Request: RamDisk Loader

Joust

Is there a way to load a lot of stuff, like shaders, lightning ect. into a ramdisk for better performance? Like SWTOR got a special laucher?

zgrssd

There are programms to make a Ram Disk and have been since the early days of DOS. The modern ones are storing thier data between uses too.
Windows has at least since Vista the ability to mount a Volume under a Folder Name, just like Linux has always been able too.
Make a Ramdisk. Maybe manually copy the folders contents onto it. Then mount it as the folder you copied the data from. Once you can do it per hand, you could do it via a batchfile that calls the launcher as final step.
As far as I can tell the bulk of data (26 GiB) is in ESO\<client version>\depot.

But you would need a ton of memory (possibly enough for the entire game) to spare for this to have any benefit. It is propably cheaper to jsut buy a SSD to run the game from instead of the insanme ammount of memory needed.

zgrssd

Made some tests. I expected the bulk of temp data to be written too "<User Porfile>\AppData\Local\Temp" (easiest reachable via the %temp% system varriable).
The launcher seems to create one dir per client called "scoped_dir9964_[random 5 digit number]" while it runs. Propably to buffer what for it downloads in patches.

The does not seem to create any temporary files while running, neither in \Windows\Temp nor in the user profile temp directory.
There is a miniscule (~11 MiB) increases in the Programm Folder size while you are logged in with a Chracter and that amout is changing slightly, so if there is any temp files it is likely in the programm folder (acceptable break of style as the game needs write access for updates anyway). Nothing a ramdisk could measureably speed up.
Putting the bulk of the gamefiles or the entire game folder on a SSD or a Ramdisk would propably have a measureable effect, but that is quite a bit of data.

SirAndy

Would now be the right time to ask for a 64-bit client again?

zgrssd

SirAndy wrote: »

Would now be the right time to ask for a 64-bit client again?

I have no idea. But the Addon Forum is defintely not the right place to ask for it.
That is even outside of the scope of mods.

UPrime

64 bit client wouldn't help with faster disk access. It would prevent more texture data from having to be swapped out, but that's only true if you're transferring between different maps that have very different textures. Having said that, I am somewhat surprised that they didn't have a 64 bit client. Then again, MMO's tend to target the lowest common denominator when it comes to machine specs.

zgrssd

I see multiple reasons they have a 32-bit client only:
- It runs on 32&64 bit OS. x64 only runs on x64 Computer with x64 OS. While they are getting more common, they are not yet the new default. It took some time for 16-bit and 32-bit to becomen default too. And x64 cannot run x16 programms at all.
- Consoles are amixed blessing here. Generation 7 was firmly in the x32 archtecture with RAM values of 512 MiB (not a joke). The 8th Generation is the first one to break the GiB and x64 marks, with 8 GiB of RAM. So a x64 version for console does actually make more sense then it used to have,
- They avoided the usual pitfalls (like using .NET framework for the client) wich could further limit performance on a x32 System, so they can actually use a full 4 GiB set of RAM.
- switching from x32 to x64 can be a simple as one compiler switch. Or as difficulty as a complete rewrite of half the code. They really have more important stuff to do with the post launch pains, the console launch and content updates.

It might actually come later. But I would not bet for it.