Opinions Requested

[Doolar]

Is there any advantages to installing SH III to a second HardDrive or just installing SH III on the HardDrive with the OS ? Thanx

[Mittelwaechter]

Your hard disk can't read and write simultaneously - as it can't read from two or more different locations - or write on two or more different locations simultaneously.

If your game needs data from the installation directory and the swap file (sort of auxiliary RAM on the hard disk) to be loaded into your memory (RAM), it has to decide what to read and load first.

The installation directory on a second hard disk might be smart, if the connection (data transfer rate) is as fast - or even faster - and the CPU is able to handle both tasks simultaneously - as each disk can read from its own location and feed the RAM.

If you have trouble with laggy convoys, it could be worth a try.

So what do you know about your data transfer rates and your CPU?

[Doolar]

Mittelwaechter , I have an AMD FX6300/3.5ghz/6 cores and a transfer rate of , well I'm not sure :
Architecture / Microarchitecture
Microarchitecture Piledriver
Platform Volan
Processor core ? Vishera
Core stepping ? OR-C0
CPUID 600F20
Manufacturing process 0.032 micron of :

General information
Type CPU / Microprocessor
Market segment Desktop
Family
AMD FX-Series
Model number ? FX-6300
CPU part numbers
FD6300WMW6KHK is an OEM/tray microprocessor
FD6300WMHKBOX is a boxed microprocessor with fan and heatsink

Frequency ? 3500 MHz
Turbo frequency 4100 MHz
Boosted P states [1] #1: 4100 MHz, 1.425V
#2: 3800 MHz, 1.4125V
Bus speed ? One 2600 MHz 16-bit HyperTransport link
Package 940-pin organic micro Pin Grid Array (UOC940)
Pb-free
Socket Socket AM3+
Weight [1] 1.3oz / 38.1g (CPU)
1lb 1.6oz / 498.5g (box)
Fan/heatsink Z7MH01T001
Introduction date October 23, 2012
Price at introduction $132

Data width 64 bit
The number of CPU cores 6
The number of threads 6
Floating Point Unit Integrated
Level 1 cache size ? 3 x 64 KB 2-way set associative shared instruction caches
6 x 16 KB 4-way set associative data caches
Level 2 cache size ? 3 x 2 MB 16-way set associative shared exclusive caches
Level 3 cache size 8 MB 64-way set associative shared cache
Multiprocessing Uniprocessor
Features ◾ MMX instructions
◾ Extensions to MMX
◾ SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
◾ SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
◾ SSE3 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
◾ SSSE3 / Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
◾ SSE4 / SSE4.1 + SSE4.2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 ?
◾ SSE4a ?
◾ AES / Advanced Encryption Standard instructions
◾ AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions
◾ BMI1 / Bit Manipulation instructions 1
◾ FMA3 / 3-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
◾ FMA4 / 4-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
◾ F16C / 16-bit Floating-Point conversion instructions
◾ TBM / Trailing Bit Manipulation instructions
◾ XOP / eXtended Operations instructions
◾ AMD64 / AMD 64-bit technology ?
◾ AMD-V / AMD Virtualization technology
◾ EVP / Enhanced Virus Protection ?
◾ Turbo Core 3.0 technology

Low power features PowerNow!
Low power P states [1] #1: 3000 MHz, 1.225V
#2: 2500 MHz, 1.125V
#3: 2000 MHz, 1.025V
#4: 1400 MHz, 0.9V
Integrated peripherals / components
Integrated graphics None
Memory controller The number of controllers: 1
Memory channels: 2
Supported memory: DDR3-1866
Maximum memory bandwidth (GB/s): 29.9
Other peripherals HyperTransport technology ?
Electrical / Thermal parameters
Maximum operating temperature ? 70.5°C
Thermal Design Power ? 95 Watt
Notes on AMD FX-6300

◾The processor has unlocked clock multiplier

Both HD's have a Data rate of 6gbps. I hope this helps because I'm not sure what the CPU data transfer is ... thank you for your help ... Jerry

[Mittelwaechter]

Your CPU should have no problems with the task to manage SH3 on the second disk.
But I can't say if any advantage is big enough to be recognizable.

Your hard disks are both the same type/size/speed? Internally connected to your motherboard?
(no USB external?) (no fast RAID - two disks working as one?) Typical setup?

Is your system a ready to use computer, bought from a computer store?
Or is it a self construct?

Do you have a laggy game play - or why are you after this “advantage”?
Obviously you are not into overclocking and measuring the last drop of performance, right? So what is your “inpsiration”, your motivation to rearrange your actual SH3 setup?

If your game is laggy:
Do you have a dedicated graphics card?
How much RAM is installed?

[Doolar]

My system is a home built. other specs:
Windows 10 Home 64bit - OS
AMD FX6300 - cpu
AMD M5A97 R2.0 - mobo
AMD STRIK R7 370 / 2gb DDR5 - video
16gb DDR3 1600 - ram
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatality Pro - sound card
2 WD 1tb / 6gbps -hard drives
your basic CD/DVD Burner

There is no problems with lag on my other home built rigs (2), even though the OS and SH III is on the same hard drives in both. This computer is only for SH III and Fritz Chess. I had some cash to build a budget rig, so these are parts that I've accumulated over a few months that will handle SH III pretty well. I'm always messing around with this stuff, so I figured, " what the heck ". I really have no other mission for the 2nd hard drive so I was "brain storm'n" on what to do with it. This is what I came up with. If there is no known speed advantage, I'll put it (other HD) it something else. As for over clocking the CPU and GPU, I will do that too, as with my other rigs. No problems there ... Jerry

oh yea, this rig is still in the planning stage ... got the parts now planning how to get the most out'a SH III with these parts ... when I got the plan, I'll put this together ... hope'n for tomorrow

[BarracudaUAK]

-- EDIT -- Forgot the whole reason for the info...

Short Version, yes it will help.
I started typing this, then thought I should put up some comparable figures to show the difference, and then it became this:
-- end edit --

Your SATA III are 6Gbps,

6 Gigabits per second, Which last time I checked for a MegaBYTE number on that, it was something around 300 MegaBytes per second.

Which is only the Cache speed... actual read/write speed will be slower.

Last numbers I saw on Western Digital Caviar Black 7200rpm (the performance drive) was about 165-167MB/second sustained read speed, with a SATA III.
I have SATA III "Seagate Desktop" 7200rpm (formerly "Seagate Barracuda") (nope, not where I got my name from), they have a sustained read speed of 150MB/Second.

In My previous PC with a 10k rpm 300GB WD Raptor: SATA II has a 3Gbps Transfer rate, but will average 310MegaByte/Second read speed. (in linux) (loads a crysis level in windows XP in 45 seconds.)

My current one with the Seagate desktops, will read 150MegaBytes per second, from each drive. But I have it in Raid0 (striped) and the read speed varies based on the partition.
Average: 718MB/S-559MB/s (minum 400MB/s at the 'end' of the drive. Max 765MB/s at the 'begining'.) With 4 HDDs.
When I only had 2 drives, it would sustain about 375MB/S average.

You get a bigger boost with more drives in raid, but you can "mimick" the effect with 2 individual drives almost as good.

On all of my windows gaming machines over the last 16/17 years, I kept OS, with swap file, on one, Games on the other.
UNLESS the newer drive was faster: Example: 13.6GB 5400rpm OS drive/ with 100GB 7200 RPM secondary drive, was faster to have swap on second drive. <--- this one was a ways back.

Barracuda

[Mittelwaechter]

This is your rig for SH3 and Chess only?

Your game will load fast with 16GB RAM - and then there will be no need to read anything from any disk again.
All components will have a lazy day and debate on the meaning of life.

You will be able to measure a difference with two HDs - but this will be no visible advantage - as the system with one HD should perform SH3 like a charm anyway.

It's a bit like asking if there is an advantage in shooting the cat with the 10,5 cm instead of the 8,8 cm.

The cat will be dead - and the splatter will be awesome - no matter the gun.

[Doolar]

thanx for the help and advice. When in CA45 (Baltimore Md.), I owe ya's a Beer !

[Pisces]

I understand that you already have the harddrives in your possession. So the following is probably moot and late. But I'll still add it for completeness. The SATA III specs are the upper limit of the electrical signal transfer rate, not the max data IO datarate. It says nothing about the actual data rate that you can expect from the physical drive, especially if it is mechanically based (magnetic platters). Datarates of mechanical harddrives are very dependent on what sort of files you need to acces, and how the filesystem is dispersed on the disk. If the files are large and continuous (all sectors nicely defragmented and sequential) you can approach max specs. If the OS is running on it too then applications/games will have to suffer a bit depending on what needs to be done. But since the game SH3 is based on many small files it will never reach those manufacturer published drive specs. It needs to do a lot of overhead processing to access those predominently small files. For this kind of game an SSD (solid state disk) is a much better solution for better performance. It is all electronics and flash-chips based. It has no moving parts (magnetic reading arm) that needs to swing across the platter to find the spot. It just needs to decode the right memory location in the chip and spit it's content out. I has very low seeking response times compared to mechanical disks. You can easily notice the performance gain if you run your OS from it. Unfortunately they are quite a bit more expensive than regular drives. (for the same size)

[Pisces]

Yes, but what if most of that memory used by the game is swapped to virtual memory on the harddisk. Then you have to look at the weakest link in the chain.

I agree on the thread title being quite general in scope.

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

...

• environment with units COMPLETELY loaded

...

This ultimately is your limiting factor.
Both for SH3 and your PC.
The closer the game (or OS) gets to "filling" the RAM that it can use (~2 GB for SH3), the more issues with performance you will have.

Originally Posted by BL!TZKR!EG

The main performance issues with SH3 are:

• only 32bit
• only single-core

...

Even if the game fails to recognize all of the ram, or CPU, by running it on a multi-core system with MUCH more RAM than needed,
he has insured that the Game Process is unhindered, in addition to the fact that the CPU cycles are much above what is required.
Even more so than what would have been available on a single core CPU.

Originally Posted by Pisces

Yes, but what if most of that memory used by the game is swapped to virtual memory on the harddisk. Then you have to look at the weakest link in the chain.
...

Also, installing the game to a 2nd hard drive, this further "unloads" the resources that the program will access.
If the OS isn't accessing the HDD that SH3 is installed on, then the game will load quicker.
While this may not help the FPS, it will reduce the loading times. (See my statement in my last post about loading a Crysis level in 45 sec. It didn't help the FPS, but I was in the game much faster.)

Just some thoughts, I went into detail, then I decided to cut down the length of this post, so this is what is left.
My apologies if some of it doesn't make sense, that sometimes happens when I cut down the length of my posts.

Barracuda