Skyrim + 8GB, 12GB or 16GB of Memory : V - Skyrim

» Thu May 17, 2012 10:29 pm

In terms of throughput, going from a SSD to RAMDisk is far less beneficial relatively than a hard drive to a SSD. Keep that in mind when making purchasing decisions.

» Thu May 17, 2012 11:30 pm

That depends jimhsu - consider the sheer throughput rates that you get when using the memory subsystem, vs throughput limitations on a single SSD. That increases the more you have to move around, so someone using a very high res texture pack would see an enormous benefit with a ramdrive, even over a SSD.

» Fri May 18, 2012 9:55 am

So I've been thinking of setting one of these up just so I can play Skyrim with all of the mods my heart desires BUT I found this quote about RAM drives:

'[R]am can only go up to 8gb of storage (TOTAL-not counting the running programs) in a 64 bit environment, or 4gb in 32bit- so it cant hold much.'

I don't know this much about computers. How true or false is this? What would this mean for my dream of a RAM drive on which to run Windows 7 and Skyrim with mods?

» Fri May 18, 2012 1:09 am

False. On a 64-bit system, it should support up to 192GB.

» Fri May 18, 2012 4:00 am

Excellent.

Does anyone happen to have a link or two to an in-depth explanation of how to go about making one of these, or know where I should start my research? Or am I on my own here?

Addendum: Also, someone suggested it might be possible to use a USB 3.0 flash drive in lieu of a RAM drive. Viable or not? (I'm pretty sure that's not a decent alternative, but thought I should check ...)

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:17 am

What is this? Is it something Bethesda promised to do for the PC?

We’re also planning on rolling out support for 4-Gigabyte Tuning (Large Address Aware) next week for our PC users. Stay tuned!

http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/07/skyrim-update-1-3-now-on-steam/

» Fri May 18, 2012 11:21 am

I don't think the game is going to use 4GB even when heavily modded.

» Fri May 18, 2012 10:02 am

False. On a 64-bit system, it should support up to 192GB.

Theoretical limit is somewhere around 16 exabytes, but many OSs limit that. For some reason, Microsoft thinks it's a good use of time and effort to impose different arbitrary restrictions on the different versions of different OSs they've made. :rolleyes:

» Fri May 18, 2012 7:13 am

That depends jimhsu - consider the sheer throughput rates that you get when using the memory subsystem, vs throughput limitations on a single SSD. That increases the more you have to move around, so someone using a very high res texture pack would see an enormous benefit with a ramdrive, even over a SSD.

Probably. But I still argue that trying to put a MODDED skyrim installation (one that will significantly benefit from a ramdrive) on RAM is prohibitively expensive. My oblivion install folder is over 30GB, for comparison - could probably shrink that down to 20GB, but still. While 4GB modules are cheap, 8GB modules are nowhere near affordable usually. Fun project though.

I was actually comparing the SSD to something like http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/05/ddrdrives-ram-based-ssd-is-snappy-costly/ , which while still fast, is an order of magnitude slower than system RAM due to the limitations of PCIE - in which case might as well just go with RAID 0 SSDs. Keep in mind that loading ultra-high resolution textures is largely a sequential task, so the large benefit in random access compared to a SSD (which is already very fast) is less beneficial. So unless you can afford 8GB modules or you really have a whole lot of slots, getting Skyrim to work on RAM probably brings more hassles than benefits.

Posted on this similar topic on great length on another forum comparing SSDs and hard drives. You could probably derive anologous numbers for a RAMDisk vs SSD.

For some math:

Avg mechanical disk seek = 15ms
Avg SSD read seek = 0.1 ms
HDD sequential read speed = 100MB/s
SSD sequential read speed = 200MB/s
We'll assume 3 bytes/pixel (uncompressed)

Typical wow texture size: 256x256x3 = 196KB
Typical "modern game" texture size: 1024x1024x3 = 3.1MB * 3(diffuse, normals, glow) = 9.4MB. The diffuse, normal map, and glow map are typically contiguous in the packed file, so random access is insignificant here.

An SSD fetches a wow texture in 0.1 + (196KB/200MB/s) = 0.1 + 0.98 = 1.08 ms
A hard disk does it in 15 + (196KB/100MB/s) = 16.96 ms. Notice that even with a huge RAID 0 array you can't get this below 15 ms.

Performance advantage = 15.7x

For the modern game texture, an SSD does it in 9.1MB/200MB/s + 0.1 = 45.6 ms
The hard disk does it in 9.1MB/100MB/s + 15 ms = 106 ms. The SSD lead here is not so impressive anymore. With a 2 disk RAID 0 array, this becomes 60.5 ms. With enough cheap disks, we can easily beat the SSD in cost.

Performance advantage = 2.32x

This all goes back to the latency vs bandwidth argument. Here's a really old but decent review on that:
http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/Latency.html

For perspective, accessing data via ethernet on a remote computer with SSD (0.3+0.1 ms) is many times faster than accessing data locally via a standard hard drive.

» Thu May 17, 2012 9:59 pm

Not trying to derail here but I have a related question.

I have a 32 bit system with windows xp and 4gigs of ram. However, I'm pretty sure xp only utilizes 3.25 because that is what it shows.

How much ram is Skyrim using without the LAA thingy?

Would it run better if I used that mod or be just about the same?

» Fri May 18, 2012 7:52 am

Probably. But I still argue that trying to put a MODDED skyrim installation (one that will significantly benefit from a ramdrive) on RAM is prohibitively expensive. My oblivion install folder is over 30GB, for comparison - could probably shrink that down to 20GB, but still. While 4GB modules are cheap, 8GB modules are nowhere near affordable usually. Fun project though.

Well, if you're speaking about RAM... you can get 8GB of top-quality RAM for around 30 to 40 USDollars... so yes it is actually incredibly affordable.

» Fri May 18, 2012 9:36 am

I have a 32 bit system with windows xp and 4gigs of ram. However, I'm pretty sure xp only utilizes 3.25 because that is what it shows.

32bit OS is limited to 4GB total(system+Vram) so subtract your total Vram from your total installed system ram and that is what is reported as usable. You have a 768mb GPU am i right?

How much ram is Skyrim using without the LAA thingy?

760mb. Which is pretty conservative considering OB and FO3 both used the 32bit exec. limit of 1.7~GB.

Would it run better if I used that mod or be just about the same?

As far as i know you can't benefit from LAA on a 32bit OS. I've seen many reports of better performance but simply making the game LAA is not going to make it use more memory.

» Fri May 18, 2012 10:17 am

I have a 32 bit system with windows xp and 4gigs of ram. However, I'm pretty sure xp only utilizes 3.25 because that is what it shows.

How much ram is Skyrim using without the LAA thingy?

Would it run better if I used that mod or be just about the same?

Skyrim can use 2gb maximum without the LAA switch on, and that is theoretical (actual numbers don't approach 2gb due to constant loading/unloading of assets).

If you have 4gb in a 32-bit O/S like XP, you can use the 3gb switch to allow applications an additional 1gb of addressable RAM. That leaves you 1gb for the operating system, which (in a well-tuned XP install), is more than enough.

Bottom line - yes, using this configuration would give more RAM to Skyrim, and allow it to perform better, crash less, etc. Additionally, the LAA switch will be turned on in an upcoming patch, meaning all you have to do to benefit is add the /3gb switch to your boot.ini file.

» Fri May 18, 2012 9:00 am

Skyrim can use 2gb maximum without the LAA switch on, and that is theoretical (actual numbers don't approach 2gb due to constant loading/unloading of assets).

If you have 4gb in a 32-bit O/S like XP, you can use the 3gb switch to allow applications an additional 1gb of addressable RAM. That leaves you 1gb for the operating system, which (in a well-tuned XP install), is more than enough.

Bottom line - yes, using this configuration would give more RAM to Skyrim, and allow it to perform better, crash less, etc. Additionally, the LAA switch will be turned on in an upcoming patch, meaning all you have to do to benefit is add the /3gb switch to your boot.ini file.

I did this on my Windows 7 install. Granted, I run the game in a bare bones only-the-game-running environment to keep from killing my machine, but it improved the performance drastically. I was getting 25-30 FPS outdoors, with 50-60 indoors (occasionally less with complex lighting sources and ash piles), but now I never drop below 45-50. Period. I'm glad I did this for this game and a few others as well.

NOTE: Please know what you are doing if you're on a x86 OS. You might scramble your install and get constant BSODs and then have to play some trickeration to repair it if you're not careful.

» Fri May 18, 2012 5:19 am

False. On a 64-bit system, it should support up to 192GB.

For a 32-bit program with large address aware? Maybe a true 64-bit program could access all that memory, but I have serious doubts a 32-bit program with the large address aware flag could. As far as I know, with a 32-bit OS, large address aware programs can grab up to 3gb RAM (with the proper system settings) and on 64-bit programs, 32-bit large address aware apps can grab up to 4gb RAM.

Microsoft thinks it's a good use of time and effort to impose different arbitrary restrictions on the different versions of different OSs they've made. :rolleyes:

I really hope I am misunderstanding this post, because so far as I can tell you are saying the differences between x64 and x86 builds of Windows are "arbitrary" and that is just a silly thing to say.

» Thu May 17, 2012 9:24 pm

I really hope I am misunderstanding this post, because so far as I can tell you are saying the differences between x64 and x86 builds of Windows are "arbitrary" and that is just a silly thing to say.

I believe what he is saying is that the 3 versions of x64 OS that MS has released(XP,Vista and 7) have all had different theoretical RAM ceilings and the "supposed limit" is arbitrary.

» Fri May 18, 2012 1:17 am

I really hope I am misunderstanding this post, because so far as I can tell you are saying the differences between x64 and x86 builds of Windows are "arbitrary" and that is just a silly thing to say.

Your faith has been rewarded. I'm not that ill-informed.

I was referring to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778%28v=vs.85%29.aspx. Worm had it right.

» Fri May 18, 2012 9:20 am

They won't. :spotted owl:

They're going to release a LAA-enabled .exe this week, maybe it's the first step towards a 64-bit exe.

Or maybe I'm just being too optimistic...

» Fri May 18, 2012 1:03 pm

Wow I just hope they tune this game for higher memory, as far as I know they made one for 4 gb. But come to think of it this game is a console port, which means a lot of efficiency is left to waste for the pc version. For instance it doesnt make full use of multi threading.. amg badtesda

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:23 am

They're going to release a LAA-enabled .exe this week, maybe it's the first step towards a 64-bit exe.

Or maybe I'm just being too optimistic...

As someone else said, making it 64-bit would mean rewriting the whole platform. It's one thing to add a pillar to a bridge, and another to turn it into titanium.

By the way, I don't suppose I should try the 3GB switch on my windows XP when I have 3GB of ram...

Actually, would you mind a quick totally unrelated question? According to the fellows at my computer store, I have 3 gigs, but in task manager under processes, the memory usage is shown as _____/4446MB. Am I being too optimistic?

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:01 pm

As someone else said, making it 64-bit would mean rewriting the whole platform. It's one thing to add a pillar to a bridge, and another to turn it into titanium.

By the way, I don't suppose I should try the 3GB switch on my windows XP when I have 3GB of ram...

Actually, would you mind a quick totally unrelated question? According to the fellows at my computer store, I have 3 gigs, but in task manager under processes, the memory usage is shown as _____/4446MB. Am I being too optimistic?

I don't know if it's "the whole"...I've also read it shouldn't take more than 2 weeks of work or so...and frankly I don't know what to believe (I'm no programmer myself).

And about those 4446, maybe it takes into account the virtual memory, as well as your physical RAM.

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:07 pm

As someone else said, making it 64-bit would mean rewriting the whole platform. It's one thing to add a pillar to a bridge, and another to turn it into titanium.

By the way, I don't suppose I should try the 3GB switch on my windows XP when I have 3GB of ram...

Actually, would you mind a quick totally unrelated question? According to the fellows at my computer store, I have 3 gigs, but in task manager under processes, the memory usage is shown as _____/4446MB. Am I being too optimistic?

Hmm one way to find that out is to manually eject some memory and see what it reads when u start up, but I dont think u need to do that. U just start up and read what ur bios is saying about the capacity of ur memory.