HDD bottleneck ?

[maxpgm]

Hello' i got a few question
I've plan to buy a new hdd but i want to ask something.
fps in some games on my pc is stutter and slow down sometimes or fps drop.

Spec:
Amd phenom II x945
GF GTX660 non-ti
RAM 4GB
Windows 7 ultimate 64bit
Western Digital green 320gb

Is the problem come from hdd am i right or from something?
It's an old hdd and i just plan for WD blue or black. What do you guys think is better? or maybe ssd ?


sorry for english

thank you.

 

[Derek12]

AFAIK a slow HDD won't cause stuttering or low fps in most cases unless the map is too big to fit in RAM/Video RAM but the HDD light in your case will indicate that. Check your CPU usage with task manager and video card usage with GPUZ that would tell you which is bottlenecking and if none of them are 100% maxed then it's the RAM or HDD the culprit. Update video drivers, etc. Check the HDD light while the FPS drops.

 

[Aquinus]

It depends on the game that you're playing. I found that some games like SC2 are highly limited by memory bandwidth and single-threaded performance where other games like Farcry 3 are a little more lenient with the CPU requirements if you have more cores. Depending on what you have running, 4Gb of ram might be too little depending on the game that you're playing.

So my questions are:

What resolution are you playing at?
What games are you playing?

 

[hckngrtfakt]

AFAIK a slow HDD won't cause stuttering or low fps (only extended loading times) correct me if wrong, it's more likely some background process, monitor your CPU with task manager and video card usage with GPUZ

Im not going to say you're wrong, but you're technically not correct

A slow HDD (such as the green series) can in fact affect video games performance
specially on FPS games, since textures need to be loaded off the same HDD sector
from which the EXE (dlls, data libraries, etc,... )is being read

While it depends more in the type of game being played (as mentioned above)
the HDD is definitely an important factor (hence the Raptor HDDs popularity, and more recently SSDs)

 

[Derek12]

Im not going to say you're wrong, but you're technically not correct

A slow HDD (such as the green series) can in fact affect video games performance
specially on FPS games, since textures need to be loaded off the same HDD sector
from which the EXE (dlls, data libraries, etc,... )is being read

While it depends more in the type of game being played (as mentioned above)
the HDD is definitely an important factor (hence the Raptor HDDs popularity, and more recently SSDs)

I though they were stored on RAM/Video RAM and only loaded from HDD when you run the game, anyway I've updated my post.

 

[Dent1]

Hello' i got a few question
I've plan to buy a new hdd but i want to ask something.
fps in some games on my pc is stutter and slow down sometimes or fps drop.

Spec:
Amd phenom II x945
GF GTX660 non-ti
RAM 4GB
Windows 7 ultimate 64bit
Western Digital green 320gb

Is the problem come from hdd am i right or from something?
It's an old hdd and i just plan for WD blue or black. What do you guys think is better? or maybe ssd ?


You

sorry for english

thank you.

You need to run a HDD benchmark to measure the read and write performance. e.g. HD tach

Without running a benchmark its impossible to tell.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmirror/hdtach,1.html

I though they were stored on RAM/Video RAM and only loaded from HDD when you run the game, anyway I've updated my post.

Yes, but the read/write of the average HDD is 60MB-120MB/Sec whereas the RAM read and write is over 1000MB/Sec and the latency is almost instantaneous. So stutter is a possibility on a mechanical HDD.

Although I debunk hckngrtfakt theory on "Green" HDD. Most green hard drives are as fast as some of the top end mechanical HDD.


More than likely, if the HDD is causing issue, its because it's only 320GB, once you start filling the HDD up to near capacity performance begins to decline. Again the OP needs to run a benchmark before we speculate.

 

[Derek12]

Yes, but the read/write of the average HDD is 60MB-120MB/Sec whereas the RAM read write is over 1000MB/Sec. So stutter is a possibility on a HDD.

OK lets see if the OP reports whether the HDD LED is on or off when the FPS drops, if it's on or mostly on then the HDD is probabily bottlenecking and if it's off of mostly off then it's probably something else.

 

[Dent1]

OK lets see if the OP reports whether the HDD LED is on or off when the FPS drops, if it's on or mostly on then the HDD is probabily bottlenecking and if it's off of mostly off then it's probably something else.

Not really. I've been running green HDD for years without bottlenecking. I went from a Samsung Eco Green to a Seagate Barracuda. General performance is identical despite the "downgrade". In fact I rather the green because it was quieter.

If the HDD LED is constantly ON, with high activity, it could be because a lack of physical RAM. If there is a RAM shortage, the system will borrow from the slower HDD causing stuttering. But this isn't a HDD bottleneck, rather a consequence of a RAM capacity bottleneck.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Download more ram

 

[Derek12]

If the HDD LED is constantly ON, with high activity, it could be because a lack of physical RAM. If there is a RAM shortage, the system will borrow from the slower HDD causing stuttering. But this isn't a HDD bottleneck, rather a consequence of a RAM capacity bottleneck.

Yeah OP can check task manager if memory usage is too high, if yes then obviously the computer is thrashing.

--------------------------
So short history and directly answering the OP question and bottlenecking stuff, anyone correct me if I'm wrong:

HDD light on and high memory usage = Need more ram
HDD on and low memory usage= HDD bottleneck
HDD off, 100% CPU (or one core)= CPU bottleneck
HDD off, low CPU usage and 100% GPU usage= GPU botttleneck
Everything low usage= RAM bottleneck (slow), driver issue or something overheating.