Hardware Loading Faster

[Kaito]

So, I downloaded some High Res textures for Orbiter (I know one of them was KCS...and a bunch of other ones, though i'm not exactly sure which ones), and the loading time has jumped INCREDIBLY high. Christmas is coming up soon, and I've been thinking of asking for a computer upgrade for Christmas.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what would make my computer load files faster?

 

[Woo482]

it's a few things like CPU Hard Drive and RAM

 

[TSPenguin]

It is the combination of parts that does the magic.
However, if orbiter has to use swap then getting more ram will do WONDERS!

 

[Epsilon]

As far as actual loading time, it's the processor (and memory, to a lesser extent) that's going to affect those the most.

If you've got someone computer geeky available to you, I'd suggest one of the lower-end quad core processors in a custom system - I understand the Intel Q6600 is quite a bit cheaper now than it used to be, and it's certainly got enough balls to do what you need it to. As far as memory goes, DDR2 is quite sufficient, and 3 GB will top out a 32-bit system.

Run XP on the system, of course - it's got quite a bit less system overhead, and although it's -less- of a worry when you're kicking 3 gigs of RAM, you're typically going to want to squeeze every drop of performance you can out of a gaming rig.

Lastly, get a decent-to-good video card - 512MB of video RAM will do quite enough for most people's uses, even when gaming, and the prices on those are quite reasonable. If you're not doing a custom built system, you'll probably want a video card on the side - they typically come with either lower-end video, or craptastical Intel 965 chipsets, neither of which will be worth a damn on a gaming system.

For the record, I built my own system for just under $900. Add in the $200 worth of parts I "recycled" (from the old system), and take your own opinions:
AMD Phenom 9600 processor, 4GB RAM, 512MB NVidia GeForce 8600GT (I think it's the GT model...), 2 DVD drives, 200GB hard drive, Thermaltake V1 Fan (this thing is GOD - link at the end) , Ultra case, motherboard of some sort (not overclocking it, so it's not a worry)... and I think that's it.

The Thermaltake V1 fan looks like this: http://www.etmoonshade.net/bigfan.jpg - it stands just a bit shy of 6 inches off the surface of the motherboard, but it keeps the processor niiiiiiice and cool. It -is- too big for a lot of cases, so be careful if you get it - get yourself a full tower sort of case, or a wide mid-tower, or you'll end up not being able to fit it. Any other questions, poke me, prolly on IRC.

 

[Woo482]

if you want to go for a cheaper option for CPU get a dual core I have a E6600 and it play Crysis fine

 

[Epsilon]

if you want to go for a cheaper option for CPU get a dual core I have a E6600 and it play Crysis fine

The only reason I suggested a quad-core is that it's still relatively cheap (though not as much so as a dual-core, indeed), and that it takes the load off the core running Orbiter so it can tap itself out. Typically, a system is running antivirus programs, possibly a web browser in the background, and a couple of other things that take up clock cycles - in theory. In practice, I went straight from a single core system (AMD MP 2600+) to my current quad-core system, so unfortunately I don't have anecdotal evidence to be able to say "And there's a significant advantage!".
Also, hopefully, the new version of Orbiter will take advantage of multiple cores once it comes out.
(That would make me happy. Very happy.)

 

[Woo482]

I think windows vista can make programs use more than one core so you dont need to wait for the new Orbiter

 

[Bj]

As far as actual loading time, it's the processor (and memory, to a lesser extent) that's going to affect those the most.

If you've got someone computer geeky available to you, I'd suggest one of the lower-end quad core processors in a custom system - I understand the Intel Q6600 is quite a bit cheaper now than it used to be, and it's certainly got enough balls to do what you need it to. As far as memory goes, DDR2 is quite sufficient, and 3 GB will top out a 32-bit system.


The Thermaltake V1 fan looks like this: http://www.etmoonshade.net/bigfan.jpg - it stands just a bit shy of 6 inches off the surface of the motherboard, but it keeps the processor niiiiiiice and cool. It -is- too big for a lot of cases, so be careful if you get it - get yourself a full tower sort of case, or a wide mid-tower, or you'll end up not being able to fit it. Any other questions, poke me, prolly on IRC.

Nice fan, I bet that's loud

If all your playing is Orbiter you don't need a quad core for Orbiter, that's way overkill.

I run at 60FPS with my duel core with any game that I own, (not saying much, but still)

I suggest going to Nzone and testing your current system to a game that you wish to play (linked is MS FX)

Check to see if your system could just use a few upgrades or if you could get a new system that meets or exceeds these suggestions.

 

[Epsilon]

Nice fan, I bet that's loud

No, it's surprisingly quiet, really. Probably 10dB down from a box fan running on low. That being said, I can sleep in a radio van ( http://www.etmoonshade.net/Evulhttp://www.etmoonshade.net/Evul Dishes.jpg - neither person is me) with all 15 fans going in it when it's running in high power mode, so my opinion probably isn't -quite- valid... :lol:

I suggest going to Nzone and testing your current system to a game that you wish to play (linked is MS FX)

I'll have to try that site out. Quite interesting.

That being said, I play a lot more games than Orbiter.
... and I like more power.

 

[Hielor]

I think windows vista can make programs use more than one core so you dont need to wait for the new Orbiter

A program can't really use multiple cores unless it's written to do so (ie, multithreaded). If a program wasn't written to be multithreaded, then it really won't get any advantage from a dual-core system, with the exception that it'll be running on one core while background processes are on the other--which is a rather large advantage.

However, with a primarily single-threaded application, you won't see any difference between dual- and quad- cores.

 

[Epsilon]

However, with a primarily single-threaded application, you won't see any difference between dual- and quad- cores.

Except for the performance bonus of not having to share processor resources being used by your game with (as many) other applications.

I'm not saying it's going to be the difference that makes or breaks your gaming experience, but it's extremely nice to have IMO, especially when you're doing as many different things at once as I tend to be.

A program can't really use multiple cores unless it's written to do so (ie, multithreaded).

Also good to know that I didn't miss something that would've actually made Vista worthwhile. I -thought- this was the case, but I wasn't going to go on a fact-checking trip tonight. ^_^

Also, having twiddled with that nzone site - it gives some good system information, but I don't trust it because it keys off the manufacturer's minimum and recommended requirements - and those requirements always seem to be too low (IMHO). :\

 

[Woo482]

all so if you want to play all the good games that are DX10 you need vista

 

[agentgonzo]

CPU: Orbiter is a single threaded program, so the only advantage that a dual- or quad-core CPU will give you is that the background tasks run by other applications and the OS can go on the other core and not interfere with Orbiter's running. For the most case, this is 0-5% of your CPU and will give you maybe 1 or 2 FPS in the game. It will not noticeably affect loading speed of the game. An increase in CPU speed will decrease the processing time to do a particular task (including preprocessing of textures at startup) and will improve your loading time.

Graphics Card: This will give you faster frame rates, but not affect the loading time of the game at all

Hard Drive: If you have a slow (5600rpm or laptop HDD) then a faster drive with a better cache may speed up the loading of your game, but only if the CPU and RAM are sufficient to make the Hard drive the bottle-neck. I sincerely doubt that this is the case unless you have a slow hard drive.

RAM: Increasing your RAM will most likely increase the loading time of orbiter. When orbiter loads, it reads all the data (and specifically textures) from disk, processes them and stores them in RAM. If you do not have sufficient RAM to store all of this (eihter because the textures are huge or Windows and all other running components/applications are hogging it) it will have to start swapping data stored in RAM to disk (basically, copying it to disk to then load it back into memory again later when it needs it). This is monumentally slow compared with just accessing it in RAM and will drastically slow down your load time. It can normally be identified by a constantly churning hard drive.

Windows Version: This will make no noticeable difference to the loading speed and, as someone above mentioned, it will not take advantage of multiple cores as Orbiter is single threaded.


Post your computer specs here and I'm sure that we'll be able to tell you which part of your system is the bottle-neck. My guess would be that RAM is your bottleneck running high-resolution textures unless you have at least 2GB of RAM.

 

[garyw]

Defrag your hard drive. If Orbiter is having to load the textures from places all over the hard disk then the load time will jump significantly.

 

[Kaito]

CPU: Orbiter is a single threaded program, so the only advantage that a dual- or quad-core CPU will give you is that the background tasks run by other applications and the OS can go on the other core and not interfere with Orbiter's running. For the most case, this is 0-5% of your CPU and will give you maybe 1 or 2 FPS in the game. It will not noticeably affect loading speed of the game. An increase in CPU speed will decrease the processing time to do a particular task (including preprocessing of textures at startup) and will improve your loading time.

Graphics Card: This will give you faster frame rates, but not affect the loading time of the game at all

Hard Drive: If you have a slow (5600rpm or laptop HDD) then a faster drive with a better cache may speed up the loading of your game, but only if the CPU and RAM are sufficient to make the Hard drive the bottle-neck. I sincerely doubt that this is the case unless you have a slow hard drive.

RAM: Increasing your RAM will most likely increase the loading time of orbiter. When orbiter loads, it reads all the data (and specifically textures) from disk, processes them and stores them in RAM. If you do not have sufficient RAM to store all of this (eihter because the textures are huge or Windows and all other running components/applications are hogging it) it will have to start swapping data stored in RAM to disk (basically, copying it to disk to then load it back into memory again later when it needs it). This is monumentally slow compared with just accessing it in RAM and will drastically slow down your load time. It can normally be identified by a constantly churning hard drive.

Windows Version: This will make no noticeable difference to the loading speed and, as someone above mentioned, it will not take advantage of multiple cores as Orbiter is single threaded.


Post your computer specs here and I'm sure that we'll be able to tell you which part of your system is the bottle-neck. My guess would be that RAM is your bottleneck running high-resolution textures unless you have at least 2GB of RAM.

Thank you, that is what I was looking for ^_^

Okay, Computer specs...
eMachines T6410
Just click the Specifications, and it will tell you exactly what is in my computer except for the CR-ROM Drive.

 

[pattersoncr]

There are ways you can improve load time without hardware upgrades. I have an alternate Sol.cfg file I use that contains only the sun, Earth, moon & Jupiter. (I named it Sol_Lite) It loads crazy-fast. You can have any number of Sol.cfg files (like one with Saturn and all of her moons if that's where you're going) and then reference the desired .cfg file in the scenario. Not using hi-res textures is another option (you can rename the "textures2" folder) although I suspect hi-res is what you're after. In this case, selectively loading only what you need for the scenario (via the customized Sol.cfg) will get you the most bang for the buck.

 

[TSPenguin]

Since you have 512MB RAM, you will most likely fill that pretty quick. Get more RAM!
And if you have further needs for ingame improvements you should get a dedicated graphics card as well.

 

[astrosammy]

Do you have Seth Edens High Res textures installed? These have caused my Orbiter to need very long time to load. Merging it with the default or the textures available from orbitersim.com (with the pltex.exe) made the loading time much lower.

 

[Keatah]

based on your specs, I'd make sure you have 2gb ram, load everything at once if possible to avoid swapping.

then optimize your hard disk and be sure to place the orbiter files at the beginning edge of the disk. optimize with Ultimate Defragger, or some such similar proggy that allows manual file ordering. (good for 2 or 3 seconds)

Then you can always upgrade to an SSD or Velociraptor. good for 4 seconds or so.

You should note, that with 2gb or more, you can exit orbiter, do something else, then come back and most of the stuff will still be in memory. Try it!

 

[cjp]

When I went from 256MB to 1280MB RAM, this made a huge improvement in loading time, as well as a significant improvement in a smooth simulation experience.

The operating system uses two tricks when combining the harddisk and RAM:

• when you don't have enough RAM, the OS uses disk space to temporarily store the part of program memory it can't store in RAM. Once a program needs that part, it is loaded from disk, and another part of program memory is stored on the disk. This swapping is slow, because the harddisk is a lot slower than the RAM. You can notice this effect when you fly over a high-res texture area of as planet, and the frame rate temporarily drops because the OS needs to load data from disk.
• When you have more RAM than you need, the OS will use the unused part of the RAM to store a copy of recently accessed files. When you load these files a second time, the OS will load them from RAM instead of from disk, which will make the loading a lot faster. The effect is that loading Orbiter the second time will be a lot faster than the first time.

I think having lots of RAM will help the most. Having a very fast hard disk will help too, but I don't know whether access speeds of different hard disks are so much different. Here, defragmenting the disk could also help a bit.

I think usually loading time is disk limited, but once you have lots of RAM, it might become CPU limited: when all files are cached in RAM(*), loading time may be limited by the parsing of files (e.g. compressed image files, mesh files, large .cfg files). In this case, a faster CPU and faster RAM can help. Multi-core CPUs will only make a small difference compared to single-core CPUs, except maybe when the OS itself is CPU-hungry (Vista maybe?), but in that case you'd better have a more efficient OS, or tweak your OS to make it more efficient.

When looking at the frame rate instead of the loading time, make sure you have a good video card WITH LOTS OF VIDEO MEMORY. When all textures fit in the video memory, textures don't need to be swapped between RAM and video RAM (**). This means both the CPU and the videocard can spend their time on useful things instead of all the 'move data from A to B' bureaucracy.

(*) Depending on the scenario you load, you may need more RAM for that than the disk size of your Orbiter installation

(**) or worse, between video RAM, RAM and harddisk, when you don't have enough RAM