer size, or leaving up to the program. The Details window shows a host of various
statistics describing how well MagnaRAM has been improving your system's performance. It shows everything from compression ratios to the number of disk swaps saved. it also shows a breakdown of the memory with and without MagnaRAM. This window is quite informitive, and convinces you that you've made the right choice in buying this utility.


HOW WELL IT WORKS

MagnaRAM's performance surprised me. I had expected very little if any acceleration. Instead, I got quite a nice shock. First I tested TurboLoad alone. To test load time acceleration, I loaded a sequence of large applications, and then tested Hexen II framerate to check CPU usage. I loaded applications in this order: Adobe Photoshop 4.0, Microsoft Frontpage 97, Microsoft Excel 97, America Online, Netscape Navigator 4.0. Then, with all these open, i checked the Hexen II framerate. I found a small amount of acceleration when using TurboLoad alone (without RAM compression), but the boost wasn't exceptional. (see the table below)

Next, I tested MagnaRAM Compression alone. When I repeated the same test with just compression, I got impressive results. The load times for Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Frontpage were actually about one second slower than normal. But after this, they became much faster. Excel and AOL loaded 3 seconds faster each, but Netscape loaded more slowly. MagnaRAM really shows its stuff here. After loading the first two applications, Windows would normally have started swapping to the hard disk. However, with MagnaRAM running, the swapping was less frequent, as well as more efficient. The Hexen II framerate jumped to almost 29 FPS. Obviously MagnaRAM does not hog resources, as the framerate had actually increased by 5 FPS from normal. I repeated the test once more this time combining the compression with TurboLoad, and i found that the performance was a bit less than with the compression alone.

Gaming Performance (Hexen 2 Frame Rates)
Pentium II - 266 - 32MB System RAM

Without MagnaRAM With TurboLoad With MagnaRAM MagnaRAM & TurboLoad
System w/ 2MB Video RAM 23.97fps 19.27fps 28.83fps 26.84fps
System w/ 4MB Video RAM 24.12fps 22.01fps 22.01fps 21.9fps

Here we see that a system with only 2MB of Video RAM, when compared to an identically configured system equipped with a 4MB Video Card actually outperforms it in a gaming situation. However, this does not hold true when using above 32MB of System RAM and in high end situations where quite a large amount of RAM is devoted to the Graphics Card.

Application Load Times (in seconds Lower is Better) - Pentium II - 300 32MB SDRAM

Without MagnaRAM With TurboLoad With MagnaRAM MagnaRAM & TurboLoad
Adobe Photoshop 4.0 8.21s 8.21s 6.03s 7.36s
MS Frontpage 97 9.83s 10.08s 8.92s 10.10s
MS Excel 97 2.51s 2.55s 2.06s 2.54s
America Online 8.54s 9.95s 9.51s 9.76s
Netscape Navigator 4.02 9.23s 9.01s 7.44s 8.28s

MagnaRAM does improve performance quite a bit in systems only equipped with 32MB of System RAM, however as you can tell from the chart below, it really begins to shine when the test system boasted 64MB of RAM instead of 32MB. The increase in performance after 64MB of RAM however is minimal.

Application Load Times (in seconds Lower is Better) - Pentium II - 300 64MB SDRAM

Without MagnaRAM With TurboLoad With MagnaRAM MagnaRAM & TurboLoad
Adobe Photoshop 4.0 7.80s 7.59s 7.82s 5.64s
MS Frontpage 97 4.51s 7.84s 4.00s 8.75s
MS Excel 97 2.27s 2.16s 1.76s 2.26s
America Online 8.48s 9.69s 7.98s 9.42s
Netscape Navigator 4.02 7.14s 8.30s 5.40s 6.91s

In addition to applicaiton load times, I ran the Wintune 97 benchmark on the system, but the difference in results was minimal, except for that of Cached speed for drive C (the Windows drive). This is most likely due to the fact that MagnaRAM's Cacheback feature uses the hard drive cache memory when it is idle, and probably took time to return it to the system when it was needed. Compared to these figures, actually using MagnaRAM gives a much better impression. I really felt the improvement in the system performance while running MagnaRAM.

Final Decision

MagnaRAM is an excellent, useful tool for Windows users, but probably only worth the buy if you are really going to use your RAM to its potential.

Product Information: System Requirements
Manufacturer:
Quarterdeck, Inc. (www.quarterdeck.com)
Price: $39.95 US
Platform: Windows 3.x / 95
Distribution on: 3.5" disks
Processor: 386, 486, or Pentium-compatible (486 or higher recommended)
Platform: DOS 3.3 or higher with Windows 3.1x running in 386-enhanced mode or Windows 95
Memory: 8 MB (16 MB or more recommended for Windows 95)
HD Space: 4 MB

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