The game is working well from my RamDisk, mklink is not required if you start the game using TESV.exe instead of the launcher.
From starting to getting in the game is about 5 to 6 seconds, loading into a single house cell around 2 seconds, loading into a city cell around 4 seconds, pop ins are absolutely minimized, they are barely noticeable even when traversing a cell that has a lot of content.

Note, for those who still want the Steam achievements you will have to use mklink to keep Steam in the loop, starting TESV.exe does not start Steam.

Thanks for the feedback - I'm getting similar results.

My only problem is I'm using RamDisk 10.0 to get that 10 gig of space, and it has no backup facility, unfortunately I cannot purchase the one you suggested until I get some cash in my paypal account, so I reckon I'm going to have to do with batching for now.

I'm tempted to do this, but really even on the HDD I'm on I don't notice significant load times so I probably won't. I have however used that program for another game I play so thank you for the link and information!

cheers for this tutorial cuz not only does it help with skyrim but youve now taught me how to make a ram disk successfully with any game,

Interesting, games should start making this a feature now that most have 64 bit operating system and upwards of 8-16GB of ram.

Games under utilize ram a lot these days... like Skyrim

Consoles need to update soon :sadvaultboy:

I really want to run this seein as I have 12 gig ram. I want to do this while streaming using xsplit and running the windowless borders mod. Anyone know if I may experience problems?

Wonder if I would get a big enough performance post to stream in 1920 resolution max everything.

I'll be doing this on my next PC ... I have just under another $1000 to save up. Make that $1500, with the RAM drive factored into the equation.

Thanks OP. I've been asking someone to post an explanation for this. Much obliged.

I'm getting only 4 to 5 second load times running the game from a separate partition on a separate harddrive, the OS and swap file are both also on their own harddrives.

An improvement of 2 seconds does not seem like a big improvement considering the time it will take to load the ramdisk every time I want to play the game.

zBobG, I'm under the impression it'll solve the LAA/4+GB problem. Especially useful if you want to heavily mod Skyrim. Or was I misinformed?

I don't think so - a harddisk is just a harddisk, no matter whether it is a 'real' physical harddisk or a 'virtual' harddisk (in some kind of ram). It does not matter what the source of the files loaded into program memory is, you can still exceed the program's memory space.

Oh! I think I know what you mean. In Win32 you can ordinarily never use greater than 4GB memory even if your motherboard supports it, except that you can use it as a ramdisk. But... It's a lot of money to spend on RAM chips just to have a dedicated ramdisk. Doesn't seem like a good deal to me.

USB flash seems like a very good compromise, you can buy a 16GB flash drive on Amazon for $12. The disadvantage USB flash has in comparison to SSD is that it is 15 to 30 times slower but is a whole lot cheaper.

I'm fairly sure you were misinformed. The RAM disk is basically acting like your hard drive (where the Skyrim data is stored). What it will do is speed up the access times for loading screens, and whenever the game would normally need to draw data from your hard drive. The game is still going to use your other ram (not in the ramdisk) normally (this is still capped at 4 gb with the patch). This isn't forcing the game to use more RAM, it is just using the RAM as your hard drive. For this reason the RAM disk option is only feasible for people with a lot of extra ram to spare (I'm considering it because I have 16 GB in my desktop). I'm not too tech savvy regarding the details, so anyone who knows more feel free to correct what I've said if necessary....

Of course, a ramdisk is faster than a harddisk, it's easily 100..200 times faster. I just don't want to have to load the ramdisk with the files every time I want to play the game.

And if the game is only going to run marginally faster I don't think the cost benefit ratio is great enough to justify the cost of the ram chips.

The LAA issue has to do with the memory a program is allowed to use and is only an issue with 32bit programs. The size or nature of the storage media does not change that restriction in any way.

Question: I thought that textures load to RAM, not the graphics card? I'm starting to think I should stay away from the tech-heavy threads. :confused: Just when I think I have a grasp on something, more questions pop up.

Video ram, my friend, stored on your graphics card, vs RAM. Your GPU has its own RAM dedicated to the task...

I know that much. I thought RAM was used for the textures, though. That's what LAA threads seem to indicate, anyway. If this is not the case, then enabling LAA won't make for much of a difference with regard to how many texture mods you can use in-game. That would all depend on the capacity of your video RAM.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Disappointing.

So ... all of the LAA threads have been misinforming me? :flamethrower:

I'm thinking of trying this and reserving 2gb for the ram disk. I have 6gb, would only leaving 4gb left over cause anything to become...unstable?

Now, I'm wishing I had 8gb.

Leaving aside 4 GB for other functions/processes is fine.