[HOWTO - RAMDRIVE] Increasing SWTOR System Performance

[mrkitethreeeight]

HI, I'm doing something wrong and its probably a derp moment.

 

So I used Starwind and got the drives set up, I'm now up to the folder junction I've found my install location and everything but in cmd the first line "mkdir T:\SWTOR\swtor" just comes up saying the system cannot find the drive specified.

 

any help would be great, like I said I'm probably just not reading something properly

 

Do you see t: in Windows Explorer? If not, did you create the spanned volume as instructed in the first post?

[Lemon_King]

Do you see t: in Windows Explorer? If not, did you create the spanned volume as instructed in the first post?

Pretty much what I was going to post. Make sure you spanned it and gave the drive a letter of T: or change the batch file to match the letter of your choosing.

[flem]

Windows Vista / 7: Copy and paste the text into a batch file. Either RMB - run as administrator, or create a shortcut and check "Run this program as an administrator" from the compatibility tab.

You have to use the Advanced tab for Run as Admin in Win7, at least with UAC on. The one in Compatibility is perma-greyed out.

[mrkitethreeeight]

You have to use the Advanced tab for Run as Admin in Win7, at least with UAC on. The one in Compatibility is perma-greyed out.

 

Right you are. I'll fix that, thanks.

Edited January 24, 2012 by mrkitethreeeight

[unclekaula]

How do you know if its working?

[Invesco]

Am I doing something wrong if my T: drive is

 

985 MB free of 1.99GB?

 

Also, when the game is running the two diskcache files in the SWTOR file are 0kb.

[XortiN]

How do you know if its working?

 

Would be nice to have someone reply with some hard numbers of before and after on how it ran. Unfortunately with it being an MMO it will be different everytime so to many variables but I think with the space you could get an idea or avg it out in your head.

 

What were you getting before for fps?

Now what do you get on avg?

[Lemon_King]

Am I doing something wrong if my T: drive is

 

985 MB free of 1.99GB?

 

Also, when the game is running the two diskcache files in the SWTOR file are 0kb.

 

Looks right, the Static and Stream files should show 0kb until refreshed when looking at the T Drive.

[DarthRobert]

Thanks for the suggestion OP. +1 to you.

[Mannic]

Nice. I went from 75-ish FPS to over 100 after this. Why? Me no understand. That's with everything except AA set to "high." (AA to low, the high-quality AA makes my graphics look slightly blurry.)

[unclekaula]

Would be nice to have someone reply with some hard numbers of before and after on how it ran. Unfortunately with it being an MMO it will be different everytime so to many variables but I think with the space you could get an idea or avg it out in your head.

 

What were you getting before for fps?

Now what do you get on avg?

 

I was meaning how would I know if it was successfully setup. I do see drive has about a gig used up worth of space (out of 2) so does that mean I set it up right?

[Lethality]

These things don't sound like things players should have to do to improve performance of a computer game.

[Moosimoo]

These things don't sound like things players should have to do to improve performance of a computer game.

 

Its called choice. PC users can tweak their machines to get more power out of them (read: remove/reduce bottlenecks, which is what the OP is doing). I know you meant we shouldn't NEED to, but this is just for clarity

 

BTW OP, you can read the install location from the registry. Those of us who install outside of the default location cannot use %appdata% etc. Then again those of us who installed outside of the default location know how to amend your script I think.

 

This would be soooo simple under Linux...

[Moosimoo]

I was meaning how would I know if it was successfully setup. I do see drive has about a gig used up worth of space (out of 2) so does that mean I set it up right?

 

Yes. SWTOR tends to have a 1gig local pagefile, which is what you had recreated in the ramdisk. You should see performance increase when reading from this pagefile. Note: it won't be immediately apparent, you need to cache something first, so give the game a few minutes.

[Fentz]

so, if you do this, can you play swtor without making the ram disk afterwards? and will starting it without any ram disk reset the whole thing and you have to redo it if you wanna use ram disk again? Edited January 24, 2012 by Fentz

[JScranton]

Awesome post, thanks!

 

I don't have this issue currently, as I'm running my Win 7 bootup and SWTOR on my SSD (Agility 3), and I know it will shorten the life of the drive, but meh, I bought it to use it, hehe.

 

Anyhow, I have a few friends that might benefit from this, as they have some older hardware, so thank you very much for posting this, will give it a shot!

[Barracudastr]

Not working for me my drive isn't using anything....

 

I start the game and it is 1.90/1.99 even after hours of playing.

 

And the disk cache ends up in the default folder at 1 gig like usual... Not sure what I am doing wrong.

 

My settings are also reset every time I load the game as well :/

 

mkdir F:\SWTOR\swtor
mklink /J "%userprofile%\AppData\Local\SWTOR" "F:\SWTOR\"
mklink /J "F:\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" "F:\DiskCacheArena"

[SIMJEDI]

so, if you do this, can you play swtor without making the ram disk afterwards? and will starting it without any ram disk reset the whole thing and you have to redo it if you wanna use ram disk again?

 

No, after you do this the game will not run unless you have the ramdisk loaded as the junctions the script in the OP will always point the game to the ramdisk. To fix this read below.

 

Just make sure to save the orginal SWTOR folder in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local. No need to delete it just rename it. I renamed mine swtor-original.

 

When not wanting to use a RAMdisk just delete the SWTOR junction that the given script in the OP creates for you in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local, then rename your backup folder that you created back to it's original name.

 

The action of saving the original swtor folder should be emphasized instead of deleting it so people can go back and easily undo the changes if using this method dosent work for them.

[Barracudastr]

Okay fixed the settings part but Its still not caching correctly.

 

The two files I have in the ram drive are only taking up 2/3 megs each.

 

While the file in the main folder on the HDD is using 1 gig still.

[mrkitethreeeight]

Its called choice. PC users can tweak their machines to get more power out of them (read: remove/reduce bottlenecks, which is what the OP is doing). I know you meant we shouldn't NEED to, but this is just for clarity

 

BTW OP, you can read the install location from the registry. Those of us who install outside of the default location cannot use %appdata% etc. Then again those of us who installed outside of the default location know how to amend your script I think.

 

This would be soooo simple under Linux...

 

Um, see awesome batch file from bottom of OP.

[Moosimoo]

Um, see awesome batch file from bottom of OP.

 

Aye I know, was saying that its possible to find out where the game is installed by querying the registry. TBH thats probably just a lot of overengineering though.

[Rion_Starkiller]

Okay fixed the settings part but Its still not caching correctly.

 

The two files I have in the ram drive are only taking up 2/3 megs each.

 

While the file in the main folder on the HDD is using 1 gig still.

 

 

After each reboot:

 

 

imdisk -a -s 2G -m T: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"  

mkdir F:\SWTOR\swtor

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

 

You must redo line 3 because the junction points FROM the RAMdisk to your HD. Each reboot deletes that particular junction because your whole F:\ drive is deleted. When the junction points FROM your HD, it is permanent unless you manually delete it.

 

This is what I was overlooking and it fixed my problems -- which were very similar to yours. I think this should fix both of your issues.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Rion_Starkiller

[mrkitethreeeight]

Aye I know, was saying that its possible to find out where the game is installed by querying the registry. TBH thats probably just a lot of overengineering though.

 

Tis, tis. I think this whole thread is a bit overengineered, but I'm having fun with it.

 

In the command prompt, I redo lines 1 & 3 after creating the RAMdisk -- on each reboot:

 

 

imdisk -a -s 4G -m T: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"  

mkdir F:\SWTOR\swtor

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

 

Those settings are a bit different, have you been using 4G instead of 2G for the ramdisk?

 

For Barracudastr, that line needs to read:

 

imdisk -a -s 2G -m F: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"  

Edited January 24, 2012 by mrkitethreeeight

[Rion_Starkiller]

Yeah, I'm using 4 gb. I have 16 gigs of RAM sitting there doing nothing. One of these days I'll find something else to do with the extra 2 gb.

 

 

Those settings are a bit different, have you been using 4G instead of 2G for the ramdisk?

 

For Barracudastr, that line needs to read:

 

imdisk -a -s 2G -m F: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"  

 

 

Fixed for Barracuda.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Rion_Starkiller

[Lemon_King]

Its called choice. PC users can tweak their machines to get more power out of them (read: remove/reduce bottlenecks, which is what the OP is doing). I know you meant we shouldn't NEED to, but this is just for clarity

 

BTW OP, you can read the install location from the registry. Those of us who install outside of the default location cannot use %appdata% etc. Then again those of us who installed outside of the default location know how to amend your script I think.

 

This would be soooo simple under Linux...

 

>_>

I have the game sitting in: S:\Applications\Star Wars-The Old Republic

Which is way outside of the default install location.

 

But the way BWA has the client setup to save said files under %appdata% - %userprofile%\appdata\local\ .

 

 

No, after you do this the game will not run unless you have the ramdisk loaded as the junctions the script in the OP will always point the game to the ramdisk. To fix this read below.

 

Just make sure to save the orginal SWTOR folder in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local. No need to delete it just rename it. I renamed mine swtor-original.

 

When not wanting to use a RAMdisk just delete the SWTOR junction that the given script in the OP creates for you in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local, then rename your backup folder that you created back to it's original name.

 

The action of saving the original swtor folder should be emphasized instead of deleting it so people can go back and easily undo the changes if using this method dosent work for them.

Altered the step to rename the old folder to make things easier. Edited January 24, 2012 by Lemon_King