Ramdisk to remove load times completely!!

well atleast by 90%!!!!

If anybody has 8g+ of ram and wants to make load times non existant, (because u dont have solid state drives) I suggest using a Ramdisk!! What Ramdisk is/does is create a partition on your RAM so that data is no longer loaded from your hard drive because its already in you RAM so ur RAM has instant access to it, going from about 80-150mb/s read speed to about 3500mb/s read speed.


All you need to do is create the RAMDISK using this tool in windows - http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk - make the ramdisk 4.3GB's non formatted, then you need to open windows partition manager and FORMAT the drive to NFTS and COPY (the thing with ramdisks is, RAM is volitile memory, so when your comp reboots the data is lost, you can make it auto load at boot and/or backup periodically but not neccesary as the files should not change much) your ENTIRE Path of exile folder in it... then you make a symlink using command line - needs to be done every time u reboot as well..

go to start, and under the search bar type cmd and hit enter ( or go to run and type cmd winxp) this will bring up the command prompt. in there you need to edit this command to fit your comp and then hit enter and launch the game!

Command: mklink /j "C:/Program files/Grinding Gear Games/Path of Exile" K:\


You need to edit the path of the folder in the symlink to match your own, as well as choose the drive letter that you have chossen - i chose K:\


This technique can be used for anything you want to load faster. the folder size of PoE is 4.2gigs, just half of your ram if you have 8gigs which is above average... after they release act 3/open beta im sure the size will increase to a point where this technique isn't possible unless you got a redic 12-16gigs of ram!


THANKS to tristantio for the simple Linux Tutorial on how to use a ramdisk - didn't realize it was working under wine but for those who play PoE under linux - Second post!

If anybody wants to simplify this tutorial feel free to. ill quote you in OP. My tutorial should be easy enough :P

For Linux users (as root):

mkdir /mnt/ramdisk
echo "none /mnt/ramdisk ramfs defaults,noauto 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
mount /mnt/ramdisk

Then proceed to copy your POE install into /mnt/ramdisk:
cp -ar /path/to/POE /mnt/ramdisk/

(Make sure you launch the game from your ramdisk/POE folder)

Edit: If you're concerned about using up all your RAM you can use tmpfs instead of ramfs, as it will default that to 50% of your total RAM (so if you have 16GB the tmpfs will allocate 8GB - ramfs will not limit, it will let you copy until it is full and then tap into your swap memory, at which point things will get real slow)

If you have over 8 GB of memory you're a nut in the first place! No OS or program in existence can make use of that. Can you even use it to store loaded information with something like ramdisk? That'd be the only practical use for memory over 8 GB.

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anubite wrote:

If you have over 8 GB of memory you're a nut in the first place! No OS or program in existence can make use of that. Can you even use it to store loaded information with something like ramdisk? That'd be the only practical use for memory over 8 GB.

Putting data in memory instead of pulling it from disk is the point of having RAM in the first place.

Having "more than you need" is never really wasteful due to the OS page cache and various other things.

Note: An SSD is a slightly cheaper option than a ramdisk and avoids a costly cold start. That being said, if you have the memory, go nuts.

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anubite wrote:

If you have over 8 GB of memory you're a nut in the first place! No OS or program in existence can make use of that. Can you even use it to store loaded information with something like ramdisk? That'd be the only practical use for memory over 8 GB.

Most enthusiast system builders are going with 8GB minimum now just because ram is so cheap.
8gb ram is $40. It's hard to turn down that futureproofing opportunity for that price.


Besides that reason, some people will actually use that much, if they are multitasking or using some intensive applications such as video editing/photoshop. And also yes, the RAM disk is actually an excellent way to boost performance. It wasn't practical in the past because ram was too expensive. But now with extremely cheap ram, you can load the most used files/applications in the ram cache with a script at OS boot time.

64bit OS's support more than 4gigs, and 32 linux OS's with a PAE kernal can support more than 4 gigs as well. 8gigs of ram isn't that uncommon anymore. Yea SSDrives are a better option but their read speed is only about 200-400mb/s unless you have about 3 or 4 of them in a raid 0 config which combines them and even then you'll have about 2k read speed, ramdisk is about 3k-3.5kmb/s read speed. If you got the ram RaMdisk is nice to have. It does suck to have to load the folder into the ram every boot though. but takes just a few seconds. its the only "loading" you gotta do.

IMO ramdisk should be a more widely used technology... and it would be if it weren't for the high potential for data loss... but imagine x360 having an extra 4gig of ram for a ramdisk and the game has one big load at the beginning and then done.

At the end of the year Ima upgrade to a 16gb lappy :) Why not. <3 being in the 1% :P

Use can also use an SSD.

Interesting idea I guess. I have 12 gb of ram but it does seem a little inconvenient is some ways when compared to just using an SSD or normal hard drive.

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anubite wrote:

If you have over 8 GB of memory you're a nut in the first place! No OS or program in existence can make use of that. Can you even use it to store loaded information with something like ramdisk? That'd be the only practical use for memory over 8 GB.

It's quite easy to use up 8gb or more, it just depends what you are doing.

3d modeling, animating, rendering, really high quality photoshop(or whatever other program you use) painting can take up quite a lot.

Add that on top of multitasking and you can easily burn through 8gb.

For the average person though, probably not going to get that close to 8gb with just games or multitasking.

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Never heard of Ramdisk, I'll be sure to check it out when I get more ram.

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anubite wrote:

If you have over 8 GB of memory you're a nut in the first place! No OS or program in existence can make use of that. Can you even use it to store loaded information with something like ramdisk? That'd be the only practical use for memory over 8 GB.

When you're compiling big applications you're glad to have at least 8 GiB RAM. Using half of the RAM as a tmpfs is nowadays always a good idea and especially under Linux easy to use. On a laptop it can also buy you more battery time. You can have your OS write all the logfiles into the tmpfs and copy them to the HDD every x minutes or before you shutdown.