~1 second pause in games

[jacktesterson]

Disable your virus scanner when you play.

Microsoft Security Essentials is set by default to be constantly "slow scanning" your PC.

Its worth a shot.

A 5400RPM drive shouldn't be causing Pauses. Its still enough for gaming.

I think something is using your hard drive resources while you play, and its often a Virus scanne.r

 

[tviceman]

I would also check and make sure your video card and/or CPU is not overheating and throttling down temporarily. Run MSI afterburner and coretemp in the background, and observe the max temperatures it reaches during several of the pauses.

 

[taltamir]

Disable your virus scanner when you play.

ooh, definitely a good one... also, do you have any other background programs that access the HDD? like, say, an automatic backup program?

Also, try googling the specific game name + the issue. A lot of time it is due to a bug in a specific game, if that is the case you would easily find out about it.

PS. I think blaming overclocking for something like that is unreasonable... if your OC was unstable you would see artifacts or crashes, not stutters.

 

[Termie]

Just guessing but there is a big chance it's the audio drivers. Check online if you can find the latest audio drivers, also open the audio settings in Wow, maybe change some stuff there and see what happens.

Actually, OP, did you remember to install your audio drivers that came with your motherboard? If you allowed Windows to auto-install them, the wrong drivers may be installed. I had a problem where games would constantly crash after I uninstalled my Asus drivers while trouble-shooting and allowed Windows to auto-install the generic drivers. That could be your problem as well if it's a new build.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Sounds like what was happening after I allocated virtual memory to a slower harddrive so I'm inclined to guess it's your slow harddrive although I won't say it's definitely that.

 

[Voo]

Well the only thing I can say is, that I've played WoW for years (also 40/25man raids, although I tried to minimize that for other reasons.. ) on my laptop with a 5.4k rpm drive without any problems - granted that was before the addon (actually BC), but I find it hard to imagine that the addons would've changed that that much.

Although head parking by green drives every 10seconds or so sounds like a reasonable idea.


@Bigystyle: Huh? Maybe I misunderstand you, but MSE schedules a scan once per week and the rest of the time just monitors files and attachments from the internet (not really a problem if he's gaming), as well as suspicious file activity (could be a problem but here it uses 5k mem and low priority file read in the byte range, skype is worse, not to speak of TS/VT).

Although I remember a bug with MSE 1.5 where it needed excessive amounts of memory/cpu in a few configurations, so better check that, should be easy to see when logging.

 

[jackace]

I tried turning off search and indexing and it did not work.

I will double check audio drivers to make sure I have the latest

I will try turning off AV and disabling sound in the BIOS tomorrow.

If neither of those fix the problem I have a 250gb 7200 rpm seagate barracuda 7200.8 I will copy the game folder to and run it from there.

 

[Acanthus]

I tried turning off search and indexing and it did not work.

I will double check audio drivers to make sure I have the latest

I will try turning off AV and disabling sound in the BIOS tomorrow.

If neither of those fix the problem I have a 250gb 7200 rpm seagate barracuda 7200.8 I will copy the game folder to and run it from there.

Please report back!

I'm interested to see if the WD Green drive is the issue because of the "over-parking" issue.

 

[Acanthus]

Well the only thing I can say is, that I've played WoW for years (also 40/25man raids, although I tried to minimize that for other reasons.. ) on my laptop with a 5.4k rpm drive without any problems - granted that was before the addon (actually BC), but I find it hard to imagine that the addons would've changed that that much.

Although head parking by green drives every 10seconds or so sounds like a reasonable idea.


@Bigystyle: Huh? Maybe I misunderstand you, but MSE schedules a scan once per week and the rest of the time just monitors files and attachments from the internet (not really a problem if he's gaming), as well as suspicious file activity (could be a problem but here it uses 5k mem and low priority file read in the byte range, skype is worse, not to speak of TS/VT).

Although I remember a bug with MSE 1.5 where it needed excessive amounts of memory/cpu in a few configurations, so better check that, should be easy to see when logging.

It's not the fact that it's a 5400rpm drive. It's the fact that is a 5400rpm drive that has very aggressive sleep settings out of the box. It can be disabled with a program called WDIDLE3, but it puts the drive to sleep after something like 6 seconds of inactivity and then takes a good second to spin up when data requests are made.

Based on the game, and the nature of the engine, and the problem he is describing i have a strong suspicion this could be the issue.

 

[taltamir]

wait... the OP is running a game on a WD green drive?
yea that would totally explain it.

alternatively, ANY drive with overly aggressive sleep config (you can set those in the windows power options) will do that, the problem with the GP drives is that they ignore the OS' config and go to sleep on their own accord after mere seconds of inactivity.

 

[jackace]

Please report back!

I'm interested to see if the WD Green drive is the issue because of the "over-parking" issue.

Did not have as much time as I wanted over the holidays to swap drives. I will try and get to it this week, but its going to be a long week at work.

 

[jackace]

I was able to put the 7200 drive in this afternoon and have played most the evening now and not had any pauses. It looks like it was the drive. SSD drives just need to go on sale again. I missed them both times they did around xmas.

 

[MustangSVT]

very interesting, so that was all from a green drive?

I'll have to rethink about the wd 2tb ears drives.

 

[Termie]

I was able to put the 7200 drive in this afternoon and have played most the evening now and not had any pauses. It looks like it was the drive. SSD drives just need to go on sale again. I missed them both times they did around xmas.

I think this is a problem that is not well-documented in hard drive reviews. We usually just see sequential and random read/write tests, and maybe boot times/level loads, but the nature of the tests dictates that the drives will never park during them. In the real world, however, if a drive is constantly parking, it will definitely affect performance.

I'm curious whether idle power tests, which are the only area where constant parking might help, are actually run long enough to engage the parking mechanism. If not, it would seem WD should ship these drives with the aggressive parking off, and simply make it an option for the user. WD isn't getting any advantage during idle tests, and it's making their drives look bad in user reviews and threads.

 

[shangshang]

nvm

 

[Voo]

I'm curious whether idle power tests, which are the only area where constant parking might help, are actually run long enough to engage the parking mechanism. If not, it would seem WD should ship these drives with the aggressive parking off, and simply make it an option for the user. WD isn't getting any advantage during idle tests, and it's making their drives look bad in user reviews and threads.

Afaik the WD setting is extremely agressive (i.e. <30seconds), so I'd think that should be noticeable compared to the 15minutes or whatever MS uses as their default.

 

[jackace]

This next week I might play with that WD utility and see if I can turn off the "parking" and test the drive again.

 

[jackace]

very interesting, so that was all from a green drive?

I'll have to rethink about the wd 2tb ears drives.

Thats the very drive I have. I heard good things in reviews and it had a good rebate so I got it. I had planned to only use it as a data drive and get a SSD but I have missed every deal so far and now I'm left waiting for the ~$1.5/gb sales on the 120gb drives to return.