Want to speed up texture loading times on FSX

**Captiandon** · 05-08-2007, 12:43 PM

I found that when changing views in FSX that sometimes the textures were really slow to be added like on the panel. I cant really swing the 600 in cash to buy more ram at this time and I was trying to think of an alternitive. Well I found one. I am running Vista and this seems to be a new feature with Vista. I got to wondering if one could use a Flash Drive for Ram. So I did a Google search and came up with this.
http://www.reviewsaurus.com/2007/04/...-drive-as-ram/

Seems that the upgrade to Vista wasnt such a bad move after all.
BTW I am Using a Super Flash Drive USB2 8GB card. Yep thats right An 8 Gigabyte Flash drive.

**johnost** · 05-08-2007, 05:43 PM

Sounds interesting. Can you give us an idea of the improvement(s) you have experienced?

John

**Captiandon** · 05-09-2007, 12:48 AM

Well it seems that the only real change I have noticed is faster loading times for the Textures when changing views. The textures a little more stable. Its not a total fix for a lack of ram as I read further in that write up. Its more of a replacement and faster version of Cache instead of using hard drive space which is slower then Flash on USB 2.0 But as far as Frame rates I havent noticed much of a differance. maby a frame or two per second faster. I would imagine that the best bet would be more ram but right now I cant afford the 600 in cash for 4 gigs of DDR2 I will wait for a few Months and maby the price will come done some. Maby a year before we can see some affordable ram. Of course I am running a Notebook and right now I only have 1 gig of ram. However its a Dell XPS M1710 and I can upgrade to the 4 gigs. I just want to spend the money on my car right now.

**jetguy35** · 05-09-2007, 12:57 AM

I upgraded my ram from mwave.com. They seem to have some cheap ram if you check their site every once in a while. Or go to www.nextag.com and search for ram because they give you prices on ram from many different online stores.

Ben

**johnost** · 05-09-2007, 01:47 AM

I can see that there may be a loading time improvement when you are running with 1 Gb of RAM. I run with 2 Gb, and after a lot of watching the Vista RAM-meter, I have never seen usage higher than 51%. But now I am thinking - my wife has a 1 Gb memory stick for her digital camera, and she has a USB card reader attachment, where the memory stick shows up as a virtual drive on her computer. Maybe I can "borrow" this stuff and give it a try.

John