Quote Originally Posted by Slynk View Post
Typically games like this have a disk cache for things like character models (since they are dynamically generated) as well as environment caches (since they are so large.) Video games have a strict memory limit to uphold and this is bypassed by disk caching.
Ah I see your logic, but no, like in FFXI all characters are rendered on the fly (or at least if they are cached, it's only in memory), there's definitely no disk caching involved Same for the environments, it loads enough of what's around you into RAM (explaining the ~1GB the game can use at times) and I believe it loads/releases more as you move around.

It does however write out the character data to disk every time your change your gear (and possibly when the condition degrades) to the My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A REALM REBORN folder, although this data is pretty tiny and compared to the amount of writes Windows itself does (especially when it uses the pagefile), this game isn't really anything to worry about.