Rolling Cache size

[Bert Pieke 7,591]

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I used to defragment HDDs if that’s what you’re referring to.

https://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/

[regis9 4,039]

9 hours ago, Gordon Hutchison said:

Hi folks,

I have MSFS installed pretty much on its own on a 2TB SSD - is there any tangible benefit for manually allocating a large Rolling cache size within MSFS settings (say 1TB for example).

Cheers

I think I if you have a reasonably fast internet connection there’s no need to use rolling cache.  Personally I noticed no difference when I turned it off.

[Ray Proudfoot 9,041]

12 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

https://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/

Thanks.

[Steve Dra 7,605]

I have a feeling that the way ssd prices keep dropping and faster form factors keep emerging.....We'll soon never be in a position where we'll actually never have enough read/writes on a finite-life product before we replace it for obsolescence or inadequate capacity (I have more than several old 250GB SSD's laying around that cost more (in their day) and way slower than my current M2 1TB drive. 🙂   2TBs are quickly becoming reasonable.

At least I hope that is where we are heading. 😉

 

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Steve Dra

[marsman2020 1,310]

6 hours ago, Reader said:

What is not mentioned in the description of a rolling cache is the errors introduced if the user adds a new scenery item in the area stored in the cache and then flies over the area without deleting the cache. There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that little or no time during the initial development was devoted to the consequences of adding third party scenery. This is why users are finding that default airports interfere with addon airports and that airports that are thousands of kilometres apart can nevertheless cause problems with each other.

This does not make any sense based on the developers description of how the cache works in the previous Dev Q&A.

The sim is about to go get an asset via HTTP, and it checks to see if *the same exact data* in the cache, and uses that instead.  Same data, stored in the same format.

If there is some issue with add-on scenery, it would either be getting the wrong data via HTTP, or the wrong data from the rolling cache - same data, same format.  At the point where the sim is going to load the asset, it's already decided to load that asset and to either use or ignore add-on scenery that might be present in that area. 

There are a lot of cargo cult statements out there about the rolling cache, but I tend to believe the people who wrote the thing.

(That's not to say there isn't some other mechanism which might cause the sim to get confused about what it should be loading, but based on what we recently learned about how the rolling cache is, it's not the cache's fault)

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

It was a piece of advice I remember from many years ago. Can’t see why it wouldn’t still be relevant today.

And it’s recommended size is 1.5 times installed RAM. So the more RAM you have the larger the pagefile. Each to their own.

Modern SSDs have very good wear leveling algorithms and you'd have to write the pagefile constantly many times over for years to cause any issue.  Also, there are many PCs and laptops available now that only have SSDs, so they only have the option to put the pagefile on an SSD.

I'm not sure if 1.5x RAM is really needed for systems with large amounts of RAM.  It's still good to keep something there so unused paged can be swapped out, but I'm not eating up 96GB of my expensive NVME drive for the pagefile on my system with 64GB of RAM with a 1.5x fixed sized pagefile. I have it set to auto-size and let Windows handle it. 

56 minutes ago, regis9 said:

I think I if you have a reasonably fast internet connection there’s no need to use rolling cache.  Personally I noticed no difference when I turned it off.

Each person who turns it off is eating up more and more of the server bandwidth that all users of the sim have to ultimately share. 

[vgbaron 3,715]

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@vgbaron, in relation to what? The pagefile or running programs on a HDD and not an SSD.

Sorry - the latter Ray

[Ray Proudfoot 9,041]

8 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

Modern SSDs have very good wear leveling algorithms and you'd have to write the pagefile constantly many times over for years to cause any issue.  Also, there are many PCs and laptops available now that only have SSDs, so they only have the option to put the pagefile on an SSD

I'm sure modern SSDs are much better than the earlier ones. I have a laptop with only an SSD so don't have the option. If what you're saying is correct my laptop's drive should last many years. I have yet to lose an SSD - usually it's another issue that's responsible for a laptop update.

Time to get back on topic I think. 😉 Sorry for hijacking your post Gordon.

[cianpars 1,179]

I have W10 on a 250gb SSD, an enpty 250gb SSD and a 1tb M.2 drive with MSFS on it.  With plenty of excess storage, I have set my rolling and manual caches fairly high, but intend to delete them both before I install World Update 3 and then run cacheless for a while and see how it goes.

I do get the impression that my loading times with the caches are better, though have not measured them due to many variables.  I also get the impression that the sim ran smoother without the caches (though not sure if that makes any sense.

These things can be difficult to accurately measure, so I have to just go on how it feels.  E.g, Starting at the same airport as I used last or not and also, that I have a lot more addons than I had when I originally operated cacheless.

Edited February 2, 2021 by cianpars

[yankeegolf3 52]

Hello,

When are we supposed to delete the rolling cache?

What happens when the rolling cache is full?

THX

[cianpars 1,179]

43 minutes ago, yankeegolf3 said:

Hello,

When are we supposed to delete the rolling cache?

What happens when the rolling cache is full?

THX

It's rolling, so it overwrites itself every time you use it.  No need to delete it except perhaps when installing an update.

[Reader 2,034]

11 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

There are a lot of cargo cult statements out there about the rolling cache, but I tend to believe the people who wrote the thing.

I tend to believe the anecdotal evidence of users experiencing CTDs with newly installed products that are instantly and permanently solved by deleting the rolling cache.

[Twenty6 694]

14 hours ago, regis9 said:

I think I if you have a reasonably fast internet connection there’s no need to use rolling cache.  Personally I noticed no difference when I turned it off.

I just moved to eastern Tennessee and found out Xfinity Comcast is now instituting a data cap of 1.2TB per month. From what I understand it's beginning to happen across the US.

On January 31st, 2021 I got an email from Xfinity saying I've used 75% of the 1.2TB which normally wouldn't be a worry, but it's the first month of actual usage since we moved and it's just my wife and I using the internet. Only going to get worse. So all of a sudden the rolling cache has become important to me.

Different state legislatures are taking notice and debating whether or not to ban internet/cable companies from additional monthly charging given a lot of schooling is taking place online these days. But they could still throttle down the speeds. So yeah, rolling cache is worth figuring out.

[kapitan 90]

On 2/1/2021 at 7:22 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

It was a piece of advice I remember from many years ago. Can’t see why it wouldn’t still be relevant today.

And it’s recommended size is 1.5 times installed RAM. So the more RAM you have the larger the pagefile. Each to their own.

sorry to bringa back this thread from 3 months ago

Yes, things changed, in current state of win 10 letting windows manage the pagefile freely is better in terms of fps for MSFS2020 according to my experience with and without 1.5 times your ram

[Ray Proudfoot 9,041]

2 hours ago, kapitan said:

sorry to bringa back this thread from 3 months ago

Yes, things changed, in current state of win 10 letting windows manage the pagefile freely is better in terms of fps for MSFS2020 according to my experience with and without 1.5 times your ram

I would be amazed if the size of a page file had any bearing on fps in MSFS. Best just to leave Windows to manage it as you say.

[wolfie_24 0]

On 2/1/2021 at 10:45 AM, Gordon Hutchison said:

Does anyone still use HDD's for actually running programs nowadays? Especially games / simulators etc.

Surely spinning rust drives has been resigned to a purely long term storage and backup role, or media storage for streaming content on HTPCs / Home NAS setups.

Hi Gordon:

In (a very late) answer to your question, I'll tell you that I have 3 types of drives in my computer: HDD, SSD, and NVME.
Like you, I use the HDD to store documents and programs that do not need high speed, such as a word processor for example and occasional use programs.
The different types of disc coexist without problems and the speed difference becomes more noticeable depending on the use that we are going to give it. You could compare the three models, and in the order I told you, like a motorcycle, a sports car, and a jet plane.
For example, and just as an example, installing Windows 10 in full (including any necessary reboots) on a 1TB Kingston NVME connected to the main M2 port (PCI-e 4.0) took me 6 minutes and 15 seconds, which gives an idea of how fast they are.
However, not all computers have PCI-e 4 (only some of the current motherboards for AMD) with a speed of 16 GB / S, while the PCI-e 3.0 (second M2 port) has a speed of 8 GB / S; That is, twice the (theoretical) speed for the same disk model in both cases.

The SATA 3 ports have theoretical transfer speeds of 6GB / s and it is recommended for SSDs although they will not take full advantage.
Regardless of this, the performance of a disk depends on other things, among which is the cache and access time.
One thing is an electromechanical disk (HDD) and another is a solid state disk (more comparable to a RAM memory in its operation).
Returning to the topic that originates your question, I noticed a difference during the game between the use of HDD and SSD.
I have changed equipment a few days ago and I am still downloading the FS2020 so I cannot say yet if there is a (noticeable) difference between SSD and NVME, but I think there is, although it will be more difficult for me to be objective because I did not only change the disks.

A possible solution is to place the rolling cache and temporary files in a virtual memory that acts as a solid state disk, depending on where you live, it may be cheaper to buy a good RAM than a cheap SSD.
In that case, I recommend the ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver that you can download from the following link: https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/
Maybe you can speed it up a bit with that trick.

On the other hand, we know that FS2020 is a "next gen" game that demands a lot of bandwidth, storage, processor and video card.
I've used an i7 4790K with 16G DDR3 RAM, a GForce 1070TI, and 2 1TB SSDs and didn't get more than 15-16 FPS. Overclocking the processor I have had many crashes and doing the same with the video card the same. The only solution was to overclock the VRAM (video card memory) while reducing its voltage (undervolting) and it has allowed me to go to about 20/25 FPS (always running everything in ultra for tests), you will find various tutorials on Youtube.
They were not bad results considering that it was a team with more than 6 years, but this simulator puts any hardware with more than a couple of years to the limit.
We will see if with the new equipment I achieve a notable improvement (Ryzen 7 5800X, 32G of RAM, ATI Radeon RX 6700 XT and the aforementioned disks), I will find out this week and I will gladly share my experience if required.
Greetings from the South of Argentina!