Optimal performance settings, part 2

[bloom25]

(For some reason the BBS won't allow me to post something this long if I left it as 1 big post.)

3.  This setting is for people who are using a KT133 chipset board for Athlon Tbird processors:  (Asus A7v, Abit Kt7, MSI Master, etc.)  Note: This setting requires you to go into the bios, please be careful not to mess anything up in here.   The Kt133 chipset supports PC 133 ram, unfortunately by default it will run the RAM at 100 Mhz.  If you have PC 133 ram, go into the bios and find the memory speed settings.  (Probably under "advanced" )  Set it to PC133 and save and exit.  This will improve system performance by at least 10% overall.

4.  This one applies to anyone who has downloaded RW lately.  You may have also inadvertantly installed a little piece of spyware known as "Gator."  Here's how to check:  On the desktop, press Cntl-Alt-Delete 1 time .  On the box that pops up, see if there is something called fsg.  If there is, you have gator.  You can remove it from the control panel -> add/remove programs -> look for gator.

5.  MS office users:  You may have a horrible program called fast find on your computer.  You should disable it to gain performance.  To do so, right click start button -> pick explore -> find startup folder -> remove fastfind if it is present.  You can always restore it from the recycle bin (that is if you don't empty it   )

6.  Last item:  Monitor refresh rate.  Many people don't know it, but your refresh rate determines the maximum framerate possible in AH and in most games.  By increasing the refresh rate you can increase your framerate, AND make your monitor easier on your eyes.

DISCLAIMER:  You need to KNOW what refresh rates are supported by your monitor before changing these settings.  It is possible, though unlikely, that you may damage your monitor if it tries to use a refresh rate it doesn't support.

Here's how to change it (if you video card and monitor allow it):  right click an empty spot on the desktop -> pick properties -> settings tab -> advanced button -> adapter tab -> There is a box that says refresh rate.  You will likely see it set to "optimal."  Optimal for windows is NOT optimal for most users.    (It is about 55 to 65 Hz.)  You should click the arrow and set this to the maximum setting your monitor will allow.  (Note:  You may only have adapter default and optimal available to you, if so this setting will not work for you.   )  For those luckly enough to have more choices, like 60Hz, 72 Hz, 75 Hz, 85 Hz, set this to the maximum that your monitor allows at the resolution you are running at.  If it doesn't work, windows will restore the original setting.  Unfortunately some really cheap monitors *could* be damaged by increasing refresh rate, so please only attempt this if you know your monitor supports that refresh rate.  Most good 17" monitors will support 75 or 85 Hz at 1024x768 res.  Most good 19" will support 75 Hz and 85 Hz at 1280 res.

7.  Disable junk that starts up with your system that you don't want or need.  You can turn off many of them before playing AH by right clicking their icon located by the clock.  (I.e.  Turning off the virus scanner to gain a frame or two in AH.)  Not many people know that you can permanately turn them off as well.  First, check and see if a setting exists to disable the program loading on startup in the program itself.  If not, you can still turn them off.  Here's how: start -> run -> type "msconfig" -> click the startup tab.  You can now uncheck programs you don't want to load on start up.  (NOTE:  DO NOT UNCHECK systray, explorer, or rnaapp.)

Hopefully this will gain more than a few people a serious performance boost to their systems.  

------------------
bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[This message has been edited by bloom25 (edited 03-16-2001).]

[Ripsnort]

Thks Bloom!  About half of these two posts I've done...Question for you:

In F4 days, I also discovered that managing my own memory (rather than Win doing it for me) help get more FR out of it, ie. doubling the MIN/MAX to whatever the ram was...agree or disagree?

[Lephturn]

Hey Rip,

I always manage my swap file manually, and I set the Min and Max as the same number.  This prevents the swap file from growing and getting fragmented, which is the primary reason I do it.

How big should your "virtual memory" or swap file be?  Well, it depends on how much RAM you have.  2xRAM+70 was a good rule way back in the 16 meg RAM days, but with the large ammounts of RAM we have now, you hit a law of deminishing returns.  For 64 megs I went with 200 meg swap.  For 128 Meg I went with a 250 Swp.  And for 256 I stayed at 300.  You don't want to make the swap file too big, or Windows has to do more work managing it.

Thats what I run.  What do you guys find best?  How are you testing it?

------------------
Sean "Lephturn" Conrad - Aces High Chief Trainer

A proud member of the mighty Flying Pigs
http://www.flyingpigs.com

Check out Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH articles and training info!

[bloom25]

That will help as well Rip.  Why I didn't add that is complicated, but here's an example.  Lets say you want to write a CD using a burner.  It is possible that if you don't have enough temporary space for Windows to use (might need 700 mb), for the creation process to fail.

On the other hand it does improve performance, and here is the reason why.  Windows dynamically resizes it's temp file, making it larger and smaller.  The problem is that the area of the drive that windows uses rapidly gets fragmented because of this.

By setting the max and min sizes manually you prevent this fragmentation from occuring, thus gaining some speed.

One possible, and 100% safe way, to accomplish the same thing is to perhaps only set the min size.  This should be better than letting windows do it all automatically.

The best option is to set up a small partition on your hard drive that is only to be used for swap space.

Hopefully that's a helpful to you.  



------------------
bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Raubvogel]

<punt> for Leopard

[Fatty]

On virtual memory, I always partition a drive specific to it.  Right now I have the drive at 900MB with Min/max virt memory of 512.  The first time I did this it was an incredible performance boost, and have continued doing it religously upon each new installation since.

[bashwolf]

Hiya everyone,

As some of you are unware I have not been flying AH online.  Been going H2H till my Food stamps increases  

Anyhow here 2 questions i have.  
1st one is for Fatty.  I have partition my HD (my friend did it for me).  C is Windowns, D is games and E is for internet and downlaods etc.  What i really like to know Fatty is I did not understan your statement and would you go into detail so i can do what you did.  

Bloom here is the question I have for you I went to change my refresh rate from 72 to 85 and I have 19 monitor and tnt2 ultra vidoe card.  I have one default, optiaml, 60, 70, 72, 75, 85, and 100.  I was using 72 but i just bump it to 85 or should i go with 100?  I have window and game set both at 1024x 768 and 32 bit.  ANy suggestiosn or should just try out 85 and see what happesn jump to 100??


Thank you in advance Guys

Bash

[Fatty]

Come back Bash, MA is dull without you.

Okay what I'm talking about is pretty much the same as what your friend did for you, so if you wanted to set this up sometime he should be able to give you a hand with it.  Unfortunately you can't do this without fdisk or similar utility (wiping the drive), so I would not worry about it unless you're doing a clean install anyway.

Partitioning is seperating part of a drive under the heading of a seperate drive.  For instance if you have a 20GB drive and partition 1GB to a second drive, you'll have a C drive with 19GB and a D drive with 1 GB.  The benifit of this is stuff on "D" is limited to just that area, so when loading/looking on "D", you're dealing with 1GB area instead of 20GB, reducing find/load time.

By using this method to seperate an area on the drive specifically for virtual memory and nothing else, read/write to virtual memory is significantly increased (or seems to be, could be an electronic placebo).  Some of the more dedicated hardware guys could probably elaborate more on any real benifit, if any, I don't do this professionally just mess with my computer as a hobby.

If I'm setting up windows from scratch (which is the only way to do this really, since fdisk is required), I will...

1. Create a bootable floppy with CDROM support and fdisk.

2. Partition HD giving about 1.8x the space I want to use for virtual memory to the second drive.  You could probably get by with less, but if you try to limit it to exactly what you want to use you're going to run out of disk space on that partition, which would mean cutting down your virt memory or starting over from scratch.  I use the standard 2Xram for virtual memory, so with 256MB ram I use 512MB virtual memory, and 900MB partition for that virtual memory.

3.  Boot with floopy and install windows (side note if you've the disk space copy windows CD to the hard drive and install from there, and you'll never have to waste your time putting in the win98 CD every time you add something to your system).  Load your VIA drivers and/or whatever else depending on what system you have.

4.  Go into virtual memory settings (is somewhere in Bloom's steps) and manually assign it to your partitioned drive, with min/max to whatever you decided on.

[SKurj]

About managing your own virtual memory (swap file)

Disable virtual memory, then scandisk and defrag, and then set your swap file size.  This permits it to use 1 block of space as opposed to many scattered parts.

I follow alot of advice from: http://www.tweak3d.net/

SKurj

[bloom25]

Set your refresh rate as fast as it can possibly go ... but don't set it until you know your monitor can support it.  Some monitors can be damaged by setting it way to high.  I'd say 85Hz is probably safe, most 17" monitors will do this speed at 1024x768.



------------------
bloom25
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[Raubvogel]

Do the newer Geforce drivers automatically manage refresh rate? My little refresh rate box disappeared after I installed latest drivers. Also, every game seems to be stuck at 59 fps, when most ran higher than that before. I suspect it is being limited by refresh rate. No worries, 59fps is fine, just curious.

[Ripsnort]

 

Originally posted by SKurj:
About managing your own virtual memory (swap file)

Disable virtual memory, then scandisk and defrag, and then set your swap file size.  This permits it to use 1 block of space as opposed to many scattered parts.

I follow alot of advice from: http://www.tweak3d.net/

SKurj

Good advice, I do this as a standard practice once a month.

[Sky Viper]

 

Originally posted by SKurj:
About managing your own virtual memory (swap file)

Disable virtual memory, then scandisk and defrag, and then set your swap file size.  This permits it to use 1 block of space as opposed to many scattered parts.

The single block of space is also obtained by setting the min and max to the same number.

Question for you gents with 128M of RAM or more: Is you system even touching your swap file?
To check (Win9X) --> Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Monitor.
Make sure that "Memory Manager-Swap File in use" is chosen -->Click Edit, Add Item, Memory manager, Scroll down to Swap File in use.

If you system is like mine, then the swap file never gets used.  
Now let's apply some logic...No swap file in use means I don't need it.  Experience tells me that things change or that I might miss something, so lets go to a minimum setting.
NOTE:  There is no logic that I have seen to use a formula of 2X RAM + 70.
I set my Virtual memory to Min 100, Max 100.
This produces a chunk of harddrive space that does not fragment!
Note, you can specify a particular partition on which to place this chunk!
If you defrag in W98 with the Virtual memory off, you will end up pushing this chunk at the END of all the data on your drive. This is because W98 defrag moves all the data forward, and the most often used data is move to the front(so to speak).
Also, W98 Defrag DOES NOT move the swap file.
Subsequent data will be written after your chunk of swap, and will continue to fragment.


Best case scenario: Fresh Windows install, Before installing ANY software set your memory min/max and reboot.

Weekly defrags...leaving swap set to 100/100.

When I put all this into practice 2 years ago, I decreased my daily BSOD and lockups to an nearly unnoticable amount.

Sky Viper
No. 54 Squadron
 

[bashwolf]

thx for your input guys.

Fatty I cant afford at moment will do as soon as my 2 year old son gets a job than ill be MA lol.


Bash

[Dux]

*bump*