Issue with high performance multi-drive computers.

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Guest

Issue with high performance multi-drive computers.

Post by Guest »

(This is a bit of a long post and thanks for letting me into the forum!)

I am not posting this in bugs as this isn't actually a bug. Also, I figured out most of this. This is more of an interesting series of events that lead me to a single conclusion.

So here are my specs and this is important:
Here are my specs:
Ryzen 7 1800x
32GB Ram
ASUS Strix 1080TI
500GB Samsung Evo SSD (For OS, Windows 10)
4TB Western Digital HDD (For games and storage)

Now, this computer isn't a slouch. But as much as I like modern games, I also have a passion for older games. Specifically Doom. I just built this computer a little over a year ago and since then (I think during an update on Win 10) I have been seeing noticeable lag spikes. I couldn't for the life of me figure this one out. Is it security options from Windows? Is it some form of page filing? Is it a compatibility issue with Windows 10? This issue has alluded me. Hours of searching on the internet didn't yield anything. But then I started streaming and started other retro FPS's as well. Half-Life was having similar issues. Specifically, it was worse, There would be a lag spike when I would pick up certain items or enter new areas and then my input would be stuck in running in one direction. It would last about 10 to 15 seconds and then I would be able to resume control of the game.

Then I had a theory. See in the early days, dev's had to do a lot of tricks so that games could run on a wide range of systems. One of these tricks was Raycasting in doom. It would draw the levels in real time which would be less intensive on the processor. While this isn't true for GZDoom (Which is what I use) it still doesn't pull from the utilities of the computer the same way modern games do. That being said I came up with a couple of possible solutions.

-It may be the HDD itself. I tested Z Doom Launcher and my Doom Directory on the SSD and it worked nearly perfectly. Also, I have lowered everything in the video settings of GZDoom and still chops.
-I am also thinking it's Windows 10 itself. The OS is poorly optimized for older games I feel like. I am thinking of getting an identical SSD and loading Windows 7 on it to specifically play older games like Half Life and Doom.
-There could be a setting somewhere in Windows 10. I have scoured everywhere for possible CMD prompts. I have Windows Tweaker 4 and have all the tracking disabled. I have Xbox DVR set to off. But maybe I failed to format my HDD correctly. Maybe there is a console command in GZDoom that I am not doing or in Half Life. I also did Clockwindow 1 as well. Some improving but not much. Same glitch will happen after some play time.
-I have CAM and After Burner and my temps seem fine. However, I did notice on GZDoom my processor will go to 80% and can't figure that one out.
-The last solution and one I don't want to do, is get 2 2TB Solid states and split my data over the 2 so that I can get better loading.

So I went looking at my utilization of my hardware. Temps fine, CPU, RAM, and GPU were all not going over 1 or 2% of utilization (unless I am running OBS). However, there was ONE thing I didn't check. Notice from my specs, I have an SSD for my OS exclusively and an HDD for my game storage. This is where the crux of my problem is. I pulled up task manager and ran GZDoom with Project Brutality 3, UDV, and D64 for Doom 2 (as this is a very memory intensive mods and the map pack has to load multiple new things quickly). Bam when I ran the mods on my SSD the SSD showed no utilization only when I switch levels. The game ran smoothly and never dropped frames or FPS. HOWEVER, I then ran the copy of GZDoom on my HDD and low and behold, ever time there was a lag it perfectly corresponded with a utilization spike on my HDD. I would go from 0 utilization to 90% and then back to 0.

So, the point of this post is to show others where the stuttering is coming from. I have seen countless forum posts but none talked about this. It was all about inherent Windows 10 compatibility or some page filing. No, the problem is HDD speed. I think.

This is the most up to date that I am at. I can't seem to figure out how to get the game to run smoothly on my HDD and it baffles me as to the "why" this is happening vs. the fact that it is happening. My dad suggests that I should use part of my HDD as extra ram being that the game is old. But I am not sure if this is a valid solution given the fact I have 32GB of ram.

Any thoughts on this? Thanks for putting up with this wall of text, but I couldn't figure out how to condence it. I wanted others who had the same problems to see the path I took to come to my conclusion.
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Graf Zahl
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
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Re: Issue with high performance multi-drive computers.

Post by Graf Zahl »

I never ran into such issues with actual games, but I also experienced HD lag, expecially when playing back music. Very often when a new file was opened the system had a short but noticeable delay.
After that I installed a larger SSD and copied all stuff that seemed to be affected onto it, i.e. my music collection and of course all my older games that weren't too large.
After that the problems completely went away.

For older games, I think the main problem is that they were written for systems with a lot less RAM so they invented convoluted caching schemes to keep the memory footprint low. And many of these caching schemes were outright crap. Just have a look at Doom's original memory allocator. When its provided space of RAM ran out it started throwing out data, with absolutely no strategy. This led to instant reloading of the data that just got thrown out in many occasions. The worst about these systems generally is that they have no facilities to adjust to the system's RAM size and just went with what was deemed sufficient when the code was written.
Needless to say, such implementations do not work well anymore with modern computers and if they hit some critical balance point may make the games look to run choppy.
Guest

Re: Issue with high performance multi-drive computers.

Post by Guest »

Thanks for the help. I installed an NVME drive on my computer and here are the results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEADX7 ... vxw03c010c
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