Rottenator
The Littlest Hobos
Ushra'Khan
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Posted - 2010.02.15 14:52:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Rottenator on 15/02/2010 14:55:57
Edited by: Rottenator on 15/02/2010 14:55:40
Edited by: Rottenator on 15/02/2010 14:54:29
I know its not really necessary to use a ramdisk because OS X has good file caching, but I was to try it anyway. I came quite far and it also looks like its possible to put it in a automator script, just ... I don't know if it actually makes any sense. I mean, I don't know if it speeds up system/grid loading, because I have no idea if the bottleneck is diskIO or just network latency. But well, here is how you can do it.
Three warnings:
-Only use this for cache NOT for settings, cause you will loose it all.
-Don't do this if you have no clue what you are doing, it might get you very frustrated with lost data and so on.
-Don't make your ramdrive too big, I think I read somewhere you shouldn't make it bigger that 1/3rd of your total physical RAM.
The following commands will set your cache dir on a ramdisk:
%hdiutil attach -nomount ram://523264
%diskutil erasevolume HFS+ ramdisk /dev/disk1
%diskutil umount /dev/disk1
%diskutil mount -mountPoint ~/Library/Preferences/EVE\ Online\ Preferences/p_drive
/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/CCP/EVE/c_program_files_ccp_eve_tranquility/cache /dev/disk1
- Line 1 creates a 256MB ramdisk called '/dev/disk1' as the output shows (in my case) but does not mount it anywhere yet.
- Line 2 formats the ramdisk so you can actually write something to it, but it also directly mounts it at /Volumes/ramdisk, which is the wrong place.
- Line 3 unmounts the ramdisk because its mounted at the wrong location.
- Line 4 mounts the ramdisk at the cache directory of eve. (this is actually 1 line, but to not break the forums I broke it in two)
If you run the commands in the terminal it will look something like this:
%hdiutil attach -nomount ram://523264
/dev/disk1
%diskutil erasevolume HFS+ ramdisk /dev/disk1
Started erase on disk1
Unmounting disk
Erasing
Initialized /dev/rdisk1 as a 256 MB HFS Plus volume
Mounting disk
Finished erase on disk1 ramdisk
%diskutil umount /dev/disk1
Volume ramdisk on disk1 unmounted
%diskutil mount -mountPoint ~/Library/Preferences/EVE\ Online\ Preferences/p_drive
/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/CCP/EVE/c_program_files_ccp_eve_tranquility/cache /dev/disk1
Volume ramdisk on /dev/disk1 mounted
To eject the ramdrive just go to finder and eject it. Also if you shutdown your mac it will be gone when you boot up again, so don't safe anything there that you want to keep.
Does anyone has any idea whether it actually improves performance as in loading system or grid? I found it took a little longer to start Eve, but jumping gates went a bit better than I'm used to, though I think just trying this really is just taking subjective measurements.
If anyone cares to do further tests on it please post your results here. I know that on a windows machine it really was effective.
If it turns out to boost Eve performance and people want to, I'll try to make an automator script to run this before starting Eve and post how to replicate it.
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Rottenator
The Littlest Hobos
Ushra'Khan
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Posted - 2010.02.16 10:33:00 -
[2]
 Originally by: Disco Jack
The issue I am seeing is that the cache just keeps getting progressively bigger and there's not enough de-allocation of the RAM being done (memory leak?), so with an extra pool of RAM to send your cache, it should reduce the strain on your actual RAM which might increase your performance a little, and the period of time before you crash from a memory related error should be extended since there's now a larger pool to throw the cache into.
I'm not sure if we are talking about the same. But what I'm doing is allocating a little part of my RAM to use it as a really fast filesystem to store the little things Eve normally puts in the cache folder on your harddisk. I think you somehow are talking about some other sort of cache then I am. Doing as I done above means you have _less_ RAM available for the os and thus the game, thus it would rather take less than more time before you crash from having not enough memory. Actually I'm reducing the size the cache folder can take to 256MB while if it were on my harddisk it can grow up to 600Gig cause I have that much space free on my harddisk.
Originally by: Disco Jack
I'm still getting cider buffer overrun errors, and a few more have cropped up in the past few days. I'm very interested in the results of this idea.
I've never had any problems with my 4GB of memory here, at least not that I know of.
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