Can a slow hard drive bottleneck overall performance in games?

EastCoasthandle · Dec 3, 2009

We know that a faster HD can decrease load times and make certain aspects of a game that needs to load data from the HD appear more snappier. But can it improve the overall frame rates of the games you play? From the looks of it so far a faster hard drive can improve frame rates in some games I've tried. However, it wasn't something that was night and day different. What are your experiences?

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

it wont improve FPS, but its a good way to cause stuttering as it loads what it needs to.

Many games dont load everything at the start of the level, they load as they go - slow HDD = stuttering in those situations.

I had stuttering in Dragon age origins a minute ago, went and checked and my HDD was 40% fragmented... oops.

athenaesword · Dec 3, 2009

Mussels said:
it wont improve FPS, but its a good way to cause stuttering as it loads what it needs to.

Many games dont load everything at the start of the level, they load as they go - slow HDD = stuttering in those situations.

I had stuttering in Dragon age origins a minute ago, went and checked and my HDD was 40% fragmented... oops.

why don't you use diskeeper? great programme keeps all your disks defragged permanently.

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

athenaesword said:
why don't you use diskeeper? great programme keeps all your disks defragged permanently.

i see no need. i use ultimatedefrag, and find the idea of real time defraggers silly. it would slow my HDD down when writing.

francis511 · Dec 3, 2009

Which games show an increase ? I can`t think of any specific examples .

crush3r · Dec 3, 2009

francis511 said:
Which games show an increase ? I can`t think of any specific examples .

I find Fallout 3 and Oblivion especially benefit

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

francis511 said:
Which games show an increase ? I can`t think of any specific examples .

any game that loads from a HDD. you'd find RPG style games more common (as said above) simply due to the larger environments - theres too much to load all in one go (especially fallout3, with its lack of 'levels' to load at the start of)

its not an FPS boost, its prevention of stuttering/long load times.

if your load times doubled, you'd certainly call that a downside - so going to a faster HDD (or a better optimised one) could certainly be said to provide an improvement. its just not something that will show up in benchmarks.

athenaesword · Dec 3, 2009

Mussels said:
i see no need. i use ultimatedefrag, and find the idea of real time defraggers silly. it would slow my HDD down when writing.

oh is that right? how much of an impact is it supposed to be?

i move files around all the time so defragging manually for me would be a huge chore. and all my hdds are 1.5tbs so doing it individually would take some time.

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

athenaesword said:
oh is that right? how much of an impact is it supposed to be?

i move files around all the time so defragging manually for me would be a huge chore. and all my hdds are 1.5tbs so doing it individually would take some time.

instead of writing it where it fits, you're moving data to make a good spot for it to fit. it could make the writing a fair bit slower, depending how full the drive is.

athenaesword · Dec 3, 2009

Mussels said:
instead of writing it where it fits, you're moving data to make a good spot for it to fit. it could make the writing a fair bit slower, depending how full the drive is.

do you happen to know of any articles or papers about this? i'm trying to find some but i don't seem to find any published work about how real time defrag slows down writing in reality.

Lionheart · Dec 3, 2009

where's a cheap SSD when ya need one! :eek:

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

athenaesword said:
do you happen to know of any articles or papers about this? i'm trying to find some but i don't seem to find any published work about how real time defrag slows down writing in reality.

none.

its simple logic however - if the HDD has to do more (Defrag before/during writing) then its going to take longer.

athenaesword · Dec 3, 2009

Mussels said:
none.

its simple logic however - if the HDD has to do more (Defrag before/during writing) then its going to take longer.

well according to specs, the programme doesn't do the defragmenting when you're using programmes or doing heavy writing on the hard drive, which makes perfect sense. defragmentation doesn't take so much time that the software has to insist on doing it 24/7. i myself have noticed no such slowdowns in writing since i started using the software.

since there seems to be no evidence at all online that i can find regarding how writing is significantly slowed from using real time defragmentation, i'm going to have to dismiss what you just said as merely an opinion.

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

athenaesword said:
well according to specs, the programme doesn't do the defragmenting when you're using programmes or doing heavy writing on the hard drive, which makes perfect sense. defragmentation doesn't take so much time that the software has to insist on doing it 24/7. i myself have noticed no such slowdowns in writing since i started using the software.

since there seems to be no evidence at all online that i can find regarding how writing is significantly slowed from using real time defragmentation, i'm going to have to dismiss what you just said as merely an opinion.

indeed, its likely only a small thing.

but i'd personally rather defrag only when i need it - i hate the noise from un-needed HDD activity.

athenaesword · Dec 3, 2009

Mussels said:
indeed, its likely only a small thing.

but i'd personally rather defrag only when i need it - i hate the noise from un-needed HDD activity.

haha i guess that's a different concern altogether. you got me a little worried there just now.

EastCoasthandle · Dec 3, 2009

francis511 said:
Which games show an increase ? I can`t think of any specific examples .

Dirt 2 demo
Operation Flash Point: Dragon Rising Demo
for starters...

PP Mguire · Dec 3, 2009

athenaesword said:
well according to specs, the programme doesn't do the defragmenting when you're using programmes or doing heavy writing on the hard drive, which makes perfect sense. defragmentation doesn't take so much time that the software has to insist on doing it 24/7. i myself have noticed no such slowdowns in writing since i started using the software.

since there seems to be no evidence at all online that i can find regarding how writing is significantly slowed from using real time defragmentation, i'm going to have to dismiss what you just said as merely an opinion.

Any real time program is supposed to do it in the background when your not accessing that drive. Essentially what it does do though is increase latency time because you have to wait for the program to stop when you proceed to access that drive and if its not done defragging some files it could take longer to access those files. It dosent decrease write times but it could decrease read times with the latency and partial file fragmentation from some files that where being actively fragmented while the drive was idle by user. Most wont see this as a problem because most drives that get fragmented are large storage drives. Personally i have 2 1TB drives that are almost full and neither are fragmented. Where defrag programs are concernd its all personal preference, and i personally dont use them. If my OS drive needs a defragment then i probably need a fresh install of Windows.

As for the OP if your drive is to slow and causes bad stuttering that can actually affect FPS becuase the rest of the machine has to wait for the information. Usually this is only caused by 5400rpm drives or slower IDE drives on a faster modern machine. Im sure none of us use those now :laugh:

Mussels · Dec 3, 2009

even a modern 7,200 RPM drive can cause you problems if its being accessed by more than one thing at a time.

try copying 500GB of data to/from a HDD and a load a game to see what i mean.

(point is, AV, defraggers and such accessing the drive can cause problems)

r9 · Dec 3, 2009

If you have enough ram and vram hdd should not have impact on performance except loading times.

TheMafia · Jan 18, 2010

Just had to post this!

Regarding stuttering in FPS games...

I have slow HDD's and I play majority multiplayer games...and as we all know most of them make use of punkbuster.

punkbuster can be set to scan ur hdd's in 20ms or 500ms intervals...this causes alot of stutter on my computer.

I think my CPU is starting to lose performance too.....due to anti-virus + hdd's slow + punkbuster....

seems like the CPU hangs when waiting for HDD's to finish a read, bad when they are tasked.

Polaris573 · Jan 18, 2010

Mussels said:
none.

its simple logic however - if the HDD has to do more (Defrag before/during writing) then its going to take longer.

It only defrags when the computer is idle or when the screen saver is running depending on how you set it. It doesn't defrag while the drive is reading/writing.

As for it introducing latency. It is not constantly engaging/disengaging every time you stop accessing the hard drive. It waits for a period of inactivity before starting again. Latency might occur when you first start using the computer after a period of rest, but it will only be for the few milliseconds it takes for the stop call to be made.

SUPERREDDEVIL · Jan 23, 2010

of course!.. afford an SATA II or a SSD for maximum performance. IDE is really crappy.

Mussels · Jan 25, 2010

SUPERREDDEVIL said:
of course!.. afford an SATA II or a SSD for maximum performance. IDE is really crappy.

IDE has no effect. Very, very few drives even come close to its 133MB/s maximum.

DRDNA · Jan 25, 2010

Mussels said:
IDE has no effect. Very, very few drives even come close to its 133MB/s maximum.

I average over 300MB/Sec ..always :toast:

Mussels · Jan 25, 2010

DRDNA said:
I average over 300MB/Sec ..always

and with four HDD's, that'd be 4x133MB/s (or 2x133MB/s, if you had two drives per IDE plug)... 300 of 266? not too drastic a difference.

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Can a slow hard drive bottleneck overall performance in games?

EastCoasthandle

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