mutantmagnet
11-15-2008, 08:23 AM
I'm interested in using a RAID setup to get more out of my machine for Darkfall. But before I pick a specific RAID to work with there are certain things I'm unsure about when it comes to software in general, and things I need to know specifically when Darkfall comes out.
If you are unfamiliar with RAID take a few days to read this 80 page doc (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.html). Stop hyperventilating, many of the "pages" contain only two paragraphs. If you refuse to read that then take a look at this comparison chart (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp.html). If you can correctly guess what each catagory represents you'll be fine mostly in following the discussion.
The first thing that bothers me is that when it comes to gaming does hard drive performance really mean anything?
The way I understand it files are initially read from the hard drive and then RAM makes a copy of that data and any additional reading will be done from RAM and not the hard drive itself. So what's the point if RAM is always faster than hard drives?
The only reason I see this ever becoming an issue is if you get into large battles and the graphical pictures for any new object have to be initially read from your hard drive first. Yet even that seems to be irrelevant, because I've noticed many times graphical images don't load when you enter an area with a lot of players in all MMOs. So is this a case of graphical images not being stored on RAM?
Now let's just assume implementing RAID is useful, is improving write performance neccessary for gaming? IMO there doesn't seem to be any reason to write new data on your hardrive in a single player game besides save points. Even in an MMO where writing may be more frequent than an offline game I still see it as a marginal activitiy.
But what about reading performance? This to me would be the reason to use RAID, yet each RAID setup emphasizes different ways to read your hard drives. Until Darkfall comes out we don't really know which reading method is going to be more valuable; but I'm curious to hear others' opinions on how Darkfall will work.
Speculation Section
When I think about how the devs say they've thought carefully about preventing players from manipulating graphics to negate stealth tactics I'm wondering if the devs are using procedural textures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_textures) to do this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farbrausch) If my understanding of them is correct the code written for these type of textures directly control the hardware and force a specific color value to be used.
If they use such a method is sequential read performance still valuable even though the footprint size of the code is essentially small?
Maybe on wrong and the devs create premade textures and other graphical files and have that stored in your machine. Since the data will be packaged to try and protect it we'll have one large file representing a jumble of little files. Is sequential read performance more important, because it is bundled; or is random read performance the more valuable consideration when choosing RAID, because the specific files in the package will be small?
I've been focusing heavily on graphics affecting our machines but more than that would be loaded by our machines. It's all just a matter of what do we think the devs would allow our client computers to handle that we couldn't use to cheat with. Based on past MMOs what do you think Darkfall would allow our machines to handle? More specifically and importantly, how large do you think the average amount fo data needed to be read will be?
/Speculation
Currently I don't think implementing RAID is a big deal for gaming, but what about if you like to game while using fraps a lot? Fraps constantly writes data onto your drive. Will using something like RAID 0 or RAID 7 actually help gaming performance? I think it does but I'm not sure why fraps slows down a system so much to begin with.
If you are unfamiliar with RAID take a few days to read this 80 page doc (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.html). Stop hyperventilating, many of the "pages" contain only two paragraphs. If you refuse to read that then take a look at this comparison chart (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp.html). If you can correctly guess what each catagory represents you'll be fine mostly in following the discussion.
The first thing that bothers me is that when it comes to gaming does hard drive performance really mean anything?
The way I understand it files are initially read from the hard drive and then RAM makes a copy of that data and any additional reading will be done from RAM and not the hard drive itself. So what's the point if RAM is always faster than hard drives?
The only reason I see this ever becoming an issue is if you get into large battles and the graphical pictures for any new object have to be initially read from your hard drive first. Yet even that seems to be irrelevant, because I've noticed many times graphical images don't load when you enter an area with a lot of players in all MMOs. So is this a case of graphical images not being stored on RAM?
Now let's just assume implementing RAID is useful, is improving write performance neccessary for gaming? IMO there doesn't seem to be any reason to write new data on your hardrive in a single player game besides save points. Even in an MMO where writing may be more frequent than an offline game I still see it as a marginal activitiy.
But what about reading performance? This to me would be the reason to use RAID, yet each RAID setup emphasizes different ways to read your hard drives. Until Darkfall comes out we don't really know which reading method is going to be more valuable; but I'm curious to hear others' opinions on how Darkfall will work.
Speculation Section
When I think about how the devs say they've thought carefully about preventing players from manipulating graphics to negate stealth tactics I'm wondering if the devs are using procedural textures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_textures) to do this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farbrausch) If my understanding of them is correct the code written for these type of textures directly control the hardware and force a specific color value to be used.
If they use such a method is sequential read performance still valuable even though the footprint size of the code is essentially small?
Maybe on wrong and the devs create premade textures and other graphical files and have that stored in your machine. Since the data will be packaged to try and protect it we'll have one large file representing a jumble of little files. Is sequential read performance more important, because it is bundled; or is random read performance the more valuable consideration when choosing RAID, because the specific files in the package will be small?
I've been focusing heavily on graphics affecting our machines but more than that would be loaded by our machines. It's all just a matter of what do we think the devs would allow our client computers to handle that we couldn't use to cheat with. Based on past MMOs what do you think Darkfall would allow our machines to handle? More specifically and importantly, how large do you think the average amount fo data needed to be read will be?
/Speculation
Currently I don't think implementing RAID is a big deal for gaming, but what about if you like to game while using fraps a lot? Fraps constantly writes data onto your drive. Will using something like RAID 0 or RAID 7 actually help gaming performance? I think it does but I'm not sure why fraps slows down a system so much to begin with.