Games Under 8GB

johnyt said:
There are ram disk softwares the will dump all the ramdisk data to hard drive on sytem shutdown and replace it on startup. This does make shutdown and startup a longer process.
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The problem is that 8GB of data will take ages to copy into memory. Lets say that your HD can read at 100MB/sec. That means it'd take over a minute just to copy it all onto the RAM disk. So your "quick loading times" will be offset by that.

I experimented using a RAMdisk for gaming around 9 years ago using a cutdown Quakeworld installation in the hope of getting quicker mapchanges and less lag from demorecording etc. It was a bit of a gimmick really and I soon abandoned the project.
 
HangTime said:
The problem is that 8GB of data will take ages to copy into memory. Lets say that your HD can read at 100MB/sec. That means it'd take over a minute just to copy it all onto the RAM disk. So your "quick loading times" will be offset by that.
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Your missing the point of a RAMdisk. Its not to save overall time and gain more time playing!

Its to be in a server first, choosing your class and being able to set up (game specific) quickly and giving you the best chance of having a good game.

E.G. Halflife deathmatch, connect, spawn, collect weapons and get a spot to kill and maim those arriving 10-15 seconds later.

Those who use RAMdisk do not care about the minute loading the image or copying the data across. I actually just copied STALKER across. 5.58Gb took 35 seconds @ ~210mb/s from my RAID SSD to my RAMdisk.

Its all about getting the upperhand.

Edit: To add about single player games. Loading times for me spoil the immersion factor. STALKER is an excellent example, as is Bioshock. Great atmosphere, but then you have annoying load times which breaks up the action. RAMdisk and certainly SSD's help avoid the break in flow. RAMdisk does help your gaming experience in this manner.

WS
 
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Well Splattered said:
Your missing the point of a RAMdisk. Its not to save overall time and gain more time playing!

Its to be in a server first, choosing your class and being able to set up (game specific) quickly and giving you the best chance of having a good game.
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Yeah I understand all that, if you read the rest of my post you'll see I was doing it years ago (32MB RAMdrive heh) for those very reasons, to try and spawn quickest in QW FFA following map change. However ultimately I found that it didn't have much of an impact and was more hassle than it's worth, but of course others may disagree.

I was just pointing out that for anyone wanting to give themselves better loading times in SP games like Crysis etc the benefits may be counterbalanced by having your drives mashing away for a while while copying it over. I'm sure with a SSD-RAID setup it's a lot smoother and quicker, but most people don't have that.
 
HangTime said:
Yeah I understand all that, if you read the rest of my post you'll see I was doing it years ago (32MB RAMdrive heh) for those very reasons, to try and spawn quickest in QW FFA following map change. However ultimately I found that it didn't have much of an impact and was more hassle than it's worth, but of course others may disagree.
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Always good to discuss. My experience with RAMdisks is more recent. I did see you had experimented, but a while ago. Recent implementation means its all a lot easier to setup.

You raise a good point about the SSD setup. :)
 
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