Performance boost of IMATCH

[Frank]

Hi all,
I found a performance boot using RAMDISK http://www.dataram.com
Everything is much faster than my real fast ssd disk and it is free if your imatch database is not bigger than 4 GB.
Enjoy
Frank

[Kucera]

Ah, but what happens once you reboot? The Ram disk is gone with your database, is it not? Or do you just move the database in for work and back it on a drive when you are done?

[Frank]

The RAM Disk is Stores bevor the reboot on your lokal Disk. There you can Backup it.
So nothing is lost.
Frank

[ianrr]

Interesting  ... Save at shutdown and save ever xx seconds also available. Tried experimenting with faststone and was very fast. Wanted to try with Capture One, but came up with licensing issue being on a new drive 
Will wait for Mario's take on it before I dabble in it  ....

[ianrr]

Tried running the Imatch 5 program ( not the database ) in the Ramdisk  ... seems awefully fast to me in loading the thumbnail view  ... still relatively long loading time for the program itself, but looking at directories etc seems much faster  ... just my perception at this stage.

[Mario]

Will wait for Mario's take on it before I dabble in it  ....

I should comment on this about what, exactly?

Keeping your database on a SSD, a high-speed (!) USB 3.0 stick or a RamDisk will speed up things considerably. Like all database applications, IMatch does a lot of I/O operations, and the faster the seek and read/write times of the media, the faster IMatch will be.

[Richard]

For someone with 16 GB or more of memory to use with Photoshop this seems ideal because I doubt that IMatch would use that much. What I question is what happens when one has but 8 GB and you use half for a RamDisk. Now IMatch is limited to using what remains. For optimal performance, how much memory should IMatch have?

[Mario]

IMatch uses up to 3 GB of RAM, but only in memory-intensive features like the Viewer or the slide show.
IMatch itself lives happily with 300 to 500 MB (!) of RAM for standard operation.

Tip: When you use IMatch for a while, check the Process Tab in the Task Manager. Look for the imatch5.exe process and check the colum Peak Working Set (you may need to include that column via the View > Selected Columns... menu in Task Manager.  The Peak Working Set show you how much memory IMatch 5 used maximal. The Working Set column shows you how much memory IMatch uses at the moment.  IMatch also records this info in the application log file.

If you have a system with 4-8 GB of memory, don't bother with a RamDisk. The memory allocated for the RAM disk is not longer available for Windows, especially the file system cache. And this cache speeds up your system across all applications. Maybe if you have 8 GB and you can get by with a 2 GB RAM disk because your database is small.

A 16 GB system is cool, if you can set aside 4-6 GB for the RAM disk and the database fits on it. If you use Photoshop, you may notice a severe speed degradation in Photoshop. I don't know what PS needs all the memory for, but it runs much faster when you can use it 8 or more GB of RAM. Jeez. I've used to run Photoshop 6 on a system with only 1 GB of RAM. And, really, what has changed from Photoshop 6 to CS/6 that requires 10 times as much memory...?

[Frank]

OK, You have to have planty of RAM like I have. I have 32 GB.
Frank

[Richard]

I have 32 GB.

Wow! A Ram disk is great for you.

[Mario]

32 GB RAM is the typical RAM used for a database server serving a very large work-group, or a web server (with database) able to handle traffic from thousands of users. Or, eh, one user running Photoshop or Nikon Capture...