Topic: Vista SSD Performance Tweaks & Stuttering Removal (Read 18031 times)

Aaron · « **on:** 22-January-09, 02:11:04 »

Few things to do:

Turn your page file off. You do this via: Computer > Properties > Advanced system settings > Performance settings > Advanced > Virtual memory > Change > Untick "Automatic etc." > Select no paging file > "Set" button

Then:

Disabling HDD optimised services - these are bad for SSDs.

Windows+R > Run appears > Services.msc > Enter > Properties on Windows Search > Drop-down box > Disable > OK.

Properties on Superfetch > Drop-down box > Disable > OK.

Followed by:

Disable system restore. Computer > Properties > System protection > Untick your SSD > OK.

Last but not least:

Registry tweaks.

I compiled a .reg file to save you having to do it. [If possible, could a moderator attach it to the post? Thank you]

http://rapidshare.com/files/187415797/Vista_SSD_Optimise.zip.html

Restart and you're off!

Moving your Firefox or IE cache to a HDD works well. Or you can use a RAMdrive, but that's another thread for another day.

(File attached)

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #1 on:** 22-January-09, 10:55:00 »

You can't turn paging off in windows, as it uses it for silly things.

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #2 on:** 22-January-09, 12:09:31 »

BTW, before even think about SSD, one better reads this article: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=1

It gets interesting from page 5, as SSD's have big problems, so bad that Vista BSOD's on a lot of them!

Aaron · « **Reply #3 on:** 22-January-09, 15:17:21 »

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

I think Tony is more on the ball than either of us are.

Fredrik · « **Reply #4 on:** 22-January-09, 23:53:35 »

You can turn the paging/swap file off. But you should have plenty of memory. And if you have a memory leaking program you will notice that, Windows without paging file can't or wont swap such a file out. So often the performance increase without virtual memory wont last for very very long, but will come back after a restart.

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #5 on:** 23-January-09, 21:10:38 »

Quote from: AaronYuri on 22-January-09, 15:17:21

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

I think Tony is more on the ball than either of us are.

You haven't read my link did you?
Else you would have seen that many SSD's have a sick puppy controller onboard that's unable to handle many I/O at the same time and puts then on hold.
And thus, in a multitasking OS like XP, Vista, Linux etc, it will start to stutter because the CPU is put on hold!
Tony is only reducing the chance of it happening, but if you unrar a number of small files, it starts to happen, no matter what you do.
The problem is in the type of controller used inside the SSD.

Aaron · « **Reply #6 on:** 23-January-09, 22:27:14 »

Quote from: Bas on 23-January-09, 21:10:38

You haven't read my link did you?
Else you would have seen that many SSD's have a sick puppy controller onboard that's unable to handle many I/O at the same time and puts then on hold.
And thus, in a multitasking OS like XP, Vista, Linux etc, it will start to stutter because the CPU is put on hold!
Tony is only reducing the chance of it happening, but if you unrar a number of small files, it starts to happen, no matter what you do.
The problem is in the type of controller used inside the SSD.

I read that link a long time ago, when I was thinking about purchasing an SSD.

I was referring to the pagefile--not the stuttering.

Maybe you did not understand me correctly?

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #7 on:** 24-January-09, 16:31:37 »

Weird, your post title talks about stutter as well

Aaron · « **Reply #8 on:** 24-January-09, 17:21:01 »

Quote from: Bas on 22-January-09, 10:55:00

You can't turn paging off in windows, as it uses it for silly things.

"http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

I think Tony is more on the ball than either of us are."

Perhaps I should of written it like that. It was a reply to your post, Bas.

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #9 on:** 24-January-09, 20:57:45 »

Windows is silly, if you defrag it starts paging, no matter how much memory you have.
Maybe changed in Vista, but XP gives trouble if you turn it off.

Aaron · « **Reply #10 on:** 24-January-09, 21:46:50 »

I've had the pagefile off for several months on Vista. Haven't had any problems with Vista at all, honestly.

Only issue I have is it likes to cache my memory, this is not good for QuickPar

But we're going off topic here.

Wonkanoby · « **Reply #11 on:** 25-January-09, 14:44:27 »

defragging is one thing you should not do to an ssd drive

all it will do is make it fail earlier

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #12 on:** 25-January-09, 15:20:58 »

People will do it, as they assume its just like a normal harddisk.
From all the stuff I read and hear about SSD's, I will move to SAS when I need a new harddisk.

Aaron · « **Reply #13 on:** 25-January-09, 17:42:50 »

Quote from: Wonkanoby on 25-January-09, 14:44:27

defragging is one thing you should not do to an ssd drive

all it will do is make it fail earlier

Quote from: Bas on 25-January-09, 15:20:58

People will do it, as they assume its just like a normal harddisk.
From all the stuff I read and hear about SSD's, I will move to SAS when I need a new harddisk.

Bas, don't turn my thread into an SSD vs. HDD war, please.

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #14 on:** 25-January-09, 17:52:57 »

I do not, but many SSD's have I/O performance trouble, that's where the stutter is coming from.
If something works well, most people don't start tweaking.
It's that simple.

Also, why do people buy SSD's? Question that.
SSD's consume less power, and the good ones are nice to use in a notebook.
On the other hand, SAS have proven reliability and don't die after x number of writings.
However, seeing the trouble SSD's have, they are probably faster too.

I'm not turning it into anything, just showing that there are other ways to have speed.
Why else are people looking at the speed of SSD? But they never looked at SAS.

Aaron, why are you looking at SSD? Honest, can't be about the power-consumption in a desktop machine.

Ps. you have to defrag NTFS/FAT32 else windows will destroy the filesystem, because you run out of pointers in the directory structure! (or it slows down a lot)

Aaron · « **Reply #15 on:** 25-January-09, 18:10:24 »

This thread is about SSD performance tweaks, and helping remove the stutter. If you have something to contribute, I would really like to hear it?

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #16 on:** 25-January-09, 18:15:46 »

That's what I'm saying all the time, many SSD's have a problem controller causing the stutter.

Just look: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=8

Particular this page: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=10

You can not tweak that source of stuttering, as the controller inside the SSD is giving the trouble.
And it's not only OCZ, but in fact many have the problem...only a few don't.

Aaron · « **Reply #17 on:** 25-January-09, 18:38:44 »

I'm fully aware of the problem, Bas. Anything smaller than 64k reads & writes slow as hell, I know. I do own one, after all... Even the Intel SSDs with cache suffer from the stutter.

To continue this is pointless, as there is nothing left to say.

Quadrifoglio Verde · « **Reply #18 on:** 26-January-09, 20:59:41 »

Wisely, I shall ignore everything said from post # 2 and further down (not much to do with SSD tweaks)...

Aaron, could you please list the registry tweaks compiled in your file? I'm pretty sure I have already done some of those, I would like to see which can still be useful to me. Thnx in advance...

I'm not a big fan of some of those tweaks. Yes, some of them do make an SSD a bit faster. But some of them make Vista slower as well. In the end it might even out or it might even be a negative influence on performance. Also, Vista is somewhat better for SSD performance than XP. In XP, an SSD will be a couple percent slower or sometimes more. I find Vista x64 untweaked not too bad on SSD performance....

Aaron · « **Reply #19 on:** 26-January-09, 23:12:38 »

Code: [Select]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000000
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000000


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000001
"NtfsMemoryUsage"=dword:00000002


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction]
"Enable"="N"

The defrag boot optimise, you definitely want off.

Large system cache causes all memory but 4MB to be cached. Helps the SSD greatly, but it's not that good for gaming and what-not.

The prefetch and superfetch, as you know, should definitely be off too.

I've forgotten what the dot8name creation is for, but Google is your friend.

Quadrifoglio Verde · « **Reply #20 on:** 26-January-09, 23:41:25 »

Thnx...

DisablePagingExecutive=1 is always the first setting I change on a fresh installation, definitely helps (any system).

Large System Cache=1 definitely does not work for me. Might speed up an SSD, but from what I have read it's better to use this on an SQL server for example. Desktop system: not really.

Prefetch, Superfetch and Defrag Boot Optimise indeed should be off. The NTFS stuff I tried a few weeks ago, couldn't really tell any difference.

Ex Forum User 3 · « **Reply #21 on:** 27-January-09, 02:36:49 »

Quote

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001

DisablePagingExecutive prefents system executables from being paged to pagefile.
LargeSystemCache does a lot for gaming and SSD's, as it uses more then 4MB memory, so it caches more.
It does not decrease gaming, in fact it should speed up gaming as your cache is bigger for file operations.
It does not use all memory, but a percentage of it.
Very usefull when you have more then 1 GB memory.

Quote

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000000
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000000

Turning the prefetchers off has no use, as the prefetch helps loading of frequently used data.
It does not adjust all the time.
The registry is written far more often.

Quote

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000001
"NtfsMemoryUsage"=dword:00000002

Disable 8.3 creation means it also writes filenames in MSDOS FAT format, not so usefull anymore.
NTFSMemoryUsage, tricky one, as it's does side reading...not that usefull.

Quote

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction]
"Enable"="N"

Will help as it works every 10 minutes when the system is idle, then it defrags boot.
I'm sorry but only the first and last keys are usefull.

However, I miss the more important keys, like logging and counters, you leave them on.
Those are called performance, fileaccess, etc counters, they update the logs, filesystem, etc everytime you click something, turn those off will do a lot more.
Also kill system logging, as those keep writing too.
Don't know the exact keys for Vista, you have to Google for them.
Windows does a lot behind your back

Aaron · « **Reply #22 on:** 27-January-09, 03:40:17 »

The prefetcher causes lots of small writes, which is bad for the drive's life and performance. It's also useless, because the SSD's access times are so low.

In Vista, having a large system cache can cache the memory down to just 4MB free - which wouldn't allow a game to boot, in my case.

News:

Author Topic: Vista SSD Performance Tweaks & Stuttering Removal (Read 18031 times)