I was initially dismayed by hearing that Skyrim would only have a 32 bit executable and take up only 6 Gb installation space.

Most people would think therefore, that having lots of system ram like I do (24 Gb) is a waste for games like Skyrim.

But heres an idea if you have at least 12 Gb ram on your system - Find some Ram disk software online and turn all your extra ram over 4 Gb into a ram disk. Copy paste your oblivion folder onto the ramdisk and enjoy 4000+ Mb/s read and write speeds for virtually instant loading.

Free ramdisk software only allows up to 4 Gb ramdisks to be made though, and you have to pay to unlock the full software to make a larger one. I've never tried any ramdisk software before, but I will start looking for some now.

Provided Skyrim behaves like Oblivion and the Fallouts, you'll need to SymLink the install folder to your RamDisk with http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768 after temporarily renaming your permanent Skyrim directory.

Junction "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Skyrim" "R:\Skyrim"

Given: RamDisk is drive R:\

Edit: removed x86 'cause no one with 8+ GB RAM should be running Win(x86)

Note: I''m not "dismayed" whatsoever about Skyrim's compressed install size. They're good at what they do... 6GB with higher compression is substantially more content than Oblivion (4.8GB).

Thats good do know. Do you know if theres any free ramdisk software that allows larger than 4 Gb sizes to be made, or if not which one I should look at buying?

If it is because of good compression I don't see the problem sorry.

Ok, I decided to buy this software:

http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

And made an 18 Gb ramdisk:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7374/ramdisk.png

But when I try to use the Junction program linked above, it just opens and immediately closes

I want to test it with Civilization V so Im ready for when Skyrim arrives.

Drop Junction.exe into your C:\Windows directory (yes, it's safe). then run the above code from your command prompt or you can make a batch file (run below .bat from :\Skyrim after temporarily renaming the permanent directory.

@EchoOff
Echo Note: This .bat should be run from within your RamDisk's Skyrim directory after temporarily renaming your permanent Skyrim folder.
Echo SymLink Skyrim to RamDisk?
Pause
Junction "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Skyrim" "%CD%"
Pause
@EchoOn

^Fix'd

To revert to your normal installation, just delete the SymLink.

Too much faffing about. I'm just going to install it on an SSD.

Ok, I'll practice that with my Civ V installation, and hopefully I will be ready to do it when I have Skyrim



Unless your entire steam folder is on an SSD, wouldnt you have to do the same thing?

You can SymLink your whole Steam directory to an SSD/faster HDD as well if desired, or even just selected games. You can do all sorts of stuff with Junction. It's quite enabling.

Note: Windows itself used SymLinks to get around them moving AppData and Documents structures around to retain compatibility with XPs file sttructure. This is most likely why Win partitions must be NTFS (Vista, 7, and 8 evidently), still.

My steam directory is over 130 Gb, and 256 Gb SSDs cost too much

24 Gb ram was ￡140.

Why is everyone so worried about the 6GB installation space? Wasn't it already stated that they have much better compression technology than before?

Just wondering. :shrug:

Im not worried about the install size anymore, and this isnt the thread to discuss that

This thread is about running Skyrim off a ramdisk, mine has over 6000 Mb/s read speed and I want to use it for Skyrim.

This is really a general hardware thread, so it belongs in CD. I will move this over there for you.

You can selectively link some games and skip others rather than SymLinking your whole Steam directory. 128GB SSDs are cheaper and, if dedicated, you can probably find a 256GB for lesss than 1$/GB. I managed to get a 256GB C300 for $225...

there is no real improvement at those speeds to be had. Low install size possibly means better compression, so even if you load everything quicker you're still limited to decompressing and rendering.

Meh, I just realized that Symlinking isnt worth doing on a Ramdisk as it loses all its content on a system restart.

I'll just use my 64 Gb SSD

I've seen a lot of posts that echo that feeling and I'm not really sure as to why. Oblivon, Fallout 3 and New Vegas all had small hard drive footprints and the tech being used for Skyrim is not going to be much different considering it was designed for the same consoles.

EDIT: In fact, if I recall correctly the vast majority of the prior games' filesize was the audio files.

Unless uncompressed with bUseArchives set to 0 to eliminate the compression factor . When I eventuallty make the jump to LGA 1366+, I'm gonna have to get a board that can take 24 or 32 GB RAM just to be able to tinker with this. My current board can only handle 8GB, not like I'm really held back by it. OP has 24GB which is probably sufficient to try this if uncompressed Skyrim <= 20'ish GB......or not. OP, if your C:\ is not an SSD (must not be if Steam is ">130GB"), you can still use Junction to have Skyrim/whatever on your SSD. I'm doing something similar with a 34mm 24GB ExpressCard SSD.

Dont jump to 1366 now, wait for 2011.

1366 CPUs are slower than an I5 2500k for gaming, and X79 motherboards have already been announced.

The ramdisk wil only work for games which can be directly copy / pasted and run off the ramdisk without requiring any other setup, as the data on the ramdisk is lost on reboot. Saved games would have to go to my docs or another folder not on the ramdisk as well.

Civ V works fine by simply copy pasting it onto the ramdisk, and all the ave files are stored in my docs.

I'm actually going to ebay my 24 Gb when Ram prices skyrocket again and go back to 12 Gb with my 2 Gb sticks.

Also another thing to consider that while vanilla Skyrim will be 6 gb but if you use mods heavily the skyrim directory can grow to even over 24 gb in size.

Yup. I have 16GB RAM, able to allocate 12GB to a ramdisk, but if I use mods it won't be enough. I'll easily go over 30GB if I install 100-200 mods mostly adding new content.

Yea, I'm beginning to think this isnt as good an idea as it first sounded, but I will give it a try only if it can work without having to waste time setting up a symlink after every system reboot.

Just have to wait for the game.

Nice idea about a "RAM drive" but I think the problem is that I thought RAM drives are volatile...meaning the game would need to be reinstalled at every bootup.

Unless the setup saves the content of the RAM drive when it shuts down....

Sadly, until 64-bit OS and applications dominate the market, large amounts of RAM will go largely under/un-utilized.

They will code software for the largest market base, and that is still 32-bit OS architecture.

-1366: Yeah, I'm probably going to stick with 775 for awhile and see how it plays out.
-RamDisk could work with any game given enough effort. You could have SymLinked SymLinks on your NTFS RamDisk to permanent folder(s) to retain save/config files. Having the permanent game folder on an SSD would expedite the copying to the RamDisk, so you could still try this and mitigate the copying time post reboot. Convoluted much?
-ebay RAM: Ha! Like the stock market!Yeah, I'm already eyeballing a 48GB version as my Skyrim directory will not only be unpacked, but also heavily modified/augmented. Then there's DLCs... Might have to yank one of my 128GB SSDs from my laptop and dedicate it to TES, then I could Hot-Swap it and still play/mod the same installations on my laptop.

*weighs pros/cons*

Man.., I hate rich people.. :flame:



:P