Hyperspace causing 100% Disk usage

[MrVibrating]

What i can't understand is why loading data should interrupt the hyperspace animation? I'm on a six-core CPU, it's not being stressed at all.. so why the conflict between loading data and displaying a simple animation?

This is surely some kind of software bottleneck - ie. a bug in the gamecode?

If it needed to stream the animation frames from HDD then that might explain it, but then why would it need to do that in the first place when such a small animation could be cached to video memory?

I'm loathe to swap pagefiles around as i run a triple-boot system and Windows 7 doesn't play friendly with other OS's assets.. keeping it constrained to its own drive is the safest option. If the only solution is a hardware upgrade then it'll have to wait..

From a sheer practical viewpoint though i'm sure FD could fix this - if only by caching the animation and / or optimising the disc usage. I've tried defragging the install folder with Defraggler but this doesn't help much (and besides it'd need re-doing with every game update)..

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

2500k and just a plain old WD black for the HDD and my stuttering is almost completely gone after the last few patches... 8gb of ram and a 7970 with 3gb.
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I overclock everything though, I'd OC the hard drive if I could, and I limited my page file to 1gb

 

[Pyrion]

RAM almost certainly has nothing to do with thas. Elite is still a 32 bit application, it can only use less than 2gb of ram. Swapping may be a problem since they are RAM limited because of 32 bit.

 

[Morbad]

RAM almost certainly has nothing to do with thas. Elite is still a 32 bit application, it can only use less than 2gb of ram. Swapping may be a problem since they are RAM limited because of 32 bit.

Memory limit for a 32-bit large address aware process (ED is LAW) is 3GiB in 32-bit Windows, and 4GiB in x64 Windows.

 

[Briarée]

what i don't understand here, is why FD didn't made the game 64bits if it uses such large amount of memory....i mean, it'snot like it's been 10 years already that 64bits is up fore the players.....

 

[Symo]

I've noticed that the 'judder' (with associated machine-gun sound fx when the hyperjump starts) only seems to happen when the ship voice says 'ready to engage' - its 100% of the time as well. 'Ready to engage' (which also seems to be random), 2 second pause, machine-gun sound fx, launch...

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

what i don't understand here, is why FD didn't made the game 64bits if it uses such large amount of memory....i mean, it'snot like it's been 10 years already that 64bits is up fore the players.....

They said it was unnecessary with the current build and that converting to 64bit was just a matter of recompiling everything when the game finally does get to the point that it becomes necessary.

 

[Scoob]

I get judder in hyperspace transits too, however, every judder seems to correspond to my router actively transferring data.

In fact, if I ever get a judder in Super Cruise I can see the router light flashing too. Not directly checked SSD usage, but how much raw data can this game really be loading from SSD? I have games that are constantly loading lots of data (such as Skyrim and other games that are loading lots of assets on the fly all the time) that don't judder at all, yet they're rending much more than the fixed scene ED shows during a jump. Also, despite this judder during Hyperspace transit, I still often get a "loading" hang before I'm at the start and back in control of the ship. I additionally often see several second delays entering Super Cruise proper. Note: I've tested this extensively in SOLO so it's not down to lots of other players in the same instance as me.

To be clear, every little judder and hang I experience - be it in Hyperspace, Super Cruise, checking ship system or buying/selling/equipping at stations - is accompanied by router activity. Note: that by broadband is quite poor, only 4500mbps down and 1000mpbs up - ping is fairly good though.

Scoob.

 

[Morbad]

what i don't understand here, is why FD didn't made the game 64bits if it uses such large amount of memory....i mean, it'snot like it's been 10 years already that 64bits is up fore the players.....

It doesn't use that much memory.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

Swap isn't always created as it can be switched off. When you're playing ED, it's 32 bit so I imagine will never use more than 4 GB no? So if it needs data / textures etc then it will go to the game files and have nothing to do with swap.

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Ok ... Looks like I'm wrong. But why would it be paging? Perhaps because paging overcomes the address limitations of a 32 bit application?

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit. I know that (with the amount of memory) I could switch off the swap file, but if something were to then over max my memory the PC would crash. In order to prevent this, I have a dedicated 60GB SSD set aside for the swap file, and I don't have any issues related to the swap file.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

Memory limit for a 32-bit large address aware process (ED is LAW) is 3GiB in 32-bit Windows, and 4GiB in x64 Windows.

This is not correct. The address bus (in hardware and software) dictates how much memory can be addressed. A useful tip for calculating how much memory a PC can address is that for every 10bits the capacity goes up by the next major 'name', and for every bit that is added the capacity doubles. 10bit width addresses 1KB, 20bit is 1MB, 30bit is 1GB, 40bit is 1TB, and so on. 32bit can address 4GB in TOTAL RAM (including that on the graphics cards), and any RAM over that 4GB limit is ignored, as it cannot be addressed. If you had a PC that could, in hardware, address 64bit, but you were running a 32bit O/S then during the initial memory count as the PC started up it could see (and handle) over 4GB RAM, but once the O/S is running it cannot manage anything over 4GB, so it is ignored completely by said O/S. My PC has, and can see, all 32GB RAM fitted.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

Oops I was wrong about my pagefile. It was actually on the same drive as elite.

Moved it to another drive and a few things happen.

• Hyperspace is a bit less juddery
• C-Drive (SSD that Elite is installed on and (more importantly) appdata is sat no longer spikes up to 100%
• D-Drive (6gb/sec normal HD) which now has the pagefile on it now spikes up to 100% instead.

Looks like during hyperspace elite is absolutely hammering the paging file.

Because you have moved the swap file there is no longer a bottleneck when both the application data and swap file were competing for access. This is why I do what I have done. Several years ago I was doing a call at a client site (an architectural firm) when one of the senior designers complained to the IT support guy that, whenever he did 3D rendering (as well as some other tasks) his PC slammed the brakes on, and took ages. They had already maxed the memory, as well as defragged the drive (and a lot of other things as well), and, while it had made a difference, it was still a major issue. I suggested the idea of fitting an internal drive dedicated to the swap file, and I explained why (don't use external drives, the communication speeds are far lower than the internal drive speeds). The designer in question said that he was willing to act as a guinea pig for this.
A few weeks later I had reason to call back, and when the IT guy saw me he said "I am not sure whether to clock you one, or hug you!". He then went on to explain that, after a few days the 'guinea pig' designer was going on about how much faster his PC was when running 3D rendering that everybody else wanted it done to their PCs, and were not happy about the fact that they had to wait until he (the IT guy) ordered and got sufficient drives for them all (as well as get approval from head office). He did then say that, once all the PCs had swap file drives (and he clearly explained to all of the users that they were NOT to use the drive named 'Swap File' as it would slow the machines down again), he had a lot less complaints and problems to solve.
This trick does NOT make the PC faster, but it DOES stop it slowing down due to the bottleneck mentioned.

 

[xondk]

Hyperspace for me has always been juddery, I put up with it but recently I noticed that whenever I jump to hyperspace disk usage goes to 100% and sits there. It *never* goes anywhere near that high and since I'm running Elite off an SSD I'd not expect it to be struggling.

Anyone else see this or have a solution? Is it a bug/fault?

View attachment 11945

The massive plateau to 100% is the whole hyperspace time. The rest of the time it's hovering around 1% other games or during loading it never goes above 20%

I am slightly confused, it loads, for quite a short time, 100% disk usage happens when games load.....this is very normal?

 

[Shintai]

Hyperspace for me has always been juddery, I put up with it but recently I noticed that whenever I jump to hyperspace disk usage goes to 100% and sits there. It *never* goes anywhere near that high and since I'm running Elite off an SSD I'd not expect it to be struggling.

Anyone else see this or have a solution? Is it a bug/fault?

View attachment 11945

The massive plateau to 100% is the whole hyperspace time. The rest of the time it's hovering around 1% other games or during loading it never goes above 20%

7-10MB/sec on an SSD at 100% usage is quite bad. The hyperspace is a session change.

Make sure you run your SSD in AHCI mode.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

7-10MB/sec on an SSD at 100% usage is quite bad. The hyperspace is a session change.

Make sure you run your SSD in AHCI mode.

Active time is not bandwidth usage. And I'm pretty sure SSD's can only be used in AHCI. I've never seen one that was compatible with IDE.
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OP may have a problem with his 4k read/write speeds. An SSD benchmark is in order.

 

[woodhouse]

To be clear, every little judder and hang I experience - be it in Hyperspace, Super Cruise, checking ship system or buying/selling/equipping at stations - is accompanied by router activity. Note: that by broadband is quite poor, only 4500mbps down and 1000mpbs up - ping is fairly good though.

Hopefully the 'resource loading telemetry' introduced in 1.07 is going to help FD get rid of judder/stutter.
Someone suggested a long time ago that stutter wouldn't be fixed until some time after release. That sounded like a good prophecy. I am still counting on a fix eventually.
I don't care much about the judder in hyperspace even though it feels unnecessary. It's the judder in supercruise that breaks gameplay for me. After months and months of watching the stutter, it is getting more and more obvious that the game is waiting for resources to load. Somehow it should be made immune for missing resources and at least go on rendering frames... and just render a planet when the resources are in rather than making us wait looking at a white dot until we're really close...

 

[blacky75]

Hyperspace for me has always been juddery, I put up with it but recently I noticed that whenever I jump to hyperspace disk usage goes to 100% and sits there. It *never* goes anywhere near that high and since I'm running Elite off an SSD I'd not expect it to be struggling.

Anyone else see this or have a solution? Is it a bug/fault?

View attachment 11945

The massive plateau to 100% is the whole hyperspace time. The rest of the time it's hovering around 1% other games or during loading it never goes above 20%

But ED into a RAMDRIVE... it's so tiny, I guess everyone could do it on todays computer ;-)

Also if you use BPC tools or any other requiring a log activity, remove it, stutters go a bit less

 

[Hell Razor5543]

OK, I am going to use an analogy (that I have used when I taught IT hardware). RAM is, in effect, the desk space the PC uses. You cannot have piles of paperwork on the desk, so each page is allocated its own specific place on the desk. HDD (and SSD) are the filing cabinets in the office, and you cannot work on things that are in the cabinets; they have to be on the desk. If you have a small desk then you can only have a few things on it, and if you need to have all that is currently on it (as well as a few other things in the filing cabinets) things start getting complicated. The swap file effectively sets aside a drawer in a filing cabinet to 'extend' the desk space, but (as you may well know), in order to prevent them toppling, filing cabinets normally prevent you from opening 2 drawers. By allocating a filing cabinet specifically for the desk 'extension' you can have a drawer open on it, as well as a drawer open on a different filing cabinet, instead of having to open and close different drawers on the same filing cabinet.
Before somebody says that SSDs are so fast that this is not an issue, let me inform you that, while they ARE very fast, they still have to access the data within them serially, so can only process one request at a time. Multiple drives will allow the PC to have parallel data access (serially on each drive, but if you have 4 drives you could access 4 items at the same time).

 

[Zed]

This is not correct. The address bus (in hardware and software) dictates how much memory can be addressed. A useful tip for calculating how much memory a PC can address is that for every 10bits the capacity goes up by the next major 'name', and for every bit that is added the capacity doubles. 10bit width addresses 1KB, 20bit is 1MB, 30bit is 1GB, 40bit is 1TB, and so on. 32bit can address 4GB in TOTAL RAM (including that on the graphics cards), and any RAM over that 4GB limit is ignored, as it cannot be addressed. If you had a PC that could, in hardware, address 64bit, but you were running a 32bit O/S then during the initial memory count as the PC started up it could see (and handle) over 4GB RAM, but once the O/S is running it cannot manage anything over 4GB, so it is ignored completely by said O/S. My PC has, and can see, all 32GB RAM fitted.

But Morbad was talking about 32 bit applications running on 32 bit or 64 operating systems. You are talking about the operating system and hardware so although you are correct you've got the wrong end of the stick and in that respect noting you said is of any value

 

[Shintai]

Active time is not bandwidth usage. And I'm pretty sure SSD's can only be used in AHCI. I've never seen one that was compatible with IDE.
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OP may have a problem with his 4k read/write speeds. An SSD benchmark is in order.

There is IDE compability mode on SATA.