Use a RAM drive to reduce stuttering

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Ataros

Out of 4GB RAM my ramdisk takes 1600 MB and this completely removes stutters for me having these 4 files placed there:

bob_buildings.SFS
bob_plane.SFS
bob_update.SFS
bob_update01.SFS

One of developers mentioned that bob_update.SFS and bob_update01.SFS are worth putting into RAM.

People at Sukhoi forums report that the most frequently accessed files are bob_plane.sfs, bob_update01.sfs, bob_maps.sfs.

Thanks for this. With the above files I can report an average FPS of 61 without stutter (except for the first few seconds after mission start) in free flight over land. My specs are in the signature and I am running a Windows Basic display profile during the game. Antivirus is excluded from the steamapps folder and the RAM drive.

Video settings are:

1600*900
Full screen
Anti-Aliasing = 8x
Anti-Epilepsy = Off
Model Detail = High
Buildings Detail = Very Low
Land Detail = Low
Forest = Off
Visual Effects = Medium
Damage Decals = High (but haven't taken any hits so not relevant yet)
Buildings Amount = Low
Land Shading = Low
Grass = Off
Shadows = Off
Roads = Off

However, being a scientist (back off man!) I am compelled to admit that I haven't done side-by-side comparisons with HDD vs. RAM drive. Don't really care, though, since I am getting reasonable results now. Can't wait for the patch so I can hopefully turn some settings up.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Stanger

I have a SSD for c:drive (Operating system) and a SSD for Drive (Games)

Still get choppy with 40 fps.

Please correct my if I'm wrong but my understanding is that DDR3 bandwidth is much higher than any SSD due to the different interfaces. I'm out of my depth here so feel free so shoot me down (nice mixed analogies, hey?) but I thought DD3 transfer rates were thousands of MB/s vs. SSD which are hundreds of MB/s.

[moggel]

Originally Posted by jimbop

What was the problem with ImDisk?

The problem was that when I tried to mount a disk I got an error message sayong something like: "Failed when loading ImDisk virtual disk driver: Access denied".

I couldn't find a way to run as admin (although my "normal" account is in the admin group) and I'm reluctant to kill UAC as I'm using the same account to do work stuff.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by moggel

The problem was that when I tried to mount a disk I got an error message sayong something like: "Failed when loading ImDisk virtual disk driver: Access denied".

I couldn't find a way to run as admin (although my "normal" account is in the admin group) and I'm reluctant to kill UAC as I'm using the same account to do work stuff.

Well I probably can't help there. Try googling for a non-UAC workaround but I know I am running as Admin with UAC disabled (home machine, sure wouldn't do it on my work machine even though it has 16GB RAM!)

Maybe right-click ImDisk exe and Run as Admin?

[mazex]

Originally Posted by jimbop

Acknowledgments first: here (JG52Krupi) and here (Ataros, post #37).

This is a method to create a virtual RAM drive which can be used to store some of the more accessed game files. I don't know how RAM speed compares with SSD speed? But many of us don't have SSDs yet. You will need some spare RAM that is not being used while the game is running.

The below test seems to reduce stuttering (no effect on FPS) during a quick free flight over Dover. I don't have time to continue testing just now but more later. Please let us know how you get on if you try it.

1. Download ImDisk from here: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk

2. Install ImDisk then open ImDisk from Control Panel

3. Mount Image. All you need to do is click on Gigabytes under Size of virtual disk and enter 1 in the text box. This will create a 1Gb virtual RAM drive with the drive letter F

4. Format the new drive in My Computer as NTFS

5. *Copy* whichever files you want over to the new RAM drive (I copied bob_3do.SFS, bob_buildings.SFS and bob_ground.SFS in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\parts\bob)

6. Rename the HDD versions of the files with an -OLD extension (or whatever you want - don't delete them but you will need to rename or move them)

7. Download Link Shell Extension and the necessary runtime DLLs from this site: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinks...kshellext.html

8. Open your new RAM drive (F: for me) in My Computer, right-click the file you want to create a link to and click Pick Link Source

9. Open the original steamapps CoD folder where the files are usually located, right click and click Drop Symbolic Link

10. Play the game

11. Let us know if it makes a difference or even if it doesn't, thanks.

Did not seem to do any real difference on my rig at least... Used the RAMDisk tool instead and mounted a 2Gb image which i filled up with:

bob_buildings.SFS
bob_ground.SFS
bob_plane.SFS
bob_update.SFS
bob_update01.SFS
bob_update02.SFS

No joy like I said (on a 6Gb Windows 7 x64 system with a Core 2 Duo E8400@3.3 and a GTX275 GPU - weak I know!). Still stutters over land (when seeing buildings at least!) but OK over the channel.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by mazex

Did not seem to do any real difference on my rig at least... Used the RAMDisk tool instead and mounted a 2Gb image which i filled up with:

bob_buildings.SFS
bob_ground.SFS
bob_plane.SFS
bob_update.SFS
bob_update01.SFS
bob_update02.SFS

No joy like I said (on a 6Gb Windows 7 x64 system). Still stutters over land (when seeing buildings at least!) but OK over the channel.

What's your system out of interest?

[Troll2k]

With a ram disk what happens when you turn the machine off?

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Troll2k

With a ram disk what happens when you turn the machine off?

It disappears of course! See OP, I already mentioned this is not an optimal solution but I'm using it until the patch at least. It really doesn't take long to set up when you are used to it.

[Targ]

Made it worse for me, lol.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by jimbop

It disappears of course! See OP, I already mentioned this is not an optimal solution but I'm using it until the patch at least. It really doesn't take long to set up when you are used to it.

I'm not sure if I misunderstand you, but Dataram RAMDisk has the option to save the data on the RAM-device to disk, both at shutdown and continuously at your own interval while running. Would be rather boring to get in a corrupt/inconsistent state if Steam updates the game and patches the RAMDrive files that gets nuked on reboot