Expensive way to reduce loading times

[Lax]

So back on topic, I started to run a test on this last year but 24GB was not sufficient for me to put WoW's data folder on a RAM drive and be able to comfortably run my 5 WoWs. I have another 8GB waiting to be put in my PC to do a real test, but haven't had a chance yet. (Plus I had to wait for a proper Windows 7 64-bit RAM drive)

Obviously, as has been pointed out, this is not a cost effective solution. It requires a server motherboard (I'm running dual quad-core Xeon) and lots of RAM. And to be honest, I'm happy enough with the performance from my WD Raptor. I just want to see how it performs. I'll share my results.

[Pycno]

Actually many socket 1366 desktop botherboards support 6x4gb dimms for a total of 24gb ram. If you take 24Gb and remove 6gb (for WoW and OS) you are still left with 18gb space. Wow should fit onto this, at least if you clean/delete cinematics and screenshots. I have not tested this at all and dont want to contradict you but it surprises me that it did not work, are you sure you did everything right?

[Lax]

Okay it looks like my motherboard is only recognizing 20-22GB, even with 32GB installed. And after trying it again today I'm having the same problem I recall having before -- WoW won't read some of the files. Previously I thought this was from not being able to fit everything on the ram disk, but I tried it with all of WoW on the ram disk instead of just the data folder, and no joy.

I think this is because of a bug in ImDisk (the ram disk I'm trying). Running chkdsk on the ram disk shows it has lots of errors.

I'll have to try with a commercial ram disk.

[Pycno]

There are many ramdrive-applications, maybe the one you tried just didnt work so good? Could be worthing installing several ram-drive free trials and see if some works better then others. Its weird that only 20-22Gb's of memory is recognized, maybe a bios update will fix it? Sure sounds like there something that isnt working exactly like it should at least, shouldnt be any errors on the drive imo.