HDD thrashing in games, need some help

[Phantasmal]

MSI K8N Neo4 board
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2gb Kingston Hyper-X ddr
XFX 7900 gs
WD800JD Western Digital SATA II 7200 rpm drive
Mushkin 550w psu (dual 20a)
Windows XP sp2

If any other info is needed let me know. I'm really at wit's end with this issue though. I get stuttering in games due to HDD thrashing, old and new ones. Mainly games that load areas on the fly, like Sacred, Gothic 3, Brothers in arms, or the new Two Worlds game. I've tried just about everything I could find on the internet and nothing seems to make any difference.

Just recently added that second gb of ram, and it has made absolutely no difference as the games don't seem to even touch it even when I disable the swap file. It's like these games go directly to my HDD for loading, and that is when the light flickers a lot and the game stutters for 1-2 seconds. This only happens when the areas are loading, not like constant stuttering or lag mind you.

Just for a checklist of stuff I've tried so it won't be suggested; I've defragged, tried numerous drivers for sound, nforce and video, switched sata ports, switched sata cables, under and overclocked, set page file to various suggested settings, tried a few registry tweaks, xpcachefilter, reformatted pc, grabbed latest direct x, ran error checking tool, everything I could think of.

Is there anything else anybody can suggest trying? Maybe a HDD test so you can check the results? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[1Tanker]

MSI K8N Neo4 board
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2gb Kingston Hyper-X ddr
XFX 7900 gs
WD800JD Western Digital SATA II 7200 rpm drive
Mushkin 550w psu (dual 20a)
Windows XP sp2

If any other info is needed let me know. I'm really at wit's end with this issue though. I get stuttering in games due to HDD thrashing, old and new ones. Mainly games that load areas on the fly, like Sacred, Gothic 3, Brothers in arms, or the new Two Worlds game. I've tried just about everything I could find on the internet and nothing seems to make any difference.

Just recently added that second gb of ram, and it has made absolutely no difference as the games don't seem to even touch it even when I disable the swap file. It's like these games go directly to my HDD for loading, and that is when the light flickers a lot and the game stutters for 1-2 seconds. This only happens when the areas are loading, not like constant stuttering or lag mind you.

Just for a checklist of stuff I've tried so it won't be suggested; I've defragged, tried numerous drivers for sound, nforce and video, switched sata ports, switched sata cables, under and overclocked, set page file to various suggested settings, tried a few registry tweaks, xpcachefilter, reformatted pc, grabbed latest direct x, ran error checking tool, everything I could think of.

Is there anything else anybody can suggest trying? Maybe a HDD test so you can check the results? Thanks in advance for any help.

Did you check to see if DMA is enabled(in device manager)?

 

[fredgiblet]

Have you checked to make sure that your anti-virus isn't doing a scheduled scan?

 

[Phantasmal]

Yep DMA enabled, as it usually is by default. And I don't use a virus scanner or none of that, have most of the windows services disabled that aren't needed too (indexing, auto update, etc.). So background services aren't the issue, I always make sure nothing is running that would make my pc chug.

Any other suggestions? As in more advanced stuff. This might be not something fixable but I'm still gonna ask around.

EDIT: Actually with the nforce drivers, there is no DMA option for the SATA drives. Only for IDE, which would be my DVD and CD burners. But even when nforce drivers aren't installed, DMA is always enabled by default for me I believe.

 

[geofelt]

What task is doing the i/o? Turn on the performance monitor to find out. Is it reads, or writes? Is the disk cache enabled? Run hdtach to see if the device is operating at speeds that are typical. By reformatting the pc, I assume that you mean you reloaded windows. Could this be normal operations for those games? Question all of your assumptions.
---good luck---

 

[Phantasmal]

What do you mean doing the i/o? Not sure what you're talking about there. I have the option of enabling/disabling read and write caching though. I tried disabling read caching but it didn't even make a difference.

Ran hd tach earlier, all normal results for this drive. And it isn't necessarily normal for all these games to stutter like this. Most people have said the extra gb of ram for Gothic 3 would smooth it out for example, but it plays the exact same as if I had 1gb still. I also don't think it's normal for an older game like Sacred to always stutter upon new areas being loaded, isn't like the game has hi-res textures.

I can run some games perfectly, it's the games that use on the fly loading that do it. They should however be accessing the ram, but instead I see my HDD light flickering and my game stutters from that.

 

[echdskech]

What games do you play? does it happen to all games?

Try turning off virtual memory to see if the thrashing is caused by swapping or by another app.

 

[geofelt]

You are assuming that your game is doing some sort of HDD activity. Verify that this is so by looking at the performance monitor. It will tell you what task is issuing the i/o, and what the service time is, ...etc. You may find that something else is happening. For example, you may be having a disk error recovery problem and the i/o is to a log file. Who knows what you will find.

 

[Phantasmal]

I already addressed what you replied with EchDskEch beforehand, in my opening post. I tried no swap file and same results, and it only happens with games that use on the fly loading like most 3D rpg's.

I still have no idea what you're talking about regarding i/o (input/output?) and what not geofelt. I opened task manager after the game loaded up, and after some stuttering I checked it. What info are you looking for exactly?

Under the performance tab, it says nothing about what task is doing what or a system time. There are no different services running. Can you be more specific? Are you sure you're talking about something on Windows xp?

 

[TonyStark]

Defrag your hard disk.

 

[Phantasmal]

Guess I should repost this in bold since people seemed to have overlooked it somehow.

Just for a checklist of stuff I've tried so it won't be suggested; I've defragged, tried numerous drivers for sound, nforce and video, switched sata ports, switched sata cables, under and overclocked, set page file to various suggested settings, tried a few registry tweaks, xpcachefilter, reformatted pc, grabbed latest direct x, ran error checking tool, everything I could think of.

 

[echdskech]

If you could post a list of the games you're having issues with, maybe others playing those specific game/s are having issues too. it could be title specific rather than a hardware/OS problem.

 

[Phantasmal]

I'm positive it isn't title specific, as it happens with numerous games not just a select few. It's almost like the games are accessing the page file, even when they don't need to. And even when I disable the page file, in task manager it still shows it being used during gaming.

But for some games I have this problem with..

Oblivion, Gothic 3, Sacred, Brothers in Arms, Two Worlds, Civilization 4, Neverwinter Nights 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Titan Quest, etc.

 

[dokk]

MSI K8N Neo4 board
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2gb Kingston Hyper-X ddr
XFX 7900 gs
WD800JD Western Digital SATA II 7200 rpm drive
Mushkin 550w psu (dual 20a)
Windows XP sp2

If any other info is needed let me know. I'm really at wit's end with this issue though. I get stuttering in games due to HDD thrashing, old and new ones. Mainly games that load areas on the fly, like Sacred, Gothic 3, Brothers in arms, or the new Two Worlds game. I've tried just about everything I could find on the internet and nothing seems to make any difference.

Just recently added that second gb of ram, and it has made absolutely no difference as the games don't seem to even touch it even when I disable the swap file. It's like these games go directly to my HDD for loading, and that is when the light flickers a lot and the game stutters for 1-2 seconds. This only happens when the areas are loading, not like constant stuttering or lag mind you.

Just for a checklist of stuff I've tried so it won't be suggested; I've defragged, tried numerous drivers for sound, nforce and video, switched sata ports, switched sata cables, under and overclocked, set page file to various suggested settings, tried a few registry tweaks, xpcachefilter, reformatted pc, grabbed latest direct x, ran error checking tool, everything I could think of.

Is there anything else anybody can suggest trying? Maybe a HDD test so you can check the results? Thanks in advance for any help.

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Hi Phatasamal; Y'know I had the same problem once upon a time ,,and my
cure was/is to create a seperate partition for my swap file which is set to 700/1.5g [i have 1g ram] the primary function of my system is gaming,also i found out that my mobo an Asus A8N-SLI Se and it's non sli twin do not like little hdd's which is basically anything under 160g,currently i an running 1x320g for the net,and 1x250g for gaming,[all my hdd's are WD's]so much for my crap..
Have you tried the WD utility DLDIAG,is it possible??that your hdd's not up to scratch,maybe?? the onboard cache 8m,is snafu'd??..
The other thing that might help is to ghost your primary?? partition,store the ghost on another partition,format and restore the ghost the partition..[or equivilent]
On the other hand you might just have a less than righteous hdd,in which case,you would need to RMA the beast.Mind you.I get 1-2 seconds stutter in Dark Messiah now and again,but I put it down to unoptimised code,or illegal short cuts used by the lazy progammers ????
One more thing and I will get out of your face ,for what it's worth NTFS partitions are not more efficient/faster than 32 bit,because of the overhead,all of my gaming drives partitions are 32bit fats..Good luck..

 

[darkguset]

Lower the texture quality in your games and see if that makes a difference. Also have a look at the access of HD during gaming or whenever you seem to have this problem. Use either windows ctrl+alt+del or another application to monitor this. Also did you do a virus check? Could also be your HD failing.

 

[Phantasmal]

That's about the only thing I haven't tried yet dokk, is creating another partition. Guess I should give it a go then and see if I have any luck. I did try WD diagnostic tool and everything passed. According to the few HDD tests I've tried, my drive appears to be working fine but those tests don't recreate gaming experiences so their accuracy is nullified by my issue.

I've tried tons of game settings darkguest. And nothing makes a difference really. I even played some games on all low settings and the stuttering still takes place whenever new scenery appears. You'd think these games would go to the ram or even my 256mb of video memory for stuff like this, but my HDD is always being accessed for some odd reason.

Oh and nope, no viruses. This problems happens after a fresh format even so it isn't that. It'd seem like my HDD is working perfect, as I don't have any other problems besides this.

 

[geofelt]

As I remember for XP, go to administrative tools, under computer management, then system tools or monitoring tools you should be able to find performance monitor. This is not the same as task manager, it can be more detailed, and therefore, more helpful. There, you should be able to collect whatever performance data you want. It can be logged to a file if a snapshot is not enough. I'm sorry, I have been on vista long enough to get fuzzy memory about xp details.

 

[Phantasmal]

Alright I tried another partition and placed swap file on it, unfortunately made no difference. I don't think partitioning will help me out, because it's still accessing the same HDD and that seems to be where the problem lies. It shouldn't be using my HDD so much, I mean, isn't that what ram is for?

Checked that out geofelt, just shows the normal stuff that task manager shows for me. Doesn't appear to be anything else making it act differently, just the game itself using 100% cpu which I believe is normal.

Almost at the point where I think I'll need a new identical drive to set up raid, but on another forum they said that more ram would've helped and raid wouldn't. Dunno what to try now, any other suggestions? Any tweaks or something?

 

[geofelt]

If your cpu is 100%, then the hdd is not the limiting factor. There is something else going on. Can you verify that you have all of the memory that you think you have. Run memtest, and make certain that it has 2gb.

 

[Phantasmal]

Ran a memory test, and received 0 errors. So my ram appears to be functioning correctly and it's all there, I even have them set up in dual ram mode and cpu-z confirmed this.

Thanks for all the help so far, wish this was something easier to fix or diagnose. This is why I'm stumped, doesn't seem to be anything left to test or change. Maybe different ram slots or a tweak to disable the page file, I don't know.

 

[echdskech]

try loading your memory with your swap turned off just to confirm that its not a ram overloading problem.. create a huge image in photoshop or gimp if you dont have photoshop. windows should complain about having low or insufficient memory before the drive start thrashing.

also, you can try running the games disconnected from the network just to eliminate the possibility that something in your network might cause it.

if you have a spare disk around, you can try installing a fresh OS there just to eliminate the drive itself as the problem.

another (longshot) tweak you can try is turning S.M.A.R.T in the bios. there are only a couple of things i know off the top of my head that caused windows to burn my hd:

- file indexing
- av scanning
- swapping
- large file transfers
- game loading

the posts above seem to have tackled most of these tho.

good luck!

 

[Phantasmal]

Tried to create the largest possible sized image in photoshop, it worked on it for like 10 seconds then an error came up not enough memory and whatever.

The weird thing about my swap file is though, even when I disable it or set it to a low number, when I run a game and check task manager the game is still using a page file all the way up to 800mb or more. Shouldn't it not be used at all for games?

 

[geofelt]

Many games have an option to save the status of the game automatically, either explicitly, or by default. I know that CIV-4 does. At the end of every turn, it will write out 150k to 800k worth of data. This will blast the disk for a few moments. as far as I know, civ-4 does not load anything after it gets started, it just uses more memory. Two gb should be fine.
On some occasions, I notice that my cursor gets very sluggish for a few moments and may not move at the end of the turn. I turned on the performance monitor, and found a windows process being very active. I think it was windows onecare(security program) checking the newly created checkpoint file.
See what happens with the games' auto checkpoint turned off.
What do you mean by on the fly loading? That seems to be a common thread.

 

[Phantasmal]

Most games give you the option to turn off auto save, which you are referring to. I never have it on so of course it isn't that. And you must be thinking of Vista or something again, Win xp has no auto checkpoint or even checkpoint process that turns on that I've ever heard of.

What I mean when I keep saying "on the fly loading", is from games like Gothic 3, Two Worlds, Boiling Point, Oblivion, Sacred, etc. Where the game will only load up your surrounding area initially, then as you move about in the world new cells will load up with new scenery causing the stutter problems I have. With 2 gb of ram, it SHOULD smooth out the stutter lag I get from most games with this type of loading as the ram should be at work for this process, not the HDD or page file.

I understand that Gothic 3 and Oblivion will always suffer from it as they are poorly optimized, but I get it from EVERY game that uses this feature no matter what. Even old Sacred does it to me, which is like a Diablo 2 clone if you're wondering what it is. People don't normally suffer from this problem on all these games. So something must not be functioning correctly or set up right.

 

[Phantasmal]

Hey I have a question since this issue seems about impossible to fix, at least over the internet.

Would it maybe help if I created a seperate partition on the drive, set it to Fat32 and installed my games on it? Dokk and others around the net mentioned Fat32 is faster for gaming, but would it help just to make a smaller partition for only installing games to?