I remember reading that the game can have problems if you have more than 2gb of ram, for some reason. I couldn't find where I read it, sorry if it was right under my nose!
Anyway, I'm going to upgrade my system, and part of that is more ram (4-5gb) so I was hoping someone could let me know if there's a fix for the problem. Or if I just imagined it...
Problems with >2gb ram?
Problems with >2gb ram?
You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is!
You remember well and some tools to handle the problems are included with the unofficial patch.Minalkali wrote:I remember reading that the game can have problems if you have more than 2gb of ram, for some reason. I couldn't find where I read it, sorry if it was right under my nose!
Anyway, I'm going to upgrade my system, and part of that is more ram (4-5gb) so I was hoping someone could let me know if there's a fix for the problem. Or if I just imagined it...
my machine is 4gb (I think) and I had upgraded my previous one to that kind of RAM - my old machine, whilst slower processor crashes less often than my newer one, so when I get a problem, I move the save game between machines and play past the problem area on the old machine. once I'm happy, I save it back to my newer machine and carry on.
I use a memory stick for the file-moving - it works fine.
I use a memory stick for the file-moving - it works fine.
"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players"
Well my new computer runs the game just fine, thanks to Wesp5's awesome patches. But there is one issue that is slightly annoying: loading times. My new computer is much more powerful, but the loading times don't seem to have gone down at all. Is this normal? Is there a way to lessen them?
You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is!
More memory doesn't mean it's become more powerful or faster. In olden days, more memory actually meant a larger and slower memory address allocation table. If you want faster memory access you have to take things as CAS latency and Frontside Bus Speed into account, maybe other things too. They are both fully Wikifiable at any rate.
Some of these settings can be tweaked through the system BIOS, but not without risk. Overclocking memory shouldn't be done unless you're sure you can handle the excess heat production (that counts for memory sticks as well as processors). Time CAS latency out of sync with the CPU and you can end up with queueing problems, which make your system even slower. But even if pulled off right (and if it isn't already auto-configured optimally) the effect it has on you memory is always lesser compared to installing new, faster memory.
Some of these settings can be tweaked through the system BIOS, but not without risk. Overclocking memory shouldn't be done unless you're sure you can handle the excess heat production (that counts for memory sticks as well as processors). Time CAS latency out of sync with the CPU and you can end up with queueing problems, which make your system even slower. But even if pulled off right (and if it isn't already auto-configured optimally) the effect it has on you memory is always lesser compared to installing new, faster memory.
[INDENT]'..tolerance when fog rolls in clouds unfold your selfless wings feathers that float from arabesque pillows I sold to be consumed by the snow white cold if only the plaster could hold withstand the flam[url="http://bit.ly/foT0XQ"]e[/url] then this fountain torch would know no shame and be outstripped only by the sun that burns with the glory and honor of your..'[/INDENT]
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Jhereg
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At the risk of mentioning the obvious...
More memory does not of necessity equate to greater speed.
1) If page faults are an issue, more memory can help resolve or at least ameliorate that.
2) If resource leakage is an issue, more memory can decrease mean time between failures, but does not fix the basic problem.
If neither of those was an issue to start with, then more memory will serve no useful function. At the end of the day, there is a fixed upper limit to the amount of memory most programs will require under any particular condition, and if you have that much free, it doesn't matter if you have an extra 50 terabytes of memory - it's not going to help. I ran through the Giovanni quest (V1.2) on a 2 Gb system. In that half-hour, the minimum available free memory was about 400 Mb. This tells me that my system was not stressed for memory - I was only using at most 80% of what was available (and yes, I did check the page file usage and page faults - they didn't change).
Intermediary hardware concerns such as muliplex/strobe problems, clock synch, bus speeds, caching and queueing, etc. can be a concern. If your computer was constructed by a reputable company, though, the bits and pieces are typically selected to work as well together as they may be expected to. So unless your system is hand-hacked by somebody without the knowledge to select components that will play nice together, or you're a dyed-in-the-wool hardware geek, it's usually best to leave the deep magic to the deep magicians. These aren't the old TRS-80's where a hobbyist with a few textbooks, a soldering iron, and a little skill could haywire mods into them. If a hardware geek wants to know about software geekery, I expect them to come to me. If I want to know about hardware geekery, I'll return the professional courtesy and go to them.
So, enough about memory, clocks, busses, strobes, yadda-yadda and like that. So what is the slowest thing on any computer? Hint: it isn't any of the parts that run at near-light-speed (that would be the electronic parts).
It's the mechanical parts. The disk drives. If you've got a 360 RPM drive, and you replace it with a 720 RPM drive, that means the disk spins twice as fast. Assuming the controllers are capable of handling that speed, and you have a 360 RPM drive, the most obvious speed-enhancing mod would be a faster disk drive.
Next would be the drive configuration. A striped RAID array writes the same stream of information on multiple drives simultaneously, so there is less data transfer per drive and less head movement per drive, which means more information can be transferred in less time, which means faster.
After that would be the drive interfaces. I've already copped to the fact that I'm no hardware geek, but as I understand it, an IDE interface is the slowest. After that, it's either SATA or SCSI-2, but I'm not sure which of them is the faster. In any case, that would be the next most obvious place to look for a performance increase.
So, let's see. What does it cost to put in a SATA RAID-5 array of 4 disks plus 1 parity, using 720 RPM drives? I'll bet it's not cheap. I also bet it would be pretty fast. I also bet it would still be the slowest part of the system.
And the really wonderful part is that the game can't know or even care what the drive configuration is. To the game, it's just a data-stream, and it'll gobble that data up just as fast as it can allocate memory. If loading times are a problem, that's where your solution is going to be.
More memory does not of necessity equate to greater speed.
1) If page faults are an issue, more memory can help resolve or at least ameliorate that.
2) If resource leakage is an issue, more memory can decrease mean time between failures, but does not fix the basic problem.
If neither of those was an issue to start with, then more memory will serve no useful function. At the end of the day, there is a fixed upper limit to the amount of memory most programs will require under any particular condition, and if you have that much free, it doesn't matter if you have an extra 50 terabytes of memory - it's not going to help. I ran through the Giovanni quest (V1.2) on a 2 Gb system. In that half-hour, the minimum available free memory was about 400 Mb. This tells me that my system was not stressed for memory - I was only using at most 80% of what was available (and yes, I did check the page file usage and page faults - they didn't change).
Intermediary hardware concerns such as muliplex/strobe problems, clock synch, bus speeds, caching and queueing, etc. can be a concern. If your computer was constructed by a reputable company, though, the bits and pieces are typically selected to work as well together as they may be expected to. So unless your system is hand-hacked by somebody without the knowledge to select components that will play nice together, or you're a dyed-in-the-wool hardware geek, it's usually best to leave the deep magic to the deep magicians. These aren't the old TRS-80's where a hobbyist with a few textbooks, a soldering iron, and a little skill could haywire mods into them. If a hardware geek wants to know about software geekery, I expect them to come to me. If I want to know about hardware geekery, I'll return the professional courtesy and go to them.
So, enough about memory, clocks, busses, strobes, yadda-yadda and like that. So what is the slowest thing on any computer? Hint: it isn't any of the parts that run at near-light-speed (that would be the electronic parts).
It's the mechanical parts. The disk drives. If you've got a 360 RPM drive, and you replace it with a 720 RPM drive, that means the disk spins twice as fast. Assuming the controllers are capable of handling that speed, and you have a 360 RPM drive, the most obvious speed-enhancing mod would be a faster disk drive.
Next would be the drive configuration. A striped RAID array writes the same stream of information on multiple drives simultaneously, so there is less data transfer per drive and less head movement per drive, which means more information can be transferred in less time, which means faster.
After that would be the drive interfaces. I've already copped to the fact that I'm no hardware geek, but as I understand it, an IDE interface is the slowest. After that, it's either SATA or SCSI-2, but I'm not sure which of them is the faster. In any case, that would be the next most obvious place to look for a performance increase.
So, let's see. What does it cost to put in a SATA RAID-5 array of 4 disks plus 1 parity, using 720 RPM drives? I'll bet it's not cheap. I also bet it would be pretty fast. I also bet it would still be the slowest part of the system.
And the really wonderful part is that the game can't know or even care what the drive configuration is. To the game, it's just a data-stream, and it'll gobble that data up just as fast as it can allocate memory. If loading times are a problem, that's where your solution is going to be.
"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style." Steven K.Z. Brust, "Jhereg", ISBN 0-441-38553-2, Chapter 17, prologue.
Well it's clear you guys know way more about computers than me, and your solutions went right over my head, but for some reason you seem to think I'm thinking more ram will make the game faster - I'm not. I did think that having a much faster processor would though. Sorry if I was wrong about that 
The thing is that I'm playing Mass Effect right now, and the loading times are just a second or two. Doesn't seem right that this game, which I would assume has a lot more to load, takes a fraction of the time a four year old game takes. I figured it was just related to the way the game loads, I also thought there might be something wrong. I just don't know!
So what are loading times like for all you guys? For me, loading a hub takes typically about 1-2 minutes. For reference, I'm running on a Intel core duo 3gb processor, 3.5gb of ram (I actually have 4 but my system only reads 3.5, because I'm running XP I think?) and an ATI HD3870 video card. I'm not too sure about the RPM of my disk drive actually, but it's 50x.
The thing is that I'm playing Mass Effect right now, and the loading times are just a second or two. Doesn't seem right that this game, which I would assume has a lot more to load, takes a fraction of the time a four year old game takes. I figured it was just related to the way the game loads, I also thought there might be something wrong. I just don't know!
So what are loading times like for all you guys? For me, loading a hub takes typically about 1-2 minutes. For reference, I'm running on a Intel core duo 3gb processor, 3.5gb of ram (I actually have 4 but my system only reads 3.5, because I'm running XP I think?) and an ATI HD3870 video card. I'm not too sure about the RPM of my disk drive actually, but it's 50x.
You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is!
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Jhereg
- Posts: 379
- Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:02 pm
- Location: What the heck am I doing on *this* planet??
- Contact:
50x?
Your drive is 50X? Are you running it from a CD-ROM? For me, loading a hub normally takes less than 15 seconds, but I'm running it from a hard disk.
I guess I didn't see one possible speed increase. Running it from the hard disk. That also might explain what you're seeing.
The newer game was build for newer systems. By default, it probably installs all of the information to the hard disk, and it only needs the CD to validate the copy-protection.
If I recall correctly, VTMB has the option to install to run either from the hard disk or from the CD. Either way, the CD has to be in the system (for the copy-protection), but there is a rather significant difference. Four years ago, resources were scarcer, and more expensive. If you told VTMB to install to run from the CD, then it left a lot of large files on the CD to reduce the amount of hard disk space it had to consume substantially. This option was fairly common in the comparatively recent past. The price you paid for saving your hard disk space was really s l o o o o w w w loading times.
If this is the case, it's not actually much of a deal-breaker. Backup your saved games, remove VTMB, re-install it (to run from the hard disk) and then patch it back up to whatever patch level you're using. Put your saved games back where they belong, and you should be very pleased with the result.
Now by way of edification (nothing useful about improving performance of VTMB here):
As to the way the game loads, that actually does have an effect - just a much smaller one (and one that can't be altered without a lot of reprogramming). If all of the resources (pictures, textures, sounds, etc) are stored piecemeal then each file has to be opened and loaded individually. If all of the resources for a level are compiled together and stored as a memory image, then the whole memory image just has to be sucked into memory from one file, which is faster. The trade-off there is flexibility against speed. If the files are stored piecemeal, then modding the game is a lot easier, and the developers gain a degree of flexibility in their loading strategy. If the image is precompiled, modding is tougher, and there is no flexibility in loading strategy.
Your drive is 50X? Are you running it from a CD-ROM? For me, loading a hub normally takes less than 15 seconds, but I'm running it from a hard disk.
I guess I didn't see one possible speed increase. Running it from the hard disk. That also might explain what you're seeing.
The newer game was build for newer systems. By default, it probably installs all of the information to the hard disk, and it only needs the CD to validate the copy-protection.
If I recall correctly, VTMB has the option to install to run either from the hard disk or from the CD. Either way, the CD has to be in the system (for the copy-protection), but there is a rather significant difference. Four years ago, resources were scarcer, and more expensive. If you told VTMB to install to run from the CD, then it left a lot of large files on the CD to reduce the amount of hard disk space it had to consume substantially. This option was fairly common in the comparatively recent past. The price you paid for saving your hard disk space was really s l o o o o w w w loading times.
If this is the case, it's not actually much of a deal-breaker. Backup your saved games, remove VTMB, re-install it (to run from the hard disk) and then patch it back up to whatever patch level you're using. Put your saved games back where they belong, and you should be very pleased with the result.
Now by way of edification (nothing useful about improving performance of VTMB here):
As to the way the game loads, that actually does have an effect - just a much smaller one (and one that can't be altered without a lot of reprogramming). If all of the resources (pictures, textures, sounds, etc) are stored piecemeal then each file has to be opened and loaded individually. If all of the resources for a level are compiled together and stored as a memory image, then the whole memory image just has to be sucked into memory from one file, which is faster. The trade-off there is flexibility against speed. If the files are stored piecemeal, then modding the game is a lot easier, and the developers gain a degree of flexibility in their loading strategy. If the image is precompiled, modding is tougher, and there is no flexibility in loading strategy.
"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style." Steven K.Z. Brust, "Jhereg", ISBN 0-441-38553-2, Chapter 17, prologue.