XP File Performance vs. default Program performance POST.

[strider 0]

I have to agree that "a framerate is a framerate...no matter what program". FSX CAN'T make a 12 FPS look any better than FS9 could. The human eye starts to detect loss of "fluidity" at, around, 25-30 FPS. Of course we are all different and some notice it at lower or higher numbers. I tend to notice it at the higher end (28 or so). This is why film projectors run at a much higher rate (I believe the old movie house ones ran at 60?). Nothing any software can do will change this...if the images are only updating, on your screen, 10 times per second...it will look "jerky". That's a physiological fact which nothing can change. I see that the FSX "mythology" is already in full swing...glad I'm staying with FS9 for the foreseeable future. It will take a couple of years to weed out all the "snake oil" salesmen. At some point there will be an FAQ posted for improving FSX performance ( "1. Buy a very hot system. 2...."). I'll wait until "Dr. Thadius's magic gall bladder elixir" and the rest are removed from said FAQ, and only proven "medicine" remains.

[Guest Ozzie]

I have copied this down from above since my well known dislike of a certain company that produces OS's may influence people to consider me a nut - that may be so - but as a lot of current IT folk have been trying to tell people It is potentially VERY dangerous to invoke this changeThis puts in into slightly less technical terms>Hi>>Would you care to elaborate on these great risks that you are>telling about ?>>TeroWell I will try to - even though things have changed since I was workingBack when I was working - servers were ALWAYS astronomically more expensive than desktops - that was for a reason - THEY WERE MADE OUT OF BETTER QUALITY COMPONENTS being the simple answerFile cacheing WILL give you better (faster) results - BUT at potentially dangerous consequenses IF anything goes wrong - with File cacheing - it does exactly what it says - it caches the file in RAM for rapid access - in the case of FS - that is a bonus because the CPU does not have to use a program to go and "look for" it on the disk therefore increasing the perceived "speed" of the machine (or program)The more RAM you have the better the perceived benefit and the GREATER the potential risk of problems That is absolutely fantastic and correct - AS LONG AS NOTHING GOES WRONG - eventually the CPU will have a little bit of "idle time" and be able to write the files "back to" the disk - once again - nothing wrong with that provided that whatever application is being used does have some sort of a "lull" in it to give the CPU time to do this - SERVERS (at least PROPER servers) have all sorts of "safety features" built into them e.g. EEC RAM used to be one (4 times the price for 50% better quatity AND the ability to have a "checksum" (in case of an error)I could go on & on - but the simple answer is that an aweful LOT of machines that we all use today DO NOT necessarily have quality components in them - irrespective of what brand name they have or what price we have to pay for themLet me give a small scenarioI am having a fantastic time flying around Seattle or wherever and after an hour or so I decide that I would like to check my email - I put FS on pause - open up my email and check it - I have a message - great - I then answer that message and CLOSE my emailGreat - I can now go back to flyingDuring my little discourse into another program (in this case chosen Email system - plus of course incoming Email - plus of course the fact that I actually replied) - ALL that additional information is NOW stored in Cache - It has NOT yet been written to the disk - hopefully the files that were already in Cache have been correctly written back to disk - Oldest used - 1st kicked back outSo far - so good - BUT what happens IF we just have a couple of little tiny power fluctuations - you know - the ones where the lights just dim for a second - they ARE power spikes (either UP or DOWN - unless you are running on a GOOD UPS) and THEY can quite easily just "FLIP" one or more bits in the RAM - that is called a corruption (potentially) - sometimes the OS can take care of single bit errors - sometimes it cannotThere is therefore the potential for a file that is sitting in cache to have a 1 or 2 or 3 bit corruption if or when it gets written back to the disk on the basis of "first used first out"Now I know that this is starting to become a wee tad long but I hope at least some of you are absorbing it and realising the potential consequenses - I will try and speed up the processLets just say that texture 100098700.BMP (or whatever) is a VERY common texture and over the days/weeks/months/years it has sloooowly accumulated enough bit errors to become corrupted FS will at some point NOT be able to read it and will "SPIT THE DUMMY" - that is called a "CRASH" - what happens in the event of a CRASH - WELL!!! depending on the OS the files in Cache are then "SPLATTERED ALL OVER THE DISK" - there is no real need to start another discussion about how this may or may not occur with different OS's - it all depends upon too many factorsAnd THAT my friends is possibly the last time you see your data unless the writers of the OS have cleaned up their act since I last worked - in fairness - the writers of SERVER OS SOFTWARE probably have - but I for one am not sure about consumer type OS'sIF you ONLY have FS and an OS on your computer and are happy enough to deal with any consequences AND you are totally confident that you have TOP QUALITY components (not necessarily expensive) in your machine - THEN this is a good suggestion - (Mind you - I would not trust my system THAT much)- otherwise I tend to suggest caution - especially IF you have all sorts of other garbage on your machine other than JUST FS and an OSI have also added a couple of corrections that I missed 1st time and added a few modifications and corrected some typos that I should have picked up earlierTuppence from an ol'f@rtIn fact - I am actually old enough to remember back before some of you were born to the days when an ENTIRE programme could actually fit on a single 5.25 inch floppy disk (read the history books - they DID exist) - and there were some machines that you could actually put in enough RAM to then create a "RAM DRIVE" and load the entire programme into it - boy! did They fly - as long as there was NEVER a power fluctuation

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Ozzie (or anyone else with the technical know-how who might care to chip in),Thanks for taking the time to help us clarify this whole business in our minds.One question, however: In the case of FSX and files being cached in RAM for faster access, why would the O/S need to write these files back to disk since they haven't changed in any way? They are just being read from the HD to be held in cache without any modification. In the case of a power blip/failure it would not matter if the cached files became corrupted, say, during a read operation as the originals remain intact on the HD from whence they came. Or am I demonstrating a complete lack of understanding about how such things work?Mike

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Mike, you've just been nominated for the Question Of The Year Reward. What an outstanding question! It looks like computing is something highly logical - but without any logics. :-) Kind regards Jaap

[Guest Kev_Is_Soaked]

Mike:Even if your not making changes to files, the OS is. As XP runs, files are constantly updating. For example the Event log is continually recording system wide events, the Registry is always flipping bits here and there throughout the day, as well the Master File Table is being updated as the page file changes. Just running FSX would result in several disk writes.To see your OS related disk writes, try this. Open up Task Manager, choose the Processes TAB. Click View, choose Select Columns. Check I/O Writes and I/O Write Bytes then hit OK.Now you can see what processes are actually writing to disk. Even though I have only Firefox open right now, there are several other processes that seem to be writing to disk.... some of them I don't know why, but some are easier to figure out. Even my Printer driver seems to be writing to disk!!!!! One of the main culprits, is Explorer.ExeThat's right, your OS's User Interface is doing lots of disk writing as you work and play, whether you like it or not. Mostly, it's updating a file or two saving it's 'heartbeat'. A long time ago, some developer thought it would be a great idea to have processes record its own heartbeat so that when and if it crashes, it can tell if that process was responsible or not.For example, if upon a restart it knows that 10 processes had heartbeats right up till 10:25:09PM, that the process that suddenly stopped at 10:24:30PM probably made the system unstable enough to eventually crash. I know it sounds a little far out, heartbeats... heh.... but in all seriousness.... it is how developers can tell what their software is doing and when it's doing it. It makes life a whole lot easier.Anyways back to my point. XP on its own, even if you start it up, let it run all day long, then turn it off.... will still accumulate enough disk write activity to be a danger in terms of corruption should the system not be configured to run safely.

[carlan2uk 0]

A very interesting article. I may try it if I need extra help when the new addons (eg Level D) come out.I am not too worried about a crash occuring as I do a Norton Ghost back up on a separate external hard drive at least once a week.This has got me out of e few problems in the past!David

[BrzI 26]

Juts be aware of the fact that you might Ghost a problem-in-the-making. In which case you will only postpone a future crash. The only image/backup you can really trust is one made BEFORE you turned memory caching ON.Thanks

[Guest Ozzie]

>Juts be aware of the fact that you might Ghost a>problem-in-the-making. In which case you will only postpone a>future crash. The only image/backup you can really trust is>one made BEFORE you turned memory caching ON.>>ThanksTouche!Now theres a man with common sense

[Guest smarti05]

If your system does crash and you cannot restore it, you guys are going to lose a #### of a lot of stuff you really want to keep. I for one have been to this point before, its incredible how much stuff you have that you forget about. Is it really worth the risk for one poorly written game?I will wait for the magic patch!!

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Kev,Once again your lucid explanations are paving the way :)This is great, I've learnt such a lot in just a few days.One thing is now very clear in my mind: I will NOT now be implementing the 'System cache' option.I wonder how many of us have explored the 'Select Columns' under the View menu item in Task Manager? I know I hadn't...until now!Many thanks!Best regards,Mike

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Jaap,Awe shucks, you're making me blush ...LOL!!Regards,Mike