Makes a fast HDD dolphin also faster?

[slax65]

Hey guys,

My HDD where the system is installed on is going to die soon (I think)
So I'm going to get a fast one ..
Many people who bought this HDD said, that the whole system got much faster ..
So could I hope to get Dolphin faster, too?
It's a 1TB HDD with 1000rps, 64MB Chache, read and write max: 200MB/s

[admin89]

slas65 Wrote:Many people who bought this HDD said, that the whole system got much faster

Yes

Quote:So could I hope to get Dolphin faster, too?

Nope
Reason : i have 2 SSD , one for laptop and one for desktop
Dolphin does not run faster but Windows boot time and application load time are much faster
SSD is obviously faster than HDD (Depending on each model , some HDDs are even faster than low-end SSD)
Edit : Those 2 SSD are low-end Intel X25V 40GB and mid-range Intel 330 60GB

[Garteal]

Quote: It's a 1TB HDD with 10000rpm, 64MB Chache, read and write max: 200MB/s

You missed a 0 there.
What harddrive is it exactly, and which one do you have right now?

If you have a decent 7200rpm harddrive already, you won't notice a huge difference.
Aside from loading times, etc, Dolphin won't benefit from it.
You will get a faster PC bootup time and better performance while playing games that heavily rely on asset streaming.

Edit: Admin'd.

[Hippox77]

I thought that Dolphin would actually benefit greatly in those scenarios when new data loading that tend to cause skips. That is, small pauses when new data is loaded for the first time until they're cached in the RAM. If Dolphin could load an entire ISO into the memory, if enough memory was available, and you waited for the timely process to complete, you'd eliminate these skips, no? So why would a high-speed SSD not accomplish this, too? I am maybe completely in the wrong, though.

Edit: What is the caching process of new data limited by then, since it can cause skips?

[RachelB]

Quote:I thought that Dolphin would actually benefit greatly in those scenarios when new data loading that tend to cause skips.

I don't believe i've ever encountered such a scenario. Or if i have, i've never noticed it. If you do, then yes, running your games from an ssd or ramdisk would help with that. I wouldn't expect a noticable improvement though. And of course, most games aren't constantly loading data, so you'd only get any benefit while they are (probably just load screens).

[NaturalViolence]

Hippox77 Wrote:I thought that Dolphin would actually benefit greatly in those scenarios when new data loading that tend to cause skips. That is, small pauses when new data is loaded for the first time until they're cached in the RAM.

I didn't think dolphin had any kind of data caching/prefetching mechanism. As far as I know data is only loaded into memory when the game tells dolphin to load it into memory.

Quote:If Dolphin could load an entire ISO into the memory, if enough memory was available, and you waited for the timely process to complete, you'd eliminate these skips, no?

Like RachelB said these skips either don't exist or are so minor that they are completely impossible to detect. Prefetching would reduce accuracy, although I doubt it would actually break any games.

If the skips do exist they would have been far worse on the actual hardware since the actual hardware has to load data from a MUCH slower DVD drive.

Quote: So why would a high-speed SSD not accomplish this, too? I am maybe completely in the wrong, though.

Edit: What is the caching process of new data limited by then, since it can cause skips?

Dolphin only uses a fraction of your available HDD throughput anyways since it essentially "pretends" that the .iso file on your HDD is a disk in the GC/Wii DVD drive. It emulates the speed of that DVD drive which is far slower than any consumer level HDD. Any excess speed is useless since it isn't used. The same thing goes for streaming data from the drive.

[Hippox77]

I'll try to give a practical example of I am referring to as 'skips'.

In Smash Bros Brawl these 'skips' happens pretty consistently by loading a new stage up on a new session of Dolphin and then by executing a random character's attack moveset. You'll sometimes get these small 'skips' right in the beginning of the march, as in the picture will freeze for maybe a 0.25 of a second and then resume - but like I said, only for the first execution of whatever move that happens to trigger a 'skip'.

If you then quit the stage, and then load it again, then the game will play smoothly without the same skips that happened the first time, so I was naturally thinking this is because of some sort of caching of data into the memory.

[NaturalViolence]

Are you sure that's due to HDD access? That's more likely just the shader caching mechanism. In fact I'm almost positive that it is.

Dolphin caches shaders after compiling them the first time so that it doesn't have to recompile them again later on. The compiling/caching process takes long enough to produce a noticeable stutter.

[Hippox77]

(01-24-2013, 09:40 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Are you sure that's due to HDD access? That's more likely just the shader caching mechanism. In fact I'm almost positive that it is.

Dolphin caches shaders after compiling them the first time so that it doesn't have to recompile them again later on. The compiling/caching process takes long enough to produce a noticeable stutter.

I see, interesting. You're probably right about it, too.

I'm not super technical about this stuff at all, but it seems to me that there might be some possibility for tweaking of this process in the hands of users for certain games. Like, for SSBB a lot of the shader cache is reused very often, so often that it'd make good sense to store it and be able to pre-cache this shader cache for new sessions of Dolphin. Smart shader cache management, yes? Right now, Dolphin uses a universal design approach for this cache that works good for all games, but there's tweaking potential in it, I feel.

I don't know if this is possible, though, or makes sense. Or possible issues with it. You tell me.

Edit: I just assume Dolphin throws out this cache quickly, as that's how this seems to me.

[NaturalViolence]

Quote:I'm not super technical about this stuff at all, but it seems to me that there might be some possibility for tweaking of this process in the hands of users for certain games. Like, for SSBB a lot of the shader cache is reused very often, so often that it'd make good sense to store it and be able to pre-cache this shader cache for new sessions of Dolphin. Smart shader cache management, yes? Right now, Dolphin uses a universal design approach for this cache that works good for all games, but there's tweaking potential in it, I feel.

Neobrain spent a lot of time optimizing the current shader cache system as far as he could. I doubt that there is any work left to be done that could significantly improve it.

Quote:Like, for SSBB a lot of the shader cache is reused very often,

What do you mean by that? Do you mean that the shaders are called very often? Or possibly that the shaders are recompiled very often?

Quote: so often that it'd make good sense to store it and be able to pre-cache this shader cache

Wait what? You want to pre-cache the cache?

Quote:for new sessions of Dolphin.

I THINK I know what you're trying to say but I'm not totally sure. And if I'm right dolphin already does it.

Dolphin stores the shader cache on the HDD. The cache entries are persistant as long as they aren't invalidated by certain conditions (which from what I gather are fairly rare).

Quote:Di Smart shader cache management, yes? Right now, Dolphin uses a universal design approach for this cache that works good for all games, but there's tweaking potential in it, I feel.

That makes no sense. How would you optimize the shader cache for specific games?