Looking to speed up load times of favourite apps

Khannie

So.....I was just thinking about this....most of my computing at home involves about ten applications, of which, the top two are Unreal Tournament 2004 and Mozilla Firefox. Almost without fail I will load one of them when I boot the computer.

I don't want to increase my boot times, but I would like to increase the speed of load of these puppies. Can you buy a PCI card (or equivalent) that has flash ram (or equivalent) on it, that's faster than a hard drive?

I think flash ram's pretty slow....slower than a hard drive, though I could be wrong, in which case the solution's obvious.

Anyway, has anyone got any suggestions?

It surprises me that operating systems don't already come on rewriteable fast memory, so that it was there immediately once you turn the machine on....a bit like a console...or the old 8 bit computers.

SwampThing

Yes, there is a solution...

Check out this

Ciaran500

You could try and find one of these if you looking to lood from solid state mem. http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

Khannie

Ciaran500 wrote:

You could try and find one of these if you looking to lood from solid state mem. http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

That's the stuff. I'd only want a small one though....maybe 512MB. Defo not 4 gigs. That's for global-mega-corps.

Mutant_Fruit

Try using software to create a ram disk. It'd have to be small (unless you own loads of ram) but you should be able to make one thats big enough to store firefox. But, i doubt you'd notice a huge speed improvement. Its worth a shot though i suppose.

It wouldn't help games, unless you had a giant ramdisk, and installed the game onto it

Orion

Khannie wrote:

the top two are Unreal Tournament 2004 and Mozilla Firefox. Almost without fail I will load one of them when I boot the computer.

I don't want to increase my boot times, but I would like to increase the speed of load of these puppies. Can you buy a PCI card (or equivalent) that has flash ram (or equivalent) on it, that's faster than a hard drive?

My God you're impatient

UT loads in about 15 seconds for me and Firefix in about 5. And both of them are after I've already got TS, Thunderbird and mIRC open on top of all the other crap in my systray

How much RAM have you got in your box? And what's the seek time on your hdd?

Khannie

Macros42 wrote:

My God you're impatient

Yes. Yes I am.

Impatience and laziness fuel the world economy

Macros42 wrote:

UT loads in about 15 seconds for me and Firefix in about 5.

And this is acceptable to you?



But seriously....I hate waiting for windows to load, and I hate waiting for UT to load.

Macros42 wrote:

How much RAM have you got in your box? And what's the seek time on your hdd?

Ram is 768MB. Not upgrading that 'til I get a new machine. I never hit swapfile space. UT's not really a ram monster.

Hdd seek times? Not sure tbh, but it's a fast 7200rpm ATA 133 drive with 8mb cache.

Mutant: I considered the ramdisk thing, but I'd have to copy the exe to ram each time from disk.

I'm really surprised that there isn't more demand for really fast solid state storage.

hostyle

Khannie wrote:

I'm really surprised that there isn't more demand for really fast solid state storage.

There is. Its just very, very expensive.

SwampThing

Khannie, put on a yellow leotard, light some canddles and incence.
Turn on PC - UT & Firefox on autoload.
Assume the Lotus position on the floor and find your inner calm.
Arise, take position in front of PC, and hope no-one ever realises you're playing UT against them wearing what you're wearing!

Khannie

SwampThing wrote:

Khannie, put on a yellow leotard, light some canddles and incence.
Turn on PC - UT & Firefox on autoload.
Assume the Lotus position on the floor and find your inner calm.
Arise, take position in front of PC, and hope no-one ever realises you're playing UT against them wearing what you're wearing!

LOL.

To get in touch with my inner killer, I play UT naked, covered only (in parts) by raw meat

Picture THAT!

Looks like I'll just have to RAID0 when I upgrade in a few months.

Orion

Khannie wrote:

LOL.

To get in touch with my inner killer, I play UT naked, covered only (in parts) by raw meat
Picture THAT!

Aarrrrggghhhhhh! That's an even worse mental image than Calis singing in the shower

SwampThing

Oh sweet Jesus, someone pass me a bottle of Absinthe, 'till I finish myself off!!

You're a sick ****er Khannie

Gegerty

Khannie wrote:

So.....I was just thinking about this....most of my computing at home involves about ten applications, of which, the top two are Unreal Tournament 2004 and Mozilla Firefox. Almost without fail I will load one of them when I boot the computer.

I don't want to increase my boot times, but I would like to increase the speed of load of these puppies. Can you buy a PCI card (or equivalent) that has flash ram (or equivalent) on it, that's faster than a hard drive?

I think flash ram's pretty slow....slower than a hard drive, though I could be wrong, in which case the solution's obvious.

Anyway, has anyone got any suggestions?

It surprises me that operating systems don't already come on rewriteable fast memory, so that it was there immediately once you turn the machine on....a bit like a console...or the old 8 bit computers.

Emmm why don't you leave them open and don't shut down your PC? I work as a software developer and the apps I use take an eternity to load, I just keep them open always. Sometimes need to reboot maybe once every 6 months, hardly warrants buying new hardware for it.

Khannie

Gegerty wrote:

Emmm why don't you leave them open and don't shut down your PC?

:eek:

*shudders*

I too am a software developer, and while my work machine's on, I leave most apps open. This machine has oodles of ram, so that's grand.....HOWEVER....leaving my PC always on is something that I consider just plain wrong.

That kind of wasted energy sickens me tbh.

Swamp and Mac: Knew you'd like that

Gegerty

Khannie wrote:

:eek:

*shudders*

I too am a software developer, and while my work machine's on, I leave most apps open. This machine has oodles of ram, so that's grand.....HOWEVER....leaving my PC always on is something that I consider just plain wrong.

That kind of wasted energy sickens me tbh.

Swamp and Mac: Knew you'd like that

Switch to Wind power :rolleyes:

jozi

My whole image of khannie just changed *shuder*
:eek:

Khannie

jozi wrote:

My whole image of khannie just changed *shuder*
:eek:

Like the new one?

See you at the LAN in a few weeks

Capt'n Midnight

Khannie wrote:

:HOWEVER....leaving my PC always on is something that I consider just plain wrong.

That kind of wasted energy sickens me tbh.

How about hibernating then use pagedfrg (sysinternals) to defrag that file so it loads quicker.

with 768MB ram you could look at not paging out the kernel - can't remember the settings to do that though - uses up memory but should be a little faster.

also change your pagefile to static (same min/max size) and again with the pagedfrg to make it contiguous

http://www.cyberwizardpit.net/article3.htm - XP Ramdrive
not going to help much though

jozi

Khannie wrote:

Like the new one?

See you at the LAN in a few weeks

ROFL
Can imagine you there now, on your own cause we all got scared

EDIT: just noticed i went over 1000 posts, how did i miss that

Orion

Khannie wrote:

Like the new one?

See you at the LAN in a few weeks

F**k that - I think I'll just go to the Star Wars night* and skip the LAN. Thanks for helping me make the decision easy


*This is assuming that you watch Star Wars fully clothed of course