SWTOR Unleashed (game files in RAM to improve performance)

[CaptRavenous]

SWTOR Unleashed 3.3.0 is out.

 

I heartily endorse this event and/or product.

[exca]

Yes, for a system using an SSD readyboost probably wouldn’t help and I never said it would. What I said was ‘The only way to boost load speeds for TOR is have a USB 3.0 slot, put in a 8+ gig thumb drive, and activate the whole device for Readyboost.’ though you could also use a flash drive they just dont seem to help as much as the 3.0 thumb drive does. I've tried both with 16gb devices and the 3.0 USB was always the faster load.

 

My PC is a laptop, I-7 2860 CPU @ 3.5Ghz, 16gigs ddr3 1333 ram and 2 WD 7200rpm Scorpio Black drives. With those components when I go to Corrilia it takes anywhere from 65 to 80 seconds to load on my IP which is 25Mbps/5Mbps without any ram/boost mods running.

 

With SWTOR Unleashed the loads are the same. With Unleashed and readyboost the load is between 45 and 60 seconds the first time I go and about 5-15 seconds thereafter. Without Unleashed running and with readyboost active the loads are the same first time and after, between 45 and 60 seconds then 5 to 15 seconds.

 

So, yes, readyboost can in fact speed up your load times, even on the first visit to a planet, and a huge speed up after you’ve been once. If you want to see this in action, look me up on Pot5, and I’ll be happy to show you. Or, test it for yourself. It works for me.

 

edit-The one drawback is heat. Readyboost generates a lot of it on my laptop so I use a 3 fan cooling pad also. Even with that it still runs in the 65-70c range or rather hot while playing TOR and using Unleashed and RB.

It's quite simple, it's because your hard drive is slow. So running the game from a USB3 drive is faster than hard drive but slower than SSD which is also slower than Unleashed.

Realise that when you load an area the game mostly never load "again" LocalApp, DiskArena, FX or Dynamic (which are only loaded dynamically while moving in the game). You are instead loading planet files etc.... which you didn't put in Unleashed ram drive.

Nothing is really surprising in computing. It's just that until you understand what's really going on, you might be mislead.

Edited October 14, 2012 by exca

[Rothie]

It's quite simple, it's because your hard drive is slow. So running the game from a USB3 drive is faster than hard drive but slower than SSD which is also slower than Unleashed.

Realise that when you load an area the game mostly never load "again" LocalApp, DiskArena, FX or Dynamic (which are only loaded dynamically while moving in the game). You are instead loading planet files etc.... which you didn't put in Unleashed ram drive.

Nothing is really surprising in computing. It's just that until you understand what's really going on, you might be mislead.

 

I’m not really sure what you think I’m trying to say. lol I understand quite well what’s going on and why it’s happening the way it does for each iteration I gave. I’m not saying readyboost will “magically” increase you throughput or anything either. What I am saying is that for the majority of computer users, (most don’t have SSD’s) using it will in fact show them noticeable decreases in load times, whether by not having to load a file successively after its stored or decreased seek times from a platen drive.

 

A difference of 30 plus seconds is a NOTICLEABLE decrease in load times, so saying readyboost won’t help is just wrong. Yes, Readyboost isn’t making the files download faster. It’s just making you have to download less data, either would lower the total time to travel, so who cares about semantics, faster is faster.

[exca]

I’m not really sure what you think I’m trying to say. lol I understand quite well what’s going on and why it’s happening the way it does for each iteration I gave. I’m not saying readyboost will “magically” increase you throughput or anything either. What I am saying is that for the majority of computer users, (most don’t have SSD’s) using it will in fact show them noticeable decreases in load times, whether by not having to load a file successively after its stored or decreased seek times from a platen drive.

 

A difference of 30 plus seconds is a NOTICLEABLE decrease in load times, so saying readyboost won’t help is just wrong. Yes, Readyboost isn’t making the files download faster. It’s just making you have to download less data, either would lower the total time to travel, so who cares about semantics, faster is faster.

I said all this because you compare/talk about unleashed noticing it doesn't change a thing about loading times while it's not made for this and you're not including in it the files you load. What's the point then?

By the way I agree 100% people should use in addition to unleashed readyboost if they don't have a SSD to speed up their loading times.

[Rothie]

I said all this because you compare/talk about unleashed noticing it doesn't change a thing about loading times while it's not made for this and you're not including in it the files you load. What's the point then?

By the way I agree 100% people should use in addition to unleashed readyboost if they don't have a SSD to speed up their loading times.

 

Yep, you misconstrued my point, or I should say I stated my point poorly. Yea, I looked back and did say ‘speed’ when I should have used ‘time’ instead. My comments were directed at swredrage’s comment about load times being at biowares mercy.

 

Most people don’t have enough ram to run all of SWTOR from Unleashed, so it’s not going to help them decrees time to planet travel. Adding a readyboost device along with Unleashed, for most players will help them in the long run. That was my point.

 

If you thought I was knocking your program, quite the opposite, I use it religiously. But it is designed for a specific use and once that’s maximized you need to add something in addition. For the average user, a readyboosted device is the easiest and cheapest thing to add. You can buy a 16gig SDHD flash drive for about $10us which is a lot cheaper than the cost of an SSD for your system.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Rothie

[Jayten]

What's the benefit of ticking the "add an extra 100MB" in additional options?

 

I also have 8gigs of ram, and with the recommended 7gb setup I'm getting the RAM warning each time I try to start up in Unleashed.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Jayten

[RuthlessSloth]

Hey, I have 4GB of RAM and I choose the select FX and Local Maps options and try to run it unleashed, but I do that and I get a pop up saying I don't have enough RAM to do that, any ideas what's going on?

[Gryphandor]

What's the benefit of ticking the "add an extra 100MB" in additional options?

 

I also have 8gigs of ram, and with the recommended 7gb setup I'm getting the RAM warning each time I try to start up in Unleashed.

 

Should not be possible with 8 gigs of ram to expect it to start. The operating system is running for crying out loud.

[Jayten]

I'm not saying Unleashed is using 7gb... I'm saying I'm using your recommended settings for 7gb of available ram, of which I have 8 (this equates to about 4.1gb usage from Unleashed.) Edited October 15, 2012 by Jayten

[Muesliac]

Thanks a lot for this!

 

I've had problems with sound stuttering (I actually had opened a ticket.... open for over a week, no response :-/).

As a last shot, I tried Unleashed. And not only did it solve my crackling/stuttering sound, it also upped my framerate and culled (micro-)stuttering animations. Again, my sincerest thanks. Plays like butter through a hot knife, now!

 

 

...Though I really have a hard time understanding what caused my sound to stutter in the first place. Since Unleashed seems to primarily utilize more of my RAM (8 Gigs here), can it be that sound files in TOR are heavily compressed, and the constant stuttering comes from TOR not being able to handle the decompression/playback on my system? That said, I run a lot of games on this rig (from WoW to TSW, ME3 and Skyrim), and TOR is the only one with any problem.

 

Hugs and cake. Yes, there will be cake (since I can't eat any, but I love baking it ;-).

[AuralSects]

I have installed the new version 3.3 and have 8 GIG of RAM.

 

However, I keep getting an error message saying I don't have enough memory allocated even if I select the bare minimum of only 50MB to create the disk. I have everything unchecked and it still gives me this error. I have looked under processes and have closed all unnecessary programs.

 

I have 8 GIG of RAM, used CPU-Z and checked windows processes to see how much RAM I am using (only 725MB) and have 2.5 free, 2.5 available.

 

Please help!

[exca]

What's the benefit of ticking the "add an extra 100MB" in additional options?

 

I also have 8gigs of ram, and with the recommended 7gb setup I'm getting the RAM warning each time I try to start up in Unleashed.

 

I'm not saying Unleashed is using 7gb... I'm saying I'm using your recommended settings for 7gb of available ram, of which I have 8 (this equates to about 4.1gb usage from Unleashed.)

Mostly none. It's just in case we miscalculated the ram drive size. But pratice shows it's not usefull in 99.999% of the situations.

The message should state clearly how much RAM you lack.

 

Hey, I have 4GB of RAM and I choose the select FX and Local Maps options and try to run it unleashed, but I do that and I get a pop up saying I don't have enough RAM to do that, any ideas what's going on?

It should be clear enough, you don't have enough RAM.

 

I have installed the new version 3.3 and have 8 GIG of RAM.

 

However, I keep getting an error message saying I don't have enough memory allocated even if I select the bare minimum of only 50MB to create the disk. I have everything unchecked and it still gives me this error. I have looked under processes and have closed all unnecessary programs.

 

I have 8 GIG of RAM, used CPU-Z and checked windows processes to see how much RAM I am using (only 725MB) and have 2.5 free, 2.5 available.

 

Please help!

What is exactly the message? It should be clear enough.

Are you using a 64bits Windows? If you only have 2.5Gb of free (=available) RAM, since SWTOR will require that much itself, you'll have 0 for unleashed. To me it looks like you run a 32 bits Windows... unfortunately for you, these operating systems can only use 3GB of your RAM in its default configuration.

Edited October 15, 2012 by exca

[swredrage]

Yes, Readyboost isn’t making the files download faster. It’s just making you have to download less data, either would lower the total time to travel, so who cares about semantics, faster is faster.

 

I think you mis-spoke (typed whatever,) but just in case you didn't

 

no ready boost is not making it download less data, its making it load from a different area (your usb3 drive instead of the hard drive). Readyboost is essentially caching the data to the USB drive so after the first load it pulls it from there instead of the hard drive. Great option for laptops and systems where upgrades are limited and that have usb3. Like you said a lot of people don't have SSDs or 21GB+ RAM available to run from a ramdrive. On the same token, a lot of people still don't have USB3 and an addon card would also be required to use USB3 at USB3 Speeds. In those cases if you where making a purchase to speed up SWTOR you could spend an extra 20bucks, get a 128gb SSD, or you could go with a caching 32/64GB SSD for around the same price which is kinda like a permanent readyboost setup (its not but kinda the same idea). Or get more ram. Both SSD and RAM Prices are pretty low now (considering). each setup is a little different, what might work for me may not work for someone else.

 

Low traffic times (like now) and when i load into low population zones (like my ship) i load in just a few seconds from ram, and only a second or two more from SSD. On fleet during peak it takes about half a minute for both.

 

Again, just because it is sometimes hard to get across on forums, i'm not knocking unleashed or using readyboost, if it works for you and you're happy with it go for it :-)

[exca]

Added ReadyBoost suggestion to second post.

[plode]

oh boy, this looks promising!

 

@ work right now but i just might give this a go when i get home later on!

from what ive read i should be able to reduce the fps drops.. got 8gb RAM total (windows7 64bit, i7 quadcore 2.93ghz, geforce 450 gts 2gb.)

 

ill let you know how it goes

 

pld.

Edited October 15, 2012 by plode

[WarbNull]

This did not help me much with my games performance. Not sure why. Maybe my specs or the way I have my system setup, but the SWTOR Unleashed didn't improve anything for me.

 

In any case I decided to just go back to playing the game as normal. My performance issues where only do to the 1.4 patch as the game for me worked great before that. Hopefully they can improve things in a future patch.

 

I may have to try this on my Laptop though. Maybe it will help there instead.

 

 

Here are my specs for the desktop I used when trying this, if people are wondering:

AMD FX8150 (LC'ed)

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX

2 @ MSI 6970 Lighting GPU's (LC'ed)

16GB G.Skill Sniper CL7 DDR3 RAM (2 @ F3-12800CL7-4GBSR kits).

2 @ 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (One for OS and one for some games.)

Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB LP Sata III 6.0Gb/ (Storage and low level programs.)

Cougar SX850 Power Supply

OS: Windows 7 64bit

[Toxxo]

I have no idea what this about or how to make it work.

[exca]

This did not help me much with my games performance. Not sure why. Maybe my specs or the way I have my system setup, but the SWTOR Unleashed didn't improve anything for me.

 

In any case I decided to just go back to playing the game as normal. My performance issues where only do to the 1.4 patch as the game for me worked great before that. Hopefully they can improve things in a future patch.

 

I may have to try this on my Laptop though. Maybe it will help there instead.

 

 

Here are my specs for the desktop I used when trying this, if people are wondering:

AMD FX8150 (LC'ed)

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX

2 @ MSI 6970 Lighting GPU's (LC'ed)

16GB G.Skill Sniper CL7 DDR3 RAM (2 @ F3-12800CL7-4GBSR kits).

2 @ 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (One for OS and one for some games.)

Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB LP Sata III 6.0Gb/ (Storage and low level programs.)

Cougar SX850 Power Supply

OS: Windows 7 64bit

What settings did you choose? How could you tell it didn't improve performance?

 

I have no idea what this about or how to make it work.

Unless you make the effort to read the very first post, it's quite understandable.

[WarbNull]

What settings did you choose? How could you tell it didn't improve performance?

I check my performance by watching my FPS and seeing how it felt while playing. If it was still sluggish or not.

 

I tried it with all the settings and with mixtures of the settings:

 

• First I tried it with just All Assets selected.
  
• Then I tried it with All Assets and the Cache options selected.
  
• Then after that I tried the "Add an Extra 100MB to the Ram Drive size" along with all the Assets and Cache options selected.
  
• Then I tried it with just the FX selected.
  
• Then I tried it with just the Dynamic Selected.
  
• Then I tried it with both the FX and Dynamic selected.
  

 

The only things I did not try was "Show PublicTestServer files and prepare the RamDrive for PublicTestServer" and the "Enable Log File". I do not play on the PTS so I saw no reason to try that. I did not do the Log File as just because it is a log file and I did not feel like reading it.

 

Is there some sort of specific setting for my specs that would work better?

Everything I tried above did not show any increase in FPS and it all felt the same while I was playing the game. It was all still a little sluggish. I played in the same area of the game and basically attacked the same mobs.

 

It could just be do to the fact that the 1.4 patch has made my performance worse. In any case I saw no real improvements at all when I used it. Any thoughts as to why?

Edited October 15, 2012 by WarbNull

[exca]

I check my performance by watching my FPS and seeing how it felt while playing. If it was still sluggish or not.

 

I tried it with all the settings and with mixtures of the settings:

 

• First I tried it with just All Assets selected.
  
• Then I tried it with All Assets and the Cache options selected.
  
• Then after that I tried the "Add an Extra 100MB to the Ram Drive size" along with all the Assets and Cache options selected.
  
• Then I tried it with just the FX selected.
  
• Then I tried it with just the Dynamic Selected.
  
• Then I tried it with both the FX and Dynamic selected.
  

 

The only things I did not try was "Show PublicTestServer files and prepare the RamDrive for PublicTestServer" and the "Enable Log File". I do not play on the PTS so I saw no reason to try that. I did not do the Log File as just because it is a log file and I did not feel like reading it.

 

Is there some sort of specific setting for my specs that would work better?

Everything I tried above did not show any increase in FPS and it all felt the same while I was playing the game. It was all still a little sluggish. I played in the same area of the game and basically attacked the same mobs.

 

It could just be do to the fact that the 1.4 patch has made my performance worse. In any case I saw no real improvements at all when I used it. Any thoughts as to why?

Try DiskArena + LocalApp+Fx+Dyn

 

And check performance drops with CTRL+SHIFT+F. (since you have a good conf, your max fps will probably not raise).

[PeteLala]

Having trouble patching while swtorunleashed was installed as soon as i removed it patching continued and was able to play....do i have to unistall everytime theres a patch or is there a fix for this?!?

[MikeTheDuke]

I did try this. I found that despite having 8GB RAM, the options they recommended was not great as I did find it slowed down performance. But with that I was able to use some tweaks that I found very helpful.

Look at the planet you are on or are going to visit, perhaps if you are doing Warzones or an Op, then selecting those Assets would be beneficial, I did with loading all except Dynamic then adding Hoth items and others, that I felt were useful and I did notice a smooth play through. Still have a few more tests.

 

Note. If you have a clean install of Windows 7 then the recommended method of everything on an 8GB machine might work. But, my recommendation would be to select all except dynamic and then add a few more in.

[CaptRavenous]

Having trouble patching while swtorunleashed was installed as soon as i removed it patching continued and was able to play....do i have to unistall everytime theres a patch or is there a fix for this?!?

 

Did you run SW:TOR Retail, or SW:TOR Unleashed?

 

You have to run SW:TOR Retail for patching.

[exca]

I did try this. I found that despite having 8GB RAM, the options they recommended was not great as I did find it slowed down performance. But with that I was able to use some tweaks that I found very helpful.

Look at the planet you are on or are going to visit, perhaps if you are doing Warzones or an Op, then selecting those Assets would be beneficial, I did with loading all except Dynamic then adding Hoth items and others, that I felt were useful and I did notice a smooth play through. Still have a few more tests.

 

Note. If you have a clean install of Windows 7 then the recommended method of everything on an 8GB machine might work. But, my recommendation would be to select all except dynamic and then add a few more in.

Are you using version 3.3 ?

[Vanceh]

The download link for Unleashed is dead. Please fix asap.

 

http://www.metasharp.net/swtor/SwtorUnleashed_v3.3.0.zip <--- Dead