Improving Loading Time

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LoadingTimeMan
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Joined: Wed Jun 17, 2020 11:38 pm

Improving Loading Time

Post by LoadingTimeMan »

HeyGuys,

i have used PrimoRamdisk for quiet a time now and actually wasnt aware that PrimoCache exists aswell.
So basically i want to compete in my favourite game and sadly the loading times get tracked when playing aswell.
I have used Primo Ramdisk to just put the entire game on it but to be honest it didnt really improve loading times by that much compared to my SSD.
I think the problem is that the Game Files are not in Folders inside the installation path but rather in a big archive (like .zip or .rar i guess)

From my understanding my CPU still has to "unpack" the game files and then move them to the Ramcash again. Also inside the Archive there are like 100.000 files and the total size is ~12gb.
So i assumed that my CPU just takes the same time to "unpack" the files from SSD or Ramdisk. Or that ramdisk just isnt really faster copying alot of small files than my SSD is. Obviously i have ALOT faster read/writes when i use Crystaldisk on my ramdisk compared to my SSD but i guess thats one big file that gets copied. (Sorry i am not really into the depth of these themes)

So here is my question, can this program help me with that? I sadly dont really think it will as it will prolly just cash the entire archive aswell on the "cash" right? If i set the cash big enough i guess. Or will it actually save the Individual files that my CPU "unpacked" and make the loading times alot faster?
I have a fresh installation of windows for this and i guess i can do like 12gb ramdisk and 12gb cash if that even does anything :?

PLEASE dont laugh at me i am desperate :D this is just how i imagine things happening but as i said i have like no idea how all this memory stuff works.
It just feels really bad to lose 20-30% time to longer loading screens than others.

Thanks for any help/ideas!
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Re: Improving Loading Time

Post by Support »

You may use Process Monitor to monitor the disk access when you start the game. Then you may find what files are access or extracted.

PS. As you may have known, some games might take lots of time to unzip/extract, download, or process data. The bottleneck might not be in reading/writing files.
LoadingTimeMan
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Joined: Wed Jun 17, 2020 11:38 pm

Re: Improving Loading Time

Post by LoadingTimeMan »

Hey,

After some testing i guess i approved the point that sadly PrimoCash doesnt cash individual files form the Game Archive and is not faster than just running the game off of a Ramdisk.
I looked at my Process Monitor and i guess it proves that point aswell.
https://imgur.com/a/fpLH2E7
I defenitly got interesting results tho.
So with just playing the game off my SSD in my tests i got ~58sec of loading screens. (Loaded 15 zones which are not randomly generated and are every time the same)
When made a 24gb L1 Cash using PrimoCash my loads were ~48sec. (it only occupied ~400mb tho, thought it would actuall maybe load the entire game files Archive on there)
When i put the entire game in PrimoRamdisk my loads were ~38sec.

Would putting the game on a Ramdisk AND creating a PrimoCash do something?

If its a CPU bottleneck shouldnt my CPU load go up in loading times? it usually stays at around 10-20% (Ryzen 5 1600 @4ghz)
Also in Taskmanager the Ramdisk or SSD max moves up to 8-10% usage while loading... pretty strange.

Thanks if you have any more tips/ideas whats going on or what i can test!
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Re: Improving Loading Time

Post by Support »

The image link seems broken.
If the game extracts archive, make sure that you enabled Defer-Write in PrimoCache cache configuration, thus extracted files will be stored in RAM cache first.
Anyway, if the entire game is installed in a ramdisk, the speed should be the best among these solutions.

I guess the game takes certain time to process data besides loading and extracting files.
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