Discovered the reason of bad performance, but don't know how to cure

[cucher]

Hello to all!

Does anybody notice that all freezes are sinchronized with game's acces to HDD? Freeze begins then HDD is in use and terminates then it's over. I don't know why, but in my case HDD works about 70% of playing time. Every time you move the ship to any objects, the game getting acces to HDD. Can anybody (especially EGO guys) tell me, what the hell is it looking there for? My system has 8 Gb 1333Mhz ram. Is it not enough to avoid such frequent accessing to HDD? It looks like somebody established a kind of virtual usage limits for ram and forgot to "disable a flag" or "tick a box". Or maybe for some other reasons the game just don't see the full amount of memory. I'm telling it because all the symptoms are similar to ones caused by lack of memory. It explains why you run the game perfectly with "low" setting and can't do the same with "high" in spite of how many Gb you have on-board.

Any ideas?

[CBJ]

Like any 32-bit application the game can only use 2GB of memory (3GB with the appropriate Windows configuration setting) no matter how much you have installed. Having more than this does help as it means the game can have the whole lot without having to leave some for Windows, drivers and so on, but it doesn't give the game any more than the basic limit. Others have reported that the game tops out at around 2.4 to 2.6GB with the 3GB flag set.

Disk access is unavoidable for video files, which are much too large to keep in memory. Disk access is also inevitable when loading assets for the first time, so the longer you play the more is cached and the less that should happen, unless the game runs out of available memory and has to flush its cache and the process start again.

[BigBANGtheory]

Don't forget X3:TC is a Win32 application it will never use more than around 1.8GB of physical RAM for the thread + a little Windows cache that the OS allocates regardless of the ammount of RAM you have.

I personally agree with your observations and the effect it has on the game there is obviously one or more components of the game that is causing it to stall whilst waiting on an I/O request. I've not been able to pinpoint any particular game event which triggers it however enermies coming into scanner range is fairly high up the list of suspects.

[cucher]

OK, noted all the thoughts above. Let's forget abour 8 GB, 3 Gb should be more then enough for smooth gaming. Yes? I also don't complain about any videos. But isn't it strange then game constantly accses HDD (as I told abt 70%) during simple movements? And why do I have freezes the same time as HDD works? I thing it's not a simple coincidence. These processes are related to each other very much. Since the game needs so frequent data updates from HDD (even for couple of asteroids!), then installed ram is not enough. But how could it be?

[(----____JEFF____----)]

The reason HDD access causes the lags is because your whole computer is waiting on it to finish, and since the HDD is the slowest component of you pc you do the math
It seems as if the game moves itself into the page file instead of the ram, that's what I think from hearing what you say.

[cucher]

Exactly! But the question is - why? Why the game needs constant access to HDD? Even for simple things. Not enough ram? No way! Then - why?

[AdrianB1]

cucher, what OS version are you using? I run the 64 bit version of Windows 2008 server with 4 GB of RAM and it never freezes, the system cache does its job and the HDD access is really smooth. I think you also run a 64 bit version of an OS, is it Vista or is it XP? I think XP will run faster than Vista on 64 bit.

[Phaedrus]

Logging of the rest of the activity in the Universe perhaps?

[cucher]

It's Vista 64 Ultimate. Maybe XP is really a little bit faster, I don't know. But such endless lags and freezes during HDD access... Don't think XP is too faster to reduce them to min level.

[X2-Eliah]

Well, let's look at this from my point of view:

The game directory is about 9-10Gb, right? (round figures here, a +-1.2Gb possible)

And it is clear that most of these files are integral for the game to operate, right? (Just try removing a file, like the 02.cat/.dat and see how it goes)

Well in that case, why is it a sudden surprise that game needs to use the HDD to use all of it's grand 9Gb (OK, maybe just 5Gb at normal gameplay) when the RAM can only be filled up with 2Gb of it?

[cucher]

2 Phaedrus: I really doubt it's because of the whole Univers matter.
It looks like the game takes textures for rendering not from ram but from HDD only. Of course, in this case it should take time. More textures - more freezes. For example, then you fly facing to clear space, HDD is not in use. You turn to any object - it's LED startet to blink. In difficult sectors it's flashing most of time. As a result - stuttering and freezes.

[Phaedrus]

You may be right, my suggestion was the first thing to pop into my mind.

I seem to remember that with Reunion unpacking the .dat files helped with performance.

Also I noticed yesterday when I was benchmarking that closing down some background applications (even those with "idle" priority settings like SETI@home and Folding@home) bumped up my avg framerate measurably.

[cucher]

I don't have any additional applications running. It's new computer with X3:TC, Vista and anti-virus (which I disable every time I'm playing) only.

One interesting addition: some people (including me) declare that they loosing planet textures from time to time. I also noticed that few textures of ships and stations also disappear/appear occasionally. Another confirmation of texture related reason?

[gravitysux]

Hi!

Seems like I experience much of the same as you guys. HDD access slows down the game a lot. For me it's very noticable (Unplayable) when groups of pirates spawn, and in fights in crowded systems. HUD disappears, game freezes for 3-5 seconds and I head the HDD trashing.

Got a fairly new system - Vista64 on a QuadCore 9300@3Ghz, 2 GB 1100Mhz RAM (DDR2), Nvidia 9600GT 512MB, and new SATA 2 disks. It feels almost like the harddisk access produces lots of interrupts.

I've reduced resolution to 1024x768, and reduced AA and textures to lower settings, helps, but not enough to make fights playable.

For me TC plays worse than Reunion on my old XP on AMD single core/Radeon 9800Pro card.

I'm reinstalling the computer anyway, so I will try it with a fresh XP SP3 install and see how that performs.

[cucher]

Yes, 100% my symptomes! Every word. Haven't told it before, but also loosing HUD during freezes.

[frymaster]

the more RAM you have, the smoother the game will play, especially on vista 64, as vista is really really good at using the RAM not needed for programs for caching disk access as well. This basically turns your "spare" memory into "extra" memory for x3


(yes, this is a ludicrously simplified explanation)

[cucher]

I have a lot of Gb installed, but no result. All specific problems already described above.

[(----____JEFF____----)]

Maybe you can try to make your page file smaller. I have no idea how to that in Vista though, but I think google is your friend in this case

[Phaedrus]

Is there a possibility to force Vista to use RAM over HDD?

Could you for instance mount a RAM-drive, you have memory to spare...

[cucher]

Don't know how to do it, even don't know whether it's possible or not.