What I am referring as a RAM Drive is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive. If I Install Blender on a RAM Drive, would it increase Blender's "speed"? Additionally, since "speed" is a very loose word, it would be nice to also mention 'what' will be faster (e.g. a better GPU will increase cycles render speed, etc.)
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$\begingroup$ I don't think it would, at least not very much. It would only help when reading/writing from the drive, which I don't think is done at all during the really long operations like rendering. As for GPU rendering, it depends on your current setup and the GPU you want to use. "faster" is relative. In general though, GPUs are faster, but have tighter memory constraints. $\endgroup$– gandalf3Commented Sep 6, 2014 at 17:44
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$\begingroup$ No. Not while rendering. $\endgroup$– someonewithpcCommented Sep 6, 2014 at 18:01
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$\begingroup$ @krismath For the sake of science, I suggest you do a test and report back. I doubt you'll see an increased in speed that's worth having less RAM available in your system. But I could be wrong... $\endgroup$– user1853Commented Sep 6, 2014 at 20:14
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$\begingroup$ @cegaton I am deciding whether I should learn to create a RAM Disk or not based on this question. I realize the potential harms it could do to my computer but if it's clearly beneficial, I would do so. Being not too savvy at computers, I'd say it would take a while before I make a RAM disk. BTW, I appreciate your thought of scientific experimentation. $\endgroup$– krismathCommented Sep 7, 2014 at 2:04
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1 Answer
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Reserving memory for a file system was a good idea 20 years ago.
Modern operating systems use all the available memory that is left by the running processes for caching.
When you start a program the first time it takes longer than subsequent starts because the files and used libraries are still available in RAM. This is the best way because if a process requires more memory cache areas can be evicted. A RAM-disc whereas would statically allocate the memory which might be needed by another process and couldn't be temporarily released.
tl;dr
No, It would harm the overall performance of your system.
