Does anyone use Ramdisks with FS9 or FSX?

[ddimm]

I started looking at ramdisk software called RamDisk+ from SuperSpeed. I was wondering if this may have any potential benefit for some of the most common accessed flight sim files. Is anyone out there using it? What would be the most beneficial files/folders in FS9 and FSX that could take advantage of it given the limited amount of space?

Thanks,
Daniel

[Peter Dowson]

I started looking at ramdisk software called RamDisk+ from SuperSpeed. I was wondering if this may have any potential benefit for some of the most common accessed flight sim files. Is anyone out there using it? What would be the most beneficial files/folders in FS9 and FSX that could take advantage of it given the limited amount of space?l

I tried it for a while because I had 8 Gb of memory and even using Windows 7 64-bit version, there was no way FSX would use al that otherwise.

But in the end it is either almost impossible to select which files to put there (it accessing so many all the time), or re-direct FSX to get them there (effectively a different disk), that I gave up. I tried with many of the SimObject sections placed there, but there was no benefit at all that I could measure.

I think that one of the bottlenecks in FSX, and probably the main one once your processor is running fast enough, is memory access. And a RAMDISK obviously can't help there. I actually changed over completely to SSDs (Solid state disks) for both Windows and FSX (separately), and that helps for sure -- things load up quicker, for one!

But by far the biggest inmprovement i've ever had was to upgrade to a Core i7 processor with good fast DDR3 memory. I think it's because of the direct memory access the i7 range implement, plus the triple bandwidth (accessing 3 DDR chips at the same time). The core i5 series looks interesting at the price, but I think it treats DDR3 like DDR2 with only two chip width.

My main system has 6Gb of expensive 2000 MHz memory, but the 1600 MHz and 1800 MHz memory, in matched 3-stick sets, would be a vast improvement over the previous maximum DDR2 types running at speeds like 800 MHz.

Regards

Pete

[oal331]

Hello Peter,

thanks for sharing in detail your configuration.
With this SUPER-PC is FSX smooth enough with high fps in any weather with multiplayer (online) flights?

Which VGA did you have?


Thanks a lot

Eddie

[Peter Dowson]

With this SUPER-PC is FSX smooth enough with high fps in any weather with multiplayer (online) flights?
I don't use multiplayer, but I do run with both UT2 and MytrafficX supplying 100% AI Traffic. My worst performing scenery is UK2000's Heathrow Extreme, but even with that fully populated with ASI Traffic, and using AES, Autogen etc, and ASA weather with HD 4096 clouds from FEX I get at least 20 fps. I use FPS Limiter set at 30 and that's what I get most everywhere else.

I'm not using any 2D or VC panels, though. Only scenery view on screen. The hardware cockpit contains all the instrumentation, courtesy PM.

The PC is overclocked to 4.5GHz, mind, and water-cooled. ;-)


Which VGA did you have?
GTX 285 water-cooled, using 182.50 drivers at present. Most of the later drivers seem no better and seem to have occasionally black-out problems.

Regards

Pete

[Sean Nixon]

The PC is overclocked to 4.5GHz, mind, and water-cooled. ;-)

Oh, you overlooked that minor detail 1st time round, eh? ;)

Out of interest, what i7 are you using? The 920?

And what percentage increase do you think the overclocking/water cooling gives?

One final question, do you have any experience with RAID 0 and FS?

Thanks

Sean

[Sean Nixon]

One final question, do you have any experience with RAID 0 and FS?

Scratch that Pete, I've been reading up on SSD's. :D

[Peter Dowson]

Oh, you overlooked that minor detail 1st time round, eh
When I experimented with RAMdisk my system was the dual 9775 (SkullTrail) PC, running at 4.0 Gb., also water-cooled. I still had mini-stutters on that PC and was trying all sorts of things -- the RAMdisk was one, SSDs were another. I decided that the bottle-neck was the memory access. When I read about the i7 architecture and found the mobos could also support memory clocks up to 2000 MHz, I decided the only solution was another upgrade ... the SkullTrail system is now in my office, my development and test machine, and it is superb for that! ;-)


Out of interest, what i7 are you using? The 920?On that main cockpit PC, the water-cooled one, it's the 975. I doubt that you can get the 920 up to a stable 4.5GHz even with water-cooling -- the folks that built mine couldn't (Wired2Fire). I do have a 920 overclocked to 4.0 GHz on another PC, for VFR flight. That's on normal air cooling (a big cooler with two big fans on it, true).


And what percentage increase do you think the overclocking/water cooling gives?Allows a stable 4.5 GHz and overclocked video card. I think the max else would likely be around 4.1. Makes full use of the really fast memory and its i7-style bandwidth.


One final question, do you have any experience with RAID 0 and FS?On previous systems, yes, but both my systems are now 100% SSDs. 128Gb Vertex for Win7 and 256Gb Vertex for FSX.

Regards
Pete

[oal331]

This is the ABSOLUTE FSX PC !!!

Thanks for sharing with us :-)

Eddie

[larabond3]

I have one drive for the OS and a newer SATA drive dedicated to FSX...I'm not sure if you get better performance by having FSX on a separate drive from your OS, but I can tell you that Nick N recommends using RAID for either your OS or your FSX drive, unless you have a dedicated RAID controller installed.So I took his advice and only used my mobo raid for non-fsx storage.

[mpl330]

Appreciate we are going off topic here but... Peter, what motherboard are you using with your i7 setup?

Regards
Mike

[Peter Dowson]

Appreciate we are going off topic here but... Peter, what motherboard are you using with your i7 setup?
The water-cooled one using an i7-975 overclocked to 4.5 GHz is on an EVGA X58 mobo. That's my 737NG cockpit FSX PC. The i7-920 air-cooled one running at 4.0 GHz in on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5. That's running my Aerosoft (Oz) Piper Arrow cockpit with FSX.

Regards
Pete