Should you upgrade your system?

[_________Neurofreeze]

Originally posted by JohnMclain
If you REALLY want ao to fly...

Get a motherboard that supports 2gb of RAM. Set 1gb to a ram drive and install AO to it. I suppose it could be done with 1.5gb ram as well...

Make a copy and keep it on your normal hard drive. If you ever crash or reboot, you'll have to redo the whole deal. Just ghost it, and transfer it over.

You can find tips on how to do this on various hardware helper sites.

You'll blow away any SCSI based system for less cost.

John

I wouldn't say that. Unless you use something like SDRAM (non-DDR), it could very well cost more. My Cheetah, controller, and cables would come out to about $300 total ($200 for the drive itself). 2GB of DDR SDRAM of even the PC2100, cheapo, generic crap would cost $400, if not more (I think pricewatch lists some 512MB sticks for $95, which are obviously generic). Maybe if you looked at it as a 1.5GB upgrade it would cost the same, assuming your system currently has 512MB and three DIMM sockets free and can your current motherboard can handle that much RAM and your current 512MB stick is the correct type (many four stick setups require ECC RAM). That's if you settled for craptacular RAM... which is one of the two most common causes for hardware-related system failures (up there with crappy PSU's). Also you'd have to figure in the fact that I can put my OS and every single one of my programs on my drive, so the benefits reach out far beyond using one single game for only the span of a single uptime, where as 2GB of RAM doesn't do much for performance beyond 512MB unless used in some very large media projects (in which case a SCSI drive might actually be preferred anyway).

I have played around with RAMdrives though, and I suggest any hardcore gamer who is able to should try it out. It's beyond fast... far, far faster than simply turning off Virtual Memory. It might not be feasible for AO and very, very new (like UT2k3) games though, as their space requirements are growing faster than the amount of RAM even hardcore gamers use.

[Naughti]

I just saw two very good increases in system performance, one was expected.

I originally was playing AO with a p2 400, 128 meg ram, tnt 16 meg agp card. I had some troubles though lots of them were due to it being unoptimized at release (really amazing I could play at all)

Later I had 576 meg of ram when I upgraded my computer to play Luclin with Everquest. Ao ran a bunch better than, but they'd also made improvements with its memory in a year and a half.

A bit after i got a geforce 64 meg mx 400 card for like 30 bucks, new this also made it nicer.

Recenly I bet the bullet and got a new motherboard, case with 300 w ps, celeron 1.8 ghz = $208 bucks and a geforce 4 ti 4200 128 meg agp 4x for $169. This made a BIGGGG difference.
All of this was in 98, then I upgraded to XP pro - multiboot.


Finally I was going to replace my pc 133 sdram with DDR ram, since the new board I got can use all sdram or all ddram (both kinds of slots) But when I checked, ddr ram is still like twice as much even for the 2100 speed. So instead I got another pc 133 sdram, this time 512 meg. I'll put the other 256 meg and a 64 meg into my older computer.

So now I have 768 meg and am in xp pro. AO runs incredibly better. I used to be at 800 x 600 with lots of stuff off now I run at 1024 x 768 32 bit color with higest textures and view/character view out pretty far. So far I do well even in cities like omni around crowds.

I used cacheman (www.outertech.com) to set up some optimization of xp pro for games, such as not using so much ram for disc cache and not using much of the virtual swap file if possible.
While looking at cacheman during and after AO, I noticed that my system ram use (real ram, from the dimms) kind of climbs steadily, starting out at 400 meg or so. After a couple hours and being in lots of intense areas.. I was usually using 600 meg of system ram while only like 8 meg of my virtual swap (though it said 350 ALLOCATED in xp)

The LARGEST difference I see now is that, where as before I got lagged up the wazoo by players, since upping my meg to 768 and forcing xp to use mostly real ram its pretty darn smooth even with like 30 of them around a whompa and view distances out pretty far. The game looks pretty fantastic too.

I feel that now I'm pretty ready for SWG or even Everquest 2

768 is a whopping crudload better than 512 meg in a game like this, due to textures. Textures all over on world geometry and especially on nearby players take up loads o' mem. The more mem you have, the more you can handle without lag. Once I upgraded things that were really lagging behind like my proc and vidcard, I clearly saw this.

MMORPGS are different than all other video type games because of variation of texture possibilities with a large number of avatars.
If you ever notice, this is something they always avoid in a single player game, with reason. It doesn't kill your framerate to display 25 of the same model and texture of orc over here, with these other types over here and over here, what kills you is in an mmorpg with 30 people around you with NO REPEAT TEXTURES. If they were all wearing white plasteel armor, you'd have no problem, but they are not.

This is where EQ had it right in limiting the possible texture looks, yet because EQ is so old and unoptimized it also doesn't scale up as well as AO when you upgrade. The differences in it from upgrade to upgrade are quite small, even going from 512 meg to 768 meg of ram.

If you had a gig of ram, you'd likely use it in AO if you just upped your settings a bit. 2 gig would probably be overkill though. Though My eq dir is like 3 gigs, my AO one is 940 meg so it WOULD fit in a ram drive. This would be VERY fast if someone tried it, the reason would be that memory is faster than everything else, even the fastest most expensive hard drive. Since everything would be stored in memory, things would be more than instantaneous. You'd have to be a person who really played AO a lot though to make it worth having a batch file or something make the ramdrive then copy over the entire AO dir into the ramdrive on bootup, then another batchfile to copy over and overwrite the existing AO dir on the hard drive from the one on the ramdrive (or probably just the often changing files)

I always thought these games should support kind of a partial ramdriving of some part of it, which you could then point the *.ini to or something. Like just putting the textures on a ram drive.
We are getting closer to memory drives, that will be nuts.

[__________JohnMclain]

Yah but he was talking about upgrading which means...

A) He's probably already got 512mb of ram and a motherboard that supports 1.5gb

and

B) You're right, the 4 DIMM 2gb motherboard and ram would put the costs over a slow SCSI setup (which is still faster than IDE).

The kind of SCSI you get for $200 is barely faster than those western digital 8mb platter 120gb drives.

You gotta spend quite a bit more to really get good SCSI performance...

John

[__________JohnMclain]

A few more considerations...

A single SCSI drive is currently NOT very much faster than the best IDE drives.

Ultra160 SCSI drives (in the $200-$300 dollar range) are only slightly faster than say the new Western Digital drive.

Ultra 160 is only theoritically capable of throughputting 160mb/s, the real number is more like 40mb/s (about on par with the above mentioned WD disk).

However, the real benefits of SCSI come from RAID arrays as they can then (not perfectly scaled) both share that 160mb/s interface and then far outperform the IDE disk.

However that requires purchasing 2-3 of the drives, a raid controller, cabling, etc. Heck, I'm not even sure how a game like AO would perform if you set up like 3 raided Ultra 160 drives... though I'm REALLY curious - anyone have this kind of hardware around?

To sum up - theres no real performance benefit of a single SCSI drive over the newest IDE drives, 4 DIMM motherboards require good ram and are expensive

John

[__________JohnMclain]

OK, so now that I'm totally into this discussion...

ABIT AT7 VIA KT333: $130 (max 2gb ram) www.newegg.com
4x PC2100 Crucial 512mb: $520 www.crucial.com

High end makers & components. Use 1.5gb as ram drive, 500 as normal ram. THIS WILL BE SO FAST YOU WONT BELIEVE IT Requires some tech savvy and a few online FAQs to set up. Will only help one game at a time typically, and a lot of system management for when you reboot.

Total cost: $650 + shipping




SEAGATE SCSI 36.0GB 15,000RPM, MODEL# ST336752LW x2: $676 www.newegg.com
Adaptec 29160 - Ultra 160 32/64 bit PCI card: $212 http://www.scsistuff.com/scsicards.htm

High end makers & components. Use RAID, SCSI can be a bit of a pain to set up as well. Lots of net FAQs around. Will make everything on your box load about 1.8x as fast as with IDE drive by my best guestimates (roughly a 2x improvement in AO).

Total cost: $896 + shipping



John

[__________JohnMclain]

I think it's about time for me to build a new system.

ABIT AT7 VIA KT333: $130 (max 2gb ram) www.newegg.com
4x PC2100 Crucial 512mb: $520 www.crucial.com
AOPEN CD-952E 52x CDROM: $20 www.newegg.com
WD 80GB 7200RPM EIDE WD800JB: $108
Teac 1.44MB 3.5 Inch Floppy: $9
3COM 905CX-TXNM PCI 10/100: $35
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live!: $35
FIC AT010 RADEON 9700 PRO: $305
En-light Mid tower case 340W P/S: $60
AMD Athlon 1600+/266: $50

Total Tower Cost: $1272

Muhahahahah

John

[_________Neurofreeze]

Originally posted by JohnMclain
A few more considerations...

A single SCSI drive is currently NOT very much faster than the best IDE drives.

Ultra160 SCSI drives (in the $200-$300 dollar range) are only slightly faster than say the new Western Digital drive.

Ultra 160 is only theoritically capable of throughputting 160mb/s, the real number is more like 40mb/s (about on par with the above mentioned WD disk).

However, the real benefits of SCSI come from RAID arrays as they can then (not perfectly scaled) both share that 160mb/s interface and then far outperform the IDE disk.

However that requires purchasing 2-3 of the drives, a raid controller, cabling, etc. Heck, I'm not even sure how a game like AO would perform if you set up like 3 raided Ultra 160 drives... though I'm REALLY curious - anyone have this kind of hardware around?

To sum up - theres no real performance benefit of a single SCSI drive over the newest IDE drives, 4 DIMM motherboards require good ram and are expensive

John

First off, your pricing in your latter post is misleading. I was comparing my system, which uses an 18GB SCSI drive as the OS/app drive. They're only ~$200 a pop, even for the new 15k.3 drives. My controller uses an LSI chipset (by many accounts far better and cheaper than Adaptec's mediocre stuff), it's dual-channel, 2 68-pin ports, 1 80-pin port, 1 external. $80 bucks without cables/terminator (which cost about $30). Tekram and LSI both produce cards with these chipsets.

Second, the WB JB's have a starting sustained transfer rate of about 57MB/s, and end at about 33MB/s. They're undisputed king of IDE. My drive starts at about 65MB/s and ends at about 45MB/s. To some, that's pretty close. It's too bad my drive is about three times older than any WB JB's. The newest and best SCSI, the 15k.3, starts at about 76MB/s and ends at about 50MB/s. Quite a lead. This is also disregarding far more important factors in performance, whether in AO or not. SCSI, by design, has a far superior protocol and can handle simultaneous transfers and requests with ease, exactly where IDE would fall flat on its face (which is a big factor when trynig to load up dozens of textures from dozens of people in mass PvP, all simultaneously). Not to mention the fact that SCSI has far lower seek times (from higher spindle speeds) and inherently larger cache. Like a RAMDrive, you have to experience SCSI in your own system for a while. You'll never be able to go back to IDE again. Even SCSI drives (like 10k RPM drives) with theoretically lower throughputs will put an IDE drive to shame in the hands of a power user.

Third, I happen to have a friend that has a SCSI RAID0 setup (again, only x15-36LP's, the system was made far before both the 15k.3 and WB JB's were out). It does basically diddly squat for performance. Why? Seek times increased. RAID will either increase seek times or keep them relatively the same. It doesn't seem like it would be a big factor, but remember our scenario, loading dozens of textures off of dozens of people simultaneously. Also, RAID was designed to be used for data redundancy. Using RAID for performance reasons is just a flawed concept used by people who compete in pissing contests.

I'm not saying that IDE should be eradicated, I would never be able to afford all the space I use if I used all SCSI (and some things, namely SCSI CD/DVD burners, aren't being developed nearly as much their IDE counterparts). It's just that no one should hold delusions that IDE can compare with SCSI performance. It's very expensive, server-class equipment for a reason.

Finally, for your system, I'd rather cut the RAM in half, then upgrade the CPU to the new 333MHz FSB 2400+ AXP's and some DDR333 RAM. Trust me, you'll see far more benefit with that setup (and I believe that it'll cost nearly the same). Also, having four sticks, as I briefly mentioned, can lead to lower performance. With your mobo choice, the AT7, and with pretty much all AMD boards I can think of, you will:
1) Need registered RAM (which has a very slight, but inherent, performance overhead cost over non-registered RAM, not to mention that it costs $bling$bling$)
2) Need to scale back memory timings. You will not be able to run at CAS2-2-2 or go past DDR266.
You can get two 1GB sticks instead of four 512MB sticks and circumvent this though (at a huge $bling$bling$ cost). Good luck if you're really going through with it. Should be a fantastic system either way. My brother and parents personally use an AT7 KT333, it won't let you down. Personally, my next system is looking to be Intel.

[Obit]

I'm currently using a 2yr old AMD TB 1ghz, 512meg 133mhz SDram, SBLive, Geforce2 GTS, running the game in 1280x1024 16bit on my 19" monitor, runs quite crappily to be honest.

So, I recently bit the bullet and ordered a new system:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz Boxed PC533 Socket PGA478, 512kB "Northwood".

Mobo: Asus P4GE-V/L Hovedkort S478/533, 333DDR I845GE, ATA/100, ATX, USB2.0, VGA, LAN.

Gfx: Sapphire Radeon 9700 Atlantis PRO 128MB AGP, ATI 9700PRO, DVI, TV-Out, Retail.

Ram: 2x TwinMOS PC2700 DDR-DIMM 256MB CL2 Minne 184-P (for DDR-PC333MHz).

Case (need a bigger PS than I have currently, and might as well order a new stylish case): Chieftec Dragon Medium Tower w/door Black Case m/360W DX-01B-D-U w/USB/FW.

Planning to run AO on full antialising and anisotropic(whatev) filtering in 1280x1024 32bit with this setup, as well as being able to run new games.

[__________JohnMclain]

I realize SCSI has many wonderful benefits outside the scope of AO, but that wasnt the point I've always has SCSI on workstations etc but for home use, well I dont have multiple people xferring from my drive at once.

I also said I wasnt sure if having them raided would help or not - that i'd be curious to see. Seek time does hurt, but transferring more data simultaneously could overcome it somewhat. Aka, if we have 500 new textures to load, RAID may split the work between the two drives, giving 10ms seek time for each item split up between two drives. Well, all theory, thats why I was curious if anyone had actually played with it. A lot of it might even hang within the logic of the controller card.

Obviously RAID doesnt give a speed increase if you're xferring MP3s as they're one large file being read off.

Regardless, I wasnt intending to be misleading on pricing, I havent bought a SCSI controller for quite a while. I chose adaptec in the example as "safe".

Thanks for the discussion though, it's made me go look up info about SCSI which I havent done in a while.

John

[___________Meekatten]

Entire texture db in ram?
Hey it would work!
But need to buy a new car before that heavy investment in supa big DDR RAM modules though.

But as someone mentioned, HD trashing is the worst problem for me also. Seems game cannot keep from trying to access drive C: which is OS only and tools only - highly irritating.

[Numbfreeze]

Athlon XP 2400+
2 WD 120GB HDs w/8MB cache each in a RAID with a highpoint controller card
Radeon 9700 all-in-wonder pro
1GB RAM

I still get lots of choppiness when entering an area, as if stuff is still loading as I walk around or something.

[redsnaper]

i must say that going from 256 to 512 mb ram has helped greatly.
that will be the only thing i touch until i buy a new system.

[__________JohnMclain]

Yah the RAM cost is sorta scary... but if you are building a whole new system it actually would still be cheaper than anything remotely as good from Dell, Alienware, Gateway, etc.

John

[Isadara]

I did, and the game has run much more smoothly for me since.

Old:

450 mhz PII (ouch)
384 133 RAM
GeForce 2 64 mb AGP
20gb hard drive

Now:

1.33 mhz athlon
512 DDR RAM
GeForce 2 64 mb AGP (must upgrade this)
80gb matrox Hard Drive

I went from "nerfed jump" to "jumping queen".

[secondkenlon]

Should I keep breathing?

Same sorta question.