Can a good SSD lessen the need for large quantities of RAM?

[fuzzybabybunny]

A lot of UMPCs have their RAM directly soldered into the board, making RAM upgrades impossible. Many top out at 1GB RAM, and we all know that 2GB is the minimum needed to run many programs and Vista.

Would putting in a fast SSD make running Vista and memory intensive programs on 1GB RAM very possible, even enjoyable? The reason RAM is there is that it prevents the system from having to access data from the slower main drive, usually a mechanical HDD. But with an SSD...

 

[NXIL]

Hi FBB,

I do not think that UMPCs run regular Vista (or XP).

Looking at this unit from Samsung:

XP tablet is the OS

http://www.samsung.com/us/cons...odel_cd=NP-Q1U/001/SEA

This ASUS: also XP tablet:

http://usa.asus.com/products.a...l1=5&l2=64&l3=414&l4=0

Lots of extraneous junk can be removed from XP/even Vista, in order to allow it to run on an UMPC.

1 GB should be plenty for what the UMPC does (except maybe photos, and, I think if you were going to be taking a lot of photos, you would use one of your digicams, not the UMPC built in camera.....) Web browsing, mail, IM, etc: 1GB "should be plenty". (Don't quote me like the alleged Bill Gates "640K should be enough for anyone" statement.)

As for your original question: SSDs are fast, but not RAM-disk fast; it will speed up your unit, and maybe improve battery life, but, if the OS has to go to swap, a SSD device is still going to be way slower than RAM.

RAM access times: 5 to 70 nanoseconds.

SSD access times run in the .1 milliseconds, or 100 nanoseconds, so close, but, remember the RAM memory has to write to the ssd too, which is way slower, slowing down the whole operation.

Anyway, "1GB should be enough" for a UMPC.

SSD: faster than mechanical drive, but not uber RAM disk fast.

HTH

NXIL

 

[taltamir]

Readyboost might help you.
The ONLY SSDs which don't suck, and are faster than the velociraptor are the intel ones (at 600+$). Which is pretty hefty considering the price of a UMPC.
To know how much they will help exactly requires testing, and this is not something i'd be keen on testing (due to the high chance of it not panning out and me wasting a lot of money)