Borg textures

posted on February 13th, 2011, 9:54 pm

lol this just feels like its gonna descend into a flame war about who knows what now

posted on February 13th, 2011, 10:06 pm

I think you're okay - the onus has been put on you to prove that you're right, on the basis of what Kestrel is saying as being fact. Since it's not fact but rather mis-interpreted and misunderstood technical specs, nothing is going to come of it.

For instance, assuming that pagefile or system data access doesn't play a role in texture loading because it's down to the graphics card... Erm, where does the graphics card get it's data from? It's not reading it from a CD-ROM which means, yep, it's reading it from system memory. Where does the RAM get it's data from? Yep, again the system. So the media, i.e. flash or magnetic of where that data is stored has everything to do with how fast the graphics card and RAM can access that data.

Computer systems 101: the system is only as fast as it's slowest part. The slowest part, until the advent of flash memory has always been the mechanical hard drive.

posted on February 13th, 2011, 10:09 pm

lol kestrel u just cant accept you are wrong, u have to argue. readyboost gives significant boosts on pcs with less than 2gb.

on a 512 barely vista ready computer it will give HUGE boosts, on a 2gb win7 pc it gives a good boost.

and you clearly display a lack of knowledge of how readyboost works, if u have for example 4gb of ram and use readyboost then nothing will get written to cache instead of ram, the only thing that would then go to cache would be stuff that normally would sit on a hard disk. what would be the point of loading stuff into cache with loads of free ram to spare? you wont get much of a performance boost but it certainly wont slow you down lol.

im not gonna run benchmarking software and go through a lot of hassle just to show you some proof you are wrong. i dont give a toss whether you believe me or not  if u wanna let your pride get in the way of a possible improvement for yourself then fine dont try readyboost on your pc, but dont put it in the way of other people trying readyboost by rubbishing it repeatedly, we know you dont like it, thats your opinion.

and my theory isnt illogical and unlikely at all. its pretty simple but clever (readyboost's idea that is, i didnt invent it)

its simple:

some data that isnt huge is on the hard disk, it needs to be put in RAM/VRAM

having it in a readyboost cache makes it faster to access, hence faster to put into that RAM/VRAM.

Wrong... anything above 1gb and you can actually start slowing your pc down.

ReadyBoost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Provide a source when your going to call someone a lier instead of just balling rubbish from inside your mind.

and again like i said, do some test and prove what your saying , im guessing yet again you will post again without a shred of prove that it will actually work and try to go off topic by explaining how im wrong if thats the case i cba to waste my time with this thread any longer.

[Anonymous]

posted on February 13th, 2011, 10:10 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 13th, 2011, 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The slowest part, until the advent of flash memory has always been the mechanical hard drive.

i dunno, my graphics chip is pretty old, its probably made of wood

you talk about sources then you quote wikipedia guess that shows where you get your ideas about quality of information from.

im not gonna do a test, i dont care whether you believe me or not (didnt i say this earlier). if u wanna disprove what im saying go do your own tests and waste your own time. please, dont waste your precious time with this thread, id be perfectly happy if you didnt post in this thread any longer

---

EDIT: i just checked your wikipedia article to see why you linked it, i cant figure out why, it doesnt support your point at all, it supports mine

i didnt find anything on that page that agrees with your point. doesnt matter anyway as a wikipedia article on its own is pretty weak evidence.

posted on February 13th, 2011, 11:01 pm

This calls for a FleetOps Stick! We are going to be rich!

posted on February 13th, 2011, 11:30 pm

Personally, I stuck my 8GB driven my computer and allowed it to use the maximum  allotment and it runs visibly faster in game.  I can see how multiple drives plugged in could make it run slower, but one drive, with any size of storage shouldn't cause problems.  The whole point is that it is supposed to speed it up.

posted on February 13th, 2011, 11:32 pm

This calls for a FleetOps Stick! We are going to be rich!

now that i would love. if doca could make a cache file that could be downloaded and put on a usb stick, that contains copies of commonly accessed files for random access. the big things like textures would require the large data performance of a hard disk, but maybe some small stuff could be put there. and code the program to access these files if necessary.

it would be awesome, but i think way too much work.

readyboost does this, but only if u access the file first, to let windows put it in the cache. maybe if u only used a particular stick when fleetops was running, so that its cache fills up with fleetops files and not random windows files. have a separate flash memory for each game lol.

posted on February 14th, 2011, 6:55 pm

firstly optec said the lag is caused by loading meshes not textures, dunno exactly what a mesh is lol, but from the way he said it, its not textures.

mesh = model

posted on February 14th, 2011, 7:01 pm

Conclusion : Windows Vista's SuperFetch and ReadyBoost Analyzed
There they have done tests on it and found that no matter what it will improve system performance to some degree. And the 10k rpm drives will be able to get the info faster than your usb drive.

posted on February 14th, 2011, 10:58 pm

Kestrel, I read that Wikipedia article and it was very interesting, but it never said that using readyboost could slow down a computer.  In fact, it links to other sites that explain how ReadyBoost can't slow down a computer because the OS tests the load times BEFORE it offers the ReadyBoost option to the user.

The effectiveness depends most upon the hard-drive speed vs the port speed: a USB 1.0 port will produce little to no effect, while a 2.0 is okay and you only get the full effect with USB 3.0.  Meanwhile, many laptop drives (like mine) run at 5400 (or even 4800 *gasp*) and these benefit much more than a 7200 desktop drive.  A desktop with a 10k rpm drive and USB 1.0 or 2.0 really would get no benefit at all.

I read something VERY interesting though: the article explaining SuperFetch, the pre-loading routine in Windows 7 said that it monitors which files are read DURING THE FIRST 10 SECONDS after the program starts.  So maybe if you rush straight to an instant-action, you can teach your computer to pre-load the borg textures 

An idea for the devs: give us a texture pre-loading option that makes the game load textures when you start the shell, even if it discards them when it's done.  Computers with good RAM (3gb plus) or ReadyBoost will "learn" to cache the textures and thus load them faster on game start.

posted on February 15th, 2011, 2:04 pm

i think optec said a workaround is being worked on to load the meshes earlier than current. i'm not sure how early is even possible lol.

if u play borg it gets done before the game, maybe if all starbases have the required mesh thingy, but not visible to human eyes lol. So all races would load it first. I dont even if that's possible.

posted on February 15th, 2011, 4:39 pm

Well all that really needs to happen is to have the mesh loaded into memory, that is to have created the data structure that represents the stored mesh in memory before it's needed. It doesn't have to be "invisible", just in memory.