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We tested the Nvidia App performance problems — games can run up to 15 percent slower with the app
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santiagoanders
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- Jun 16, 2009
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[citation][nom]falchard[/nom]Uhh, you don't store data on a RamDisk[/citation]
Get a clue, man. Programs are already loaded into memory when they are executed. It's the data files the program accesses that need to be on the ramdisk (this could be data in the program's install directory or working files in user directories). I do source compilation from/to a ramdisk and it speeds up the process a lot, especially when compiling with 4 threads at once.
Get a clue, man. Programs are already loaded into memory when they are executed. It's the data files the program accesses that need to be on the ramdisk (this could be data in the program's install directory or working files in user directories). I do source compilation from/to a ramdisk and it speeds up the process a lot, especially when compiling with 4 threads at once.
- May 16, 2006
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Really? I could have sworn the last time I tried, it wouldn't let me. Will have to revisit that again. Thanks!
What's the point of this software? RAM disk's have been around since the early days of computing and any PC with Dos or higher can simply allocate RAM as a disk drive.
Maybe it's just me, but I fail to see the "wow" factor of this.
Maybe it's just me, but I fail to see the "wow" factor of this.
photonboy
Titan
- Jun 20, 2006
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The PERFECT Gaming RAMDISK software:
If games were designed properly, all the important files would be buffered in the System and/or Video RAM and drive related stuttering would not exist aside from new level loads. That's not the case always, even on new games that can STUTTER even while simply waiting to write a SAVE GAME to the hard drive (why that holds up the game baffles me. That's why we have RAM in the first place, to cache files to avoid the slow drive issues. Poor coding I guess, but it's far too common.)
Then there are older games like Half Life 2. Remember the sewer level with the boat? Every so many seconds you have to wait for the hard drive to load new data. Annoying! If you want to improve this scenario drastically there are two ways:
1. Rewrite the game to buffer better (not going to happen)
2. Copy the data to a RAMDISK before the game starts ( a real pain)
So how can we drastically improve older and even newer games during these long waits or annoying stutters?
The "Jeffrey Advanced Ramdisk Software" (JARS):
1. RAMDISK software launches automatically when a game in its list is launched
2. RAMDISK copies only the data that could affect stuttering for that game
3. Links temporarily point to the RAMDISK files rather than hard drive
4. CLOSING game simply clears the data and makes sure any SAVE games are copied to the hard drive if needed.
So basically the gaming community could generate a list of files for each game that help eliminated stuttering or lower loading times, and assign a priority to each file in case of limited RAM. Constant save game stuttering could theoretically be improved with less than 100MBytes (saving to RAM instead of hard drive).
*On the USER side of things, this software could be all automated and just simply work.
(FYI, the entire problem with Skyrim working on the PS3 is due to insufficient System RAM requiring the massive SAVE file to be copied to the hard drive.)
If games were designed properly, all the important files would be buffered in the System and/or Video RAM and drive related stuttering would not exist aside from new level loads. That's not the case always, even on new games that can STUTTER even while simply waiting to write a SAVE GAME to the hard drive (why that holds up the game baffles me. That's why we have RAM in the first place, to cache files to avoid the slow drive issues. Poor coding I guess, but it's far too common.)
Then there are older games like Half Life 2. Remember the sewer level with the boat? Every so many seconds you have to wait for the hard drive to load new data. Annoying! If you want to improve this scenario drastically there are two ways:
1. Rewrite the game to buffer better (not going to happen)
2. Copy the data to a RAMDISK before the game starts ( a real pain)
So how can we drastically improve older and even newer games during these long waits or annoying stutters?
The "Jeffrey Advanced Ramdisk Software" (JARS):
1. RAMDISK software launches automatically when a game in its list is launched
2. RAMDISK copies only the data that could affect stuttering for that game
3. Links temporarily point to the RAMDISK files rather than hard drive
4. CLOSING game simply clears the data and makes sure any SAVE games are copied to the hard drive if needed.
So basically the gaming community could generate a list of files for each game that help eliminated stuttering or lower loading times, and assign a priority to each file in case of limited RAM. Constant save game stuttering could theoretically be improved with less than 100MBytes (saving to RAM instead of hard drive).
*On the USER side of things, this software could be all automated and just simply work.
(FYI, the entire problem with Skyrim working on the PS3 is due to insufficient System RAM requiring the massive SAVE file to be copied to the hard drive.)
Marcus52,
yes, a RAMDISK will increase startup times. The larger the size the longer the start up. Expect it to add around 8-16 seconds extra, depending on your system.
Also if you use it to store programs and other files that get changed or updated, then you are forced to use the option to save it on shutdown, which will slow down shutdown times quite considerably.
For ME, I store browser caches and a swap file. The base RAMDISK starts empty except for those, and I don't save it on reboot, so this way they are both wiped clean. I keep a temp folder also for any program that I can point to it. I do NOT point the windows TEMP folders there, as sometimes data is stored between reboots that is needed.
Used right it works very well, used wrong and it works fine, but will actually increase wait time for the system to load and shut down, which negates the purpose of it in the first place.
In conjunction with an SSD it can be a win-win.
yes, a RAMDISK will increase startup times. The larger the size the longer the start up. Expect it to add around 8-16 seconds extra, depending on your system.
Also if you use it to store programs and other files that get changed or updated, then you are forced to use the option to save it on shutdown, which will slow down shutdown times quite considerably.
For ME, I store browser caches and a swap file. The base RAMDISK starts empty except for those, and I don't save it on reboot, so this way they are both wiped clean. I keep a temp folder also for any program that I can point to it. I do NOT point the windows TEMP folders there, as sometimes data is stored between reboots that is needed.
Used right it works very well, used wrong and it works fine, but will actually increase wait time for the system to load and shut down, which negates the purpose of it in the first place.
In conjunction with an SSD it can be a win-win.
awood28211
Distinguished
- Aug 1, 2007
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My review of this program: I've used it for months. It was faster than my hard disk, sure but 25,000 MB/s? Not even close. A 4 GB ram drive copying 1 GB data from and to the same drive took 5 or so seconds. Assuming that read and write take turns (if they don't the results are worse) that's 2 GB of data transfer across 5 seconds of time or about 400MB/ second? DDR3-1600 on a quad AMD chip. I stopped using the ram drive when I bought my new hardware including an SSD which transfers faster than RAMDISK did.
They forgot to mention that every time you run the freeware you get an ad in your face to buy their products.
They forgot to mention that every time you run the freeware you get an ad in your face to buy their products.
awood28211
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- Aug 1, 2007
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Let me add that I believe the performance issue was application related.. Either poor application performance translating the RAM to a virtual drive or intentionally limited.
[citation][nom]santiagoanders[/nom]Get a clue, man. Programs are already loaded into memory when they are executed.[/citation]Not fully, at least on Windows - executables are memory-mapped and then demand-paged, they aren't loaded fully to memory.
As for claims that games load zomgsuperfast if you put them on a RAM disk, that really depends on which games you're talking about - more things happen during load than simply grabbing raw data from disk, there's also various forms of data massaging and uploading to your GPU memory. Far Cry 2, for instance, showed no quantifiable load-time decrease when I stuffed it on a ramdisk.
Also, apparently not all RAM disks are created equal, speedwise, if you're to belive this link: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-ram-disk-software-benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/ (haven't done benchmarks myself). "RAM is RAM", but there can definitely be differences in how the backing driver is designed.
And finally, for those wanting freebies and currently using ImDisk, perhaps check out this: http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/ - it's gone freeware, though sadly not opensource
As for claims that games load zomgsuperfast if you put them on a RAM disk, that really depends on which games you're talking about - more things happen during load than simply grabbing raw data from disk, there's also various forms of data massaging and uploading to your GPU memory. Far Cry 2, for instance, showed no quantifiable load-time decrease when I stuffed it on a ramdisk.
Also, apparently not all RAM disks are created equal, speedwise, if you're to belive this link: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-ram-disk-software-benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/ (haven't done benchmarks myself). "RAM is RAM", but there can definitely be differences in how the backing driver is designed.
And finally, for those wanting freebies and currently using ImDisk, perhaps check out this: http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/ - it's gone freeware, though sadly not opensource
[citation][nom]Smith12[/nom]Marcus52,yes, a RAMDISK will increase startup times. The larger the size the longer the start up. Expect it to add around 8-16 seconds extra, depending on your system.[/citation]I've got a permanent 1gig ramdisk that's backed by an image file - including BIOS POST, I can just about put on my pants in the morning after hitting the power button, then I'm at the login screen.
[citation][nom]Smith12[/nom]Also if you use it to store programs and other files that get changed or updated, then you are forced to use the option to save it on shutdown, which will slow down shutdown times quite considerably.[/citation]A decent ramdisk product will do differential saves instead of dumping the entire image, and thus won't cause much slowdown, especially for static data like programs.
[citation][nom]Smith12[/nom]For ME, I store browser caches and a swap file.[/citation]I hope that, by swap file, you don't mean your system pagefile? That would be plain stupid.
[citation][nom]Smith12[/nom]Also if you use it to store programs and other files that get changed or updated, then you are forced to use the option to save it on shutdown, which will slow down shutdown times quite considerably.[/citation]A decent ramdisk product will do differential saves instead of dumping the entire image, and thus won't cause much slowdown, especially for static data like programs.
[citation][nom]Smith12[/nom]For ME, I store browser caches and a swap file.[/citation]I hope that, by swap file, you don't mean your system pagefile? That would be plain stupid.
madrich
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- Aug 15, 2012
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[citation][nom]Firion87[/nom]Tried it on my laptop. Doesn't seem to give me any speed bump for games at all (DDR3@1033MHz). Ain't gonna try it on my pc, because I got there a ssd installed.[/citation]
[citation][nom]goodguy713[/nom]It might load a game even faster then an ssd drive but with out a decent graphics card its pointless not to mention your direct x files are stored in a seperate folder so installing a game on a ram disk is rather hard to do ..[/citation]
I tried this out a few times over the years, when 600MHz was the fastest stock PC, I loaded the Quake 3 Arena demo into a ram drive and it smoked everything I'd seen. Pretty sure that was software rendering - which a laptop will probably be doing (I don't know much about today's mobile graphics). From what I've seen discrete looks better graphically, so any gains with ram disk and software rendering a game would still not look as good as hardware rendering. But the games WILL load a ton faster and MIGHT get more FPS like Quake 3 Arena did for me.
[citation][nom]goodguy713[/nom]It might load a game even faster then an ssd drive but with out a decent graphics card its pointless not to mention your direct x files are stored in a seperate folder so installing a game on a ram disk is rather hard to do ..[/citation]
I tried this out a few times over the years, when 600MHz was the fastest stock PC, I loaded the Quake 3 Arena demo into a ram drive and it smoked everything I'd seen. Pretty sure that was software rendering - which a laptop will probably be doing (I don't know much about today's mobile graphics). From what I've seen discrete looks better graphically, so any gains with ram disk and software rendering a game would still not look as good as hardware rendering. But the games WILL load a ton faster and MIGHT get more FPS like Quake 3 Arena did for me.
devBunny
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- Jan 22, 2012
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[citation][nom]digiex[/nom]The problem of windows, it has lots of locations of virtual storage, Pagefile, temp in the profiles folder, temp file in the windows directory, other programs put their temp storage it in their profiles folder, and its pain in the ass to unify all the temp locations, and some programs don't run if you change their temp storage.[/citation]
I have a dedicated drive for temporary folders. Most of the temporary folders on C: are linked to an equivalent on this drive. They appear to Windows and to program as if they are still on C: but the files themselves are on the temp drive.
Check out the Link Shell Extension for more information and an excellent program for managing this. http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html
I have a dedicated drive for temporary folders. Most of the temporary folders on C: are linked to an equivalent on this drive. They appear to Windows and to program as if they are still on C: but the files themselves are on the temp drive.
Check out the Link Shell Extension for more information and an excellent program for managing this. http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html
Wow...PC users have almost caught up with us Amiga users now..
We've been using RAM Disks since 1985 (and for free), all they need to do now is create a genuine multitasking OS for PC users and you will nearly have a computer and OS as good as the Amiga...
I said nearly, you'd still have to overcome the awkward fact PCs require gigabytes of memory and gigahertz of processing power just to perform the same tasks an Amiga can do with 2MB of memory and around 14Mhz of proccessing power... oh well... better luck next time... ;-)
We've been using RAM Disks since 1985 (and for free), all they need to do now is create a genuine multitasking OS for PC users and you will nearly have a computer and OS as good as the Amiga...
I said nearly, you'd still have to overcome the awkward fact PCs require gigabytes of memory and gigahertz of processing power just to perform the same tasks an Amiga can do with 2MB of memory and around 14Mhz of proccessing power... oh well... better luck next time... ;-)
abbadon_34
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- Aug 7, 2008
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