RAMDisk

[tallyken]

Some fellow Trainzers have commented on the performance improvement in TS12 with the
addition of a SSD. If you want to kick it up even more, try running Trainz on a ram disk.

MY TS12 folder is currently a bit less than 16 gigs, so I configured the Dataram RAMDisk for 16GB,
leaving 16GB for the OS, which should even be enough for 64 bit T:ANE.

Since my initial TS12 install was to a folder on a HD, it was a simple matter to copy the folder to
the ram disk. This was done only once, because the Dataram keeps an updated image file of
the ram disk on SSD, and you'll have the HD folder to fall back on.

Boot time increased by 2 to 3 seconds, and shutdown takes maybe a second longer than it
used to. After boot, everything "Trainz" chugs from ram.

Sure would like to hear if anybody tries this!

Software:
-TS12 Build 61388
-Windows 7 Ultimate
-Dataram RAMDisk Ver. 4.4.0.19 http://www.dataram.com

Hardware: (partial list)
-Intel I7 4770K
-32GB Kingston DDR3
-Asus Maximus VI Hero MB
-EVGA GTX770 4G
-Samsung 840 120GB SATA III SSD
-Seagate 1TB SATA 6G
-Corsair 1200W PSU

 

[shaneturner12]

Welcome to the forums.

I hope you are aware that you will need an equivalent amount of actual memory in order to do that, as RAMDisk uses part of your system memory to do it's job. I have used RAMDisk previously, but it had a detrimental effect on my system.

Shane

 

[tallyken]

Hi Shane, and thanks for the welcome!

You are right - you have to have gobs of ram (32 gigs in my case) or page swapping by the OS will go nuts.

Regards, and sincere thanks to you for making my hobby even more fun.
Ken

 

[JCitron]

Hi Ken,

Welcome to the forums.

Yes, RAM Disks were the big vogue back in the days way before SSDs and the newer, faster operating systems. In an ideal situation, even 32GB of RAM would be enough, but many users here such as myself have 10 times as much data. Imagine the amount of RAM you'd need to run Trainz! You'll find that as time goes on, your content will grow almost exponentially over the course of time.


John

 

[shaneturner12]

No problem. I'm technically minded myself, as you may notice in some of my other posts (and tutorials).

Shane

 

[tallyken]

Hi John, ah yes, the good old days - my first PC (home brew) had a full 4 THOUSAND bytes of static RAM!
Of course you are right, the Trainz DB tends to grow exponentially. I have made an effort over the years to keep it under control.
The thing about running from ram is the amazing performance. My intention is to run T:ANE from two installations, keeping one trim for RAMDisk.

Ken

 

[JCitron]

Hi John, ah yes, the good old days - my first PC (home brew) had a full 4 THOUSAND bytes of static RAM!
Of course you are right, the Trainz DB tends to grow exponentially. I have made an effort over the years to keep it under control.
The thing about running from ram is the amazing performance. My intention is to run T:ANE from two installations, keeping one trim for RAMDisk.

Ken

I remember those days too. I worked as a technician on systems like that on the old Ontel OPs with a max of 64k OP1/64s with static RAM. They were very expensive and the memory chips were astronomically expensive. I'm sure the performance is outstanding with everything up in memory instead of being indexed off of disk. Again, going back to the better olden days, there were RAM drives you could get for systems. They came with a megabyte of RAM back then, which was a lot, but they were cards that plugged into the EISA or ISA slots. The more expensive ones ran off of an S-100 Buss or similar connection. I can't remember who made those now, or what they look like. It's been that long.

Good luck with your RAM disk install. Let us know how it goes when you get to that point.

John

 

[tallyken]

John,
It is working extremely well, and my enthusiasm for the performance improvement was what let to my initial post - I had to share!
I intend to try to benchmark the difference between SSD & ramdisk for TS12 (rather than relying on "Wow") as time permits.
BTW, you don't wear out your SSD as fast, either.
Ken