What is RAM Disk? Can it be good or even better for games on it rather than SSD?

[AMDRadeonHD]

I've heard that you can use, let's say, 4GB's of RAM for Ram Disk and the rest 4GB's for the system and that it runs alot better than SSD's, what if I put a game on it? Can you actually put a game on it to run it better than a SSD?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Well i dont think Id use a RAM disk w/ just 8GB or RAM

But there's a good description here .... Asus built in the feature w/ latest MoBo

http/rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?35094

 

[getochkn]

I've done game tests and it's not a lot faster really from even a normal HD.

First, the problem with a RAM disc is you have to make sure to basically save the RAM disc after playing to an ISO type file to your hard drive, since RAM shuts off when the PC loses power or restarts. Then it has to be loaded upon bootup of the system. Most RAM disc software takes care of this, but still a pain if you freeze up and have to restart your PC, and you just spent an hour updating the game, you loose that.

Second, Windows 7/8 do a fairly good job of caching most used files to RAM anyways, so if you play a certain game a lot, windows will cache those files when you load up the game.

Most games don't even benefit from an SSD really. It's only loading time during a map loading, and with Windows cache, it does a good job anyways.

 

[AMDRadeonHD]

One person with Corsair Vengeance 2×4GB DDR3 1600MHz used 4GB DDR3 1600MHz and it had almost the same results as those in the link posted, does it improve everything on a computer with RAM Disk, like games and the whole operating system or do you have to put seperate applications in the RAM Disk in order to boost the reads and writes for it?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

THG had a good article on the topic about a year ago.....showed significant improvements on 16GB systems.... lemme see if I can find.


.... back

http/www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-5.html

 

[AMDRadeonHD]

I've done game tests and it's not a lot faster really from even a normal HD.

First, the problem with a RAM disc is you have to make sure to basically save the RAM disc after playing to an ISO type file to your hard drive, since RAM shuts off when the PC loses power or restarts. Then it has to be loaded upon bootup of the system. Most RAM disc software takes care of this, but still a pain if you freeze up and have to restart your PC, and you just spent an hour updating the game, you loose that.

Second, Windows 7/8 do a fairly good job of caching most used files to RAM anyways, so if you play a certain game a lot, windows will cache those files when you load up the game.

Most games don't even benefit from an SSD really. It's only loading time during a map loading, and with Windows cache, it does a good job anyways.

I've had several systems with Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB and it loaded the games so slow, for an example, Battlefield 3. It takes a minute to join the server and when it joins it loads the map so I see every object getting rendered, it takes about 5 seconds to render them.

 

[inzone]

The best solution is to get a SSD and make it the C drive with the OS on it. The game maps will load faster and just as fast as the Ram Disk , because multiplayer is played over the internet you limited to your internet connection and the servers that you connect to. So you can have a 32gb Ram Disk with a i7-4960x CPU and two Titan video cards and be at the mercy of the internet connection and the servers.

At a lan party you would be King.

 

[Taboroius]

NO THEY WONT! SSD will not run as fast as a ramdisk. You should also NEVER run SSD as your OS drive. SSD degrades over time based on "writes". If you run your OS on it you will burn through its lifecycle.

Have SSD as a secondary drive that you install the game to. With enough memory you can still have a ramdisk and load some of the game files that that are read the most often or the whole installation if you have enough ram. Relocating the files to RAMDISK is done with symbolic links