Biggest bottleneck?

[DarkEgo]

What do you think the biggest bottleneck in my gaming system is?
Thank you,
DarkEgo

 

[theeldest]

Hard drive. If it's running the OS, Pagefile (whether you need it or not, XP needs one), and your game, then it's the bottleneck.

 

[oli_ramsay]

If that's a 1 platter 320GB drive then I don't think it's a bottleneck. I think buying another 2GB of ram and therefore eliminating the need for a pagefile would give you a nice boost.

 

[DarkEgo]

Thank you,
If I was going to buy another 2 GB of ram would it have to be Traccers because I don't want to spend $60 on traccers. the only reason I have them is because they were $20 with my 4850.

 

[choppy]

If that's a 1 platter 320GB drive then I don't think it's a bottleneck. I think buying another 2GB of ram and therefore eliminating the need for a pagefile would give you a nice boost.

why is 1 platter not a bottleneck?

 

[oli_ramsay]

cos it's fast!!!!

320Gb on one platter will proably get you about 100+MB/s read speeds.

 

[choppy]

OIC..gots to get me one of those..

 

[DarkEgo]

How can I tell If my drive is one platter or two?

 

[oli_ramsay]

Go to device manager, then disk drives. It'll say the model number of the drive, then just google it.

Or just download HDtune http://www.hdtune.com/hdtune_255.exe
and do a speed test and post the results here

 

[hat]

No bottleneck really. The obvious answer is the hard drive. I like to run two hard drives, one that has the OS and my games on it, and the other one houses music, movies, etc but most importantly my page file. Keep the page file off the system drive and things will run smoother for you.

 

[Darknova]

No bottleneck really. The obvious answer is the hard drive. I like to run two hard drives, one that has the OS and my games on it, and the other one houses music, movies, etc but most importantly my page file. Keep the page file off the system drive and things will run smoother for you.

+1 that and 4Gb of RAM and you're crusing

 

[DarkEgo]

If I get 4 GB of ram would you recomend a 64 bit operating system. I am worried about getting a 64 bit operating system because I am worried about compatability issues.

 

[Darknova]

If I get 4 GB of ram would you recomend a 64 bit operating system. I am worried about getting a 64 bit operating system because I am worried about compatability issues.

What issues? I wouldn't go back to 32-bit now.

 

[freakshow]

ok speaking of HD i just ran the HD tune.


here is what i got is it good or bad?

 

[oli_ramsay]

I'm pretty sure you'll encounter no issues going from 32bit to 64bit. x64 is pretty well suported driver wise. Just see which drivers you need before you switch over to 64bit and check the manufacturer's website for them and you'll have no probs

 

[CDdude55]

A Pentium 4 and 2x 4870 X2's would be a big bottleneck.

 

[alexp999]

If that's a 1 platter 320GB drive then I don't think it's a bottleneck. I think buying another 2GB of ram and therefore eliminating the need for a pagefile would give you a nice boost.

i still have a pagefile on 4gb
Its just even bigger!
Should i disable it or something?

Oh and 320Gb platters ftw!

Downloading that app now so you can compare against a 320gb platter WD drive.

 

[DarkEgo]

I have a spare 80 GB sata laying arround (conditon unknown) would it be a good idea to put my pagefile on that drive? Also are there any guides saying how to put pagefile on a different drive?
EDIT: compatability issues being older programs (and games) without 64 bit support.

 

[newtekie1]

Do not disable your page file, there are many apps out there that require one. Just manually set the size to something small, like 1GB.

Personally, I have 4GB of RAM and a 3GB page file. However, that page file is split between my 3 non-system drives.

I have a spare 80 GB sata laying arround (conditon unknown) would it be a good idea to put my pagefile on that drive? Also are there any guides saying how to put pagefile on a different drive?
EDIT: compatability issues being older programs (and games) without 64 bit support.

If the drive is good, then it wouldn't hurt to drop it in and move the page file onto it. You don't really need a guide.

Just go into system properties(Right Click "My Computer" and select properties.) Go to the "Advanced" tab. Click on the "Settings" button under "Performance". Go to the "Advanced" tab. At the bottom there will be a "Virtual Memory" section, click the "Change" button. All of your drives will be listed in there. You simply set your primary drive to "No Paging File" and press the "Set" button. Then go to the 80GB drive and set it to "Custom Size" and put in the same value for "Initial Size" and "Maximum Size" and press the "Set" button. Reboot.

Old programs without 64 bit support still run in 64 bit OSes. You might run across a really old program that might not work, but setting the compatibility settings usually fixes the issue.

 

[alexp999]

Here you go, this is on my drive in my sig, which uses two 320gb platters:

 

[Deleted member 57642]

I don't know guys, you're taking it to extreme by saying that that his HDD is a cause for bottleneck. I own the same HDD in a similar configuration with a less powerful CPU (E2160: 3 Ghz) and no bottleneck here. If a game has good optimizations it should run just fine, that if you're system is stable and well configured.

Crysis, CoD4, Hellgate: London, Grid, Bioshock, Stalker - all run flawless on my configuration (similar to his) with same HDD. Of course, if you have poor to very poor OS Knowledge even on 3 Raptors in Raid 0 you could see some bottleneck.

If you go With 4 Gb ram and still go for 32 Bit OS (I still do at the moment), add this to your boot.ini and you might see some improvement.

[boot loader]
timeout=7
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3GB enabled" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /3GB /Userva=2800 /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

 

[DarkEgo]

If I do go with 4 GB of ram should I sell my 2 GB of traccers and get a 2x 2GB kit or should I go for a 4x 1gb setup. If I do 4x 1 GB so they have to be traccers or any ram?

 

[Deleted member 57642]

2 x 2 GB - of course. Sometimes, there's problems with a certain slot from the motherboard so you might have problems with 4 x 1 but with 2 x 2 should work, for sure.

 

[DarkEgo]

This is my hard drive, is it good?

 

[oli_ramsay]

Yup, it's fine. I don't really think you have any bottlenecks to be honest. Everything looks good. If you're really itching to upgrade something, I think another 2GB RAM would be good along with vista x64