PrimoCache Review

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tecnogaming
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PrimoCache Review

Post by tecnogaming »

Just wanted to give you all a headsup about using PrimoCache to accelerate a very big Workstation setup based on pure M2-SSD.

PrimoCache is beyond good.  I've purchased this software some time ago but it is only now that I'm starting to use it seriously.

I have a massive PC,  Ryzen 9 3950X @ 4Ghz with 128GB Corsair Dominator running at 2866, that's about the max the RAM can go because it's the max amount of RAM that the Ryzen CPUs can support.

I've setup a massive cache of 64GB for Primocache on all drives.

I have 3 Corsair MP600 for boot, apps and games. 

My configuration is  12GB Read and the rest is write.

With 64GB of free memory even the C: drive is using the cache provided by PrimoCache.

The results are nothing short of amazing.  If I do not use PrimoCache I'm basically having 64GB of RAM wasting space and creating heat.  With Primo as cache everything is instant.

Don't get fooled that you can get a really fast PC with just M2 drivers.  My drives are running at 4500MB/s because they are under PCIe 4.0 and yet, the latency, stuttering and hiccups are pretty obvious when working with several programs at once. 

Games will also stutter while reading fragmented files.  This does not happen anymore with PrimoCache.  It's so much better than the default Windows Cache that I've disabled "Turn off Windows Write Cache buffer-flush" option.  It was creating a cache over a cache and PrimoCache is better in caching content and skipping direct writes.

The trick is to never let the drive write directly, defer cache is KEY in an M2 drive,  I have an UPS for this. With a 60 second buffer before flush and free mem after write options, this software is a freaking BEAST. It turned my Windows 10 PC from normal to super-fast workstation by taking advantage of all that RAM not being used properly by Windows.

I'm gonna write an article on my magazine about this, with details on how to configure the software.

https://tecnogaming.com

I will love if Romex can contact me so we can arrange a full review with their consent. I think the community will really appreciate a detailed article, not just a review, but a technical article on how to configure this wonderful piece of software.

The amount of I/O has been reduced drastically. Since M2 drives, specially running under PCIe 4.0 standard are so fast, it's best if they can write in blocks, instead of writing chaotically as they do running on Windows, specially for the root drive. Since I/O are only working when cache is filled and since write is fast enough for when it needs to write, the result is a PC that feels like it's working from a RAMDISK.

Before using PrimoCache, there was no difference between an SATA SSD and these M2 disks. Now the difference is night and day, taking advantage of the very fast writing speed these drives can achieve, they are now optimized to write big chunks of data and this made installing software, handlind drivers and executing productive software a breeze.

Honestly I'm shocked that no big hardware magazine is talking about this or that no enthusiast like me is using it.    I feel like contributing to spread the word about this software.

I'm also using Primo Ramdisk, works equally good, specially for projects where you need near-instant write/read speed and don't want to waste write cycles on your SSD.

Please contact me at  [email protected] if you have any questions.
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by Support »

Thank you very much for sharing your experience on PrimoCache! We do appreciate it if you could write and publish an article on this. Just let us know if you need any further technical support. :)
Logic
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by Logic »

tecnogaming:
"...Ryzen 9 3950X @ 4Ghz with 128GB Corsair Dominator running at 2866..."
The Infinity Fabric Bus connects your 4, 4 core core complexes, your memory bus, your PCIe, basically everything.
It runs at memory frequency...
1433MHz in your case.
Now if it got that number up to 1600 MHz (DDR 3200) or even 1800 MHz (DDR 3600) you would see a dramatic increase in system performance.

Most interesting from your PrimoCache setup point of view would be the increase in disk (=DRAM here) benchmark numbers.

"...I've disabled "Turn off Windows Write Cache buffer-flush" option..."
This changes the behavior of the SSD's ONBOARD write cache/ing, not the system RAM.
ie: Data is written in larger erase block sized chunks, rather than little 4K chunks, increasing the speed and lifespan of the SSD's.
ie: The SSD's built in cache will take the coalesced write chunks from the PrimoCache write cache and write them as optimised chunks, rather than splitting/writing them into little 4K? chunks again.
NB: that some SSDs (Intel mostly) perform worse with this disabled, so testing is reqd.
IIRC the MP600s perform better with this ticked.

Other tweaks:
(With your huge amount of DRAM and Primocache caching your hardly in use Pagefile, I don't expect you will see much difference from this personally, but good to know)

PageFile:
With 2 or more Pagefiles, Windows will auto choose the fastest/least in use drive at any given moment.
It will also use 2 or more pagefiles/drives simultaneously in a kind of RAID 0.
A fixed size pagefile on each drive is best as fragmented files slow down even SSDs slightly. Much more so on HDDs.

The incessant writing of log files etc:
SSDs slow dramatically when data is requested while data is being written.
ie: Simultaneous read-writes slow SSDs to around 30% of their advertised numbers for sequential, random etc, wasting lifespan in the process.
SSD Fresh:
https://www.abelssoft.de/en/windows/sys ... /ssd-fresh
can disable this logging, but I prefer to use it to see which files to move to a HDD using Symbolic Links:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mso ... cbbc8d2e03
And the Primo write cache gets them there as large, more sequential, faster writes.
michaelduff
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by michaelduff »

Just wanted to take a moment and say how helpful this was to me. I've been using Primocache for years but I've been using it wrong. I was scared to turn it loose on my full server (13 drives) because I was afraid of incompatibilities with the REFS file system.

But REFS has a repair disk tool now so I figured I should try again. I run an active media server and the difference has been night and day. I'm finally using L2 cache the way you're supposed to and I've been shocked to find 60 to 80 percent hit rates.

I just bought a new SSD and more RAM to take full advantage of it.

This post is the exact use case I'm going for and was exactly what I needed to see. Finally somebody confirming my observation that M.2 is not fast enough! Also turning off write buffer on these drives as suggested.

Great review, great product. Thanks guys!
Nick7
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by Nick7 »

Just please be aware of silent corruption that can occur if using defer write in case of power loss/system crash.
michaelduff
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by michaelduff »

Yeah I was scared to try this until I had a full mirror and a UPS. Thanks!
RobF99
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by RobF99 »

tecnogaming wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:34 am I've disabled "Turn off Windows Write Cache buffer-flush" option.  It was creating a cache over a cache and PrimoCache is better in caching content and skipping direct writes.
Let me make a quick point on this. As I understand it, you still want the Windows Write Cache Buffer turned on because the L1 Cache will be flushing to those drives and those are the writes that are being write cached. L1 will flush to the drive much faster with the drive's write caching on otherwise L1 will get backed up waiting for the drive to be ready to accept more data from L1. Try it and you will see it make an even greater difference.
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Re: PrimoCache Review

Post by Support »

Yes, it's better to keep Windows Write Cache Buffer enabled because it resides on the file-system level. Windows Cache is the first one to process write quests. The file system then processes these requests and decides which disk sectors the data is written to. Next is PrimoCache processing the file system requests to disk. So enabling Windows Write Cache will make high-level applications quicker complete write requests.
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