Gothic 3 Gothic 3 tweaks?

txa1265 said:

I can't quote anything, but I know that the real-world SATA is far less than the benchmarking results based on the actual usage. However, I know you can see differences 5400RPM vs 7200RPM on the same bus, so I can only imagine that it would be noticeable (for loading, etc) when adding the SATA advantage.

Click to expand...

This is generally true of synthetic benchmarks, I must admit, though there are some good Tools out there. Also actually using any benchmark becomes
sometimes obsolete if you dont carefully consider the specific performance
profile of the machine/applications you are going to install the hardware you
are interested in. They do give you an idea though especially for HD about
seek times read/writes burst performance etc...

It just stikes me as odd that despite the added advantage of the 2x buffer
(16mb) the 7200->10000 rpm and generally good characteristics would not
amount to a greater difference in perf for the Raptor.

Keep in mind that despite my profession I actually research HW only prior
to actually buying so I might be a bit behind things (been a year+ since I
installed my Raptor Raid).

@JonNik -- Your setups make a lot of sense. Indeed you don't need another partition for the swapfile if you keep it static; the only advantage is that it won't get in the way as you defrag your data partition.

I've no idea how much better or worse they would perform relative to the one I suggested. The difference won't probably be huge either way. More ways than one to skin a cat, as they say; the crux of the matter is still keeping your system/programs and your swap file on separate physical volumes on different channels.

Re Raptors and RAID: the thing with Raptors is that they have dramatically lower seek times than jus' 'bout any other IDE/SATA hard disk, even though the transfer rates are about the same. This means that any application that involves zipping around the disk, e.g. reading a large number of small files, will benefit greatly from them. This includes stuff like booting up the system or loading complex applications with lots of .dll's and other resources. OTOH it'll make very little difference when you need to shunt around large chunks of data... such as reading or writing the swapfile, streaming video, audio, or other media.

On the other hand, RAIDing the stuff will almost double your transfer rate, but won't do anything to seek times; this will make a lot of difference for some things and no difference at all for others -- in fact, it'll speed up everything that the faster HDD didn't speed up, but won't make any difference to the stuff that the faster HDD did affect.

So, if you want the best of both worlds, RAID a pair of Raptors -- you'll get the fast seek times *and* the fast transfer rates. OTOH if you can only afford to do one, then it really is your call.

However, there's one further point: how much room do you really need for your system and apps? A 36.5 GB Raptor costs about as much as a 250 GB Samsung. However, if you only need 70 GB for your system and apps (i.e., if you uninstall your disk hogging games once you're through with them), a RAID pair of Raptors won't cost you any more than a RAID pair of Samsungs. With the Samsungs, you're getting capacity you're not actually using, while not getting the faster seek times that would benefit you.

FWIW, I've built three very similar systems (same mobo, same X2 processor) for three different people, the only differences being in the disk setup. System 1 uses a pair of Samsungs, one for data and swap, one for the system, System 2 uses a Raptor and a Samsung, and System 3 uses a RAID pair of Raptors and a (mirrored) RAID pair of Samsungs. There's a very noticeable performance difference between the three; in particular, the RAIDed Raptor system boots up so much faster than the others it's not even funny. (Incidentally, my own system is System 2, only I added a second Raptor I came across for the swap file; my next upgrade will be RAIDing the Raptors once I can be bothered to do it.)

@ Prime Junta:

It seems you have spent a lot of time and thought in this matter.
You just gave me another little nudge towards buying that Raptor thanks.

I think for now my main Raptor Raid (its 2 X 74 GB) is mostly Ok. I Do need
occasionaly a little more space when I get lazy for large periods and things
keep piling up in my data partition on the Raid untill I backup in DVD but 36
GB will probably do for now...

Cheers

Just to add a thought... note that if you consider performance and space requirements that HDs (and -yes- even the superfast Raptors ) lose performance towards the end of the drive. As a rule of thumb, you could say that significant performance drops begin at about a 50% full HD so if you really must squeeze the absolutely max possible performance out of your drive(s), you should buy approximately 2x the capacity that you will actually use.
For example, look at the HD Tachs here and here . As you can see from the benchmark in the 1st link, the 74GB Raptor went from a max of about 70MB/s at the beginning of the drive to just a little over 50MB/s towards the end of the drive. And on the 2nd linked page (open the first pic on the page), we can see that the 150GB Raptor goes from 90GB/s at the beginning of the HD to a little over 50MB/s towards the end.

So, if max possible performance is of any concern, then one should definitely try to find a good compromise between drive capacity, the actually needed storage space, and price. Buying a small 36.7GB Raptor and using up the entire (or much more than 50%) drive capacity would negate or reverse a significant chunk of the performance gains that the Raptor has compared to a much cheaper (and larger at the same price) 7.2K RPM drive, possibly to the point where it just doesn't make sense to shell out that much more cash for a Raptor.

@Moriendor -- you're still thinking exclusively of transfer rate, which is only half the story. Seek times are at least equally important.

Again, all I can say is... try it out for yourself. I have built systems with 36.5 GB and 74 GB Raptors and with vanilla 72KRPM HDD's (Samsungs and Seagates mostly). There is a noticeable performance gain with Raptors, but yes, it is not as big as the leap you get from putting just any two drives in (on separate controllers) nor as big as RAIDing any two drives. And yes, in many cases it makes more sense to buy a bunch of identical drives, if only for flexibility and future repurposing.

Here is the first article I remember, appoliges Ihaven't had time to catch up to the read several of the last post.

This is from Anand Tech afaki one of the most trusted sites on the net, here is a quote from a review from one of the first released 16meg buffer drives you can check for more recent haven't the time, atm;
"With the MaXLine III, Maxtor has given users a good in-between point for those who want the capacity of a 7200RPM drive, but with the performance of Western Digital's 10,000RPM Raptor"

Here is the articla.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2094&p=1

It should contain any stats you seek.

@Acleacius: Thanks for the Link. I unfortunately dont have a very good record
with Maxtors (the only two HD's that crashed on me were Maxtors). Nothing
to say for the Company most likely (most probably bad luck) but I got a bit
burned there.

@Moriendor: That is true but what Prime Junta says is also true. In the End it
boils down on type of usage. I want a bit of space to Move my ever Growing
Collection of mp3's , screens and documents (and free some space in my data
partition plus move them outside of the more failure prone Raid) and 36 GB will
be just the thing for now. Performance wise I only care about the Pagefile.sys
from that Disk and either way that is going to be on the "front" since it will be
static and the first thing to go in after the Disc Format (unless I got my facts
confused....).

All in all I am still skeptical that with the single raptor/or other disk I'll see
a performance increase if only because the Pagefile.sys is now on the Raptor
Raid. I think That I'll follow the path of getting a 36 GB Raptor now and a
second One in the future as Prime Junta suggested. I think that one should
show a perf increase (for the single I'll know by tonight ) but I can do
without for now .

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Well WD has them too that was 1 or 2 years ago and they were just the first out with a review.
As I said it was the first artical I recall, it was inteneded to show its more cost effective to get a 16 meg buffer IDE 250gig than getting 75gig Raptor.
Iir Raptors are WD as well, if you want WD review of 16 meg buffer you can look one up.

A good Windows XP Tweak-Guide:

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm

My wires aren't long enough for this, most IDE wires I've seen have two plugs reasonably close together so they can do either two Hard drives or two CD Roms etc. How on earth do you manage to get your 1st hard drive/burner on one, then a second hard drive/dvd on the other. They just don't stretch!

I can only assume you have special extra long wires?

Daniel.

Another ge3.ini Tweak

change:
FpS.Average=30.0
FpS.Min=10.0
FpS.Max=120

to

FpS.Average=30.0
FpS.Min=20.0
FpS.Max=60

Some people at WoG report about massively improved loading times with disabled VSync.
Rather unlikely but worth a try.

Just a note on the RAPTORS, the 36 GB versions are much less efficient than the 74 GB versions. Search around on reviews.

I've got 2 74GB in RAID 0 and with regular defragging you can achieve near SATA scores in Sandra. As far as loading games into memory - I can tell you this: when I play coop NWN games while hosting the session I'm at the vendor's stall buying weapons long before anyone else arrives.

A good free harddrive-defrag tool:

ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/hdtool11.zip

Better than Windows xp defrag, but it takes a while.


EDIT newer Version:
http://www.wintotal.de/softw/index.php?id=3452

These tweaks are necessary for people with older rigs.

Savegame-help:
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3612&postcount=16

It's a workaround - a fix can only come from PB.

I have noted that most of my crashes happens in the area Vengard+Faring+Gotha. Faring is impossible to save / quickload into without a crash. Crashes in other places have happened but they are rare.

I have also noted that Memory Cache to low doesnt really help me, and only makes the game lag more.

@JemyM
How much memory is free / allocated when you start Gothic and load a game for the first time ? - the g3starter reports it.

I have these stats

1286/2047 ->63% (physical ram)

322/4096 -> 8% (swap file)

I can play 3-4 hours until the smartheap - out of memory error occurs - saving the game ca. every 10 minutes.

If your memory fill-rate is much higher - you should look for unnecessary background processes and deactivate them and/or tweak the Gothic cache settings.

If everything goes wrong - maybe you have tweaked too much - start with the original ge3.ini and set in the detail setting resource cache and texture quality to medium.

HiddenX said:

@JemyM
How much memory is free / allocated when you start Gothic and load a game for the first time ? - the g3starter reports it.

If your memory fill-rate is much higher - you should look for unnecessary background processes and deactivate them and/or tweak the Gothic cache settings.

If everything goes wrong - maybe you have tweaked too much - start with the original ge3.ini and set in the detail setting resource cache and texture quality to medium.

Click to expand...

1579/2047 (77%)
1846/3939 (47%)

I do not see anything in Task Manager sucking up more memory than Gothic itself, which sucks up 1.2gb physical and 1.4 virtual at the moment. Also... Texture Quality Medium really looks like crap.

Something goes very wrong on your computer - windows applications can adress 2 GB only. So Gothic can only be responsible for consuming 2GB at maximum. (physical+swap memory) - A normal Windows XP SP2 sucks up ca. 300 MB.

The question is:
Which process is the memory thief on your system ?

Control it with the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) register <processes>

Control your services with the tool msconfig.

-edit- nevermind