RAM Drive (SDW Bait)

[MiRai]

Earlier today, against my better judgement, I picked up 32GB of RAM for my old, yet still a beast, P67 system. It's going to replace the 16GB I currently have in there now which has been holding me back in a few different ways.

First and foremost, 32GB will allow me do more with video editing, but it should also allow me to run more than 30 clients (http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/44505-Multiboxing-Hardware-Science!?p=341846#post341846) on my machine at once. As much as I like to push the limits of a system I've really been wanting to fire up a full raid of 40 to cruise around a major city but, 16GB has held me back. ;) Also, seeing as WoW's new file system has dramatically decreased the amount of space that it takes up on the drive (currently 19.5GB for me), I should be able to fit the entire folder into a RAM drive and then have about 10GB left on my system which is plenty to run a 5-box, or maybe even, a 10-box test.

For those interested, I chose the G.Skill Ripjaws (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231507) to replace the Corsair Vengeance (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233143) I currently have in there now. I've heard nothing but good things about G.Skill and I've really wanted to try them out -- Now I'll get my chance.

If UPS wants to show up at my door on Saturday, then hopefully I can get this show on the road sooner than later. I've been thinking of revamping the Multiboxing Hardware Science sticky anyway since MoP has given a slight update to the video engine and I figured this might be a nice way to start it all off.

In all actuality, I highly doubt I'd use a RAM drive for everyday use unless it shows some unbelievably fantastic results that I don't get when using an SSD -- But I think it'll be fun to play with none-the-less.

I'll start Googling and looking around other hardware forums, but does anyone here have any experience with RAM drive software?

UPDATE: Playing with some different choices at the moment:


http://i.imgur.com/G1igj.png


Decisions, decisions...


Note: Don't mind that the Direct IO is using an 8GB drive. It was a comparison run versus a 4GB drive to see if performance changed by doubling the size of the drive -- There was no difference in performance between the two.

[Blubber]

I'm curious to see if this will bring significant improvements, although I kind of doubt it. I'm guessing the load on the disk is very low while playing, except for some heavy spikes when it's loading textures, but we'll see. Also, how come writing is almost twice as fast as reading?

[MiRai]

I'm curious to see if this will bring significant improvements, although I kind of doubt it. I'm guessing the load on the disk is very low while playing, except for some heavy spikes when it's loading textures, but we'll see. Also, how come writing is almost twice as fast as reading?
I really have no idea why the read/write speeds differ so much... I'm totally new to all of this. :)

The improvement should be seen when in a heavily populated area like a major city or possibly a PvE raid or a large-scale PvP battle. I won't be able to test either a PvE or PvP raid so we'll just have to go off of what I can figure out in a highly populated city.

[Blubber]

The improvement should be seen when in a heavily populated area like a major city or possibly a PvE raid or a large-scale PvP battle. I won't be able to test either a PvE or PvP raid so we'll just have to go off of what I can figure out in a highly populated city.

Yes, but even in these situations I think io load is just a big spike, after that the textures are either in the vram or buffered in ram, at least I hope windows works this way (I have no clue, don't really use that crap for anything else then boxing). Which basically means that it might give you a big improvement, in a very small number of situations. I'm not quite sure it's worth the hassle of copying everything into ramdisk, and keeping both installs in sync.

[MiRai]

I'm not quite sure it's worth the hassle of copying everything into ramdisk, and keeping both installs in sync.
That's why I mention I probably won't use it for everyday use; but copying WoW from an SSD to a RAM drive at ~500MB/sec, that only really takes about a minute to copy the entire folder. ;)

[alcattle]

What were the times like using a SSD? Would be helpful to compare

[MiRai]

What were the times like using a SSD? Would be helpful to compare
It varies and I don't want to bench my own SSDs right now. ;) 560MB/510MB /sec sequential read/write is probably the max "rated" speed you'll see on the packaging of an SSD, however, real world performance varies from that as you can see in any SSD review (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6153/plextor-m5-pro-256gb-review/3).

Those three different software choices I have in the original post are showing over 10 times the speed of an SSD during a sequential read or write, and about 4-10 times as fast in the 4K area (both which are important while playing WoW).

[MiRai]

Alright, so I looked through a handful of threads on other forums, and I picked out 4 different pieces of software to test out on my system as it currently is. I'm looking for software that'll provide high numbers in the sequential (SEQ) and 4K areas because that's what WoW, and I would assume most other games, use the most.

ImDisk and QSoft are free, while Primo Ramdisk (Romex Software) and Dataram RAMDisk are not. I think Primo Ramdisk (Direct IO) is the way to go because it gives the best performance when you average everything out. QSoft provides the best 4K reads but, I think that giving up about 200MB/sec on 4K reads for a gain of about 1,200MB/sec in sequential reads is a fair trade off seeing as WoW does a lot of sequential reading from its MPQ files during gameplay (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-gaming-performance,2991-10.html). I couldn't really care less about writes because WoW doesn't write much to the drive while you're playing unless you do a /reload.

[daanji]

Instead of putting the entire WoW folder into RAM, would it be possible to just put a portion of it? Perhaps the MPQ where all the textures are located or the mostly heavily accessed file?

I have 24 GB of RAM and I'm 10-boxing, sure wouldn't mind faster load times but I could only make a 6-12 GB RAM drive.

[MiRai]

Instead of putting the entire WoW folder into RAM, would it be possible to just put a portion of it? Perhaps the MPQ where all the textures are located or the mostly heavily accessed file?

I have 24 GB of RAM and I'm 10-boxing, sure wouldn't mind faster load times but I could only make a 6-12 GB RAM drive.
The Data folder is where the MPQs are stored and it takes up 96% of my actual WoW folder. You might as well just throw the entire thing into RAM.

http://i.imgur.com/xfT5F.png

[remanz]

i used RAMDisk(a $10 software) for D3. Allocating 12G as a virtual disk. It performs as expected, fast read and fast write. But not day and night vs current gen SSD. It is a minor improvement if there is any.

however, the cost of having to fallback onto physical hard drive upon machine shut down and reload upon OS startup is too great IMO. My win7 start time went from 7 seconds (without RAMDISK loading stuff) to 1min 45 seconds. and My shut down takes like 10mins.

So in short, I think its worth using only for temp cache stuff (or use as scratch space for some software), where you do not have to copy onto it upon startup or offload it while shutting down.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Using the "mklink" command to hard-link the data folder to one in the RAMdrive probably makes the best sense. Not sure how much activity happens in WoW's cache folders but I suspect it's a lot less than the mpq files. Combine that with a startup script that does the copy and mklink setup, and it'll probably be the next best thing to transparent.

[MiRai]

i used RAMDisk(a $10 software) for D3. Allocating 12G as a virtual disk. It performs as expected, fast read and fast write. But not day and night vs current gen SSD. It is a minor improvement if there is any.
I wouldn't think that DIII would really benefit from a RAM drive; there's not really a lot of loading going on while playing is there? In real MMOs there is a vast world full of 3D environment/terrain, lots of character textures moving in and out of your camera view including a very large view distance in a 360° radius surrounding your player, and all of this needs to constantly be loaded and unloaded.

I'm not talking about seeing an improvement while walking from Goldshire to the Eastvale Logging Camp, I'm talking about trying to see an improvement in a large scale area with lots of players all in one place at the same time moving around and doing things; and that's why I can agree that it's probably not a big deal and slightly tedious to maintain a RAM drive.

On another note, RAM frequency controls how fast your RAM drive is although I'm not sure the price you pay for higher frequency RAM is really worth the speed increase it brings:

http://i.imgur.com/bSoiG.png

[Sam DeathWalker]

I wish I had time to set my stuffs up better, now that i have 64G ram (G skill also). Keep in mind that most wow transfers are 2K or less so the Seq and 512K spec is not as usefull as the 4K spec, for wow.


ImDisk and QSoft are free, while Primo Ramdisk (Romex Software) and Dataram RAMDisk are not. I think Primo Ramdisk (Direct IO) is the way to go because it gives the best performance when you average everything out. QSoft provides the best 4K reads but, I think that giving up about 200MB/sec on 4K reads for a gain of about 1,200MB/sec in sequential reads is a fair trade off seeing as WoW does a lot of sequential reading from its MPQ files during gameplay (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-gaming-performance,2991-10.html). I couldn't really care less about writes because WoW doesn't write much to the drive while you're playing unless you do a /reload.


Yes, writes is irrelivent. I think that the sequential reads are mostly during zoneing. I would go more for the faster 4K reads.

[daanji]

Are there any decent hardware based RAM Disks? I did a quick google search and the only thing I found was the i-Drive from Gigabyte.

That can only handle 4 GB though and looks to be pretty old tech.

[MiRai]

Are there any decent hardware based RAM Disks? I did a quick google search and the only thing I found was the i-Drive from Gigabyte.

That can only handle 4 GB though and looks to be pretty old tech.
RAM drives like that have come and gone since SSDs have hit the consumer market. There aren't many people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a 32GB/64GB drive when you can get a 128GB SSD for 1/4th of the price.

[daanji]

Well, I tried out Primo Ramk Disk Standard Edition. I made a 8 GB RAM Disk and put all the most heavily used MPQ files on it and used symbolic links on my WoW Data directory.

This include the following

world.MPQ
texture.MPQ
itemtexture.MPQ
model.MPQ

My system has 24 GB and my 10-box setup uses about 13 GB. So with 8 GB dedicated to the RAM Disk, I had plenty of head room for WoW.

Load times were shorter and running around in Org with my 10-box was significantly improved.

I played a battle ground, AV, and at the start it went very smooth. However, about 1/2 through the game I started getting crazy lag where all 10 clients were freeze up.

I'm not sure if it was the RAM Disk making my system unstable or something unrelated.

I will do a few more tests to confirm.

[daanji]

After doing more testing today, I determined that the source of the lag was my router. Apparently it was in a bad state and nothing but a hard reboot would cure it.


Anyway, I tried the RAM disk again with the above MPQ files on it. I saw significant improvements in overall game play. Everything was just smoother, especially in large 40-man battlegrounds.


One big improvement that I noticed is that "Interact With Target Circle-Jerk". With 5-boxing, my melee teams were always right on top of the target doing the circle of death.
With 10-boxing, my toons would do large circle-jerks around the target, which I attributed to CPU limitations.
With the RAM Disk, they circle the target much tighter than before. I'm not sure why this is the case. I assume that since the RAM Disk is too faster, the CPU has more time to do other times.

[remanz]

interesting. I gotta try this out. Do you have your wow on a standard SSD (so you are doing SSD + ram disk)

[daanji]

I have 2x SSD in RAID 0, I get about 600 MB/s with those in addition to the 8 GB RAM Disk.

So far, I think this is a reasonable trade off. It takes about 10 seconds to transfer the 8 GB of MPQ files to the RAM Disk, so restoring it isn't a problem.

[daviddoran]

I am intrigued. I bet a startup task like running synctoy to copy the MPQ files every login would work nicely to make it more transparent.

I wouldn't have thought it would make that big of a difference considering SSDs are already so much faster than HDDs. I'm definitely going to be setting up a ramdisk on my next PC build. What else would I do with the 64GB of ram I was gonna install?

[daanji]

Agreed. 64 GB of RAM is a LOT of memory. Unless you are doing a lot of Video, Photo, or 3D animation I don't think a normal user would ever use that much. Hell, even 10-boxing doesn't even come close.


Perhaps if you tried to do 40...or more clients of a more modern game (WoW is nearly 12 years old as development started around 2000).

[Baltyre]

I did a try.
I'm mainly 5boxing and i've got 16Go Ram, so i create a Direct IO ramdisk with Primo Standard.
I move the same MPQ than danji and i create link with :
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\world.MPQ" "Z:\world.MPQ"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\texture.MPQ" "Z:\texture.MPQ"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\itemtexture.MPQ" "Z:\itemtexture.MPQ"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\model.MPQ" "Z:\model.MPQ"

But i've got some intensive cpu usage the game is far from playable.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqfhZvyE80

It repeats after 7 min.

This software is only $19.99 and seems easy to use:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/huanglifu/5759172280/


Speed comparison:

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-ram-disk-software-benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/

The winner "bond disc" is 640mb max.


This is free:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=356046

http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk

[Baltyre]

I'm the only one with this cpu problem when using ram drive ?

[Oatboat]

Hmm... i wonder if it would load minecraft faster!?

[Sam DeathWalker]

This is free:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=356046 (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=356046)

http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk (http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk)

Ok I set that one up but I am using a program called Allway Sync to load the wow folder into the ram drive and to save it after each session. The saves are fast as they only save whats changed but loading the whole wow folder (about 28G) into the ram drive takes about 3 to 4 minutes. As others have pointed out you can just put the data files into the ram drive for 99percent of what I get putting the whole folder into the ram.

This is the code to put into the cmd file to use task to start at startup to make the ram drive each time the computer starts:

imdisk -a -s 33G -m Z: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"

It makes a 33G ram drive as drive Z.

Then Allway Sync will copy the wow folder from the hard drive to the ram disk.


Its hard to give performance specs as my video card (460 2G) is a bottleneck but I sure am not ever going back to not using the ram drive.

[Baltyre]

Seems less cpu intensive with imdisk.
I'm using that :

activate.bat
imdisk -a -s 8G -m X: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\world.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\texture.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\itemtexture.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\model.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\"
copy "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\*" "X:\"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\world.MPQ" "X:\world.MPQ"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\texture.MPQ" "X:\texture.MPQ"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\itemtexture.MPQ" "X:\itemtexture.MPQ"
mklink "S:\wow\wow\Data\model.MPQ" "X:\model.MPQ"

restore.bat
rm "S:\wow\wow\Data\world.MPQ"
rm "S:\wow\wow\Data\texture.MPQ"
rm "S:\wow\wow\Data\itemtexture.MPQ"
rm "S:\wow\wow\Data\model.MPQ"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\world.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\texture.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\itemtexture.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\"
move "S:\wow\wow\Data\linkedfiles\model.MPQ" "S:\wow\wow\Data\"
imdisk -D -m X:

[Sam DeathWalker]

Baltyre did it a lot better then I did.

The only downside of the auto activate and restore (although he might not have it set to auto, he can run his files by clicking the .bat files I think) is that sometimes you want the computer for other things and not wait the few minutes to load the ram drive.

Also if the activate did not work correctly and the created drive is blank then if you auto restore the ram to the hard drive you could lose all your data, you should have yet a third back up every week or so.

[moosejaw]

I set up Imdisk and used Baltyres Batch files last night, for the 8GB data move. Works well for a 5 man team. Org wasn't crowded enough for real good test. I may try to move a few more files since I also have 24gb of ram but have a little more headroom with a 5 man vs a 10 man team.

I use a single ssd (intel 520 series) and the file transfer to ram was very short. I'll time it today when I get home.

Edit: CPU headroom isn't an issue with the hex core i7 980. There wasn't any drastic difference in processor usage afaik.

Edit II: 11gb of files took 50 seconds on the single sata II ssd.

[MiRai]

Apologies for not getting back to this sooner...

I'll be honest, I didn't see a big improvement while taking a 5-man team to Orgrimmar on Illidan during peak hours and unless you really just want a RAM drive to have a RAM drive... I'd say a current gen SSD paired up with a nice beefy CPU/GPU will net you very similar results.

I wanted to see if a 10-man team would benefit more from the drive, but I couldn't take all 10 to Orgrimmar without having a few random instances crash due to running out of memory (what was left of it after the RAM drive). Oh well...

As others in the thread have shown, using free software can be a little more tedious getting the RAM drive all setup and working, but once it works it works. If you're willing to dish out $50 for a 2 PC lifetime license from Romex Software for Primo Ramdisk (http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-ramdisk/purchase.html), you can do all kinds of crazy things with it. I say $50 because the $20 Standard Edition license only lets you create a drive with a maximum size of 8GB (http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-ramdisk/features.html) so you're forced to kick it up to the Professional Edition for a 32GB max.

I'm obviously no expert in this field, and I'm sure you can accomplish the same thing with free software if you're willing to work with it, but Primo Ramdisk seemed to offer the best overall package with a very nice GUI. It has a fully functional free 30-day trial that I used to conduct the testing that I did.


I use a single ssd (intel 520 series) and the file transfer to ram was very short. I'll time it today when I get home.
Should take about a minute to move the entire folder into the RAM drive from an SSD hooked up via SATAIII.

[Multibocks]

Ok so I bought the Primo edition and I am unsure how to make it automagically load the WoW folder every time I start up. The FAQ isn't helping much, and help would be very appreciated!

[Sam DeathWalker]

This guy does some ram drive comparisons with wow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSXq6uJrRs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAOIV4KhlRM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAOIV4KhlRM

[JohnGabriel]

This guy does some ram drive comparisons with wow.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAOIV4KhlRM)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSXq6uJrRs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAOIV4KhlRM


Been getting alot of emails about the new Dimmdrive, either its from the same author of pwnboxer or he is an affiliate because they are sent from him.

Waiting to see what others thought of it.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I don't know about dimmdrive itself, I just saw the videos while looking for other things. Its not clear to me what it brings to the table beyond what I currently use. It does appear to be more convient and real time file sync whereas I have spend about 3 mintues to load and 10 seconds to unload my ram drive, and true enough if there is a power failure prior to me unloading (or I forget which has happened) the ram drive back to hard disk I will lose data. Still I don't see much advantage but of course there is no disadvantage either and it looks much simpler to set up.

[ebony]

Been getting alot of emails about the new Dimmdrive, either its from the same author of pwnboxer or he is an affiliate because they are sent from him.

Waiting to see what others thought of it.


yep its tim alright his main forums for his dualboxing is has closed down, follow has his live stream hard. so he moved on to the next "big thing"

[Ualaa]

When I registered on the newer multiboxing.com forum, Tim gave me a license for the Dimm Drive.

It seems really easy to use.
You set how large you want the ram drive to be.
You either drag a program shortcut into the launch area, or right click and configure the path.
There's another area for Steam games, basically the same deal.

Once a game is there, you click its bar to turn the application on/off.
There's a big button for Enable/Disable, which when clicked will launch the drive with anything that is set to be on.

You can then launch anything, that has been set to 'on', by clicking its' icon.

The DimmDrive syncs really quickly, which is the main feature it provides compared with other RamDrives I've heard of.
I've not actually launched anything, that would take advantage of being on a RamDrive... so cannot really comment on its performance.
The benchmark tool within it, from the video shows a pretty good increase in read/write performance compared with the platter drive.



There are some more advanced features.
You can set it to launch, when your system boots.
Which reduces the time before you're able to launch things... there is a small delay, when the drive enables.

You can also use a start up drive feature.
Basically hook up a USB hard drive, which might be faster to launch from, than from a platter drive.

[daviddoran]

Any updates to the RAM Drive question now that you have 64GB? I have 64 myself and most of the time it sits unused, so I figure if there's any improvement, it's worth it. I'm just concerned that if the PC crashes or the power goes out, I lose data, so I'd like to know which software package handles the folder synch the best.

DimmDrive looks pretty good to me, designed with gaming in mind rather than general computing.

[MiRai]

Any updates to the RAM Drive question now that you have 64GB? I have 64 myself and most of the time it sits unused, so I figure if there's any improvement, it's worth it. I'm just concerned that if the PC crashes or the power goes out, I lose data, so I'd like to know which software package handles the folder synch the best.

DimmDrive looks pretty good to me, designed with gaming in mind rather than general computing.
I honestly don't have any new information at this time and the new machine that I just built was showing numbers that I wasn't happy with when using the RAM Drive, that is, until I OC'd the processor -- Now they're back on par.

But, I'm going to stick to my original conclusion that a RAM drive really doesn't give that much of a performance boost over a modern high-performance SSD using a SATA III interface. When moving from a traditional HDD over to an SSD, you can definitely feel the boost in performance; but when moving from an SSD to a RAM Drive... There's just not that much of a noticeable improvement, if any, at all.

The textures have the ability to load ~20x faster when using a RAM Drive, but we're (referring to MMO players) still restricted by latency and how fast the server can deliver the information to our client(s).

As for the syncing stuff, I haven't delved too deep into the Primo software that I use and I'm not really too concerned with it because I would never expect to be working on my UI or anything like that when using the RAM Drive. Seeing as it takes about 60 seconds to move the entire WoW folder from my SSD into a RAM Drive, I would have done any work on my UI (or whatever else) and then moved the folder to the RAM Drive to play.

-------------------------------

To elaborate on my original conclusion:

A full 64GB of RAM can be pricey and anyone who doesn't have a system that's capable of handling that much RAM shouldn't feel like they're missing out on some ridiculous, must have, performance boost that's going to give them an edge in their favorite game. Hell, even those who do have a system capable of handling that much RAM shouldn't feel that way because, again, RAM at 8x8GB is expensive.

I'd highly recommend putting your money toward a nice fast SSD instead, specifically for your games and not being shared with the OS, and then you can enjoy 3-8 second loading screens -- They don't get much faster than that. Then put the extra money you just saved toward a new CPU or GPU so that you can turn up the video settings and get more FPS.

[Ualaa]

Having played around with DimmDrive a bit, I don't notice any improvement compared to not using it with Everquest I.
It could be, that the game is older and the system is not pushed by it at all... I remember much poorer performance, when the game was current.

Logging into the game, and changing zones, is fairly quick (about the same amount of time) with my normal drives or the DimmDrive.
I've got a pair of OCZ Vertex 3s, in RAID 0, as my Windows/Gaming Drive.

I'd expect a large improvement over a platter drive.
But a ram drive should still be quite a bit faster than an SSD (or 2x SSD in Raid 0).

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well times have changed, ram which was cheap is now a lot more costly. When the ram was cheap 64g was the way to go. Now its an open question if monies are better spent on other upgrades. I just got a 2nd main computer and am staying with 16G (planning to run 6 wow clients at low effects) and no ram drive, but am keeping the 64g and ram drive (really once you have one you won't go back to anything else) on my 1st main computer.

[Ualaa]

Ram (or a RamDrive) vs anything else.
It comes down to: what is the bottleneck, for whatever you're currently doing.