Increase your PC's speed, without upgrading or spending money!

[Darkgundam111]

hey DirectorC how did u do it for your firefox? did you only put the program folder into the ramdisk plus or are there more to it?

 

[95Viper]

Ramdisks have been around since the DOS 6 days; for all who remember:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/91634. It was called ramdrive.sys I had a card that you could install four dimms on and use as such. Oh well, enough reminiscing.

On to the point of my post...

DataRAM http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk/download-ramdisk
Dataram RAMDisk (BETA) - Windows 7, Windows Vista, XP, Server

Dataram RAMDisk is compatible with all versions of Windows 7, Windows Vista (x86 and x64), Windows XP (x86 and x64), all editions of Windows Server 2003 (x86 and x64), all editions of Windows server 2008 (x86 and x64). Dataram RAMDisk is freeware and does not require registration for disks under 4 GB. Please register with Dataram for larger disks (there is no charge). Version 3.5.130RC9

Download (3.0 MB)http://memory.dataram.com/__downloads/memory/ramdisk/Dataram_RAMDisk_V3.5.130RC8.msi

PDF for Ver. 3.5 user manual and FAQs(Vista version, but still useful):http://memory.dataram.com/__documents/Dataram_User_Manual_35(1).pdf

Enjoy

Edit: Fix download link:http://memory.dataram.com/__downloads/memory/ramdisk/Dataram_RAMDisk_V3.5.130RC9.msi

 

[kid41212003]

Nice wallpaper, I love that game.

 

[Mussels]

i'm testing it now, without mixing the ramdrive in.

the program has the ability to use ram anyway (makes its own ramdrive).

 

[Kantastic]

IMO I wouldn't dedicate less than 4GB to making a RAMdisk and for the price I'd rather grab a cheap 30 gig SSD on sale.

 

[Mussels]

i made a 2GB cache and went into options and told it to accelerate firefox.

So far i havent noticed much, but its certainly not slower.

 

[theorw]

Maybe something like DAEMON tools would benefit if u made like 8GIG ramdisk and tell it to make the virtual drive there...U could install games in no time!

 

[Mussels]

Maybe something like DAEMON tools would benefit if u made like 8GIG ramdisk and tell it to make the virtual drive there...U could install games in no time!

you still have to read the ISO, copy it to ram, then copy back to drive.

since its still being read + written once to and from mechanical drives - overall time would be the same.

how to set up firefox. yeah. hard.

 

[Mussels]

update:

firefox is a lot faster with this program. Not so much the usage browsing the web, but restarting it to install updates with 20 tabs is almost instant.

Protip: add it to your antivirus exclusion list, makes it a good chunk faster.

edit: opening a new tab is definately faster too - especially if the content is already cached (EG, a thread on TPU i've visited before)

 

[Darkgundam111]

Hey Mussels when u say add it to your antivirus exclusion ur referring to the ram disk?

 

[Mussels]

Hey Mussels when u say add it to your antivirus exclusion ur referring to the ram disk?

I mean the Eboostr program.

The *only* reason to use the external ramdisk application, is if you have 4GB+ ram on a 32 bit operating system, and want to use the unusable ram for the cache. Under x64 OS's (or with .5GB ram) the program has its own ramdrive built in.

 

[Darkgundam111]

Oh i see. thanks for the explanation mussles.

 

[Mussels]

from eboostrs benchmark program, testing on photoshop CS4

 

[hat]

Eh, I did something similar once. I didn't think it was worth it.

 

[Irish_PXzyan]

Do I need to build cache every day or is once all I ever need to do?
I noticed at start up that Eboostr was not running?
Is that normal?

 

[Xazax]

Eboostr start when your computer starts, no you don't need rebuild the cache

 

[DirectorC]

hey DirectorC how did u do it for your firefox? did you only put the program folder into the ramdisk plus or are there more to it?

The whole point is to end up with Firefox's cache on the RAMDisk. Then I made a new profile located on the RAMDisk, and copied my old profile (@ C:\Users[or Docs&Settings]\[User]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles) to the location of the new profile on the RAMDisk.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

http://techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107670

 

[TheLaughingMan]

Firefox should have never switched to caching stuff on the HDD. It is part of the reason I switched to Opera.

I want to see this increase the speed of other things, like loading games, iTunes, Steam, etc.

 

[DirectorC]

Firefox should have never switched to caching stuff on the HDD. It is part of the reason I switched to Opera.

I want to see this increase the speed of other things, like loading games, iTunes, Steam, etc.

Are you saying that Firefox, once it reads its cache from the HDD, doesn't keep in it RAM, but Opera does? I assume Opera saves the cache to HDD too...

And I prefer this fix over any other browser any day

 

[Darkgundam111]

just wondering, would say getting a portable version of firefox and then putting it in the ramdisk as well as its cache make it even faster?

 

[TheLaughingMan]

Are you saying that Firefox, once it reads its cache from the HDD, doesn't keep in it RAM, but Opera does? I assume Opera saves the cache to HDD too...

And I prefer this fix over any other browser any day

Well I am not really exactly sure of all the changes, but I can tell you what I think is correct.

Firefox use to cache stuff in RAM you were currently still viewing. It would move it to HDD when the site was either closed, navigated away from, etc. It also use to pre-cache stuff into RAM from your homepage to ensure the browser loaded faster. These features were both removed. Thus required increased accesses to the HDD during use. This made Firefox starting with 3.25 (I think) rather sluggish compared to 2.0.8 up to 3.0, but it used less RAM to run which was the goal I guess.

Then for me personally, there was a memory leak in 3.0 and the first update to it. As I opened and closed tabs, the RAM it sets aside for use was not released at times. Eventually it would reach something around 1+ GB of RAM being used for just it. The more RAM it had, the slower it got. It would also occasionally just take 44% to 50% of my processors power for no reason. It would just hold the CPU there forever. I could close it, and would keep holding the CPU cycles until I force closed in with the task manager. While the memory leak was fixed in 3.5, I still have the processor issue. While it didn't really bother my system, I would forget to forcible close it at times, then try to play a game and it would piss me off.

Opera works off the old Firefox system. It eats more RAM to use, but it is much faster and responsive. I also like several features being built-in that I use to add with add-ons. It also has some of Netscape 7.2's customization options, and properties layouts. Anything that reminds me of Netscape 7.2 is awesome in my book.