[HOWTO - RAMDRIVE] Increasing SWTOR System Performance

[TCin]

mkdir T:\SWTOR\swtor

mklink /j "%userprofile%\AppData\Local\SWTOR" "T:\SWTOR\"

mklink /J "T:\SWTOR\swtor\settings" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\retailclient\settings"

mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

 

 

^this is what i typed in ... ... seems right but IDK ..... if i had hair id pull it by now lol

 

 

here are my specs just in case ....

 

Board: PEGATRON CORPORATION VIOLET 3.02

Bus Clock: 200 megahertz

BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 5.16 07/01/2009

 

2.40 gigahertz AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-Core

512 kilobyte primary memory cache

2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache

2048 kilobyte tertiary memory cache

64-bit ready

Multi-core (4 total)

Not hyper-threaded

 

ATI Radeon HD 6800 Series [Display adapter] - 6870 2G GDDR5

HSG HF207 [Monitor] (20.3"vis, s/n 920CM3XY01033, May 2009)

SAMSUNG [Monitor] (39.8"vis, November 2009)

 

8192 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 2048 MB

Slot 'DIMM1' has 2048 MB

Slot 'DIMM2' has 2048 MB

Slot 'DIMM3' has 2048 MB

[Black-Mage]

But i use a Ramdisk, that save and load into a image file each restart, i dont have this problems with the Settings right?

[TCin]

I got it ....... thanks again

 

 

Great post BTW

Edited February 24, 2012 by TCin

[floriwie]

But i use a Ramdisk, that save and load into a image file each restart, i dont have this problems with the Settings right?

 

I u are saving the image of ur ramdisk between the reboots, then, yes, u don't need the link the settings folder...

[Ocmer_]

Thanks man, your suggestion worked!

 

Though 1 more question: When I start the game and check my processes in the task manager, Swtor still uses a total of 1.5gb RAM instead of the 4GB that I cached. Any idea why?

 

And yes, I use Win7 64bit with 8gb Ram.

 

Because the RAM drive is using the 4 GB, SWTOR is not allocating that.

 

Releena is right here, but to clarify it youll see the memory useage of 'system' go up. Imdisk itself does not show up in this case.

[Ocmer_]

But i use a Ramdisk, that save and load into a image file each restart, i dont have this problems with the Settings right?

 

Well if you save the image, it won't be a problem to save and load an image that has a link to the settings folder. Removing the setup or deleting the image won't be a problem bacause the settings are still valid.

 

In that case, same as me, you don't need to save the image everytime you shut down. You'll only need to load the image with (prob asset files) at begin of playing SWTOR. The only time I have to save a new image is now when a patch has been applied, but for that you still have to remove the whole asset file linking.

[Nacixems]

Question for OP.

 

if I just use superspeed 5 or the fancy .. products any special setup options or config settings i need for TOR? I would like to try those to see if it helps inprove the speed of the game first before doing the ram drive thing?

[mekipeki]

mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

 

 

Says it can't find the path and yes, T is the ram drive ( or local).

Edited February 24, 2012 by mekipeki

[Ocmer_]

mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

 

 

Says it can't find the path and yes, T is the ram drive ( or local).

 

Without a double \

mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

 

Or if you had since the beta

mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars-The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

Edited February 24, 2012 by Ocmer_

[mekipeki]

yeah sorry, I typed it here wrong since I didn't paste it, I didn't use double / originally. Now I pasted

 

mklink "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\SWTOR\DiskCacheArena" "T:\DiskCacheArena"

 

and still it can't find the path

 

 

edit: nevermind! I haven't had this since the beta, but I actually had to remove spaces between Star wars - the old republic, and it worked! Weird stuff. Thanks for the help!

Edited February 24, 2012 by mekipeki

[Mineria]

Are you sure you set it up properly? because it didnt work properly here at first either.

 

When you configure the program you have to start caching and after that press configure caching. Then you will have to reboot in order to make the changes.

 

Best settings so far;

 

Blocksize: 4KB (same as ntfs)

Algorithm: LRU

Cache Size: 2500MB here, depends on what you have available after a while when playing

Caching Strategy: Read-Only should suffice. But you can choose Read and Write if you have plenty of cache set.

 

Again it does not directly improve first-time loadtimes but after a bit of playing it works better and better. Im using LRU because the other algorithm doesn't seem to be as good in this scenario. You want to keep stuff loaded which is unpredictable as of whether it will be required any time soon. The LFU-R algorithm won't help with that since an unpredictable necessary read is often a seldom read. But LRU could already have cached it a while ago thus it will probably be the best algorithm for the job.

 

A bit hard to explain but anyway... It WORKS GREAT!

LRU = Least recently used

LFU = Least frequently used

 

Least frequently used is what I got it set as since the game is on it's own disk, which makes FC keep the files that are most read in memory.

On the other hand I use a 4GB cache for that disk as well, so probably why LRU works better for you.

 

Having the same block size or lower set as the NTFS cluster size performs better but, block size at 4KB will use more Memory than a larger size.

How much memory that the block size uses depends on the disks capacity.

Hence why Romexo added a default value dependent on the disk/volume capacity.

Just saying, keep an eye on memory usage when going with small block sizes.

[Crize]

Supporing this thread

[Marctraider]

LRU = Least recently used

LFU = Least frequently used

 

Least frequently used is what I got it set as since the game is on it's own disk, which makes FC keep the files that are most read in memory.

On the other hand I use a 4GB cache for that disk as well, so probably why LRU works better for you.

 

Having the same block size or lower set as the NTFS cluster size performs better but, block size at 4KB will use more Memory than a larger size.

How much memory that the block size uses depends on the disks capacity.

Hence why Romexo added a default value dependent on the disk/volume capacity.

Just saying, keep an eye on memory usage when going with small block sizes.

 

Yup I am aware of the larger memory overhead with smaller block sizes. Keeping a close eye on memory usage so thats not really a problem.

 

My theory of that LRU works better in this particular case is that the majority of the stutters is because of 'new' disk reads which didn't happen before. Unexpected reads from new textures that haven't been loaded up in memory before from the disk.

 

So at the first glance both algorithms aren't much of use, but after a while the situation changes. (But I guess it also depends on how much space you have available for the total cache, I can only spare about 2/2.5GB at max with my current available memory so in that case I believe LRU is best for me) For your situation, having more cache memory available, LFU could indeed be better. Both cannot predict what to pre-cache since the program doesn't have an algorithm to predict what is going to be needed.

[Lemon_King]

Supporing this thread

 

Thanks, been busy / tired the past few days.

Gonna do some reading and a pass on the OP tomorrow.

[releena]

This guide is meant to help with disk access performance. If you have performance issues in situations where the disk is hardly accessed it won't help you. If you're in a war zone everything you need is typcially loaded in your memory, your box just has to render it.

 

The disk is definitely continually being accessed throughout WZ.

 

Results after playing in Huttball for 10 mins prior, then logging all reads from then till the WZ ended: 11,000 reads.

 

5k reads just from dynamic_lower & head, which you'd think would have already been read & stored in system memory prior.

[Ocmer_]

I just added an ALL-IN-ONE batchscript for adding all three cache, fx asset and the seven dynamic asset files to the ramdisk.

 

For now it had a limited error reporting, eg one or multiple missing original asset files will be reported back with a hexadecimal number, which soon I hope to have a better reporting of exactly which asset files are missing.

 

In my original ALL-IN-ONE post (which has now 3 version on what to add to the ramdisk) there is a link to a post that holds the CACHE+FX+DYNAMIC version, as I hit the character limited of a post.

 

The code has been evenly more reduced than the other versions, because I reuse more code. I noticed for example the setup and mount part had the same code so from setup I linked it to mount, to reduce quite some code. This will be reflected in the future on the other scrips but that will not effect the working as I only reduce lines.

 

Edit; I tested the creating, removing (multiple times) but I did not test it while playing SWTOR as I don't have enough memory for it. I created this batchscrip because some of you asked for it, so please leave some feedback if you use this all-in-one dynamic version.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Ocmer_

[corrinado]

Thanks for this. Edited February 25, 2012 by corrinado

[Ocmer_]

Thanks for this.

I saw your post with reporting a problem with the CACHE+FX+DYNAMIC file, but seems you edited it back while I was rechecking my script in the linking part. Does it still persist, or is it resolved?

 

If not and it still crashes you might want to try to increase the ramdrive a bit;

set RamSize=4250M
set RamSize=4500M

Edited February 25, 2012 by Ocmer_

[Riochi]

If i have 6GIG of Ram what size Ramstick should I use?

[Roechacca]

wat is dis...I don't even...

 

Can u come to my house and hook this up?

[Ocmer_]

If i have 6GIG of Ram what size Ramstick should I use?

 

I would go for a maximum of 2GB ramdrive.

A ramdrive of 1.5GB can hold the three cache files and fx asset file.

 

wat is dis...I don't even...

 

Can u come to my house and hook this up?

These codes you see written in the OP have to be executed in cmd.exe

If this all moglybogely you can always check out the batchscrips that does things automatically for you,

it is also linked on the OP.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Ocmer_

[corrinado]

I saw your post with reporting a problem with the CACHE+FX+DYNAMIC file, but seems you edited it back while I was rechecking my script in the linking part. Does it still persist, or is it resolved?

 

If not and it still crashes you might want to try to increase the ramdrive a bit;

set RamSize=4250M
set RamSize=4500M

 

yes i did get a crash with the dynamic file, and after reverting back to just cashe+fx i did receive another crash. i was in a class instance when this occurred. after leaving the instance, and switched back to the dynamic file everything was going ok. i didn't play for much longer after but received no crashes. i was thinking it maybe had something to do with the story instance. i'll continue to use the dynamic version and will report back if i run into further issues.

[Ocmer_]

yes i did get a crash with the dynamic file, and after reverting back to just cashe+fx i did receive another crash. i was in a class instance when this occurred. after leaving the instance, and switched back to the dynamic file everything was going ok. i didn't play for much longer after but received no crashes. i was thinking it maybe had something to do with the story instance. i'll continue to use the dynamic version and will report back if i run into further issues.

 

Cool, and thnx for the feedback already

[Roechacca]

yes i did get a crash with the dynamic file, and after reverting back to just cashe+fx i did receive another crash. i was in a class instance when this occurred. after leaving the instance, and switched back to the dynamic file everything was going ok. i didn't play for much longer after but received no crashes. i was thinking it maybe had something to do with the story instance. i'll continue to use the dynamic version and will report back if i run into further issues.

 

 

I just figured out how to set my automatic coffee maker

[Omyz]

great information, thanks for sharing