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Setting up a ram disk? For BF3
- Thread starter Shadowlid
- Start date
Crazy speed. I copied Bad Company 2 on the RAM disk, super fast loading.
I ran a couple of benches (I didn't let some of the tests finish). was watching ufc. will update, and also when my brother gets his 24gb in his i920. after seeing my results he ordered it straight away.
The low score is my corsair force3 on sata 3 intel. asus z68v pro gen3
it looks prehistoric doesn't it.
another image i googled for comparison, the RAM drive is right smallerbAtto image.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Corsair force3 connected intel sata3
79's with quad channel will be nice to see. 32gig 16gig disk with BF3 on it yummmmmy...
BTW I don't bother with moving temp files about, not worth it. You wont be fussed in 10+ years when the ssd is so slow anyway.
I ran a couple of benches (I didn't let some of the tests finish). was watching ufc. will update, and also when my brother gets his 24gb in his i920. after seeing my results he ordered it straight away.
The low score is my corsair force3 on sata 3 intel. asus z68v pro gen3
it looks prehistoric doesn't it.
another image i googled for comparison, the RAM drive is right smallerbAtto image.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Corsair force3 connected intel sata3
79's with quad channel will be nice to see. 32gig 16gig disk with BF3 on it yummmmmy...
BTW I don't bother with moving temp files about, not worth it. You wont be fussed in 10+ years when the ssd is so slow anyway.
Last edited:
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Location
- London, England
How about load time comparison?
My guess is, even at "just" SSD speed, loading will be CPU-limited anyways, so you may not see any improvement at all.
My guess is, even at "just" SSD speed, loading will be CPU-limited anyways, so you may not see any improvement at all.
Which CPU limits which SSD by your guess?
Just ordered some Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10. 32gig will allow me space for BF3
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
I dont think that Nehalem and newer CPUs are limiting, but on RAM drive it definitely is CPU limited. So the actuall value from Crystal Disk is not very real. Finally a powerful SSD at 500 MB/s is all whats needed, however, 500 MB/s is rarely archieved because a SSD only handle that in certain cases which are not very real. So there is still lot of room to improve for SSD and they are not fully at the SATA 600 limit because average transfer of real situation is most important and at that point they barely exceed 300 MB/s at heavely mixed filesize, not even the strongest ones. PCIE drives might get there but i wouldnt dare to use a multi SF controller drive, thats like playing with fire. Even one single SF is already a hit below the belt... way to unstable tech.
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Location
- London, England
Any 300+MB/s SSD with any <$300 CPU.
300MB/s is really only achievable if the CPU does nothing except copying data from drive straight to RAM, without any processing.
Let's say loading a map is about 500MB of data, which should be much much overestimate, only 1.6 seconds of the loading time will be due to loading data from disk with a 300MB/s SSD. Even if you get an infinitely fast storage subsystem, your load time will only decrease by 1.6 seconds.
300MB/s is really only achievable if the CPU does nothing except copying data from drive straight to RAM, without any processing.
Let's say loading a map is about 500MB of data, which should be much much overestimate, only 1.6 seconds of the loading time will be due to loading data from disk with a 300MB/s SSD. Even if you get an infinitely fast storage subsystem, your load time will only decrease by 1.6 seconds.
Some more info, when RAM was 'smaller' in our PCs than it is today.
"Installing RAM Disk
Information:
RAMDisk is a program that takes a portion of your system memory and uses it as a disk drive. What is the benefit? In a word: SPEED! An additional feature of a RAMDisk is that it will never wear out. You can access it at maximum bandwidth 24/7/365 without fear of mechanical failure, or fragmentation (a RAMDisk can become fragmented just like any other disk, but it does not take a performance hit like a physical disk does when it becomes fragmented). A RAMDisk operating at maximum bandwidth does not produce excessive heat, noise or vibrations.
Most users use RAMDisk to speed up applications like:
Databases
Internet Explorer and Firefox cache for faster web surfing
Audio and Video editing
CAD programs
Photoshop Scratch Disk
Speeding up CD duplication
Games
SETI processing
TEMP files
Swap space
Web server cache
Custom applications with high I/O, high bandwidth, or high security requirements
"
Post #5
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...te-Tweaks-amp-Utilities-*&p=442159#post442159
I will run Bad Company 2 and find out the load time on each drive.
Corsair Force 3 SATA 6GB/s 120GB
Barracuda 7200 32MB Cache SATA 3Gb/s 750GB
RAM Disk 10GB
"Installing RAM Disk
Information:
RAMDisk is a program that takes a portion of your system memory and uses it as a disk drive. What is the benefit? In a word: SPEED! An additional feature of a RAMDisk is that it will never wear out. You can access it at maximum bandwidth 24/7/365 without fear of mechanical failure, or fragmentation (a RAMDisk can become fragmented just like any other disk, but it does not take a performance hit like a physical disk does when it becomes fragmented). A RAMDisk operating at maximum bandwidth does not produce excessive heat, noise or vibrations.
Most users use RAMDisk to speed up applications like:
Databases
Internet Explorer and Firefox cache for faster web surfing
Audio and Video editing
CAD programs
Photoshop Scratch Disk
Speeding up CD duplication
Games
SETI processing
TEMP files
Swap space
Web server cache
Custom applications with high I/O, high bandwidth, or high security requirements
"
Post #5
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...te-Tweaks-amp-Utilities-*&p=442159#post442159
I will run Bad Company 2 and find out the load time on each drive.
Corsair Force 3 SATA 6GB/s 120GB
Barracuda 7200 32MB Cache SATA 3Gb/s 750GB
RAM Disk 10GB
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Why though when you have an SSD? If you have some applications that heavily pages out with frequent changes to what it pages, then maybe, but its not worth the boot time to do that to me especially with an SSD and plenty of ram. Not much will be paged out in the first place.
It would be nice to find a good reason to max out our RAM now, before the up coming price hikes by the manufacturers this year.
Well that's what I am telling the Mrs.
Something to keep hope alive..
I see someone has done it a while back, when it would fit on a 16GB RAM PC.
It looks very jerky, but that maybe his GPU? or Fraps? I guess.
Well that's what I am telling the Mrs.
Something to keep hope alive..
I see someone has done it a while back, when it would fit on a 16GB RAM PC.
It looks very jerky, but that maybe his GPU? or Fraps? I guess.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2001
The more system ram you have, the less the page file gets used (dependent on the number of programs/program itself that you have actively running). Hence why I only have a 1GiB pagefile right now for my system.
Also, it can help load a game faster, but that's only if the bottle neck was the hard drive transfer speed itself. Just playing ME2 right now, where I redid the beginning a couple of times just to get the character look right, not once after the first time was the hard drive accessed to load anything from that part of the game, yet the same "Loading..." screens were always there, and always took the same amount of time. The data was already cached in ram by the OS, but it's apparent that even with that, the game itself has some kind of limit as to how fast it will load.
I still say, you are better off just letting Win7/Superfetch manage the extra ram, and just use a small ramdisk for temporary folder duty.
Also, it can help load a game faster, but that's only if the bottle neck was the hard drive transfer speed itself. Just playing ME2 right now, where I redid the beginning a couple of times just to get the character look right, not once after the first time was the hard drive accessed to load anything from that part of the game, yet the same "Loading..." screens were always there, and always took the same amount of time. The data was already cached in ram by the OS, but it's apparent that even with that, the game itself has some kind of limit as to how fast it will load.
I still say, you are better off just letting Win7/Superfetch manage the extra ram, and just use a small ramdisk for temporary folder duty.
Having read lots of differing write ups on the Prefetch thing. I found Prefetch and Puperfetch Enabled with my old Vertex drive - things loaded faster, a lot less clunky than them disabled.
I read a good article on the subject with newer SSDs that the 'prefetch tweak' is a myth, but I'm having trouble finding it to post.
This is an interesting two-part blog talks about the Superfetch service, is it disabled, as the blog mentions it should be for newer SSDs.
http://blog.tune-up.com/tips-and-tricks/superfetch-problems-we’ve-got-the-solution-part-1/
Mine was running, so I will run the Windows performance score and see if it is low scoring, and that's why it is enabled. If I get a high score I will disable it and see how the PC runs.
Edit.
As these things all seem to be related. This article has a few things different than I have be using, Indexing for one.
" “If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.”
My advice: If you don’t use a first generation SSD in your infrastructure, you can safely assume that Windows 7 disables these features automatically. Disabling these features doesn’t make a difference. In fact, on a very old SSD, it might cause problems, as Microsoft stated:
“Initially, we had configured all of these features to be off on all SSDs, but we encountered sizable performance regressions on some systems. In root causing those regressions, we found that some first generation SSDs had severe enough random write and flush problems that ultimately lead to disk reads being blocked for long periods of time. With Superfetch and other prefetching re-enabled, performance on key scenarios was markedly improved.”
http://itexpertvoice.com/home/super-fast-ssds-four-rules-for-how-to-treat-them-right/
"SSD Rule #3: Leave Pagefile.sys on Your SSD
I hate when websites, magazines, and technical books spread Windows myths. This one’s pretty popular: Some sources claim that moving the page file (pagefile.sys) off of your SSD and onto a mechanical hard disk improves performance. Wrong! Never follow this advice! Windows 7 performs mostly smaller read operations on Pagefile.sys, which is where an SSD shines. Smaller random reads are, in fact, an SSD specialty. Leaving pagefile.sys on the main system drive actually guarantees maximum speed.
SSD Rule #4: Don’t Disable the Windows Search Index
Another rumor I hear and frown upon very often goes like this: “Disable Windows Search index on a Solid State drive. This will prolong the life of your hard disk as indexing causes a lot of hard disk activity.” I couldn’t disagree more.
In fact, Windows Search is a very beneficial feature for SSDs. Yes, on its initial run, Windows Search Index causes a lot of read activity as it indexes tens of thousands of files and e-mail messages. But as soon as that’s done with, the index stays in the main memory of your machine. As soon as you perform a search query, Windows 7 only browses through the index instead of looking for files on your hard disk. Only if you actually open a file is the SSD accessed."
Just enabled Indexing on the drive.
I read a good article on the subject with newer SSDs that the 'prefetch tweak' is a myth, but I'm having trouble finding it to post.
This is an interesting two-part blog talks about the Superfetch service, is it disabled, as the blog mentions it should be for newer SSDs.
http://blog.tune-up.com/tips-and-tricks/superfetch-problems-we’ve-got-the-solution-part-1/
Mine was running, so I will run the Windows performance score and see if it is low scoring, and that's why it is enabled. If I get a high score I will disable it and see how the PC runs.
Edit.
As these things all seem to be related. This article has a few things different than I have be using, Indexing for one.
" “If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.”
My advice: If you don’t use a first generation SSD in your infrastructure, you can safely assume that Windows 7 disables these features automatically. Disabling these features doesn’t make a difference. In fact, on a very old SSD, it might cause problems, as Microsoft stated:
“Initially, we had configured all of these features to be off on all SSDs, but we encountered sizable performance regressions on some systems. In root causing those regressions, we found that some first generation SSDs had severe enough random write and flush problems that ultimately lead to disk reads being blocked for long periods of time. With Superfetch and other prefetching re-enabled, performance on key scenarios was markedly improved.”
http://itexpertvoice.com/home/super-fast-ssds-four-rules-for-how-to-treat-them-right/
"SSD Rule #3: Leave Pagefile.sys on Your SSD
I hate when websites, magazines, and technical books spread Windows myths. This one’s pretty popular: Some sources claim that moving the page file (pagefile.sys) off of your SSD and onto a mechanical hard disk improves performance. Wrong! Never follow this advice! Windows 7 performs mostly smaller read operations on Pagefile.sys, which is where an SSD shines. Smaller random reads are, in fact, an SSD specialty. Leaving pagefile.sys on the main system drive actually guarantees maximum speed.
SSD Rule #4: Don’t Disable the Windows Search Index
Another rumor I hear and frown upon very often goes like this: “Disable Windows Search index on a Solid State drive. This will prolong the life of your hard disk as indexing causes a lot of hard disk activity.” I couldn’t disagree more.
In fact, Windows Search is a very beneficial feature for SSDs. Yes, on its initial run, Windows Search Index causes a lot of read activity as it indexes tens of thousands of files and e-mail messages. But as soon as that’s done with, the index stays in the main memory of your machine. As soon as you perform a search query, Windows 7 only browses through the index instead of looking for files on your hard disk. Only if you actually open a file is the SSD accessed."
Just enabled Indexing on the drive.
Last edited:
- Joined
- May 2, 2002
- Location
- Mexico
RAM this!
As an old timer I can remember using a RAM disk back in 486 days to achieve faster frame rates. In those days I had a mac and would load PS for work or Warbirds for fun. Today with mega Vram on wickedly fast GPU cards and SSD storage units it is a bit of overkill, but hey what the hell, there will be some gain by going this route. I remember seeing a Gigabyte add on pci card that you can plug with your old RAM modules and thus you have a dedicated RAM disk. Don't remember if it can maintain info when power is off. But no matter, you just copy your application to the RAM disk and start from there.
As an old timer I can remember using a RAM disk back in 486 days to achieve faster frame rates. In those days I had a mac and would load PS for work or Warbirds for fun. Today with mega Vram on wickedly fast GPU cards and SSD storage units it is a bit of overkill, but hey what the hell, there will be some gain by going this route. I remember seeing a Gigabyte add on pci card that you can plug with your old RAM modules and thus you have a dedicated RAM disk. Don't remember if it can maintain info when power is off. But no matter, you just copy your application to the RAM disk and start from there.
After seeing no real use for the RAM disk at the moment I went for faster Boot time and uninstalled it.
I did find this on my ramdisk google trek. It's some good info on the prefetch subject.
Which lead me to the SSD defrag. Yep. That's what I thought.
http://www.mydefrag.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=51609e798a9b4af068d0d9a58eca759f&topic=3740.0
Though if you read the discussion on the forums, (as well as being a good read) it all makes sense. Have defragged my SSD on purpose!
Hope you don't mind the topic drifting about like this. Seems to me it's all part and parcel of us trying to reach perfection, as 7of9 would say.
BTW. If you do download that Defrag program, Don't run it on your SSD without reading all the information. Some here.http://www.mydefrag.com/FAQGeneralI...gReduceTheLifespanOfMyFlashSSDMemoryDisk.html
You can turn your nice SSD from a cheetah to a three legged dog.
I did find this on my ramdisk google trek. It's some good info on the prefetch subject.
Which lead me to the SSD defrag. Yep. That's what I thought.
http://www.mydefrag.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=51609e798a9b4af068d0d9a58eca759f&topic=3740.0
Though if you read the discussion on the forums, (as well as being a good read) it all makes sense. Have defragged my SSD on purpose!
Hope you don't mind the topic drifting about like this. Seems to me it's all part and parcel of us trying to reach perfection, as 7of9 would say.
BTW. If you do download that Defrag program, Don't run it on your SSD without reading all the information. Some here.http://www.mydefrag.com/FAQGeneralI...gReduceTheLifespanOfMyFlashSSDMemoryDisk.html
You can turn your nice SSD from a cheetah to a three legged dog.
Last edited:
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Location
- London, England
For example, if the data coming from the disk need to be decompressed, which is very commonly the case.
Even with an extremely fast algorithm, like gzip, no consumer CPU can decompress faster than around 40-50MB/s.
Or if some textures need to be processed, etc.
Even with an extremely fast algorithm, like gzip, no consumer CPU can decompress faster than around 40-50MB/s.
Or if some textures need to be processed, etc.
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Location
- London, England
Eh? I was saying CPU will bottleneck the SSD if it can't decompress data as fast as the SSD can feed it.
