I have two PCs running CEP2. At present, they are both limited to only 1 task downloaded at a time (the default setting), since running more than that can cause reductions in overall efficiency on all projects, not just CEP2.

On my "Main PC", I have a dual-core (E8400 with 6 MB on-chip cache) and a fast SSD (Samsung 470 series, which is good on writes). Using BOINC Tasks for measurement, I see maybe a one percent increase in CPU percentage, from around 95 to 96 percent when using the DataRam RAMDisk (4 GB, which is more than enough).

On my "Folding PC", I have a quad-core (Q8300 with only 4 MB cache) and a Vertex 2 SSD, which is also good on writes. There I use FancyCache 0.7 beta, with a 24-hour write latency, so that it acts essentially like a RAMDisk too, with practically all of the reads and writes on main memory. I see a comparable increase of maybe one percent CPU efficiency with the use of the cache as compared to writing directly to the SSD.

I think the real gains with a RAMDisk would be seen if you use a spinning magnetic drive, where the write delay would really slow you down, especially if you are running multiple CEP2 tasks. And also the later Intel CPUs may have better I/O characteristics. But for me, it seems to be the I/O of the CPU itself, and especially the quad-core, that is the limiting factor on speed since I have fast SSDs anyway.

Somewhat OT, but if you could arrange to only run one CEP2 at a time even if more were downloaded, that would be useful for me. I would be happy to have one always running, but when I allow more than one downloaded at at time, they usually bunch up and I get two (or more) running at once, which is not too good for my other projects.

Greetings from Italy!

Dear cruncher I have question for you, I have created a 10gb space with ramdisk plus on win7 x64 16gb system, should I use a NTFS format? and which space allocation I should use (range from 4096 byte to 64kbyte) ?

Thanks

Under W7-64 and 32, neither my 5 years olds nor my new state of the art, but still classic SATA HD 5400 rpm fitted laptop [with Intel Rapid Storage tech] have issue with CEP2. They run well into the 99% plus efficiency when devices are left alone. The deterioration of CEP2 is though more paramount when using the systems than with other non HD IO intense devices. Probably, with the new host I'm going to set the affinity automation to the highest 4 threads. Process Lasso app is already running in this 64 bit OS as throttle control [ThreadMasterGUI is not working at all on this new system].

Have expressed this before; wish CEP2 would adhere to the client Write to Disk settings. Then I'd set it to 12 hours, and complete in 1 run within memory and not having to toy, to include with ramdisks [not having to perm allocate a ram section]... much more efficient IMHO.

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FAT32 works for me with Dataram RAMDisk. And just use the default sector size if you have a choice (e.g., 4096 bytes is good).

I am back in the CEP2 business after a few months absence, waiting for Ivy Bridge. I have a new Core i5-3550, which does very nicely with 3 CEP2 jobs running at once, and I will be testing all four cores before long.

But I found that the latest Dataram Ramdisk version (v3.5.130R24) is not very stable for me, at least on one PC, and so I am trialing Primo Ramdisk (from Romex Software) now. It is working very stably on both the Core i5 and on a Core2 Duo. Also, it saves and loads the ramdisk image to the SSD much faster than the Dataram version, though it does cost more. If anyone needs suggested settings, I can recommend some. (I am using the "Direct-IO disk" mode, which is said to be a little faster, but anything is fast enough for my purposes, which is mainly to save my SSD from excessive writes.)