Micro-Stutters

[LoBiSoMeM]

Originally Posted by adonys

oh god, here we go again..

I am playing IL2 CoD latest Steam version with MAX SETTINGS (ie everything maxed out), on the system in my sig, with NO MICROSTUTTERS at all..

And while we're here, I am asking you: do you ever did Win 7 programming and had Win 7 under the hood knowledge needed for your work, or are you talking just from what you "know" from various internet websites, or M$ statements?

Because what I know, I know as a Windows game developer back from 2002 until today..

It obvious you don't have a deep knowledge about how M$'s operating system or its page file system is working in detail, but you're talking..

Be my guest, keep your virtual memory as long as you want to, but don't try to feed me up with your agresive "knowledge".

In the end, the results are the ones talking: I DO NOT have microstutters.. Do you?!! And why do you think I don't have them, because my system is a NASA one, or because of the way I know to tinker with it?!!

Just think a little bit, for god's sake..

You don't have any microstutter regards texture streaming in 1GB VRAM card - everything maxed out - in actual build of CloD. In one GTX 560 Ti...

You are a "Windows game developer" but don't know how W7 work regards Aero/DirectX in fullscreen 3D aplication.

I need to keep my Virtual Memory because now I'm running with just 4GB RAM. In big missions in CloD with VM disable the commited amout of RAM exceeds 4GB. In less stressful missions, a lot of testings with/without VM enabled, motiroing resources: I still - OBVIOUSLY - experiencing more texture streaming issues in higher settings and "everything maxed out"... With textures set to "HIGH", even dogfights over London are OK. To run without stutters with textures on "Original", only reducing Land Detail to "medium". And with EVERYTHING on maximun in CloD actual build with a 560Ti, the "experience" wasn't fluid at all over London.

To be simple: all your placebo tweaks don't give ANY system this "boost" to reduce texture streaming issues in CloD using this VGA. Please, show some benchmarks of your claimings...

But disable this crap indexing service is cool. No big use for it, just resource waste most of time.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by Bryan21cag

i wouldn't take it too personally he may have read something you posted that disagreed with him personally and rage added you to the list its just his opinion. Its our own opinion of our self's that really matters at the end of the day.....................uh unless your a serial killer or something......... then i guess it doesn't matter if you think your a charming fellow or not lol well you get what i mean

LOL im not too worried but reading my name in that list is like reading a paper and seeing a your name and picture on a list of suspected pedophiles..

Krupi isn't a fan boy, he's just very passionate about the game, I have talked and flown with him recently and he's a good lad, definately not a fanny.

[adonys]

I told you only to do it if you have at least 8 GB of ram.. doh!

[LoBiSoMeM]

Originally Posted by adonys

I told you only to do it if you have at least 8 GB of ram.. doh!

I can run CloD without VM with 4GB of RAM in quick mission of London freeflight with all settings maxed out. Enough for testing.

No gains at all with your amazing "tweaks". My HD wasn't working like crazy using VM. Maybe "M$" can hire you to redesign all OS memory management, you must try!

Please, show us benchmarks of your results, or post more info about all gains in gaming with VM disable in W7, please! I'm really curious...

[Zaltor]

Originally Posted by adonys

I told you only to do it if you have at least 8 GB of ram.. doh!

I agree with LoBiSoMeM, infact you shouldnt disable page files under any O/S what you should do is set the initial and the max to the same value, that way it locks a sector of your HDD decreasing Seek times thus reducing stutters, The only time you should disable Paging is if you Have an SSD drive.

[adonys]

actually, if you want to keep the page file, you should:
- set it on another HDD than the one with the OS
- set it on it's own drive on that HDD (the first drive, with the clusters near the HDD's center are the best in terms of performance)
- the above points should be enough to make sure the page file it is not fragmented, but if you can't do the above points, then defrag the HDD/drive on which you want to set it, put it in there (thus the page file is not fragmented at creation) and lock it's size (custom size, min = max) in order to not have the OS fumble with it (to keep it not fragmented)

thing is: as it is SAFE & even ADVISABLE to disable the page file if you have a SSD, then logic should tell you you may run without it even if you don't have a SSD, but have enough memory.. rrrrright?!!

Things is this: the virtual memory concept is an OS mechanism to assure concurent running processes with enough memory, even if the RAM is not so big. Thus, it creates a virtual memory space (on which the RAM is mapped as a part, the rest of it being actually mapped on the paging file on your HDD) in which it allocates memory to all running processes. processes (& their threads) AND/OR data not ran/requested for a while are firstly moved from the RAM part of the virtual memory, to the HDD mapped part, and then back when they are needed (a process TRANSPARENT to the running processes (which know that they & their data are actually in "RAM" (actually VRAM)) and called swapping.

Windows OS tries to have free RAM all the time (just in case, even if all the running processes and their data would perfectly fit into RAM and still leave a lot of it free), and actually moves parts of the data of still running and having high CPU %time processes in the paging file as part of his "awesome and newly optimised" VRAM management routines. It did that in ALL M$ OSes and it still does in Win7 (though to a lesser degree than in the previous ones, it's true. they are really trying to fix and improve this mess).

Il2 CoD is trying to cache into RAM a very high amount of small files. As it is not using all of them all the time, some of them might be swapped by the OS into the paging file, and when IL2CoD requests them.. ooops! there's a RAM miss, and the OS is swapping them back into RAM from paging file. There you go, one possible explanation for IL2CoD's microstutters.

I've found out that disabling the paging file and aero theme and using max settings is the best combo will get rid of the infamous microstutters, for me at least.

I'm not trying to impress, or convince anyone, I was just sharing a thought I have regarding a possible explanation (and if you'll read my first post you will see I've said "Because Windows is known for using the swap file even if it has tons of memory free, and this might lead to the microstutters you all are complaining about..") and trying to help the others with my knowledge.

It seems like there's no need for that, and there are "smarter" ones knowing "better".

Be my guests, go on, you help them!

[David198502]

hey adonys!at least i appreciate your efforts to make the game more playable!
ignore this brick, he is screwing his vga all the time, but never posted something useful or constructive in this forum.

btw, : "Go to ..\steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\ and right click on the Launcher.exe file and select properties. Go to Compatibility tab and check Disable visual themes, Disable desktop composition and Run this program as administrator.

By disabling the visual themes or desktop composition (I don't remember right now which of them), you might not be able to access the Save custom user settings window (as it 's a Windows window, so it would need those). You just uncheck that one when you need to save those, then check it back again, as you won't save those settings so often.

To disable Windows Indexing Service, you need to right click on My Computer, select Manage, then go to Service and Applications -> Services tree and look for the Windows Search service. Select it, right click on it and select properties and there put Startup type on Manual or Disabled and press the Stop button."

what will those two changes do to cod?is it advisable to try it even with less than 4gb of ram to disable the windows search service?what will "disabling visual themes" do to cod?
thx in advance for your answer.

[adonys]

Every other setting not related with paging file doesn't have anything to do with the amount of RAM, you can safely use then no matter what amount of RAM/page file you have.

The Windows search service is doing the indexing job (registering all the files on all your HDD's in index files, in order to speed up Windows' search function results (when you are using Windows' search function to find something on your system) and therefore constantly reading from all your HDDs and decreasing performance by using processors time and HDDs IO calls).

The others are just manually forcing off the Aero (which is a 3D interface) and Windows' desktop's visual enhancements while that program is running.

[JG52Uther]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Krupi isn't a fan boy, he's just very passionate about the game, I have talked and flown with him recently and he's a good lad, definately not a fanny.

Naaah he's a fanboy,and he's on my list as well.

(kidding,just kidding...)