VaM 1.x Best Ways to Use a RAMDrive Safely in VAM?

[brasileirinho]

Hi everyone,

I’m wondering if using a RAMDrive can reduce stutters or improve load times and I’d like to get input from users who have already tested different approaches or tools. (Let's call it VAMDrive)

My goal is safe performance improvement without risking memory exhaustion or crashes. I have 32GB RAM

I tried asking ChatGPT, but I have no idea if it's hallucinating or not.
It says I could use a temporary .var extraction cache in the ramdrive (it's different than the multi gigabyte ram cache that stores textures)
It works roughly like this: every time VaM needs a file, it opens the .var, reads the file, then closes the .var again. If the scene needs several files from the same .var, VaM will reopen it multiple times!!! This creates CPU and system-call overhead, which can lead to stutters.

So the idea is either pre-extract the wanted .vars in the RAMdrive manually, and use a symbolic link to addons package. Or use a script to detect which .vars are needed in the scene and automatically extract only those .vars.

Also, even if the recommended RAM-drive setup isn’t specific to VaM, such as using it for the system TEMP folder or anything else that improves overall system responsiveness, those suggestions are welcome too, since they would benefit all games, including VaM.

Any experience or advice would be really appreciated!

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I'd say 32GB is a little on the light side. You probably don't want to tie up some of that with a RAMDrive. I'd say a fast M.2 SSD is better. For stutters, try this plugin. It's still in development. I had issues with V3, but V2 worked fine on complex scenes.

I also recommend flushing the Vam cache when it hits 20GB, YMMV. Are you sure Vam decompresses each var again when it needs something new? When I load a CUA, it can be slow on the first asset, but if I need more assets from the same bundle, it's quite fast. Scene load times are independent from stutters. Reducing what you have in AddonPackages and the M.2 SSD will improve load times a lot. Stutters are a result of memory Garbage Collection (GC) as explained in the anti-stutter plugin discussion.

 

[brasileirinho]

I'd say 32GB is a little on the light side. You probably don't want to tie up some of that with a RAMDrive. I'd say a fast M.2 SSD is better. For stutters, try this plugin. It's still in development. I had issues with V3, but V2 worked fine on complex scenes.

I also recommend flushing the Vam cache when it hits 20GB, YMMV. Are you sure Vam decompresses each var again when it needs something new? When I load a CUA, it can be slow on the first asset, but if I need more assets from the same bundle, it's quite fast. Scene load times are independent from stutters. Reducing what you have in AddonPackages and the M.2 SSD will improve load times a lot. Stutters are a result of memory Garbage Collection (GC) as explained in the anti-stutter plugin discussion.

Thanks for the insights! This is a great alternative. I will have to swap the CPU patch to v12, but I think it will be worth it.

Btw, clicking buttons in the menu also triggers that GC? Because that's what feels real sluggish.

That thing about vam decompression behavior is ChatGPT answer, which Idk if its hallucinating or not.

Also, why do you recommend flushing Vam cache? Just to free some disk space or for better performance? I keep the cache in HDD, but I could move it to the NVME SSD, I just didn't do it because some users said that they didn't notice any improvement moving the cache from HDD to SSD.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

The cache builds up over time. At times, I noticed Vam getting slower when the cache got huge. When I flush it, the invoke time is longer the first time, but thereafter it's normal. I also download and try some scenes I later delete. No sense keeping them in the cache.

It depends on what menu buttons you click. If you have a ton of morphs, those do slow Vam down a lot. Same with hair and clothes, but not as bad as morphs. I've been pruning stuff out.

 

[Hipper]

I just checked my cache and it has 170GB/90,000 files. This is from about five months work.

Do you suggest just on 'cleanliness' that I delete the lot and keep to a max of 20GB? I assume there's little harm in this?

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I just checked my cache and it has 170GB/90,000 files. This is from about five months work.

Do you suggest just on 'cleanliness' that I delete the lot and keep to a max of 20GB? I assume there's little harm in this?

Are you sure you're looking at the cache? Its size is shown under User Preferences -> Performance in the main UI. If that's 170GB, just click Clear Cache and restart, or do a hard reset in Vam. Like I said, it's slow the first time, but should be smooth sailing after that. Don't use Windows file mangler to do that, use the gui.

 

[Hipper]

Are you sure you're looking at the cache? Its size is shown under User Preferences -> Performance in the main UI. If that's 170GB, just click Clear Cache and restart, or do a hard reset in Vam. Like I said, it's slow the first time, but should be smooth sailing after that. Don't use Windows file mangler to do that, use the gui.

I looked at VamX/cache using File Explorer. After a couple of hours work since I last looked the 'Properties' are still the same - 170GB/90,000 files. Using VAM's UI/User Preferences/Performance I get 182.77GB. I'm not short of disc space as the HDD has 1.4TB of free space.

I've never used 'Hard Reset'. I'll clear the cache in VAM/User Preferences and we'll see what happens!

Thanks for the advice.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Hard reset is just like exiting Vam and restarting, without the invoke time. It clears memory, and rebuilds the cache at minimum size. That cache is huge.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

BTW, if you're using VamX, you should always go to their forum for support, as that's a paid product. You may get more specialized advice there.

 

[sunhawken]

I Just tested a ram drive with a dupe of my vam install it's fast as fuxk. ! Like x3 the speed.