Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
I have experimented a lot with IO performance on mechanical drives, which is the sort of drive that stands the most to gain from caching. For the most part the built in Windows file cache completely eliminates any performance issues of reading from mechanical drives after initial load assuming the data is dense enough and enough memory is available, which is the case of gaming on 16GB+ of memory. Sure initial load is not so good, but after that it is very good and there are ways this can be further improved. This effectively free solution is good enough for most cases since when data is in the windows file cache you have faster than SSD access speed, limited only by memory bandwidth and Kernel performance. At this stage processing the data starts to become the bottleneck, especially if decompression or decryption is needed.
In X4 for the average person this would mean the same bad initial loading times but much faster loading times between sectors and stations as frequently accessed data is cached. Much less pop in and other such loading artefacts as one plays. Restarting the client soon after closing will also be very fast, SSD level, even from a mechanical drive.
The entire problem and why such tiered cache solutions are making such a large difference to X4 load times is that X4 for some unknown reason completely bypasses the Windows file cache, meaning it effectively has no caching at all by default, much like an old console game which were notorious for long load times.
Instead of people having to buy into third party solutions or SSDs. Egosoft should just allow the game data files to be cached by the windows file cache like other games do. Suddenly a massive loading performance boost for mechanical drives without the user having to do a thing. Sure I do agree that it will not perform as well as a smart tiered cache solution, after all those have prediction/training so know what to cache in advance, but it certainly will perform better than currently where without such system there is no caching at all and all loading is bottle necked by the underlying drive.
my game uses 8+ 16 gb (pagefile on windows, if I close the game, pagefile instantly shrinks to 1 gb) memory with a medium 800mio empire, so its using a lot the hard drive to push back things, even with 16 gb memory.
I only have 8 gb ram, but use my nvme ssd with 1gb read/write as pagefile, and this makes my memory being completely full for hours, and in the game everything runs fast not even a single performance area giving stutterings.
I get a cheap one for 70$ and thats the best investment into setting it up since 10 years my first self bought graphic card.
you directly lie (->talking about your argument not to person. mate. I'm sorry.) and this is confirmed with evidence by me. dont push through some ideologies, if you dont have substance. Go out of my way. Come again, if you are experienced like this.
The speed of the SSD is not only suffiecient, but awesome! Its really THAT key solution!
Edit: be careful. I talk not about a normal SATA ssd, but about a m.2 drive with 1 gb read AND write per second. thats slower than ram nowerdays, but it runs smooth in my daily praxis test together with fast ram, and just schedules the pagefile with the ram, so its not neccessary to have max speed everywhere, because the game uses mostly the ram speed, and doesnt need to update the pagetable that much so surcharge my nvme drive, so the exchange traffic is keeping the game extremely fluid.
-> Performance reaches the game. 100%. I can buy 2 nvme ssds for the price of ram, for the case, it will crash my drive in 1 or 2 years. I dont play the game thaaat often.
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=415226
SSD is still slower than RAM. A system with 16GB or 32GB should practically never need to use the page file since it can keep all memory pages in RAM. Hence the page file could be backed by something slow like a mechanical drive and the system will still perform as well. If you are getting to the stage where changing the page file to be on a SSD yields a significant performance boost while using the system that means that the system has insufficient memory.
M.2 is a physical format of drive. You can get SATA M.2 drives as well... I suspect you are referring to a low end PCIe NVMe drive, since high end ones hit speeds of up to 2GB/sec.
The page file is not a job and neither is the RAM a processor. It cannot be scheduled...
For optimum performance the game should only be using the RAM to hold its memory pages. Since in a well built and properly specified system for the game there is enough RAM memory that none of the game application memory pages will be written out to the page file. This assure optimum performance and hence there is no need for or gain with a SSD backed page file.
Page table updates are handled by the kernel and for the most part can be considered trivial. An SSD or more memory will not alter the performance of page table updates at all.
Simply installing the game on a NVMe SSD will make it run with a lot more consistent frame rate. This is because of the issue I mentioned earlier that for some reason X4 is not using the RAM based file cache at all when accessing its data files so performance suffers heavily from an IO bottleneck that should not exist.
Except with 16GB or 32GB of memory the game will never wear out your SSD as it will never have to use the page file and will perform better.
It fails to take advantage of even just 18GB of memory, let alone 32GB. X4 currently has has just 8GB of uncompressed assets to load even if it cached everything internally. It also explicitly disables the file cache from caching data files so it does not even use memory that way.
your theory looses against my experience.
You say 1+1= 2
and 2+2 = 4
but you forget a lot of comprehensions in the informatics that is causeing the 1+1 = 3 that the sum is more than splitting up its components by itself.
You cant also translate my experience against with ideology.
You also clearly understood and still picked up the things into weird misunderstanding.
-
1. The major part of traffic is done by the Ram anyways, so that the additional Ram, that I put into the PCIE-SSD, that is not low end, but affordable, and a pretty jump if I compare that with old HDD technology; I also have a older SSD, but the games usually dont run on them.
So take the jump serious and count it in when comparing. We are not competing with god, who also sells 4 or 5 gb/s for enough money.
So the traffic with the PCIE-SSD is lets say 20% of the RAM-Traffic, because you know how virtual memory works: You tell the PC, that it has unlimited or high RAM memory when you only have e.g. 16 gb, and you just count on with the HDD, that jumps in whenever the ram runs full, otherwise the PC would crash in that moment or the Application had to be terminated instantly by OS.
This changing the Page-Table is a OS specific word, used by processors to schedule tasks; but I used that word to 'manage' the Ram with the Pagefile. Usually the Pagefile is not important until now, for a gamer, but X4 uses a LOT of memory, and also, which is special and imporant:
It uses 80% of the memory to keep data ready to be used, and uses 20% of the data to actually display things to the player; while of couse a part of the data is used to simulate.
But there is always that hierarchy for frequently used data and seldom used data.
The pagetable (this is how caching etc works, its always the same principal no matter whether its actual caches, or normal memory, or on which layer of memory we speak) always pushes the least used data to the pagefile and loads the requested data instead, and keeps the most used data in the cache if possible.
You also have read by my first post, that the game uses 8 + 16 gb of memory. so 8 in my ram, and 16 for the pagefile, as a total with OS, I cannot and dont need to explain that 1 gb of that is the OS, and this is just what I totally need, as the OS is also required to work while I run the game, so I must count it into the calculation.
So it is using 16 GB of my PCIE-NVME SSD, that I dont have with RAM.
This is with a like 800Mio Credit empire, and can raise even more.
8+16 GB is 24 gb and thats more than 16 GB, and hence, the game needs a LOT (to 1 third)
the Pagefile if you have 16gb RAM equipped.
Those Pagefile memory used part of the RAM that is out-sourced to pagefile is the least used part of the data, and doesnt need to exchange on a high frequency.
But the game is asking for them steady enough, to make a bottleneck here, that I have NOTICED while playing. So if I have NOTICED, not just measured a theretic difference, that is a valid experience, that one cannot hush away with theory of Ram technology, hammering with 16 and 32 gb theory, that the PCI-E-SSD is just compensating something on the right place, as the 1GB/S is a key speed, that is enough, while some 100-200+ mb/s for whichever hdd/ssd would be maybe too weak to traffic 8 gb memory all the time. If you have fast enough, its good for you. But are you sure you know better?
I didnt have so much money, and dont use so much memory yet except for X4, so I tested, and did discover and felt, that this hyprid-RAM way would be a better method to optimize my game, while also have more drive memory that I also was close with before the buy.
As I also changed the motherboard and the Processor in december for X4, and other reasons, I recently discovered, that I by accident got a mainboard with a M.2 slot on it and investigated what that is.
And again: The result is very remarkable! I am HAPPY!
I cannot confirm that the PCIE-SSD is inappropriate to work as additional RAM (the game runs like butter, while it stuttered into unplayable when reaching a empire of maybe 200mio credits, before that size it was good on 8 GB memory only. -exactly until the day I setted up the PCIE-m.2-SSD into my PC! I could give direct comparision benchmarks!!!), as the combination with Real RAM, that works out the major part of Memory usage of the game, and the PCIE-SSD, that is covering the otherwise bottleneck, that makes out 16GB overhead for me, and 8 GB overhead, if you dont have 32 gb for 4 gb=40€ so like 300€ investment just for RAM that you rarely use!
That is not economic! The Manufacturers of Hardware always tell you, be save and buy higher that is marketing to lure out more money, than you actually need to run your games, as even a low-End graphics card can make your game run on high resolutions. They do marketing with numbers and theory and statistics, benchmarks, that may apply for their critical case,
but not for YOur PC!
so at the end of the day, I can run much lower hardware with much more result than I always get told (so their marketing knowledge is inferior, which is their horse they ride: the missing knowledge of the customer to milk them unneccessarily) and that can be decreased to a step into which real hardware can bring you - if you exploit its power with adapted user behavior/Pc configuration to your needs.
So with higher knowledge, we have made a major break through! Isnt that COSTLY?
I would wish, that NOBODY would have to suffer from getting tricked with too much RAM anymore. It would be a better world.
Nobody needs in the hell more than 8 GB right now, as long as the Game developers cant even scratch out the games roughly for even medium-end PCs anymore, as everything is so complicated, and the game developers are bottleneck.
But WHO cares for sense of purpose nowadays... tssssssssssssssssssssssssss
teladi ask for PROFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
A high end consumer NVMe M.2 SSD would be something from Samsung with up to 2GB/sec transfer speed, limited by the PCI-E slot bandwidth (they use low bandwidth slots, compared with GPU and such cards that are high bandwidth).
If X4 is using a lot of memory that would mean there is a memory leak bug. The game only has 8-9GB of uncompressed assets and the game state is likely not more than 300MB given how the saves are that size in low density text form.
None of that memory is used to display things to the player outside of integrated graphic chipsets. This is because discrete desktop GPUs have dedicated Video RAM which is considerably higher bandwidth than normal CPU RAM. Some of the virtual memory address space might be mapped to manage this Video RAM but still it exists on the GPU which is separate from the CPU memory when using discrete GPUs.
Yeh 8GB of memory is not really enough in 2019. I strongly recommend 16GB+ since that gives a ton for file cache (if X4 used it) and still enough that X4 will never need to have any page faults.
If building a new system I would recommend DDR4 16GB DIMMs since just 2 (dual channel) gives you 32GB of memory which is a ton to go with. Otherise get a pair of 8GB DDR4 DIMMs to throw in the expansion slots for an extra 16GB. Of course if you are me who uses an ancient I7 920 things are more tricky as I use 3x2GB+3x4GB DDR3 DIMMs.
Data is only pushed if there is not enough memory.
Game state is still likely only 300MB or so internally. If not then there is some sort of memory leak as there are only ~9GB of assets.
Well Optane is appropriate for acting as RAM, but then again Intel sell Optane DIMMs for non volatile memory purposes now. Normal SSD, especially quad bit flash, does not have the write endurance to be recommended for such a task. And sure smaller drives are cheap, but they also have tiny write endurance. RAM has effectively infinite write endurance.
Seeing how DDR5 will only be offered in 16GB DIMMs and you want at least 2... 16GB RAM is a minimum recommended amount for new builds for decent performance. One gets about 8GB for the game application and 8 GB for file cache, without worries of page thrashing degrading performance since any page thrashing is still slower than none.
X4 starts out at 4GB allocated (likely a cache manager thing) and rises from there as a game is loaded. Diablo III can reach 6GB due to its discard nothing cache manager. All Blizzard games follow this idea, so HotS can also reach 4-6GB after long play sessions. A Simutrans Extended server that I help with development occasionally is at 5.4GB, so much so that the server needs upgrading to continue high speed operation. And this is the actual memory used by the application, let alone the memory one needs as file cache for optimum performance. Sure SSDs help, but they are just a crutch to insufficient memory and for the most part the cheaper drives are not designed to cope with that work load.
I haven't run a triple-channel motherboard in a few years now at least. I really thought that technology was going to stay for a while in the mainstream.
Yeah, sort of. I left the sector I was in and I was not having the same issue while mining in a new sector. I feel like I started some strange discussion and side-chat from this. Perhaps I was too vague.
Regardless, I haven't been playing much because I got bored of the game. I actually enjoyed X-Rebirth more. My gaming life feels like its on an indefinite hold until CP2077.
That's why I'm steering clear of X4 gaming at the moment - don't want to burn out on it while it's still having issues and lacking needed content.
Haven't really been following CP2077. It's been way too long since the announcement back in what, 2012?
Didn't you watch the Gameplay Trailer from 6 months ago?