NTFS... is it slowing my gaming down?

[Zarich]

I installed Winxp recently. I did a clean install. I was using WinME before.
I decided to use the NTFS file system. Many say its wonderful. Personally I don't care about the extra security or whatnot. Since I installed I feel like my games such as tribes2 are running slower then before. I feel like IM getting a lower framerate. Could I solve this problem by converting back to fat32? or is NTFS not the problem?


Winxp home
1.2ghz thunderbird
256megs pc133 ram
asus a7v133
20gig maxtor drive
geforce3 ti500

 

[Derango]

First of all, you can't convert from NTFS to FAT32 without buying another 3rd party program, unless you were willing to reformat the drive. And back up before you do it too!

And, in my experience, NTFS has been faster for me thatn FAT32 would be. You might have another configuration problem. Also, file system speed really only has any effect on loading times. Your framerates should not depend on the speed of your disk/file system, at least noticably.

 

[boran]

hmmh
stwaaaange, ...

NTFS is technically seen much faster than FAT32 ...

are u sure u didnt format in a wrong way ...

(the ebst way is a complete blank format ..)

 

[Agamar]

NTFS does have a small amount of overhead caused by increased file security. This overhead would hardly be noticeable with a modern machine (Anything past P-II 233 should never know the difference). As far as games are concerned, unless you are swapping to the disk, as mention above, your drives should not make a difference. The easiest way to fix swapping is to add a chunk of ram (like another 256M stick) to your box. That is a lot cheaper than buying a faster disk.

 

[NogginBoink]

It's *highly* unlikely that the filesystem is the cause of the different game speed.

In order for the filesystem to be responsible, you'd have to be hitting the disk ALL THE TIME, and at a rate that FAT could just *barely* keep up and NTFS can't.

You changed to a totally different operating system. You're running a different kernel and different drivers for ALL of your hardware. You really can't do an apples-to-apples comparison of performance of Win9x vs. WinNT.

If you're getting a lower framerate, the most likely cause of the problem is that the video card vendor's driver is less effecient under WinXP than their Win9x version.

 

[AGreived]

I dont think NTFS has anything to do with it either. One thing I might say is it seems that WinXP 'eats' about 250MHz of your systems speed opposed to Win9x... If your video card uses the CPU for a lot of processing, that may make the difference, but it could be a number of things, differences in drivers being at the top of that list.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

ya got DMA enabled?