Somebody has managed to turn AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor into a storage device with read-write speeds that can rival some of the best SSDs out there.
By running a RAM disk on the 3D V-Cache processor, our sister site Tom's Hardware spotted the test results of roughly 178GB/s for reads and 163GB/s for writes when testing the system on CrystalDiskMark. It was conducted by the GPUs Are Magic account on X earlier in the year.
The user had a system powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3d CPU and the speeds were all reached within the 96MB L3 cache. They installed OSFMount and created a FAT32 formatted RAM disk. They ran the testing software a few times then hit these dizzying speeds that exceed those clocked by the fastest SSDs.
The power of RAM disks
This is all made possible thanks to the concept of RAM disks, which are representations of hard drive storage using RAM units, that can behave as storage rather than memory with the help of certain third-party software.
By implementing software like ImDisk, you can convert a portion of your memory into something that resembles a pseudo SSD that can boost storage performance by up to 30 times. That's because RAM speeds are lightning compared with storage, but it's almost impossible to harness memory as storage without the help of tools like this – and there will always be downsides, such as the fact everything would be wiped when your PC reboots.
In this case, the user configured the 96MB L3 Cache that was a part of the CPU into something that could hit unbelievable speeds. By contrast, the fastest RAM units hit read and write speeds well under 150GB/s.
The fastest SSD that's been tested to date could be Phison’s PS5026-E26 Max14um Gen5 SSD, which hit read speeds of 142GB/s and write speeds of 125GB/s earlier this year.
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