Dual Core = When is multi-tasking TOO MUCH?

[rox1co]

ok guys, i have a X2 3800+, i wanna know if my issue is normal (currently OC @ 2.6 on 1.4V w/ 2GB of Ram)

things i try to do

2 Nero-Burning Program on 1st Core and CS:S on the other 2nd Core

is it ok to be lagging a lil bit? when i got Dual Core, i had higher expectations (figured it would be fine for me to multi-task and be fine)

today was the first time i actually did the 2-Nero program + CS:S and i'm not very happy with the results

 

[Duvie]

Unless you have multiple drives and HDDs it sounds like you are IO limited....HDD can still do only one read/write instruction at a time....

Heavy use of IO dependent items need Roms as maters on their own channels, and multiple HDD preferably SATA so they can be on their own channels

 

[rox1co]

wuts IO limited mean? would it be best if i put my 2 burners on diff IDE Channels?

i plan on purchasing a 2nd HD pretty soon. if i install Windows on 1 of the HD, will i be able to install programs on the other HD where Windows wasn't installed

 

[Geomagick]

Having the burners on different IDE channels is essential, and very much recommended.

However the hard disk could also be causing the problem, assuming you are burning at quite a high speed then the amount of data coming off the disk is going to be quite high, at times saturating the drives capability.

This might be helped by adding a second drive, but really the only way to remove this bottleneck is to either go all out and have a multi drive RAID or cache the images to RAM prior to the burn. The problem with this method is that 2GB suddenly won't be enough.

 

[Duvie]

Exactly IO limited means your DRIVES...Your IDE drives and your SATA drives....Your optical drives and your Hard Disk drives (HDD)....

It is essential to have burners on their own channels or at least separated form one another...

Ideal with todays computers to have a setup like this

Primary Master = DVD-rom/RW drive
Primary Slave = none

Secondary Master = DVD-rom/RW drive
Secondary Slave = none

SATA channel 1
SATA channel 2

1-2 in a Raid 0 format

SATA channel 3 HDD as the backup and storage of critical data....


That is my setup above....I never have lag doning even multiple IO intensive apps...It takes some forethought about what drives are reading and writing still. However good multitasking with either cpus are IO devices needs t be well choreographed...

 

[jwalker46]

Duvie, How would you change your setup IF you wanted to keep your OS on a separate hdd from your data/images? Would you want a Raid 0 for the OS, or only for the data/image disc

 

[TanisHalfElven]

problem is the game and the nero tasks are reading the data from the same hdd. so the hdd is the bottle neck. try installing your games on a different hdd (no not just a different partition). then check.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: jwalker46
Duvie, How would you change your setup IF you wanted to keep your OS on a separate hdd from your data/images? Would you want a Raid 0 for the OS, or only for the data/image disc

I would do a setup like my previous one...

Primary master = DVD-rom/RW
Primary slave = none

Secondary master = DVD-rom/RW
Secondary slave = none

SATA3 = Raptor 10k drive 36gb (fast bootup, used for applications and OS
SATA4 = Strage drive

What I would do is put my nero images or what I am burning on that drive and leave the gamesonthe drive with the OS...Keep that drive free of the stiff that feels it up and defragged...

 

[Tanclearas]

RAID-0 can definitely help in increasing IO performance, but I've found it better to have the following layout.

Drive 1 - Partition 1 - Windows, Program Files
Drive 1 - Partition 2 - Game executables (mapped to C:\games)
Drive 2 - Partition 1 - Data (mapped to My Documents for convenience)

Keeping the game executables on a separate partition isn't for performance, but rather to make reinstalls a little easier.

The above layout means that when games are reading from the drive (ie: loading levels), they are not affecting the data drive at all. If I have a process working on something in the data drive, then playing a game really won't affect things much at all. Ideally, I would have the Data drive as RAID-0, but I would still keep my games and windows on a separate drive.

 

[rox1co]

if i set my HD in RAID, do they have to be the Identical by Brand/Model? if not, wut about by Size? can i RAID 80GB and 250GB?

say i put Windows OS in my 80GB, can i install Programs (Games) to my 250GB or is that purely for storage?

 

[zephyrprime]

How do you control what core a particular program is on? Doesn't windows just juggle that automatically? And if you have the newer video drivers which are multithreaded, that may be why you are stuttering.

 

[Duvie]

CS is not multithreaded and I have burned apps while my son was playing Battlefront 2 (Star Wars) and no issues of stuttering...He plays game so it while I run FH and maybe bit torrents in the background....

I think his is a clear IO limitation...

From the days of HT hyperthreading ppl have biatched about multitasking was crap to basically find out they just dont understand IO limitations...

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: rox1co
if i set my HD in RAID, do they have to be the Identical by Brand/Model? if not, wut about by Size? can i RAID 80GB and 250GB?

say i put Windows OS in my 80GB, can i install Programs (Games) to my 250GB or is that purely for storage?

As far as I know, YES...perfect match...same size, same brand, same speed, same standard, etc.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: Duvie

Originally posted by: rox1co
if i set my HD in RAID, do they have to be the Identical by Brand/Model? if not, wut about by Size? can i RAID 80GB and 250GB?

say i put Windows OS in my 80GB, can i install Programs (Games) to my 250GB or is that purely for storage?

As far as I know, YES...perfect match...same size, same brand, same speed, same standard, etc.

yea, i'm pretty sure everything has to be the same. if you get 2 drives of different sizes to RAID with each other, though, it would be a complete waste. if you RAID an 80gb and 250gb drive, both drives will be recognized as the smallest drive, 80gb each

 

[blackangst1]

SCSI FTW

 

[rox1co]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
How do you control what core a particular program is on? Doesn't windows just juggle that automatically? And if you have the newer video drivers which are multithreaded, that may be why you are stuttering.

i'm setting my Nero program on 1 Core and my CS:S on the 2nd Core (thru task manager Affinity)

CS:S may not be multi-threaded, but if i separate my gaming from my other programs i should be fine, but since i'm IO limited then i understand the reason why i was lagging

ps. you say that the new Video Drivers are multi-threaded, wouldn't that be good? why would i be stuttering?

thanks ev1 (and especially Duvie, appreciate it)

one last question

say i put Windows OS in my 80GB, can i install Programs (Games) to my 250GB or is that purely for storage?

will i be able to use the 80GB for Windows and Programs while using the 250GB for gaming or is it purely for storage? basically i'm asking if i can install programs onto the HD that i didn't install an OS on

 

[rox1co]

ok guys, i plan on getting my 2nd HD. would you advise me to run it RAID 0 for faster performance? i really don't care for RAID 1 mirror imaging, i back up my stuff on DVD-RWs so plz don't suggest RAID 1

big question is: i'm reading that RAID 0 is stripping using 2 identical HD acting as 1 doubling the performance speed

so if i'm Encoding 2 movies + CS:S on RAID 0, wouldn't that make me IO limited again despite the doubled performance since it's using 2 HD as 1. if it's using 2 HD as 1, it'll take on all 3 applications instead of having 2 separate HD

if i use 2 HD separately w/o any RAID, i could dedicate 1 HD for Encoding 2+ Movies and the 2nd for CS:S or games only

am i thinking clearly? or would RAID 0 fix my IO limited problem?

 

[Duvie]

Doubling is pure theoretical..not realworld....

Where RAID 0 performs is the intangibles....The system is night and day to just SATA drives alone...that is including a 10k Raptor....

The speed is not overwhelming...With Raid 0 you dont loose the drive space but the danger if something goes wrong is one big chunk of lost data....

I would recommend 2 sata drives..one OS and Apps and one storage...Get them same size and you can RAID 0 and see for yourself...

 

[jiffylube1024]

Forget about RAID 0 - it cuts your reliability in half, you need to use identical drives and it WON'T solve your I/O problem, it will just reduce it. RAID 0 is simply the striping of two (identical) drives for (theoretically) double the read and write performance; the two drives behave like a single, faster drive. If either drive fails in Raid 0, you lose all your data.

If you want to do RAID 0, you can't half-ass it. You need to back up your data, and I would strongly recommend first time RAID 0 users of having a third hard drive for backup of the RAID 0 array, at least until you get it configured (if you get a second drive and try to put your drives into RAID 0, you will either lose all of your data or have to do it in Windows, which is unreliable and can take days).

You should do what Duvie said: Keep Windows on one OS and buy a second hard drive to be your data/storage hard drive. Burn CD's off that second hard drive, etc while CS:S or any game/program runs off the first hard drive.

The reason you're getting slowdowns is because games need to stream data off the HD, but burning/encoding/etc also needs to stream data off a different part of the drive. The drive heads have to jump all over the disc while doing these two things at once and this causes slowdowns -- the HDD becomes the system bottleneck. To solve this problem, get a second large HDD to be your storage disk, and do all of your burning/file storage on that drive.

If you want the fastest performance, get a Raptor for your primary drive; however this route is more expensive (and the 1st generation Raptor is a bit noisy/whiny due to not using fluid bearings, and not that fast these days - barely faster than current generation SATA2 drives), you may as well keep your current HD and just add a second drive for storage. That's the easiest and cheapest route.

I ran a WD Raptor 36GB for 6 months and then the faster/quieter 74GB Raptor for a year as my boot drive; Raptors do give you faster boot times and game loads (especially the 74GB model), but the improvement is in the range of 10-15%; if storage space is tight, I'd recommend just getting a large drive for your main HDD (like a 250GB SATA2 drive with 16MB of cache, eg. the Seagate 7200.9) and partitioning it - the drive isn't that much slower, and you will get a lot more storage than on a Raptor.

 

[rox1co]

i have a SATA2 WD 250GB with 16mb buffer and i'm def not going to RAID anymore

would you recommend that i get a smaller HD like 80GB for my gaming and using my current 250GB for storage/burning (is having a smaller HD beneficial? performance/speed)

and i doubt i would get a HD with 10K speeds, just not worth it to me

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: rox1co
i have a SATA2 WD 250GB with 16mb buffer and i'm def not going to RAID anymore

would you recommend that i get a smaller HD like 80GB for my gaming and using my current 250GB for storage/burning (is having a smaller HD beneficial? seek time or anything like that related to performance)

and i doubt i would get a HD with 10K speeds, just not worth it to me

The best deal right now I would say is the 160GB model Seagate 7200.9 drive, because not only is it cheap, but it's fast - it uses a single 160GB platter, which is the largest platter on a consumer hard drive. Typical 200-500 GB drives only use 100-150GB platters. Basically it means that the 160GB seagate is as fast as any 200-500 GB hard drive .

If you get an 80GB drive, make sure you get one with an 8MB cache because the 2MB cache models are slow. I would strongly recommend the 160GB 7200.9 drive as your boot drive (you can partition it into two drives if you like; a 50+ GB drive for the OS and applications and the rest as storage).

Your SATA2 WD 250GB drive makes an excellent second hard drive for storage.

 

[rox1co]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024The best deal right now I would say is the 160GB model Seagate 7200.9 drive, because not only is it cheap, but it's fast - it uses a single 160GB platter, which is the largest platter on a consumer hard drive. Typical 200-500 GB drives only use 100-150GB platters. Basically it means that the 160GB seagate is as fast as any 200-500 GB hard drive

Your SATA2 WD 250GB drive makes an excellent second hard drive for storage.

dang another thing i've learned, so it's 1 whole platter rather than split into 2+ platters to meet it's requirement

interesting. and yeah this HD is pretty reliable, got it for $88 new at zipzoomfly

my only reason for stepping up to a 250GB over a 160GB is that 10 bucks more i'll have an extra 90GB of storage yanno, but i have to ask myself if that justifies having a faster drive (and if i do decide that i wanna try out RAID, i would be able to)

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
The best deal right now I would say is the 160GB model Seagate 7200.9 drive, because not only is it cheap, but it's fast - it uses a single 160GB platter, which is the largest platter on a consumer hard drive. Typical 200-500 GB drives only use 100-150GB platters. Basically it means that the 160GB seagate is as fast as any 200-500 GB hard drive .

Are you sure on that, personally i think you're utterly wrong. The storage review backs it up too. Firstly there are large performance differences between brands, where seagate is distinctly average, secondly the trend is clearly that larger drives are faster than smaller ones.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

IO performance really is overlooked a lot of the time, its exactlywhy I've gone pretty much all SATA (leaving the IDE channels free for ROM drives), and have gone with RAID0. RAIDing all the drives together isn't a good idea, but it can help if you're moving around large files. If you don't then its probably best to keep them all separate. That way you can read files from one drive and have others free for IO access. I'll play my games off of one harddrive, downloading files to another, and be burning/ripping/encoding disks from another...

Most of the problems I run into are keeping up with the computer, especially if the game is very demanding of my attention ...I've gotta go multi monitor one of these days.

 

[furballi]

There's more to speed than GB/platter. The Seagate is about average among modern 7200rpm drives. Not much improvement over the older 7200.8 @ 133GB/platter. A multi-platter drive will generally run faster due to more heads and surface area for read/write. The downside is more heat and noise.

The sweet spot is probably a drive with two patters (balance between speed, noise, and temperature).

As for bandwidth, the burst speed for most 7200 rpm drive is under 100MB/sec. Add about 20MB/sec for a DVD ROM. This is still more than adequate for the IDE channel.