Improve hard drive performance (especially with game loading times)

[Ylurien]

I`ve been playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights 2 recently. It`s a fun game, but I find that you have to load new areas almost constantly in the game. Every time you go indoors, you get a loading screen. Come back out again - loading screen. With the amount of loading that needs to be done in this game, I want to speed up how long it takes to load these areas.

It would seem to me, in this day and age, that there should be a utility that would use the leftover RAM that you have in your system to cache the most recently accessed information on your hard drive (or a vast majority of the information a particular game will use) and keep it in memory so that it can be accessed almost instantly. I don`t know why I have to wait another 30 seconds to load my quicksave after I die in NWN2 when I just loaded the same savegame 5 mins earlier and it took the same 30 seconds then. Why can`t that sort of information be cached in RAM, or at least more effectively on the hard drive? Would this sort of thing be classified as a problem with the way the games caches things, or is this a problem with how WindowsXP caches things by default? If the latter, is there a program or something that more intelligently handles how caching is done?

Any input on this would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[Idontcare]

Checkout this thread http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=27&threadid=2069250 - my comments in it are the same I'd provide to you here.

 

[Ylurien]

Yeah your advice in that thread was great and I`m actually planning to buy more RAM now for a ramdrive.

But I was actually thinking more of a quick software fix, if anything like that exists. Some application that effectively keeps track of which programs you use most often, which files on your hard drive are accessed most often, etc., and put them into a cache that can be accessed much more quickly than regular files.

But I suppose there`s only so much speed to be had from caching - to really improve access time and transfer speeds the only option is something like a RAM drive I guess?

 

[Cutthroat]

But I was actually thinking more of a quick software fix, if anything like that exists. Some application that effectively keeps track of which programs you use most often, which files on your hard drive are accessed most often, etc., and put them into a cache that can be accessed much more quickly than regular files.

It's called superfetch, and it comes with Vista.

 

[Ylurien]

Tell me more about Vista`s Superfetch. In your opinion, does it really speed up loading times for applications a remarkable degree? Are there any programs like it that work for WinXP? Isn`t XP supposed to already have something like Superfetch built into it?

Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, does increasing your Virtual mem swap file beyond 4GB have any real world difference in terms of speed of accessing programs and transfer speeds?

 

[Cutthroat]

In my opinion, yes it actually does speed up application loading times, once it gets to know your habits. What it can do while an application or game is running I don't know. I have no idea if it will speed up level loading times for instance, I'm not sure if it's that smart.

Windows XP has Prefetch, so does Vista, it's a cache that is used during boot to speed up Windows loading time. I have never heard of an application for Windows XP that acts like Superfetch, somebody show me if I am wrong.

Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, does increasing your Virtual mem swap file beyond 4GB have any real world difference in terms of speed of accessing programs and transfer speeds?

I have no idea, I doubt it, certainly nothing I have noticed. I have 2x2048MB swap files on separate drives, I can't even tell if that tweak makes any difference.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

if u wanna speed up game load times/overall system load times the only thing u can do now is get a HDD with a higher RPM (raptors 10,000) more cache (hitachi 32mb), denser platters. theres not much else you can do if u already have 2gb of ram

 

[Ylurien]

Hmm, it would seem that the only option left to me - as you say - is to get a new drive. And since I really only play a few games at a time, it would seem that an SSD (solid state drive) would be the best bet for me, since I do have a little money to spend on it.

The question is, where can I buy one of these drives? Newegg is fine, but they don`t ship overseas and I`m currently living in Japan. Anyone know of a good online shop that does international shipping? And what make should I go with (Samsung, etc.)?

Thanks.