how to cache Team Fortress 2 maps for quicker loading?

[core2drew]

hi all.

i'm looking to see if anyone has the knowledge or a link to a write-up that explains how to create a ram drive that you can put team fortress 2 maps on to decrease the load times when joining a server.

i'm currently operating on a windows vista 64-bit OS with 4GB of ram. i feel like i can dedicate 1.5GB to 2GB of ram to the ram drive to load the maps onto seeing as the only other stuff i do with the pc is browse the web with firefox or listen to itunes.

if creating a ram drive isn't a viable option, does anyone know how to increase load times another way? my OS is currently installed on a pair of 320GB seagates in raid-0, fyi.

any help would be much appreciated.

drew.

 

[core2drew]

bump.

no one cache's maps for the games they play often?

 

[ainarssems]

Is it really so hard to search google yourself? Check out this link I found it in less that minute: http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm. But 4GB in 64 bit Vista is nothing. You should get another $4GB if You are looking in doing this.

 

[core2drew]

ainarssems .. awesome dead link.

you think i haven't googled around? i've found different companies that have pieces of software that make ram drives. problem is, they seem to want some kind of money for their software.

i'm looking for free software that makes a ram drive, and a tutorial that explains how to cache my tf2 maps. to date, i've yet to stumble on a website that has these two things.

 

[core2drew]

bump.

any thoughts or help?

 

[dawgma]

Is it really so hard to search google yourself? Check out this link I found it in less that minute: http://www.cenatek.com/product_ramdisk.cfm. But 4GB in 64 bit Vista is nothing. You should get another $4GB if You are looking in doing this.

Was that supposed to be a link to a ram drive? Your solution for caching maps was going to be to buy an expensive piece of hardware to install the game to? That's ridiculous.

 

[Flakes]

this is easy, microsoft has a driver that will allow you to create a 64 MB Ram Drive for free, but if you want anything bigger than that you need to buy the software.

 

[core2drew]

thanks for the heads up flakes.

knowing i want to put a fair amount of stuff on the ram drive, i went off and looked for a different solution than microsofts driver. luckily, i found this:

http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

anyone have much experience with it?

 

[Flakes]

unfortunately, like yourself i was unwilling to pay for software, the only one i have knowledge of using is the windows driver, which is simple enough to set up.

i wouldnt pay for something like this tbh. if you look at benchmarks around the web comparing RAID 0 to a normal HDD there is no improvement in map loading times for games, apart from UT where i think they saved about a second. So if you put this into context i dont see the flash drive performing any faster really, even if it is alot faster than a normal disk.

however if you are set on this idea, i would set up the windows driver and place one map on it, then test to see if you notice any difference. If you do and you prove me wrong then you can always try the $40 solution


of course the other problem you have, is that every time you restart your pc you will loose the maps that you placed in the RAM drive, so you will probably spend as much time copying the maps to the drive as you would save in loading them off there.