Superfetch is trash

[kit]

Ok so I was having problems with performance (slow downs, stutters, and badly fluxuating framerates)...well after poking all around my system and thinking its my rig I called it a day.

months later I reinstall after learning more as to why my rig is still having problems with games, so after learning that superfetch literally isnt so super for gaming and reading that they were talking about disabling it for SSDs (my drive is a 7200RPM mechanical HDD) i went on a whim and disabled it anyway.

case and point, superfetch was the culprit of sooo many performance issues with all my games, and since saints row 4 was the biggest problematic game of them all I was excited to fire it up and see how it ran now, and BOOM it runs amazingly better like id give it a solid 30% performance increase.

I think its cause your constantly loading a LOT of stuff while running around steelport and superfetch keeps caching everything thats loaded so that it will load faster, but the reality of it is it was bottlenecking the crap outta my system and disabling it loosened up my HDD performance enough to balance my system out.

If you can load your game and just cannot get good performance even at 720p with all low settings, try disabling your superfetch cause it saved me from almost redeleting SR4 in sheer frusteration, now i can enjoy my game again!

[[V] UncleSam]

Interesting, I appreciate the post.

[kit]

glad i could help, hopefully this will clear out some performance issues people have probably had in the past and bring more people into the online scene cause for me the games running just fine maxed out now and my rocket spud is far from a high end gaming rig:

athlon II x3 450 3.2ghz triple core processor
M4A88T-M motherboard
XFX R7 260X DD edition 2GB GDDR5 video card
16GB DDR3 ram
1TB 7200.00 RPM mechanical HDD
650w cooler master PSU

and the game runs great at 1080p ultra graphics with very few slow downs at all unless im sprinting then it dips but thats also cause im picky and have to have vsync.

[kit]

i get the feeling this thread should be stickied if we get enough people to report back wether it helped them, if its all positive can we have this stickied for others to easily find?

[NotApplicable]

This definitely is interesting. I'm using an SSD so I disabled it, but I would've liked to have seen the difference with a mechanical drive.

[kit]

the difference is like....imagine it being smooth then everything just stops for a second,then starts and stops over and over in a sequence every time windows is caching something.

without superfetch though it dont have that effect so your effectively having less breaks for your system to cache while saying a game like saints row 4 where your constantly loading cars, textures, people, buildings, graphical goodies, debris, maybe zenyaks forces are spawning in and its gotta load them too.

well whatever the case your constantly in a state of loading everything and when windows caches everything your loading....you can see where the system just completely derps out for a split second every time the cache goes off.

so since mechanical drives are more limited in their function speeds compared to a SSD these hitches are also causing data interference with the information coming from the disk drive....basically its like a perpetual computer heart attack and its not healthy for gamers playing games that constantly pull data rather than say a first person shooter that will do all the caching during the loading.

its the reason for some of these reports where people are saying "im hitting x FPS and fraps is saying their what they are, but the game isnt running like it is" it usually comes down to superfetch being problematic with their system in the way explained, or their monitor being of a low refresh rate.

saints row 4 is a biiiig game and a great one too, just like battlefield 4 has very extensive large conquest maps that take time to load in textures and audio for all the areas of the map, whereas you play a smaller team deathmatch and things are almost instantly loaded and smooth because it doesnt have to be in a constant loading state.

thats also the reason these games are set up to load objects and enviroments as the player hits their FOV rather than sitting you there for like 20 minutes at a load screen, the player wants to play now not after 20 to 30 minutes of the game loading. its company brilliance honestly and were glad that we can get into the game as fast as we do.

[kit]

also it will reduce mechanical hard drive thrashing from some of the reports too so a happy hard drive is a stable hard drive.

[godray]

thanks for sharing this info, brother. I turned off the superfetch thingy last night and I did noticed a HUGE difference in performance. You're my hero.

[kit]

im glad to have helped out, if this helps you out remember to post on here that it worked and let us know.

[dubstepdeejay]

I guess I thought this was sort of common knowledge, but it's always good to transfer knowledge.

For more services you should turn off, visit http://www.blackviper.com/ and turn them off accordingly for your OS. This guy knows what he's talking about; been following his advice for over a decade now.

There are about 4 services for Win7 that are turned on by default that should probably be turned off on a gamer's machine.

Happy tweaking.