BF2S Forums Is anybody using a RAMDRIVE?

I originally looked into ramdrives several years ago when building a HTPC.  That was going to have windows loaded on the ramdisk.  That device was a rocketdrive from Cenatek and it actuall drew power from the PSU while the computer was off to store files almost indefinetly.  This gigabyte product is something different, in which your right, has a battery. 

I wouldn't load windows on the drive; just bf2, any additional space I'd set as the swap file.  There are also software ramdrives that would work using the system memory  (This is actually the origin of ramdrives).  The problem would be each time you reboot, your ramdrive would start empty.  You'd simply have to set a batch file or script to copy your install back over to the ramdrive before you fired up the game.

The end goal would to be in-game quickly, to gain tactical advantage.  And hopefully decrease in-game jitters as aditional textures are cached or loaded.

Tin_Whisker wrote:

I originally looked into ramdrives several years ago when building a HTPC.  That was going to have windows loaded on the ramdisk.  That device was a rocketdrive from Cenatek and it actuall drew power from the PSU while the computer was off to store files almost indefinetly.  This gigabyte product is something different, in which your right, has a battery. 

I wouldn't load windows on the drive; just bf2, any additional space I'd set as the swap file.  There are also software ramdrives that would work using the system memory  (This is actually the origin of ramdrives).  The problem would be each time you reboot, your ramdrive would start empty.  You'd simply have to set a batch file or script to copy your install back over to the ramdrive before you fired up the game.

The end goal would to be in-game quickly, to gain tactical advantage.  And hopefully decrease in-game jitters as aditional textures are cached or loaded.

Problem. . .

The optimized shaders are stored in the C:\Mydocuments folder. . .

Would need to look into whether those can be moved to the ramdrive or not - by changing a config setting somewhere in BF2.

These are the files that take time loading. . . it might be pointless if they are not on the ramdrive as well.

One other idea - is the possibilty of configuring 2 iRAMs (which works on the standard SATA controlller) into a merged raid 0 configuration. This would increase the max capacity to 8 gigs.

An additional install of windows (minimal) + bf2 could be installed on this - if a raid 0 config is stable with 2 merged iRAM drives.

This would eliminate the problem with C:\My documents containing the optimized shader files.

I think I might experiment and try this out.

Last edited by topal63 (2006-04-05 10:33:29)

ah hem..... $$$ anyone?

It WOULD load HEAPS faster, but i would wait for Giga-Byte's iRam II that supports SATAII, for double bandwidth, coz ram is greatly bottlenecked there. But do you seriously only want 4 gigs? Maybe spend more $$$ for another in RAID 0 and have 8 gigs max? kinda..... well.... you decide

Yup assasin is correct you wouldn't see that much of an improvement. The issue of where BF2 saves it's config files is simple, you'd just have to change your my documents folder to the ram drive as well.

Here is the major problem, the ram drive its a PCI card in otherwords 32bit/33Mhz and a total bandwidth of 132MB/s over the bus. That means you could only get 132 MB/s out of the drive when nothing else is happening, no sound etc, but inreality you get less. Ram drives do have the advantage of very short latencies (seek times) which is good for battlefield which loads alot of little files one after another.

But even scsi, sata, or sataII won't get better than 133 MB/s if it's installed over a 32/33Mhz pci bus.

So you have two options: either, go with a 64/66 or PCI-X etc addin raid card which would increase the bandwidth to 512 MB/s or greater and use several fast drives such as 15K scsi or the 150G raptors in raid-0. However even if you used 4 raptors or fast scsi's you probably wouldn't see more than a 280MB/s read speed.

A third option and probably cheaper option would be using the main memory. Instead of buying 4G of memory for the card get a board which supports the memory like Chewy.  Install the game to main memory in a virtual drive.

In either case, all of the options other than a 150G Raptor, its pretty much cost prohibitive.

Personally, 15K scsi drive (Free, I got really really lucky it's a $700 dolar drive, probably 300 on e-bay), adaptec 39320 (100buck e-bay), cable with terminator ($40). So for 150 Bucks I have a drive that does circles around the raptor.

Last edited by vjs (2006-04-05 15:41:13)

Thanks for the help.  I think for at least t trial run, using a system based RAM Drive might be in the future.

vjs wrote:

Yup assasin is correct you wouldn't see that much of an improvement. The issue of where BF2 saves it's config files is simple, you'd just have to change your my documents folder to the ram drive as well.

Here is the major problem, the ram drive its a PCI card in otherwords 32bit/33Mhz and a total bandwidth of 132MB/s over the bus. That means you could only get 132 MB/s out of the drive when nothing else is happening, no sound etc, but inreality you get less. Ram drives do have the advantage of very short latencies (seek times) which is good for battlefield which loads alot of little files one after another.

But even scsi, sata, or sataII won't get better than 133 MB/s if it's installed over a 32/33Mhz pci bus.

So you have two options: either, go with a 64/66 or PCI-X etc addin raid card which would increase the bandwidth to 512 MB/s or greater and use several fast drives such as 15K scsi or the 150G raptors in raid-0. However even if you used 4 raptors or fast scsi's you probably wouldn't see more than a 280MB/s read speed.

A third option and probably cheaper option would be using the main memory. Instead of buying 4G of memory for the card get a board which supports the memory like Chewy.  Install the game to main memory in a virtual drive.

In either case, all of the options other than a 150G Raptor, its pretty much cost prohibitive.

Personally, 15K scsi drive (Free, I got really really lucky it's a $700 dolar drive, probably 300 on e-bay), adaptec 39320 (100buck e-bay), cable with terminator ($40). So for 150 Bucks I have a drive that does circles around the raptor.

By the way, I have done the SCCI route before in the past and it was just a pain in the butt.  Mounting all keeping everything up and running was too much work.  Hopefully you are having better luck than I had, but it was not fun.  Two 74gig Raptors have been simple, consistant, and I am still the first person in every round.

Well when your considering ram drives, price isn't really that much of an option is it?

What I'd suggest since price is no option, is a dual opteron board with dual channel ram per cpu. Since you have to buy the ram anyways you could easily put 8G of ram into the system.  Partition off 4G for a ram disk and have it load on startup... there are several programs out there which will copy files from a ram drive to a harddrive (back and forth on boot). You could also do it with scripts considering you shouldn't really have to save bf2 back to harddrive on shutdown.

Virtual drive comes to mind from the olddays.

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

Note on SCSI, SCSI should really be the most stable platform out there, it's what's used in servers. As for price you should really check e-bay, I'm seriously considering a 0+1 dual channel raid with an add-on 256MB card such as the adaptec 3210S. 4 36K 15K drives, you could seriously do this for less than 500 bucks.

Compared to; 2x 400 dollar video cards; 800 dollar processors; 300 dollar ram; and 250 dollar sound cards it's not a bad investment. Besides a harddrive is the only thing that makes your computer work from one day to another, stores you vital information (been burned to many times with crashed deskstars etc.).

The only problem is people are scared by 60 dollar harddrive sales producing 200G of storage. Do you really need that much space? Also there is nothing saying that you can't use ata for storage, I use an older 40G ata drive for torrents.

Last edited by vjs (2006-04-11 07:55:54)

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Uh, price is an option. The actual RAM drives themselves are insanely cheap. It just costs alot to fill them up with large modules.

Otherwise, if you have alot of old memory lying around (even mismatched), you can just toss them in your drive and use it for word processing or, if large enough, graphics files. Or a temporary internet cache file. Or whatever you want. You don't really have to worry about short power outages, as their batteries are long enough to hold whatever information's in there until power comes back up. Just don't forget to move the stuff to your hard drive before you purposefully shut down.

erm, you would end up with, what, 768mb of iRam Space? not enuf for daily use i think

vjs wrote:

What I'd suggest since price is no option, is a dual opteron board with dual channel ram per cpu. Since you have to buy the ram anyways you could easily put 8G of ram into the system.  Partition off 4G for a ram disk and have it load on startup... there are several programs out there which will copy files from a ram drive to a harddrive (back and forth on boot). You could also do it with scripts considering you shouldn't really have to save bf2 back to harddrive on shutdown.

Good golly what a pain though. That's the single advantage of the RamDrive devices with batteries is that, unlike system memory, they persist between restarts.

I imagine some really smart motherboard will do this to at some point -- maybe.

In other news, Samsung is setting up to release 32GB Solidstate drives. G'damn. Those will be slick as sin. Fast, power-outage-tolerant, no moving parts, small, tiny heat output, SILENT. Take 4 of those, throw them into a raid over SATA2 and it's going to be something else to compete with -- ESPECIALLY in random access tests. (Memory, compared to a physical spinning disk, is extremely good and finding non-synchronous data)

them or iWill (the gibson mobo is by iwill, supports up to 64gb of ram )

VJS: Which motherboard do you have that supports pci-e and 64bit pci to use the 39320?