19 replies to this topic

[Driftwoood]

EDIT: Looks like I may have been a little hasty in thinking the the big improvement I saw was due to the SSD... Looks like it was mostly (if not all) due to a fresh Windows install and having less crap running in the background... my topic title should have been "Upgrading Old System? Try a fresh windows install... Wow!"

Original post below:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My 5 year old system:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Quad Core Processor AM3 3.4GHZ 8MB Cache 125W 45NM
GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD 5770 PCs 875MHZ 1GB 4.9GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI DP DIRECTX11 PCI-E
RAM: 4 GB - G.SKILL Ripjaws X F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL 4GB 2X2GB DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9-24 Memory


Without overclocking, I played the game on all lowest settings, getting 20-40 fps... Spent a bunch of time trying to figure out where my bottleneck was, and what to upgrade first...

You can check out the forum topic I started, asking for opinions and help below:
http://mwomercs.com/...neck-in-my-rig/

But long story short, I didn't upgrade any of the above... I put in a 120GB SSD, and put Win 7 and MWO on it, and the improvement was amazing!

Still on lowest settings, but my fps jumped to about 35-80... I've smoothed it out with V-sync on, as I had a lot of tearing and my monitor refresh rate is only 60Hz... Now I get a consistent 40-60fps...

Someone commented that I would see a big improvement with an SSD because I only have 4GB ram, so if you have 8Gb, you may not see the same improvements... but I highly recommend upgrading to an SSD before anything else... its much cheaper than a new CPU or GPU, and very portable into a new system down the road, like I plan...

Next step for me now is OC the CPU and GPU...

Edited by Driftwoood, 23 June 2014 - 01:50 PM.

[Catamount]

If you're really RAM-limited, then the next step is for you to get more RAM. I would have figured 4GB was enough for MWO and then some, but maybe not.

Edited by Catamount, 21 June 2014 - 05:48 AM.

[Goose]

You shore this ain't about a fresh install of Windows?

What can you tell us about your memory load, in-game?

[Hougham]

A hard disc should not make a difference of this type. 4gb should be more then plenty to play on low settings. I am with Goose my guess would be the fresh OS install is what has helped you.

[Tannhauser Gate]

Yeah it was the fresh install of the OS. There shouldn't be a lot of game-dependent ssd activity while in game. A 5 year old OS is likely to have loads of unnecessary processes and malware running along with gigs of tmp files in your profile and in windows. Also you probably had old system drivers. Still, an ssd is well worth having.

Edited by LakeDaemon, 21 June 2014 - 11:02 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

Goose, on 21 June 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

You shore this ain't about a fresh install of Windows?

What can you tell us about your memory load, in-game?

Hougham, on 21 June 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

A hard disc should not make a difference of this type. 4gb should be more then plenty to play on low settings. I am with Goose my guess would be the fresh OS install is what has helped you.

no it is the SSD, my slightly better system, a fresh install on a Hard Disk Drive made no improvement, but a Solid State Drive gave a huge improvement back in February.

if you have a slower HDD an SSD will gave a big improvement

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 21 June 2014 - 12:03 PM.

[Driftwoood]

Hmm... you could be right... though my drivers were up to date, and I tend to run things like Spybot, etc to remove malware...

Looking at the Pyhsical Memory in Resource Monitor, it does show only about 2GB used and 2GB standby/free... Previously, it was about 3GB used and 1GB standby/free...

When I have some time later, I will uninstall MWO and reinstall on the HDD instead of SSD and see if I see a difference...

Edited by Driftwoood, 21 June 2014 - 12:08 PM.

[Hougham]

Rogue Jedi, on 21 June 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

no it is the SSD, my slightly better system, a fresh install on a Hard Disk Drive made no improvement, but a Solid State Drive gave a huge improvement back in February.

if you have a slower HDD an SSD will gave a big improvement

I just played a few games on lowest settings and MWO used around a 1gb of RAM with total system showing under 3gb used. Storage drive usage after initial load was almost none existent with most of the time showing no activity and when it did finally spark up it only showed kbs. I don't really see how a faster drive could increase maximum frame rate.

Edited by Hougham, 21 June 2014 - 01:06 PM.

[Odins Fist]

The year is 2014, RAM for computers is cheaper then it has been in the past, so here's some advice.

#1. Run no less then 8gb of the lowest timing, fastest MHZ RAM that your CPU can run.. AMD CPUs love low timings for RAM, like 7-7-7-20 at 1600 MHZ if you are able to OC that Phenom II 965 and get the RAM that high.

#2. A SSD will NOT give you better frame rates, but it WILL load maps and such much faster then a Plater Drive.. I have a SSD for boot drive, and only have a couple of games on it that have lots of assests to load for a level/map.

Edited by Odins Fist, 21 June 2014 - 01:39 PM.

[Catamount]

Exactly as Odin says.

It's a basic principle of computing that a piece of hardware cannot in any way enhance one's processing ability if that piece of hardware isn't being used in the first place.

As long as you have sufficient RAM, and SSD will not be utilized significantly during gameplay, which means it is not making your game run faster. Crediting the SSD is like putting a coffee cup near your computer, seeing a game run faster, and crediting the coffee cup. It's completely post-hoc reasoning.

[Neil Diamond]

Rogue Jedi, on 21 June 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

no it is the SSD, my slightly better system, a fresh install on a Hard Disk Drive made no improvement, but a Solid State Drive gave a huge improvement back in February.

if you have a slower HDD an SSD will gave a big improvement

No, it was the fresh install of windows.

[Rogue Jedi]

LeonidasBD, on 21 June 2014 - 09:45 PM, said:

No, it was the fresh install of windows.

with a fresh install and a Western Digital Green (slow) HDD I could only run at 1600 x 900 resolution and medium graphics at average of 40fps (usually much lower the first 30 seconds of a drop), the exact same system, all I had changed was a fresh install on a SSD I can get an average of about 50 FPS at 1920 x 1080 and very high graphics.

other system specs
AMD Phenom II X6 1080t processor
8GB RAM
Geforce 560 Graphics

[Catamount]

To reiterate, if you have enough RAM, then storage is not utilized, and SSDs do not make the game go faster.

Tomorrow I'll toss a copy of the game on my WD Green, where I've run it before, and benchmark to illustrate.

[Driftwoood]

Catamount, on 22 June 2014 - 04:38 AM, said:

To reiterate, if you have enough RAM, then storage is not utilized, and SSDs do not make the game go faster.

Tomorrow I'll toss a copy of the game on my WD Green, where I've run it before, and benchmark to illustrate.

Any chance that its not (just) the fresh install of Windows, but also that windows is now running off an SSD?

[Neil Diamond]

Driftwoood, on 22 June 2014 - 12:12 PM, said:

Any chance that its not (just) the fresh install of Windows, but also that windows is now running off an SSD?

Absolutely not and Catamount is correct.

[Catamount]

My guess is that the differences are a product of measurement error, either due to small sample sizes, or measurement on different maps., or measurements under different operational conditions.

I promised I would post up numbers between my Samsung 840 EVO 250GB and my WD Caviar Green 800GB, and I will do so now.

Each time I'll start the computer up fresh, disable BOINC to reduce CPU usage, and then run 3 games in the same mech. It will at least be a decent measurement of whether having MWO itself on a faster or slower drive will help. Results will be forthcoming in about an hour.

[Catamount]

So, results (I said about an hour, didn't I? )

For each test, I restarted the computer, disabled BOINC and Overwolf, started FRAPS, and run three games with a given drive. FPS measurements started as soon as the HUD appeared, and ended as soon as the last mech died. I only died once, but in the event that happened, I observed from another mech's cockpit (in the one case in question, a Timberwolf's). All matches were run with a Cataphract-3D. All runs were done on assault, and five out of six were on the HPG Manifold.

Western Digital Caviar Green:

2014-06-22 20:33:11 - MWOClient
Frames: 31115 - Time: 526972ms - Avg: 59.045 - Min: 36 - Max: 105 - HPG

2014-06-22 20:45:55 - MWOClient
Frames: 31519 - Time: 537189ms - Avg: 58.674 - Min: 28 - Max: 120 - HPG

2014-06-22 20:59:06 - MWOClient
Frames: 22451 - Time: 394448ms - Avg: 56.918 - Min: 34 - Max: 116 - HPG

Average: 58.212
HPG Manifold Average: 58.212


Samsung 840 EVO:

2014-06-22 21:12:09 - MWOClient
Frames: 22607 - Time: 422653ms - Avg: 53.488 - Min: 29 - Max: 100 - HPG

2014-06-22 21:23:36 - MWOClient
Frames: 8503 - Time: 140744ms - Avg: 60.415 - Min: 40 - Max: 92 - River City Night

2014-06-22 21:32:21 - MWOClient
Frames: 23444 - Time: 419487ms - Avg: 55.887 - Min: 34 - Max: 112 - HPG

Average: 56.597
HPG Manifold Average: 54.686


That's right, not only did the 840 EVO not outperform the Caviar Green, but the game actually ran a bit faster on the Caviar Green. The difference doesn't appear significant, however. It seems reasonable to blame it on sample error. These aren't exactly identical benchmark runs, so I could have spent a tad bit more time indoors on the Caviar Green runs or something.

Edited by Catamount, 22 June 2014 - 05:44 PM.

[Odins Fist]

A faster HD means Maps/Assets loading faster if those Maps/Assets are on the drive in question, most are, but that shouldn't affect Frames Per Second in the manner discussed here.

I remember the old "Virtual Memory Low" error message.. LOL

8gb of decent RAM would definately be cheaper then a 240 gb SSD.

[TheSteelRhino]

So i have spent time watching system performance in mwo in past using performance monitors. Since mwo is 32 bit the process will never be able to cache everything in RAM due to address space limitation, even if you are on a 64 bit os. What I have noted is that certain map (frozen city especially) seem to hit the disk more often. I moved the mwo install to a ramdrive and that did help to improve the minimum fps. (Sorry i dont remember the numbers). Honestly its not a huge overall improvement, but that may explain some of what you are seeing.

The biggest improvement came from upgrading vid card from radeon 6970 to r9 280 and from a phenom ii x4 965 be to an fx 8350

Mwo is cpu intensive. What could be happening is with the lower thread count on a 4 core proc threads are waiting/queuing up trying to access the disk....if the disk responds faster then the processor can hit the next thread. Even though the disk i/o doesnt appear high when it needs to grab something it still slows everything down. Again, only have noticed this on older maps like frozen city and forest colony (especially if there are grapics filters. Ie weather or lots of particles)

[Catamount]

Odins Fist, on 22 June 2014 - 06:36 PM, said:

A faster HD means Maps/Assets loading faster if those Maps/Assets are on the drive in question, most are, but that shouldn't affect Frames Per Second in the manner discussed here.

I remember the old "Virtual Memory Low" error message.. LOL

8gb of decent RAM would definately be cheaper then a 240 gb SSD.

From what I've seen, MWO still seems to sit below the 2GB cap, so there's just no way storage is making a difference with even 4GB of RAM without a ridiculously cluttered computer, let alone 8GB. I will say though, loading assets off a Caviar Green definitely wasn't much fun.