Quote:
Originally Posted by Thulack
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You are correct i have never used a ramdisk but i also know a ramdisk is just using ram as a disk drive. None of this helps your system run better just whatever you store on the ramdisk. A SSD will help your whole system run better. Thats my point. Considering OP said he needed to buy more ram just to do a RAMdisk i doubt he is going to able to afford enough ram to put his whole OS on the Ramdisk to improve its overall performace where he could a SSD.
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That's not really what a ramdisk is. A ramdisk, is, as the name suggests, allocating part of your memory as a filesystem. The EQ directory, for example, could be assigned to a portion of your available ram. This means that all zone and model files have essentially been 'preloaded'. It simply removes the latency that occurs from disk access->ram that normally occurs. You wouldn't be loading your entire OS into ram ala a liveOS or something like that.
In reality, the zone files/model information are not that large, and shouldn't take an abnormal amount of time to load, even for a slow, standard HDD. I think some people with HDD's though, might be surprised to learn that their actual read/write speed is much slower then what it is advertised as for the unit in question. Crystalmark or others can show you that information. Typically indicative of an issue with IDE/AHCI settings, driver issues, or hard drive health. Additionally, as a HDD fills, so does the physical placement of the data on the platter, read and write times will increase.
SSD's are neat, ram disks have their niche uses, but neither should be required for acceptable loading times (given a stable internet connection) for everquest, by a long shot.