What can I do with Unused Memory?
- Thread starter a03dugga
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Ramdisk.
I have 16GB and have 4GB assigned as a Ramdisk and use it all as my Windows cache file. No idea if it makes anything any quicker but it's meant to save lots of little writes to my SSD, which saves wear on the drive apparently....
That's a damn good point.
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If you're not noticing a difference from a RAMdrive, you're doing it wrong, sorry to be blunt.
I get over 5GB/sec reads and over 7GB/sec writes from mine.
Stick some apps on there, that's the best thing to do.
I just have a 12GB drive as that's the size of my biggest game, I stick whatever I'm currently playing on there and...wait for everyone else to load in
There are endless uses for a RAMdrive really.
I get over 5GB/sec reads and over 7GB/sec writes from mine.
Stick some apps on there, that's the best thing to do.
I just have a 12GB drive as that's the size of my biggest game, I stick whatever I'm currently playing on there and...wait for everyone else to load in
There are endless uses for a RAMdrive really.
If you're not noticing a difference from a RAMdrive, you're doing it wrong, sorry to be blunt.
I get over 5GB/sec reads and over 7GB/sec writes from mine.
Stick some apps on there, that's the best thing to do.
I just have a 12GB drive as that's the size of my biggest game, I stick whatever I'm currently playing on there and...wait for everyone else to load in
There are endless uses for a RAMdrive really.
Could you give me the procedure for this? I currently only play BF3 or LFD2 and that sounds interesting.
Edit: Aww nuts, BF3 is wayy too big.
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I use this RAMdisk software - there are free versions, and this does have a free trial, but they're usually limited to using only 4GB of RAM. The main reason I picked this specific one is because it is more efficient - see this benchmark for comparison, where it beats the more well known Superspeed RAMDisk Plus by roughly 800MB/sec sequential read and 1.5GB/sec sequential write, which is huge. it also does automatic backups and restores, and it ties in with device manager with a nice minimal UI.
I then use a program called Steam Mover to automate making junction links and moving apps onto and off it as needed. As I said above, the possibilities are really endless, you don't have to put a game on it but you could put, say, Firefox, Office, Photoshop, on it - or move cache/temp folders. I don't do any heavy image editing or anything like that but I'm told moving the cache/temp folders (I've heard the term scratch disk bandied about) to the fastest storage available helps performance immensely.
You do need a fair bit of RAM if you're planning to use large RAMdrives, I have 24GB as I'm on X58 but if I was on 2011 I'd certainly grab 32GB to make even more use of it. Even with lower amounts of RAM it's possible to make good use of RAMdrives though.
I then use a program called Steam Mover to automate making junction links and moving apps onto and off it as needed. As I said above, the possibilities are really endless, you don't have to put a game on it but you could put, say, Firefox, Office, Photoshop, on it - or move cache/temp folders. I don't do any heavy image editing or anything like that but I'm told moving the cache/temp folders (I've heard the term scratch disk bandied about) to the fastest storage available helps performance immensely.
You do need a fair bit of RAM if you're planning to use large RAMdrives, I have 24GB as I'm on X58 but if I was on 2011 I'd certainly grab 32GB to make even more use of it. Even with lower amounts of RAM it's possible to make good use of RAMdrives though.
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No problem 
16GB is enough to do a fair bit with a RAMdrive anyway.
16GB is enough to do a fair bit with a RAMdrive anyway.
There is something you can do with RamDisk, however it depends only if your running off HDD. Anyone with large amounts of RAM and booting of HDD I guarantee the following will give faster file access.
1) You choose a RamDrive that can persist itself on windows boot-up. (Load a disk image).
2) You convert the RamDrive to a Windows 7 readyboost drive. The readyboost will cache HDD access into your RamDrive.
3) Save the Ramdrive image, so the image is populated on start-up. Cached files won't be persisted, however the readyboost will be ready for use on next boot up.
What the above has done is make your HDD hybrid, it's very fast as the hybrid storage is main computer memory.
It works as Windows readyboost caches different files then the normal system standby memory. Everything I've read standby only caches executable files, where as readyboost works over all files.
I would only recommend the above if you have RAM thats never normally populated as standby memory. If your PC is left on a while and you see standby memory full don't do the above.
1) You choose a RamDrive that can persist itself on windows boot-up. (Load a disk image).
2) You convert the RamDrive to a Windows 7 readyboost drive. The readyboost will cache HDD access into your RamDrive.
3) Save the Ramdrive image, so the image is populated on start-up. Cached files won't be persisted, however the readyboost will be ready for use on next boot up.
What the above has done is make your HDD hybrid, it's very fast as the hybrid storage is main computer memory.
It works as Windows readyboost caches different files then the normal system standby memory. Everything I've read standby only caches executable files, where as readyboost works over all files.
I would only recommend the above if you have RAM thats never normally populated as standby memory. If your PC is left on a while and you see standby memory full don't do the above.