SuperCache Express uses RAM to boost load and write times of cached data

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There is always something that improves the performance of computer systems further. If you use a regular hard drive, you can migrate to a solid state drive (SSD) for faster loading times. And if you already use such a drive, you may use multiple SSD for even faster performance, or use a caching solution like SuperCache Express instead.

Note: SuperCache Express is not a free software. The desktop version costs around $80 currently. A 14 day trial version is available that you can make use of to test it though.

The basic idea behind SuperCache Express is to use the RAM of the system for caching. This works best if your PC has a lot of RAM, 2 Gigabytes is the minimum, with 4 or more GB or RAM recommended.

Depending on which operating system you use, you may use up to 95% of the available system RAM for caching. On 32-bit systems, you are limited to 50% of the available 4 Gigabytes (except for Windows XP where you may use up to 75%) while you do not have that limitation on 64-bit versions.

SuperCache Express Review

Installation

The installation is quick and will install a system driver on the PC. A restart is required afterwards before you can start using the caching solution.

Configuration

SuperCache is not enabled by default, and you need to activate it on at least one of your drives before you can make use of it. To do so, start the application, right-click on a drive, and select Cache from the context menu.

Here you need to click on Start to enable the caching. This opens the configuration screen where you can allocate memory to the cache.

Side note: If this is not the system drive, you can also enable Deferred-Write Mode which helps reduce write bottlenecks on hard drives by deferring writes to the drive.

Once you have made your choices here, the cache is automatically used to speed up read operations on the system.

It needs to be noted that this benefits data that is already in the cache the most. If you start Firefox or Google Chrome for the first time after enabling the cache, you may not notice that much of a speed improvement when you compare it to starting the programs without the caching enabled. It may still be noticeable, depending on the speed of the hard drive on the PC system.

When you start the programs for the second time though on the system, you will notice near instant loading times. The same is true for data that you load in programs. And those near-instant loading times are independent from the speed of the hard drive installed on the system.

Benchmarks

How fast you can go? Check out the following benchmarks (using AS SSD Benchmark)

1. Caching not enabled

2. Caching enabled, first run

3. Caching enabled, second run

Mirror Mode

SuperCache 5's Mirror Mode feature mirrors an entire partition or volume in RAM, so that the data is available on the drive and in memory. This works obviously only if the PC has enough RAM installed for the feature. This works well with smaller sized Solid State Drives and even smaller disk partitions that you create for that exact purpose.

Considering that you can install up to 192 Gigabyte of RAM on a PC running Windows 7 64-bit, and up to 512 Gigabyte on a 64-bit version of Windows 8, you may be able to mirror a full SSD using the mode.

Note: Depending on which edition you use, you may not make use of that much RAM on the system.

Verdict

SuperCache Express can speed up the loading of cached data significantly on the system, which makes it very interesting for desktop users who run PCs with a lot of RAM that are not rebooted often.

You may especially benefit from it if you have to load data regularly from hard drives and notice that they are a bottleneck that slow you down.

Is it worth the requested $80? For most end users this can probably be answered with a no. If you use applications regularly that benefit from faster loading times, or are a competitive gamer who wants an edge over other players, then you may want to download the trial version of the application to see if it helps you achieve that goal.