SSD effect on games?

[wetto]

Hello everyone, I've been playing some PS2 games on my laptop, which has the following configuration:

- Clevo P150EM Backbone (with custom Prema BIOS)
- Windows 7 64 Bits SP1
- i7 3920XM (Hyperthreading Off, Turbo Boost always on @ 3.7 GHz)
- AMD HD 8970M
- 6 GB DDR3 RAM (4 + 2)
- 128 GB Plextor PX-128M5M SSD
- 750 GB Seagate Momentus SSHD (this is where I store most of my games)

Previously, I had an i5 3210M, which had lots of slowdowns and I was a bit used to them, but as soon as I got the i7 3920XM, I was able to play PS2 games at 300 FPS if I wanted to.

But what really got me surprised, was that even though I had that much processing power, games such as Radiata Stories would stop for half a second almost every minute, creating audio glitches and annoying the hell out of me.

I tried the following to fix them:

- Closed all background processes
- Enabled/Disabled all speedhacks
- Tweaked everywhere on the emulator
- Used newer and older versions
- Tried newer and older plugins
- Disabled Turbo Boost and overclocking
- Overclocked the CPU up to 4.2 GHz
- Disabled Hyperthreading

But none of these fixed the problem.

I noticed those pauses always happened on Radiata Stories when:

- Going to new areas.
- Talking with characters for the first time.
- Whenever a character spoke for the first time in a battle.

The thing is, those little "pauses" that I had been experiencing completely disappeared when I moved the game's ISO from my SSHD into my SSD.

So, I'd like to really know what may be the causes for this and some way to fix it without moving the games to my SSD (which is already full due to Battlefield 3 and 4). I have some ideas of what may be causing it:

- Due to the SSHD caching data?
- Something wrong with the ISO Plugin/emulator not loading the game properly into memory?

Thank you very much for your attention

[Blyss Sarania]

It's similar to my issue here: http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-FFX-minor...ne-changes

It happens when the game goes to load data that's not already in ram, and it needs to access the ISO. The reason it goes away on your SSD is an SSD has zero seek time, so it gets the data instantly.

Other than using an SSD or ramdisk(and you haven't enough ram for that), there isn't much you can do. Sorry

[wetto]

The strange thing is, I don't experience these on my Desktop, which has an i5 3550, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 650 TI Boost, a 64 GB SanDisk SSD and a 3 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM HDD...

Is the Seagate Momentus 5400 really that slow?

PS: Just did some testing. Radiata Stories on SSD with 30ms Time Stretch audio, PS2-Like Interpolation, no Speed Hacks, Vertical Sync on, 4x resolution and running smooth as silk.

The hell?

[Blyss Sarania]

I dunno. It depends on a lot of things: Seek time, async transfer time, fragmentation, where the data is on the disk, etc.

[xenocea]

I noticed those pauses always happened on Eternal Sonata when:

- Going to new areas.
- Talking with characters for the first time.
- Whenever a character spoke for the first time in a battle.

The thing is, those little "pauses" that I had been experiencing completely disappeared when I moved the game's ISO from my SSHD into my SSD.

So, I'd like to really know what may be the causes for this and some way to fix it without moving the games to my SSD (which is already full due to Battlefield 3 and 4). I have some ideas of what may be causing it:

- Due to the SSHD caching data?
- Something wrong with the ISO Plugin/emulator not loading the game properly into memory?

Thank you very much for your attention

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Eternal Sonata a ps3 game?
I'm not aware that it has ever been released for ps2.

[Blyss Sarania]

Lol, you are right...

weird!

[wetto]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Eternal Sonata a ps3 game?
I'm not aware that it has ever been released for ps2.

Radiata Stories... Somehow I mistook the names of both games...

Both are "Tales of" copycats to me anyway.

BTW, it's also available for Xbox 360, I think I haven't finished that one either, stuck at about 80% I guess.

At least I didn't mistook it for Arc Rise Fantasia... Now, that's a distinguishable game

[dabore]

there isn't much you can do. Sorry

i hate that "smilie".

i got that idea. it was about caching parts of an iso tracked with the iso's internal directory structure if some is there. the idea is to optional and to manually setup precaching the actual files on the iso that contain it. for some games with good archived structure this might work. sure tough - but possible for a advanced user to select the ones that contain specific content. especialy cutscene or general audio.

might bump a dev for a try.

[tsunami2311]

Hello everyone, I've been playing some PS2 games on my laptop, which has the following configuration:

- Clevo P150EM Backbone (with custom Prema BIOS)
- Windows 7 64 Bits SP1
- i7 3920XM (Hyperthreading Off, Turbo Boost always on @ 3.7 GHz)
- AMD HD 8970M
- 6 GB DDR3 RAM (4 + 2)
- 128 GB Plextor PX-128M5M SSD
- 750 GB Seagate Momentus 5400 SSHD (this is where I store most of my games)

Previously, I had an i5 3210M, which had lots of slowdowns and I was a bit used to them, but as soon as I got the i7 3920XM, I was able to play PS2 games at 300 FPS if I wanted to.

But what really got me surprised, was that even though I had that much processing power, games such as Radiata Stories would stop for half a second almost every minute, creating audio glitches and annoying the hell out of me.

I tried the following to fix them:

- Closed all background processes
- Enabled/Disabled all speedhacks
- Tweaked everywhere on the emulator
- Used newer and older versions
- Tried newer and older plugins
- Disabled Turbo Boost and overclocking
- Overclocked the CPU up to 4.2 GHz
- Disabled Hyperthreading

But none of these fixed the problem.

I noticed those pauses always happened on Radiata Stories when:

- Going to new areas.
- Talking with characters for the first time.
- Whenever a character spoke for the first time in a battle.

The thing is, those little "pauses" that I had been experiencing completely disappeared when I moved the game's ISO from my SSHD into my SSD.

So, I'd like to really know what may be the causes for this and some way to fix it without moving the games to my SSD (which is already full due to Battlefield 3 and 4). I have some ideas of what may be causing it:

- Due to the SSHD caching data?
- Something wrong with the ISO Plugin/emulator not loading the game properly into memory?

Thank you very much for your attention

wow really HDD is not longer fast enough to keep stuff like that from happen when game is in iso form, and hdd 5x if not faster then the dvd drives these game played on. and considering the seek time is slower on the ps2 dvd drive even when constantly spinning then that of hdd. that make no sense too.

Im more including to think it emulation issue like post in this thread http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-FFX-minor...#pid374493 and the ssd it it just brute forcing the issue away with more speed.

As i just cant buy that, HDD that got better seek times and way faster speeds then the 2x dvd play the ps2 had isnt fast enough. When those issue arnt there on ps2 granted emulation adds extra few layers untop what is needed

[willkuer]

Are you sure that it is a SSHD? I could not find a momentus sshd but haven't put too much effort into it. If it is not a sshd the difference in rpm can lead to the different experience comparing the 5400rpm and the 7200rpm.
If it is really an sshdc, how large is the cache? Lower than an ps2-iso? than the internal ssd-cache might not help and you get reduced to 5400rpm again.
In any case you can try defragmentation