Good SSD for improving load times?

[Leonardo]

Just now, ladyonthemoon said:

the free space on the SSD is 58.2 gB.

Hmm, are you playing other games and storing gamesaves for those games on your SSD?

[oldladyonthemoon]

2 minutes ago, Leonardo said:

Hmm, are you playing other games and storing gamesaves for those games on your SSD?

None of my games are installed on the SSD and the saves are obviously on the SSD since they are automatically stored in Documents/MyGames/Skyrim. The current saves folder contains four elements for a total of 9.29 mB.

[Leonardo]

Why I ask is quite simple, because a few games can sometimes freeze and Empire TW is one of those game that can freeze.

So the only thing I can do is to exit Empire TW via the task manager when that happen, which often happen when I have very little diskspace left on my SSD (120 Gb).

[oldladyonthemoon]

2 minutes ago, Leonardo said:

So the only thing I can do is to exit Empire TW via the task manager when that happen, which often happen when I have very little diskspace left on my SSD (120 Gb).

That's exactly what I must do with Skyrim SE... I don't see why the saves would be responsible for this kind of problem though.

[oldladyonthemoon]

10 hours ago, Leonardo said:

Why I ask is quite simple, because a few games can sometimes freeze and Empire TW is one of those game that can freeze.

So the only thing I can do is to exit Empire TW via the task manager when that happen, which often happen when I have very little diskspace left on my SSD (120 Gb).

Holy sh...! I might have found a way to close Skyrim SE without the ntdll.dll thing to have hiccups! I just alt-tabbed out of the game because I wanted to verify something in the Data folder and then decided to close the game. I right clicked on the minimized tab in the dock and selected "close the window" and it worked!

I'll try that in the future again and report if it's still working. On the other hand, you can try that in Empire TW.

Edit: I just tried it again and it's definitely working.  Probably not a very orthodox way of quitting a game but I won't argue about that. As far as I'm concerned it's problem fixed!

Edit 2: Well, it was an illusion. Quitting the game that way is easier but the error message is still there... I give up. At least, I no longer need to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the task manager and kill the process.

Edited February 2, 2018 by ladyonthemoon

[Leonardo]

12 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

I don't see why the saves would be responsible for this kind of problem though.

Why?  Because too many gamesaves in the C:\ partition will decrease the total amount of free diskspace and free diskspace is what Windows swap file (virtual file memory) needs to have, otherwise some features such as multitasking in Windows won't work properly hence for having a slow game.

[vometia]

3 minutes ago, Leonardo said:

Why?  Because too many gamesaves in the C:\ partition will decrease the total amount of free diskspace and free diskspace is what Windows swap file (virtual file memory) needs to have, otherwise some features such as multitasking in Windows won't work properly hence for having a slow game.

I dunno, given how inefficient Windows' paging algorithms seem to be (it's fallen a long way given that it was so heavily influenced by VMS, which was extremely good at that sort of thing) I think it's better to make sure you have enough memory that it doesn't need to start paging.  I remember having a really miserable time trying to run TES or FO alongside CS/CK, Xedit, Bash, Firefox and a couple of other memory-hungry things in just 6GB: switching between applications was excruciating.  The 32GB I now have is overkill even for all that stuff but at least I now have some breathing space.

[Leonardo]

7 hours ago, vometia said:

I dunno, given how inefficient Windows' paging algorithms seem to be (it's fallen a long way given that it was so heavily influenced by VMS, which was extremely good at that sort of thing) I think it's better to make sure you have enough memory that it doesn't need to start paging.  I remember having a really miserable time trying to run TES or FO alongside CS/CK, Xedit, Bash, Firefox and a couple of other memory-hungry things in just 6GB: switching between applications was excruciating. 

You know, I actually talked about that with a friend the other day and he said that he once bought a PC with a pre-installed Windows 7, which had a bunch of programs auto-started when booting Windows and that made his new computer slow as hell.  He also said that he doesn't have the knowledge as I have.

To sum it up, to my knowledge Microsoft aren't known to make Windows fast and efficient, instead they think what's good for Windows users in general.

7 hours ago, vometia said:

The 32GB I now have is overkill even for all that stuff but at least I now have some breathing space.

Having 32 Gb RAM is not an overkill I can tell you that much, because the incident that happen with Empire TW happen when I had 32 Gb RAM.

Btw... Good to see you, it has been a while.

Edited February 3, 2018 by Leonardo

[oldladyonthemoon]

7 hours ago, Leonardo said:

Why?  Because too many gamesaves in the C:\ partition will decrease the total amount of free diskspace and free diskspace is what Windows swap file (virtual file memory) needs to have, otherwise some features such as multitasking in Windows won't work properly hence for having a slow game.

I have a pagefile that is 16 gB, spread in five different drives.

[Leonardo]

4 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

I have a pagefile that is 16 gB, spread in five different drives.

How large is that page file?

If it's 16 Gb then that was news to me, because AFAIK the largest swap file (it's the same as a virtual memory file I think) one can use in Windows is 4 Gb at least in Windows XP.

[oldladyonthemoon]

2 minutes ago, Leonardo said:

How large is that page file?

If it's 16 Gb then that was news to me, because AFAIK the largest swap file (it's the same as a virtual memory file I think) one can use in Windows is 4 Gb at least in Windows XP.

It was 16gB then, when the page file was managed by the system for all my drives, now it's more. I set it to a little over the minimum recommended size (which is 12,145 mB) for each of my internal drives. For the other drives, the size is still managed by the system. So, for now, I have a page file that is 24,576 mB. Whether Windows 7 use it or not is another matter entirely.

[HeyYou]

Windows XP was likely the 32 bit version, (as drivers for the 64 bit version were darn near impossible to find) so it was limited to 4gb of address space. (as was any 32 bit O/S) These days, pretty much everything is 64 bit, so, memory limitations are a thing of the past.

So far as I know, Windows only needs ONE page file. Spreading it over multiple drives probably confuses Win 7......

[oldladyonthemoon]

4 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

So far as I know, Windows only needs ONE page file. Spreading it over multiple drives probably confuses Win 7

Not only Windows 7. Why does it offer that we set page files for each drive we have?

[HeyYou]

That would be a microsoft thing. It is possible to put your page file on any of your drives. (and some folks have installed small drives JUST for the page file, in hopes of increasing performance...... there *might* be a small advantage there, but, it would be VERY small.....)

I leave my page file on the O/S drive, as pretty much everything else is installed on a separate drive. (separate physical drive)

[oldladyonthemoon]

Just now, HeyYou said:

That would be a microsoft thing. It is possible to put your page file on any of your drives. (and some folks have installed small drives JUST for the page file, in hopes of increasing performance...... there *might* be a small advantage there, but, it would be VERY small.....)

I leave my page file on the O/S drive, as pretty much everything else is installed on a separate drive. (separate physical drive)

What do you do with the other drives? You set them to "no page file"?

[HeyYou]

Yep..

[oldladyonthemoon]

Just now, HeyYou said:

Yep..

So, one page file on the SSD? What size would you set if you were me? I have 8 gB of ram, 3 gB of vram and my SSD is 128 gB.

[HeyYou]

12 should be adequate to the task. Test for a while, and see if it gives you any problems. If it does, bump it to 16...... That should be more than enough.

[oldladyonthemoon]

Okay, I had to restore my computer to what it was before I deinstalled Skyrim from my SSD and installed it on the SATA: the game was nearly unplayable because of instant crashes, stuttering and lag. Now things are back to what they were before and the game is smooth again. I still have the ntdll.dll problem but at least I can  play!

And this time, I really give up on this.

[Leonardo]

8 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

I have 8 gB of ram, 3 gB of vram and my SSD is 128 gB.

That's only 8 Gb larger than my Kingston 120 Gb SSD, plus I have 32 Gb RAM (desktop) and you only have 8 Gb RAM (laptop?).

The video memory (I have Nvidia 750 Ti 2 Gb Vram) seems less important at least from my point of view.

[oldladyonthemoon]

12 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Okay, I had to restore my computer to what it was before I deinstalled Skyrim from my SSD and installed it on the SATA: the game was nearly unplayable because of instant crashes, stuttering and lag. Now things are back to what they were before and the game is smooth again. I still have the ntdll.dll problem but at least I can  play!

And this time, I really give up on this.

Last news:

1. I moved Skyrim SE to my external SSD, it runs fine; I'll keep it there,
2. I installed older NVidia drivers (the ones recommended by the manufacturers of my laptop) and tried the game with them, the ntdll.dll error no longer occurs on quit but I cannot play the game with them: textures problems and awful lag. So, it seems that the ntdll.dll error is actually related to the graphics drivers after all.
3. I'm installing the latest NVidia drivers for my card and if the ntdll.dll problem still occurs, I'll live with it.

Thank you for your patience!

[vometia]

On 03/02/2018 at 3:03 PM, HeyYou said:

That would be a microsoft thing. It is possible to put your page file on any of your drives. (and some folks have installed small drives JUST for the page file, in hopes of increasing performance...... there *might* be a small advantage there, but, it would be VERY small.....)

I leave my page file on the O/S drive, as pretty much everything else is installed on a separate drive. (separate physical drive)

It's possible it's a VMS thing: ISTR it supported multiple swap & page files for performance reasons, though it didn't just automatically splat one on every drive as soon as it was formatted.  It also made some efforts to make them contiguous, which I bet Windows doesn't bother to do if the other files I've examined are any guide...

[oldladyonthemoon]

On 03/02/2018 at 4:11 PM, HeyYou said:

12 should be adequate to the task. Test for a while, and see if it gives you any problems. If it does, bump it to 16...... That should be more than enough.

I'd like to come back to this. I have a silly little problem:

1. my main drive is an SS one and Windows 7 and all the needed drivers are installed on it; it is only 128 gB large,
2. I have a second dirive, a SATA one, that I do not use and that has 925 gB of free (wasted) space.

Would Windows use it if I put a page file on that SATA drive that would be, let's say, 250 gB (or more)?

Don't beat me, I'm new to this.

[vometia]

1 hour ago, ladyonthemoon said:

I'd like to come back to this. I have a silly little problem:

1. my main drive is an SS one and Windows 7 and all the needed drivers are installed on it; it is only 128 gB large,
2. I have a second dirive, a SATA one, that I do not use and that has 925 gB of free (wasted) space.

Would Windows use it if I put a page file on that SATA drive that would be, let's say, 250 gB (or more)?

Don't beat me, I'm new to this.

It could be persuaded to do it (in theory: I am not a Windows expert, Unix is more my thing) but I wouldn't recommend it: putting a pagefile on a slow device is inviting headaches as it'll make the process of shunting data in and out of memory even more arduous.  Unused space is much better for online backups and archiving of other seldom-used but useful-to-have stuff.  Or for games that don't require such high I/O performance as the Bethsoft ones.

[HeyYou]

6 minutes ago, vometia said:

It could be persuaded to do it (in theory: I am not a Windows expert, Unix is more my thing) but I wouldn't recommend it: putting a pagefile on a slow device is inviting headaches as it'll make the process of shunting data in and out of memory even more arduous.  Unused space is much better for online backups and archiving of other seldom-used but useful-to-have stuff.  Or for games that don't require such high I/O performance as the Bethsoft ones.

I agree.

Windows will let you put the page file anywhere you want. But, putting it on a slower drive than what the O/S is on, may have some unpleasant side effects.