How to Get Blazing Game Speed on a RAMdrive Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

You built yourself a better rig and sprung for 16 or 32GB of fast DDR3 to "future proof" a bit or just because you could Even if you moved up to an SSD large enough to house all your OS and program files you can achieve performance in excess of double the speed you get on SSD's by utilizing all that excess DDR3 to it's fullest. Detailed instructional videos on setting up a RamDrive can be viewed here: Radeonmemory.com . I don't specifically endorse AMD's ram drive, I simply noticed ads for it when installing a new GPU several generations of white box builds ago and was intrigued. I found theirs to be very easy to set up and use. I keep all Steam files and COP + Mod + Save game files on my Ram Drive image. With maxed out settings my initial load time is about 55 seconds and reloads about 5-6 seconds. Total Ram drive size required is just under 11GB, so if you have 16GB of DDR3 you can easily get away with a 12GB or 12288MB drive. The videos explain in detail, but for simplicities sake I will summarize: You create a ram drive of 12288MB or larger, use windows disk management to view your new partition and format it; FAT32 is fine. Now you can access it to install games files etc. via windows explorer. You save the disc image onto either your SSD or traditional hard drive. This takes a couple minutes. I check off the box to load my image when windows loads. You can now install whatever you want on your ram drive. Prepare to be stunned at how fast things run and load. I save my image whenever I will be away from my computer for a couple minutes. I back the image up regularly just like any other files I value. I do not have the image save automatically when windows closes because it takes longer to shut down. If you do not have an adequate UPS to keep your system either up fully long enough to save your ram disk or in suspend long enough to outlast any power outage do not use a ram drive. Besides the blazing speed in games, using ram reduces wear/leveling loads on your expensive SSD and will keep it running at peak performance longer.

Edited by: jasper34

We are running out of space for normal threads on forum and this one also deserves to be pinned. Rather then making this one pinned, put a link for this in already pinned thread like Alife.ltx objects per update stuttering reduction or post a new thread in PC Setup forum. It will be quickly burried in this general forum otherwise.

Good tips, btw could be usefull if I build better rig some day, not only for stalker games.

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I tacked it onto my last entry in the PC Setup Pinned forum you started. Yeah, many motherboards can't handle 32GB. I built my system to maximize enjoyment of this, my favorite game. With 32GB you could have as much as a 28GB Ramdrive and fit several games with save files on it. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't bother with an SSD anymore, or just a 32GB for Operating System only. I would spend the extra cash on more memory and the fastest conventional hard drive for bulk storage. Maybe you want to put out a request for people to delete their old threads that are now obsolete due to issues being fixed to clear up some space. It is really amazing just how many pages of comments have accumulated in what 18 months? It's a great community.

Just to point out something.

FAT32 has problems with files over...erm...a few gigs or whatever the hell it is. Sorry, I cannot remember off the top of my head. ANyway, format to NTFS and you can use larger single files.

Just google FAT32 max file size to learn more.

Fortunately game files are rarely 2GB in size, but it is a good point. Just for the heck of it I am reformatting my Ram Drive NTFS to see if the image saves or loads quicker. It should be slightly more efficient. I will post results and see if it effects performance any.

Formatting NTFS didn't seem to make any performance changes or reduce save time. Still it was an interesting experiment