RAM Disk Question

[1Wolf]

Just a theoretical question here...

I was over at Newegg watching a video where they were talking about RAM Disks with one of the guys at Asus...

I don't know much about RAM Disks. I've never used one. Never tried one. However, I have read here on [H] about folks using them for scratch disks for Photoshop and such. The fellow in the video was talking about how the RAM disk shows up like any other disk and you can even install software to it.

With RAM being so cheap...just asking a theoretical question here...

When it gets to the point that you can purchase and install enough RAM to create a RAM Disk large enough to install a game to (And, of course, still leave you plenty of RAM to run your OS and such)...could you do that? What would happen?

 

[Durntdude]

Yes you can do that. Someone did so with Battlefield 3 and posted it on youtube. Just keep in mind that anything on a RAMdisk needs to be written to the disk on boot before it can be used and it needs to be loaded as the same drive else you will have registry issues.

I've fiddled with http://www.geardownload.com/system/imdisk.html (well...different location but same name) and its worked fine. Haven't tested it much though since I have only 4 GB of RAM and use 50% on desktop alone. Games put it to 80%-95%.

I've actually though of putting all my common games on a RAM disk and having fun with it. Maybe put in 24 GB of the good stuff =)

 

[drescherjm]

Its better to just spend $200 (or less) and get a 256 GB SSD then to spend $200 and get 32GB of ram. Remember that 32 GB is the maximum on most desktop systems since most have 4 slots and 8GB is the largest unbuffered dimm that is currently being produced.

 

[Tsumi]

SSD is better.

I played around with setting up a RAMDisk, and installed GTA IV to it. IMO, it was more hassle than it's worth. You still need a storage drive to store the disk image to, and with many games taking up 16+ gb, you can only store one game at a time. Plus, loading it and saving it to your hard drive takes a significant amount of time.

What I personally use my RAMDisk for (I have a 4gb one) is for storing internet cache files. It's a blank RAMDisk, so loads up instantly when starting up my computer, and there's no need to save it when you shut it down. There's no slowdowns, and I've noticed some improvement in internet browsing speeds (using 300gb Velociraptor). My relatives with SSDs reported little to no improvements, but it does reduce the amount of reads and writes to your SSD, which should extend its life.

 

[daglesj]

Yeah shutting down and then having to save a 8GB+ image takes a while.

 

[1Wolf]

Thanks everyone After watching that video I mentioned, and being new to the concept of RAM Disks, I was just kind of curious what could be done.

Thanks!

 

[cyclone3d]

Why would you need to save the disk image every time you shut the computer down? I would think you could just save it after an update is applied.

If there is a config file and you change settings, you can just back up the config file.

Most newer games use a folder on your OS drive for saved games, so that isn't a problem either.

You really don't have to backup the whole image every time you shut your computer down. In fact, you really don't need to make an image at all.. Just use something like Areca to update any files that have changed and add any new files. It is pretty quick and saves a lot of time over doing a complete backup every time.

Level/area load times are going to go down significantly compared to an SSD provided the rest of your system (CPU) is up to loading it quicker.

 

[MrGuvernment]

because memory is volatile, when you turn off your computer your memory is whiped clean, everything from it is gone, thus you need to dump everything that is in the ram disk to a physical disk on any power cycle...

now if your home power goes down and your system reboots.. now your entire game is gone and you have to re install it from scratch.

 

[Cheetoz]

i know in linux there is a daemon that can automatically sync any folder you want with RAM

And cyclone3d makes a good point. You just need an initial sync at boot, and then dump the ram disk and sync a new folder with another game when you want.

 

[cyclone3d]

because memory is volatile, when you turn off your computer your memory is whiped clean, everything from it is gone, thus you need to dump everything that is in the ram disk to a physical disk on any power cycle...

now if your home power goes down and your system reboots.. now your entire game is gone and you have to re install it from scratch.

I was saying.

Install once to the RAM disk.

Backup install to the HDD or SSD.

If an update or config change is done, then you replace the backup or just update the backup with Areca.

When you reboot your computer, you just copy the data from the backup folder on the HDD or SSD to the RAM disk and you are good until the next update or config change is done.

 

[drescherjm]

Ramdisk software could easily be programmed to track what blocks were changed and to writeback only the changed blocks. Although I am unsure which do that.

 

[LigTasm]

I use a 24GB RAMdisk for games, it takes ~3-5 seconds to load the game onto the disk and since every game I have uses a folder in the C: drive for save/cfg files I never have any issues with losing information. It loads much faster than my SSD, especially in games like Skyrim with many zones in it.I rarely ever shut the machine down, probably the only time it gets restarted is if I get a windows update. Even with SB-E, SLI, and a pile of fans it only uses like 90w at idle, turning it off has almost no effect on my power bill.