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RamDisk and Eve
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Rollaz
AirHogs
Hogs Collective
#1 - 2014-01-05 06:43:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Rollaz
I'm the proud owner of 16gb of RAM, and although there was a lengthy thread about why you shouldn't bother with a RAMdisk for eve, I want to install one anyway and test it thoroughly in large fleet battles. I suspect that it will make a difference and I'm all about finding different ways to speed my system up.

I'd like to keep this thread on the topic of cache files and RamDisk usage with Eve and not on other places to speed up the game as we all know a good graphics card is a must... mmmkay?

At first, I downloaded the 4 mb EVE installer and dropped it on my ramdisk and the installer complained that it needed 22gb of free space for the install ?!? Last I heard Eve needed 12gb of space, so what's up wit dat CCP?

I have a PCIe SSD drive to load my ramdisk images from ( I plan to use a RamDisk for each of my games) and load times for a 10gb disk is about 14 secs, so it's a one time startup hit that pays over and over, with Radeon's RamDisk software ($15 USD) I can save an unlimited number of different game installations on my SSD's.

So here are the topics I'd love some feedback on....

1. I'd like to hear from anyone who is ACTUALLY using a RAMDisk with Eve, what were the installation issues/workarounds etc.
2. Will I actually have to have a +22gb Ramdisk to install eve
3. Can I get the performance increases I'm looking for by only moving the cache files (I'm using Windows 8.1, so I can use the new folder "relocate" option to have Windows look on my RamDisk for the files.) But I also can't seem to find a way to tell windows to relocate a user created folder, only seems to be able to relocate system made folders....
4. any other RamDisk tips/hints (OTHER then don't use one lolz)

Thanks I hope to get some yummy tips from all you bleeding edgers out there...

HAVE FUN - MAKE ISK - NO DRAMA No Api's   -   No Wars   -   No Awoxing   -   No Kidding! Hogs is OPEN for recruiting!  Join our in-game channel "Airhogs"
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#2 - 2014-01-05 07:07:01 UTC
What performance increases are you trying to get?
If you want to be able to run a higher graphics level, I expect you will get basically no improvement because that is your GPU mostly. Unless your GPU is vastly better than your HD tech anyway.
If you want to run a full overview showing drones that might help a bit (and cover your screen in drones and show nothing useful).
If you want faster server responses, that's nothing to do with anything about your computer.

So, I'm not sure what performance increases you expect to be getting?
Infinity Ziona
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2014-01-05 08:24:01 UTC
If by ramdisk you mean your comp using your harddrive as a sort of psuedo memory like the old dos days smartdrive.exe I think you a) with 16gb won't ever find yourself running out of memory to the extent you would need a ramdisk and b) if you did run out of 16gb of memory be better to find out why your pc is broken...

If by ramdrive you mean sshd, no idea...

CCP Fozzie “We can see how much money people are making in nullsec and it is, a gigantic amount, a shit-ton… in null sec anomalies. “*

Kaalrus pwned..... :)
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#4 - 2014-01-05 08:43:51 UTC
It all depends on what part of the process you want to speed up.

If it's the loading of static and cached data, then you can use junctions to point the EVE cache directories to… pretty much anywhere you want. The main problem here is to figure out a way to save and restore that data to a permanent location to avoid data loss. In this case, you won't need much space.

If it's in the loading of game assets, then you can pretty much just copy the EVE install over to the ramdisk and run it from there. It's reasonably self-contained and makes no real assumptions about where it's installed. In this case, you'll need a big chunk of memory to cover the whole install volume. I'm not entirely sure how much it is on Windows, though.

The 22GB mentioned in the installer sound an awful lot like the space needed for the installer + installed files + temporary update files + cached and static data. Still, 16GB is probably too little for what you want to do.

Infinity Ziona wrote:
If by ramdisk you mean your comp using your harddrive as a sort of psuedo memory like the old dos days smartdrive.exe I think you a) with 16gb won't ever find yourself running out of memory to the extent you would need a ramdisk and b) if you did run out of 16gb of memory be better to find out why your pc is broken...

If by ramdrive you mean sshd, no idea...
By ramdisk, he probably means ramdisk — using your ram as a disk.
knobber Jobbler
State War Academy
Caldari State
#5 - 2014-01-05 08:56:10 UTC  |  Edited by: knobber Jobbler
A RAMdisk allocates a section of RAM as a drive, where you can mount caches and TEMP files etc. Since its faster to write/read to/off RAM you get a performance gain for those sorts of folders.

Since EVE has a cache folder, mounting it on a RAM disk will have some benefit even over an SSD. The only thing to note here is start up and shut down times are slower as the RAM disk has to load and save an image file. I don't think it will help in fleet battles though, the cache is used for logs, portraits etc not ship models.

I tried it for a while using Dataram RAMdisk but it didn't have much appreciable affect on EVE. If you have an older SSD sticking cache and TEMP files on a RAMdisk will save on the number of writes being made and might extend the life of the SSD and some system performance will be a little faster.
Angelica Dreamstar
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2014-01-05 10:12:59 UTC
Infinity Ziona wrote:
If by ramdisk you mean your comp using your harddrive as a sort of psuedo memory like the old dos days smartdrive.exe I think you a) with 16gb won't ever find yourself running out of memory to the extent you would need a ramdisk and b) if you did run out of 16gb of memory be better to find out why your pc is broken...

If by ramdrive you mean sshd, no idea...

Cute to see how clueless you are. Shows how much you really know.

bingo, his pig not being a goat doesn't make the pig wrong, just him an idiot for shouting at his pig "WHY ARENT YOU A GOAT!" (Source)

-- Ralph King-Griffin, about deranged people playing EVE ONLINE
Infinity Ziona
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#7 - 2014-01-05 10:37:07 UTC
Angelica Dreamstar wrote:
Infinity Ziona wrote:
If by ramdisk you mean your comp using your harddrive as a sort of psuedo memory like the old dos days smartdrive.exe I think you a) with 16gb won't ever find yourself running out of memory to the extent you would need a ramdisk and b) if you did run out of 16gb of memory be better to find out why your pc is broken...

If by ramdrive you mean sshd, no idea...

Cute to see how clueless you are. Shows how much you really know.

except im correct

CCP Fozzie “We can see how much money people are making in nullsec and it is, a gigantic amount, a shit-ton… in null sec anomalies. “*

Kaalrus pwned..... :)
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#8 - 2014-01-05 10:54:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Infinity Ziona wrote:
except im correct
…except for the part where you think a RAM Disk means anything other than a standard RAM Disk and instead confuse it with virtual ram and a solid-state disk and mix it all up with smartdrv, which was a disk-caching driver.

All that when it's pretty clear that the OP is talking about, you know, a RAM Drive. Hell, he even lists the software he intends to use (which, now that I look at it, solves the problem of getting the data onto and off of the drive between uses — neat).
Angelica Dreamstar
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2014-01-05 11:09:33 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Infinity Ziona wrote:
except im correct
…except for the part where you think a RAM Disk means anything other than a standard RAM Disk and instead confuse it with virtual ram and a solid-state disk and mix it all up with smartdrv, which was a disk-caching driver.

All that when it's pretty clear that the OP is talking about, you know, a RAM Drive. Hell, he even lists the software he intends to use (which, now that I look at it, solves the problem of getting the data onto and off of the drive between uses — neat).

Hey hey now ... don't confuse easily googleable facts with the virtual reality she got in her head, sweety.

Nice behind you have, btw. ;)

bingo, his pig not being a goat doesn't make the pig wrong, just him an idiot for shouting at his pig "WHY ARENT YOU A GOAT!" (Source)

-- Ralph King-Griffin, about deranged people playing EVE ONLINE
Mag's
Azn Empire
#10 - 2014-01-05 12:27:35 UTC
Infinity Ziona wrote:
Angelica Dreamstar wrote:
Infinity Ziona wrote:
If by ramdisk you mean your comp using your harddrive as a sort of psuedo memory like the old dos days smartdrive.exe I think you a) with 16gb won't ever find yourself running out of memory to the extent you would need a ramdisk and b) if you did run out of 16gb of memory be better to find out why your pc is broken...

If by ramdrive you mean sshd, no idea...

Cute to see how clueless you are. Shows how much you really know.

except im correct
Oh good lord, just stop.

Destination SkillQueue:- It's like assuming the Lions will ignore you in the Savannah, if you're small, fat and look helpless.
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#11 - 2014-01-05 12:34:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Andski
Infinity Ziona wrote:
except im correct


except you're not and you're piping up and spewing out totally unrelated computing terms like if you were on a detective show

unless you want to tell us how you could possibly think that the OP is confusing an SSD - physical storage hardware that he did not mention at all - and a software ramdisk

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#12 - 2014-01-05 12:39:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Andski
anyway OP tippia and knobbler basically answered your question entirely just ignore the rest of the thread

one thing I'd like to add is that you can create symbolic links for each individual asset file in the eve directory to the location on the ramdisk, but IMO it's effort for little gain because disk drives aren't much of a bottleneck for this particular game

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Ptraci
3 R Corporation
#13 - 2014-01-05 15:01:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Ptraci
Of course there's always arcane windows programming to consider, as the actual OS might start swapping memory to disk despite your ram disk for whatever reason (alignment of the planets, Ballmer's trouser size, Windows 8 sales, etc). In fact make the ram disk large enough and you're pretty much guaranteed to have more and more windows page swaps. Has to do with blocks of memory being handed out to processes by the OS, which prefers to give the largest contiguous block it can to any process that needs it. At one point the memory starts fragmenting and you start allocating blocks from one side and the other of your reserved ramdisk memory and fun things start to happen. It's all pretty transparent to the user, but the OS will start needed more and more virtual memory even if it's sitting on a pile of free RAM.

This is all very theoretical though I doubt you'd notice much with your client :)
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#14 - 2014-01-05 15:07:21 UTC
…also, there's the hilarious recursion of making windows swap to a RAM drive when running out of RAM. Lol
Spurty
#15 - 2014-01-05 19:07:38 UTC
I have a batch file somewhere that does all of the copying and creating of ram drive, format, setup junctions etc.

You just need to remember to run it before you try to start up eve or you get sort of stuck (just need to kill a process).

Will hunt it down for you if you want it. Only reason I don't use it is not sure if I like windows 8.1 yet.

There are good ships,

And wood ships,

And ships that sail the sea

But the best ships are Spaceships

Built by CCP
Jasmine Assasin
The Holy Rollers
#16 - 2014-01-05 19:18:49 UTC
Tippia wrote:
…also, there's the hilarious recursion of making windows swap to a RAM drive when running out of RAM. Lol


When I explain my RAM drive to people I get the "Deer in headlights" look sometimes because of this exact reason.

Of course it works like a champ and you get around the "image" issue by using it as a FAT32 drive instead of NTFS (no slow shutdown/bootup, file created on the fly at startup), although it limits the file size but I run a 4GB pagefile in there no sweat and have another 2GB for random TEMP/TMP folders and such to save the SSD. Works great for that.

Unless it's a very simple game you're going to need more than 16GB of RAM to make it all work IMHO, start with at least 32 and 64 would be even better. And at the end I'm not sure it's worth it if you have SSD drive really, especially in an online game where there are so many other bottlenecks to performance.
Chinwe Rhei
Syn Interstellar
#17 - 2014-01-05 19:43:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Chinwe Rhei
Seriously don't use a RAM drive. Ramdrives were popular back when the ratio of disk speed to RAM speed was a LOT worse than today and memory management was a lot simpler.

The system basically already automagically manages disk and RAM memory together as efficiently and safely as it thinks it should - the read/write cache keeps the most recently accessed data in memory if RAM is available and the memory manager swaps portions of RAM to disk if it needs more available RAM.
Disk cache + virtual memory do the work of the old RAM drive except transparently and smarter and those are the things you should tweak for speed.

While it might be possible to gain a bit of speed boost with a RAM drive over a SSD, if you're inexperienced most likely you will see very little or may even slow down your system because your RAM drive causes disk swapping or because your EvE cache never gets updated because you always load the old image.
If there's a speed boost it's probably going to be at login/station undock and similar things and definetly not during a space-battle where all the assets will likely already be in-memory - if you experience disk access spikes during a large battle it's because of disk swapping and a RAM drive would make that worse
Rollaz
AirHogs
Hogs Collective
#18 - 2014-03-30 23:44:26 UTC
So I tried using 32gb of memory but couldn't get my system to be stable with Eve on full graphics, I'll have to try other sticks and see what happens.

Thanks to some of the posters who read and commented on my OP, I've liked those that made a difference to me, but I'd still like to find out if anyone is actually using a RAM disk with Eve... Only seemed like one of you were and didn't see much difference. I'll post my results after I get other sticks...

HAVE FUN - MAKE ISK - NO DRAMA No Api's   -   No Wars   -   No Awoxing   -   No Kidding! Hogs is OPEN for recruiting!  Join our in-game channel "Airhogs"
Mr Epeen
It's All About Me
#19 - 2014-03-31 00:04:21 UTC
Not bad guys. You got four whole posts into the thread before starting in on each other and tossing the OP out the window.

I've set up other applications on a ramdisk but not EVE. I've found that, in general, any advantages gained are negated by the hassle involved. Look around tech forums and try some simpler solutions before going that route, in my opinion.

Mr Epeen Cool
Solecist Project
#20 - 2014-03-31 01:40:45 UTC
My brain tells me that playing EVE from the SSD outperforms your solution by far.




Is your idea doable? Yes.

Is there any upside, compared to using an SSD? No.



Necro.

That ringing in your ears you're experiencing right now is the last gasping breathe of a dying inner ear as it got thoroughly PULVERISED by the point roaring over your head at supersonic speeds. - Tippia
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