Re: ramdisk / ramdrive and gaming?

**ChopStick** · 09-21-2007, 03:24 PM

I know about the subject matter, nor do I have anything contribute but I am quite interested and I have a question. If you were to run a game from RAM, would it not be erased once the computer is shut down?

**tHa_KhAn** · 09-21-2007, 03:31 PM

Originally Posted by sordavie

On a side note to Gambit, I don't think that to model a human mind you need lots of memory. First, the brain does not work like a typical digital computer. Instead, what we'd need is a very complex artificial neural net. That's because the brain just is a neural net. In particular, it does not have a data storage place and algorithms to retrieve and send data there. If the mind just is realized by the brain, then there's no reason to think that the mind is algorithm based, which means that no digital computer will ever be able to represent a mind since they are algorithm based. So, representing a human mind isn't a matter of having lots of memory or fast CPUs. A human mind is just something completely different than a digital computer.

Read Blondie 24 by Fogel if you haven't. Great little book on a neural net based checker playing program and the whole idea of A.I. based on neural nets.

Back to Wyz, more and more games have published command line options to adjust the amount of memory used. You could probably experiment with some outrageous numbers and see what the return is. This isn't an exact solution, but could be an interesting experiment.

**sordavie** · 09-21-2007, 03:36 PM

Yeah, I'm inclined to stay away from pop-science books, but thanks. In a philosophy of AI class I took, we wrote virtual artificial toy neural nets and an accompanying program that taught them how to add and subtract. It was pretty interesting.

**Acreo Aeneas** · 09-21-2007, 06:57 PM

You have to keep in mind that if you plan on using a custom setup, problem solving becomes intricately more complex. And if your ramdisk were to fail, it'll probably cost you a pretty penny to replace it (compared with traditional HDDs).

I don't think many people realize this, but XP already "precaches" program data to an extent by storing settings and such on your hard drive for faster retreival. I wouldn't be surprised if Vista also does the same thing.

Edit: Personally, I would probably get used to the "speediness" of having everything load faster, then some period later feel it isn't fast enough. It would egg me in many different ways of which I'd be spending a whole lotta time and money.

**Wyzcrak** · 09-21-2007, 10:29 PM

Originally Posted by ChopStick

I know about the subject matter, nor do I have anything contribute but I am quite interested and I have a question. If you were to run a game from RAM, would it not be erased once the computer is shut down?

There are solutions to preserve the data. I don't know how "easy" they are, but they're there.

Another solution, also arguably "not that easy", is to put into the RAM drive only the content that doesn't change, but that takes a while to load during gameplay, like maps (and maybe textures?).

**TheEradicator** · 08-20-2009, 09:13 AM

A friend of mine put battlefield 2 on a ramdisk and apparently it got him banned from a couple of servers cause he had almost no load time so every game he would already have capped some points before anyone else loaded in. I have 6 gigs of ram so at lans ill stick wc3 or a couple other gig or less games on my ram just to make sure i win the "waiting for players" game. Also if you have a 32bit os and a processor that supports PAE a ramdisk can exist on the ram that the os cant see then you can stick other junk on it (like games) or put your pagefiles on it.

**Dick Blonov** · 08-20-2009, 09:38 PM

Originally Posted by Wyzcrak

Another solution, also arguably "not that easy", is to put into the RAM drive only the content that doesn't change, but that takes a while to load during gameplay, like maps (and maybe textures?).

BF2 already does this ; that's why your first map load time is longer than subsequent map load times.

DB

**kevlarorc** · 08-21-2009, 01:29 AM

i'll say that I haven't read all of the replies so I dont know if this has already been mentioned but when I was fooling about with TweakXP Pro it allowed me to create a RAMdisk drive that is just a 48 MB area of the memory that acts as a hard drive. Perhaps its possible to create the same thing but larger and install full games on it?

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