To Replace or Not to Replace, That is the Question

[Adipose]

Let's say that I want to download a replacement for a vanilla character. Will a replacement leave as much of a footprint on the ram as a totally new character would?

[Deleted3082751User]

all changes are stored in the saved games, they are not stored in system ram.

 

ram caches data, for each session only. to speed tasks up. upon system reboot or shutdown, the cached information is then released and lost. unless it is stored on the harddrive.

 

so to answer your question, their is no footprint on ram at all, only the saved games would be affected, and based on the type of mod you are refeering to, would not have an impact in the grand scheme of things, for example if its a simple texture replacement, it can be installed and uninstalled an unlimited amount of times at any given time without affecting the game at all.

 

system ram (memory) is session based only, meaning each time you boot your system to windows that is classed as a new session and as such the system memory will store data for the entirety of each session but the information is only stored temporary and released upon a new session. that is why memory is considerably much smaller then a harddrive since it purpose is to not store data permanently. typically you would not notice this since system memory is very quick, much quicker then a harddrive, and as such you would not notice the fact that the same task on 2 different days has been cached twice (unless you are specifaclly looking for this). the best way to notice this, load a program, and notice its load speed, then load it again and notice how much quicker it loaded, then reboot the system, and notice how long it took the same program to load again, then rinse and repeat, this will give you a good example of what system ram does (Caching) and will also proof that temporary stored data in the memory is lost upon reboot and or cold bootup/ shutdown. however it will be much harder to tell if you have a very fast system, as it wont make much of a difference (as things will load extremely quick anyway), especially if said system also has an ssd card, since they can load stuff extremely quick.

 

for it to be a footprint, that means the information would need to be stored permanently.

 

and since we are talking about mods, they are only active if called upon, move them to another location that is not in the same game path, and they are then non existent according to the game.

 

the only thing that would make an impact on your game are scripts. these are the only things that can cause problems with a game if they are removed from a saved game that relies on them, as the game will still try and load the now nonexistant scripts, this will cause all sorts of issues, from crashes, to save bloat, and the worst possible issue, save game corruption, on an active playthrough. all other mods can be installed and uninstalled without major issues. especially texture replacements.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Guest

[Adipose]

Many thanks for the info.