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