Computer Advice/Pagefiling

xXGumpXX · 2012-04-01, 06:33 AM

Now i think is the time i will be upgrading my pc and getting it ready for ps2 , this will be what i will be running ps2 on amd bulldoser quad core overclocked @ 3.8 ghz 8 gb of gaming memory . gtx 680 x 2 120 gb ssd drives , windows 7 64 and a 3D gaming monitor . what spec will you be upgrading too or are you considering buying a new gaming pc ?

IronMole · 2012-04-01, 08:34 AM

Originally Posted by xXGumpXX

Now i think is the time i will be upgrading my pc and getting it ready for ps2 , this will be what i will be running ps2 on amd bulldoser quad core overclocked @ 3.8 ghz 8 gb of gaming memory . gtx 680 x 2 120 gb ssd drives , windows 7 64 and a 3D gaming monitor . what spec will you be upgrading too or are you considering buying a new gaming pc ?

What? No Titan Decimator?

Goku · 2012-04-01, 10:07 AM

Originally Posted by xXGumpXX

Now i think is the time i will be upgrading my pc and getting it ready for ps2 , this will be what i will be running ps2 on amd bulldoser quad core overclocked @ 3.8 ghz 8 gb of gaming memory . gtx 680 x 2 120 gb ssd drives , windows 7 64 and a 3D gaming monitor . what spec will you be upgrading too or are you considering buying a new gaming pc ?

Please tell me that isn't a FX-4100. If so you are bottlenecking your 680s very badly, even a 8150 will do that. Really should have a 2500K overclocked minimum to be running those cards.

Skitrel · 2012-04-01, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by Goku

Please tell me that isn't a FX-4100. If so you are bottlenecking your 680s very badly, even a 8150 will do that. Really should have a 2500K overclocked minimum to be running those cards.

Too right. And why the crossfire anyway? There's no need to at all with a card like this. Complete overkill, one of those cards will run just about anything happily for years to come.

Why a 680 anyway? The 7970 overclocks MUCH better, the boost and voltage locks on the 680 pretty much cripple it.

There's no way you need to crossfire these cards if you're not doing something ridiculously intensive, such as work related media work where you're really going to need the juice. It's just e-peen ego nonsense otherwise. Same goes for the 8gb of memory, you won't need more than 4 and besides that memory is cheap and will be cheaper in future when you do finally need it, so there's no need to get it now.

Wallets bigger than their brains some of these people. Ditch both 680s, get a 7970 and a 2500k, both of which are extremely overclockable, proven, have huge support behind them from many others overclocking them.

Don't do something stupid like step up to an i7 on that extra cash, you won't use that power either without doing work related intensive video editing.

Anyone spending more than 1800-2000$ building their own for gaming today is wasting their money. Minus monitor costs.

basti · 2012-04-01, 03:39 PM

Originally Posted by Skitrel

Too right. And why the crossfire anyway? There's no need to at all with a card like this. Complete overkill, one of those cards will run just about anything happily for years to come.

Why a 680 anyway? The 7970 overclocks MUCH better, the boost and voltage locks on the 680 pretty much cripple it.

There's no way you need to crossfire these cards if you're not doing something ridiculously intensive, such as work related media work where you're really going to need the juice. It's just e-peen ego nonsense otherwise. Same goes for the 8gb of memory, you won't need more than 4 and besides that memory is cheap and will be cheaper in future when you do finally need it, so there's no need to get it now.

Wallets bigger than their brains some of these people. Ditch both 680s, get a 7970 and a 2500k, both of which are extremely overclockable, proven, have huge support behind them from many others overclocking them.

Don't do something stupid like step up to an i7 on that extra cash, you won't use that power either without doing work related intensive video editing.

Anyone spending more than 1800-2000$ building their own for gaming today is wasting their money. Minus monitor costs.

You, sir, have no clue.

Screw ATI, completly. IF you want to run your games with crap, then go ATI. If you want quality for your money, proper drivers and proper support, go Nvidia. Thats a fact.

4 GB of Ram? Thats about the minimum you should get these days. 8 GB is the usual, but better go for 16 right away while its cheap. You wont need those 16 GB anytime soon, but you can use them to create a ramdisk, put your pagefile on it, and enjoy truly fast gaming. Combine that with an SSD, and you wont ever see a loading screen again.

Skitrel · 2012-04-01, 05:26 PM

Originally Posted by basti

You, sir, have no clue.

Screw ATI, completly. IF you want to run your games with crap, then go ATI. If you want quality for your money, proper drivers and proper support, go Nvidia. Thats a fact.

4 GB of Ram? Thats about the minimum you should get these days. 8 GB is the usual, but better go for 16 right away while its cheap. You wont need those 16 GB anytime soon, but you can use them to create a ramdisk, put your pagefile on it, and enjoy truly fast gaming. Combine that with an SSD, and you wont ever see a loading screen again.

What? Basti, do you even know what you're saying or are you just repeating garbage you've been told elsewhere?

The pagefile is used to cope when the system runs out of RAM, otherwise it's barely used. You will never EVER need more than 0-1024 pagefile on 4gb of RAM for gaming, not for at least a couple of years.

What the hell are you suggesting exactly? Creating a ramdisk and putting 12gb of unused ram on it? You're still only going to use 1gig of that at MOST at any time and with that much ram you wouldn't even use the pagefile anyway...... Not that you use the pagefile much more than 512 even in extreme instances. As I said, 1024 is more than overkill.

SSD is a given, not sure why you've raised that, there was no argument against SSD.

The only benefit of going nvidia over ATI is for anything that uses CUDA acceleration, there's been absolutely zero mention that the game uses cuda though and there's no reason it would anyway, it's of benefit to people doing 3D model creation or 3D videos, not a realtime graphical speed benefit for gaming.

As for why go ATI over Nvidia? ATI have been far faster with driver updates for the last year, at midrange they're more powerful for the same price as nvidia cards and at the high end we're talking about here they're (roughly) same power for price, though I can get a 7790 cheaper therefore my recommendation is 7790.

Ironmole, this is the 4th time you've been offensive to me on the forum while adding absolutely nothing. I've not risen to it, I'm not going to, you're going on the ignore list if you can't offer any suitable arguments and reasoning, maturely.

No offence intended Basti, it's just that... Using your pagefile in that way is crazy.

Besides that, it also sounds like you're suggesting a static pagefile, on an SSD , really? No, you want it dynamic so it doesn't write to the same cells. Though this whole ramdisk deal might be suggesting it's not writing on the ssd, regardless it seems incredibly silly, you're counteracting having too much ram by removing it and making it the pagefile which is there for use when you don't have enough ram... Wat

Stand by my points. ATI over NVidia right now, at least for the time being unless price changes occur in the mid and top.

EDIT: Perhaps pointing to some writeups on what you're suggesting might help though. Always willing to change my mind on these things, it's just that this is the way I've seen and followed things for a while now, having built 2 new systems in the last 12 months and upgraded another. I'd be really interested to see a proper writeup on what you're suggesting with some speed comparisons, it sounds like a completely self defeating thing to do though.

Goku · 2012-04-01, 03:05 PM

While multi GPU isn't for the masses, its great for 2560x1600 and multi monitor setups. I don't agree on the 7970 bit either. For people to consider getting the 7970 AMD needs to drop the price to at least the level of the GTX 680 if not lower. Besides if someone is playing PS2 this is being developed on Nvidia hardware, so you are far better off with a Nvidia. Unless you are a fan or AMD or find some huge value with one of their current cards (which there is none atm) you should be going Nvidia for new builds for PS2 in mind.

IronMole · 2012-04-01, 03:15 PM

Originally Posted by Goku

While multi GPU isn't for the masses, its great for 2560x1600 and multi monitor setups. I don't agree on the 7970 bit either. For people to consider getting the 7970 AMD needs to drop the price to at least the level of the GTX 680 if not lower. Besides if someone is playing PS2 this is being developed on Nvidia hardware, so you are far better off with a Nvidia. Unless you are a fan or AMD or find some huge value with one of their current cards (which there is none atm) you should be going Nvidia for new builds for PS2 in mind.

Not just that. Nvidia tend to have better driver support.

Also, both cards beat each other in different areas and most people want their bang for buck which is the GTX680, it also comes down to personal preference.

@Skitrel - not everyone OC's their GPU's. Most people just plug and play...

Skitrel · 2012-04-01, 03:30 PM

Originally Posted by Goku

While multi GPU isn't for the masses, its great for 2560x1600 and multi monitor setups. I don't agree on the 7970 bit either. For people to consider getting the 7970 AMD needs to drop the price to at least the level of the GTX 680 if not lower. Besides if someone is playing PS2 this is being developed on Nvidia hardware, so you are far better off with a Nvidia. Unless you are a fan or AMD or find some huge value with one of their current cards (which there is none atm) you should be going Nvidia for new builds for PS2 in mind.

680 is £30 more expensive in the UK.

Nothing Nvidia have put out in the last 12 months has stood up to anything AMD have done, I have every confidence that AMD cards will happily run the game as well or better than the Nvidia cards, regardless of the engine being built by Nvidia. While they've touted that Nvidia have built the engine multiple times they haven't once named specific technologies that their cards use in conjunction with the engine that other cards don't have the benefit of. It's marketing more than anything, nothing more.

IronMole · 2012-04-01, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by Skitrel

680 is £30 more expensive in the UK.

Nothing Nvidia have put out in the last 12 months has stood up to anything AMD have done, I have every confidence that AMD cards will happily run the game as well or better than the Nvidia cards, regardless of the engine being built by Nvidia. While they've touted that Nvidia have built the engine multiple times they haven't once named specific technologies that their cards use in conjunction with the engine that other cards don't have the benefit of. It's marketing more than anything, nothing more.

Ok, now you don't have a clue...

SKYeXile · 2012-04-01, 05:43 PM

People are arguing over nvidia and ATI? WHY? Red goes faster, its a fact.

Skitrel · 2012-04-01, 05:45 PM

Not particularly an argument, just want to really reason out what's been suggested, and why. What's been said makes no sense at all.

basti · 2012-04-01, 05:48 PM

The Pagefile isnt just used when you run out of ram. Windows uses the Pagefile anyway. Theres literally no way around it, unless you completly disable the page file, but that causes issues.
Thats why you put your pagefile on a ramdisk.
On top of that, if you usually keep your system running, or just want to not stress your Hard disk to much, you can put a game on the ramdisk. That means virtually no loading times.

The reason why Ati had more driver updates is simple: they need to fix the crap they do. With every driver update, Ati fucks something up. Every single time. Next update they fix it, and fuck something else up.
There have been performance hits up to 40% sometimes on a few games. Fact is, ATI got a clue about GFX cards, but they dont have a clue at all about drivers.

Cant provide you with writeups. This all comes from plenty of years of expirience. I build PCs, not just for myself, but for a bunch of people. And in 36 of 47 occasions where someone wanted a Ati card, something fucked up in the end. I saw those things going up in smoke already. Plenty of times, their drivers just caused massive issues, and every now and then i get a call from one of my guys hat they have strange image effects. Turns out its artys, GPU went bust, for no good reason.

Trust me, ATI is crap. Dont use them. I still use my OCed and Bios edited GTX280. I clean it every few month, and fixed its heatbug. I dont see me upgrading anytime soon, as it still got plenty of power for todays games. Before that, i had a Geforce 6800, OCed to the max and unlocked pipes. I still have that card, the only issue i ever had was the Fan breaking.
On the other hand, i had a 9800 Pro that broke after half a year, a X800 that broke after 3 Weeks (and took me 2 month to get replaced via ATI. Replacment died after a year). Not to mention all the hassle i had with their damn drivers...

SKYeXile · 2012-04-01, 05:58 PM

I have to agree ATI's drivers are somewhat terrible, but iv tried nvidia so many times and all the seem to do is spit out polygons for me in random directions and overheat. I wont ever put a card in in my computer now thats not a Sapphire ATI card, from 9800XT, X850XT, 2x:X1950XTX to 5970s, never a single problem, the 2xX1950XTX's are still going strong today after like 6 years of constant use.

i must say though, these were good nividia cards:

when they both died within 3 months, i got practically a full credit on them and got the 5970 when it first came out.

Skitrel · 2012-04-01, 06:11 PM

Originally Posted by basti

The Pagefile isnt just used when you run out of ram. Windows uses the Pagefile anyway. Theres literally no way around it, unless you completly disable the page file, but that causes issues.
Thats why you put your pagefile on a ramdisk.
On top of that, if you usually keep your system running, or just want to not stress your Hard disk to much, you can put a game on the ramdisk. That means virtually no loading times.

The reason why Ati had more driver updates is simple: they need to fix the crap they do. With every driver update, Ati fucks something up. Every single time. Next update they fix it, and fuck something else up.
There have been performance hits up to 40% sometimes on a few games. Fact is, ATI got a clue about GFX cards, but they dont have a clue at all about drivers.

Cant provide you with writeups. This all comes from plenty of years of expirience. I build PCs, not just for myself, but for a bunch of people. And in 36 of 47 occasions where someone wanted a Ati card, something fucked up in the end. I saw those things going up in smoke already. Plenty of times, their drivers just caused massive issues, and every now and then i get a call from one of my guys hat they have strange image effects. Turns out its artys, GPU went bust, for no good reason.

Trust me, ATI is crap. Dont use them. I still use my OCed and Bios edited GTX280. I clean it every few month, and fixed its heatbug. I dont see me upgrading anytime soon, as it still got plenty of power for todays games. Before that, i had a Geforce 6800, OCed to the max and unlocked pipes. I still have that card, the only issue i ever had was the Fan breaking.
On the other hand, i had a 9800 Pro that broke after half a year, a X800 that broke after 3 Weeks (and took me 2 month to get replaced via ATI. Replacment died after a year). Not to mention all the hassle i had with their damn drivers...

The 16mb of pagefile windows is using isn't going to show any performance change on a ramdisk versus not.

If what you're suggesting is somehow tricking windows into using a ramdisk presumably with software then that's just silly too. The kernel already performs in-memory caching of I/O. The purpose of doing something like that is to provide a second-level cache in the form of another device. Tricking Windows into using a RAM disk instead is pointless as it is already performing in-memory caching and the RAM disk is just wasting space that could have been used by that first-level cache.

A second-level cache is only used for I/O that is known to be random in nature (not sequential). Whereas the proper first-level in-memory I/O cache that is maintained by the kernel is useful for both random AND sequential I/O. It is just better in all ways. So being a ding bat and thinking it's clever in setting up on a RAM disk is silly. It's not clever at all. It's actually just wasting memory and needlessly encumbering the kernel with having to service a second-level I/O cache when it isn't actually going to achieve any benefits... You wouldn't achieve any speed changes at all.

Don't get me wrong, a second level cache isn't a bad thing, up to like a gig, as I said before, it'll give you performance boosts, not in that manner though. I presume you're suggesting something like readyboost to achieve this.

Essentially, if you've got enough RAM 4gb is more than enough, 6gb max will push your pagefile to completely unnecessary. You'll first load anything through the nice fast load of your SSD and windows will appropriately cache absolutely everything you need to your RAM from there on.

Even if what you suggest works, it would only work first load. Not that it would work, without some serious messing further messing than suggested, you're fucking with system level stuff though and you're going to break other stuff in the process. I can see disabling pagefile working as a way to trick the system, but plenty of stuff won't work AT ALL without pagefile enabled.

Unless I'm COMPLETELY off base and you're suggesting something entirely different.

Ironmole, sure thing it's dirt cheap, cash is cash though, if it's not necessary it's not necessary. 5 years from now the entire architecture of computing is going to start changing as qubits come into use anyway. All of what we're talking about is going to be obsolete as we move to quantum computing.

EDIT: As I said though Basti, benchmarks. If you've got benchmarks or a writeup showing benchmarks, I'd change my mind pretty fast.