Just bought a Readyboost enabled usb flash drive , 4GB 28mb/s read / 18mb/s write or something has worked wonders for this game. I do get the odd stutter but it doesn't get in the way of fighting enemies. Totaly playable now ( using 2GB readyboost ).
I have 2GB memory and when in fighting with other enemies it was nearly unplayable , stuttering... sometimes it would stall for 2secs and play on , this is with textures on high.
Readyboost is a feature of Windows Vista that uses any fast enough USB or other flash memory device as a kind of high-speed cache. I just installed a 4gb cruiser on my 2gb system, and indeed it does seem to smooth out some of the rough edges in X3:TC.
The game still stutters (I can usually tell because the UI flickers), but these lags have been reduced down to fractions of a second each, as opposed to several seconds before. It's not really a fix, but at $10 for the USB key it was certainly worth it!
Question: Since the stuttering seems related to memory, hard drive access, and cache speed, has anyone tried enabling "advanced performance" on their install drive (again only in Vista)? I'm a little reluctant given the warning, but if it helps...
Great stuff. I wouldnt enable that if I were you ^^
Any advice on which usb device to get? Readyboost relates to any usb pen or only certain ones?
Do they help with the performance problems in large battles, or only with the general 'random stutters' problem?
This could also help with my memory problems on hungry programs like zbrush (32 bit vista cant handle them, I Need to get 64bit but don't wanna spend the cash).
Here's the drive I bought: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220251
It says optimized for Readyboost, but really any fast usb key will work.
And yes, it helps me in large battles and with general stuttering. Though don't expect miracles.
Perhaps, but Neilsouth and myself are both rocking 2 GB. Could add more, but with a laptop this is much easier and cheaper. I hate to think how those with 1 gig of ram are doing though!
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Default.aspx?CatID=1225 , the one i bought and also it has High Performance: 25 MB/sec read, 18 MB/sec write speeds which does help a great deal. If you just go buying cheap flash sticks then you may well suffer. Imagine buying a slower hard drive when the rest of your system has fast ones.
Now the stuttering is still there yes , but its no way as bad as it was now for me spending an extra £20 to smooth things out in this game was worth it.
Disable Readyboost
Format the memory stick/flash drive to ntfs
Go to device manager , click on the memory stick and optimize for best performance.
Reboot system
Enable readyboost (2GB)
Pirate Neilsouth wrote:http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Default.aspx?CatID=1225 , the one i bought and also it has High Performance: 25 MB/sec read, 18 MB/sec write speeds which does help a great deal. If you just go buying cheap flash sticks then you may well suffer. Imagine buying a slower hard drive when the rest of your system has fast ones.
I think you should be okay so long as Vista actually agrees it's fast enough (it runs a check before it will activate Readyboost).
Creston wrote:If you already have 4 Gig of memory, Readyboost won't really make any difference anyways.
Creston
I would normally agree with you but I decided to try it anyway... and it does help a bit... If I remember right, does not the readyboost ram actually get used BEFORE the swapfile etc on the HD's? And if that is the case, perhaps that is why we are seeing a bit less stuttering with readyboost enabled..
At least on my end (4 gig ram dual core, ATI HD 3870, Creative xFi platinum) it is helping some and the HD is not being accessed anywhere near where it was before..... the CPU and fans still max out though so there is definitely some major issue somewhere...
I have tried some different settings on my rig and sofar the medium settings have helped the most for the stuttering problem. Though added readyboost (4Gb) seemed to help a bit. I have plenty of memory on my PC though so that should not be a problem.
I am going to work on with different settings with TC and Vista's cache/pagefile etc. incase there is anything that affects.
Basic info of my PC
CPU Q6600
RAM 8G
Nvidia 8800GTX
680i SLI chipset mobo
Creative X-Fi Titanium soundcard
Playing res. 1900x1200
Creston wrote:If you already have 4 Gig of memory, Readyboost won't really make any difference anyways.
Creston
to X3, probably not.
In general.... maybe
Just for laughs I tried my 4 gig pendrive as a readyboost (I don't really need it coz I've 8 gigs of RAM in this machine). It's quite old, and marginal in terms of speed, so I didn't notice any performance difference, but the activity light was flashing away while I was playing x3:TC, so it's definately doing something
Math problems? Call 0800-[(10x)(13i)^2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x]
The readyboost will not affect ram - the difference is will be to the hard drive - instead of having to write to the pagefile it will send data to the flashdrive and depending on the cache speed of your hdd compared to your flash is where the speed will be noticed
Snatcher42 wrote:Pirate Neilsouth, is there a reason you're using 2 GB for Readyboost instead of the full 4?
I already optimized for performance, though I'm not sure formatting to NTFS is best.
Generally, it is recommended to have at least a 1:1 ratio of solid state memory to RAM. So if you have 2GB of RAM, you should have at least a 2GB USB stick or SD card. That would be considered the ideal minimum. At the other end of the spectrum, you could have a 2.5:1 ratio of solid state memory to RAM. However, the upper limit of flash that can be used for ReadyBoost is 4GB (due to the limitations of the FAT32 file system). Myself i don't really see the need for 4GB readyboost , but if it seems ok with you aslong as its the same or more than 1:1 not less then that'l be fine.
Regarding NTFS or FAT32 , i just prefer NTFS you can pick either
Last edited by Pirate Neilsouth on Fri, 24. Oct 08, 10:50, edited 1 time in total.
Pirate Neilsouth wrote:I have 2GB memory and when in fighting with other enemies it was nearly unplayable , stuttering... sometimes it would stall for 2secs and play on , this is with textures on high.
Or you could just take the other 'old school' approach and turn the texture setting down.
I had brief (half second) or so stutters on my laptop every 10 minutes or so with textures/shaders on max, AA 4x etc... and combat with 10+ ships would lag rather badly with all the weapons fire...
Switching textures to medium helped a lot but still occasional troubles - switched textures to low and I'm currently enjoying a very hard xenon invasion with 3 pages of Xenon P's running around with absolutely no trouble at all (aside from the 2 minutes of screaming like a girl with frantic mouse/keyboard mashing, killing 2-3 of them and then either jumpdriving outta there or going pop )
Pirate Neilsouth wrote:I have 2GB memory and when in fighting with other enemies it was nearly unplayable , stuttering... sometimes it would stall for 2secs and play on , this is with textures on high.
Or you could just take the other 'old school' approach and turn the texture setting down.
Turning down textures hardly made a difference for me , this has... I've seen some people with 8gb ram and still getting problems ( stuttering , freezing )
Pirate Neilsouth wrote:I have 2GB memory and when in fighting with other enemies it was nearly unplayable , stuttering... sometimes it would stall for 2secs and play on , this is with textures on high.
Or you could just take the other 'old school' approach and turn the texture setting down.
Turning down textures hardly made a difference for me , this has... I've seen some people with 8gb ram and still getting problems ( stuttering , freezing )
Same here not to mention I have a video card that can easily handle it. The fact the game runs at nice FPS numbers when started then slows down then starts having the stuttering pretty much eliminates it being anything but an issue in code... something the devs will fix I have no doubts...
It is one reason I buy all Egosoft products... They support their code and software AND we the users better than 99% of the other gaming companies out there.. It will get fixed... right now it is just all of us talking while we impatiently await a patch... ;-}
I have a slightly off-topic question about flash drive settings, but have no idea where else to ask it: If I move my jump drive to another system, does it retain it's "Optimize for Quick Removal / Optimize for Performance" setting or revert to default? In other words, is that a setting on the drive itself, or an instruction on my computer about how to read it?