[SOLVED] Questions regarding Hard disk for gaming

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akaikisaki

akaikisaki

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May 16, 2014
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Hello All,

To start right away, I have a strange PC build. It's:

Mo/Bo: Gigabyte H110-MS2
CPU: Intel G4400 (6th)
GPU: GTX 1050 2GB
Ram: HyperX 8GB DDR4

The thing that makes it strange is the Hard disk, which is a Laptop Hard disk which I've been using for over a year. Please check the link below:
https://www.flipkart.com/wd-blue-50...y55qq80000001571815343974&qH=9dbdefe6f156d772


I had to use this because the Internal Hard disk that I had stopped working. Everyday task is fine, a few games like Unreal Tournament 2004 and Hot Pursuit 2010 also runs fine.

The problem that I'm facing is that the the games like COD Black Ops (2010) and Wolfenstein New Order are lagging a lot. At first I thought it was the Ram, so I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB, however, the lag is the same.

Question 1). Is it because of the Laptop Hard disk that they're lagging?

Question 2). If I buy a 120GB SSD and install it as primary and make the Laptop drive as secondary, will there be any improvements? In this case, in which drive should I install the game to work fine? The SSD (primary) or the HDD (laptop secondary )?



Back in 2011-12, Black Ops used to run fine with a Core2Duo CPU and Nvidia N9400GT 1GB.

Thank you.
 
Last edited:
Solution
geofelt
Laptop drives like yours are designed for battery savings, not performance.
5400rpm is not good for the C drive.
Yes, you would be better off with a ssd.
My suggestion is to buy a 500gb(or larger) samsung 860 evo. About $75
Use the samsung ssd migration tool to move your entire C drive to the ssd and replace the WD blue.
You will be amazed at the overall performance difference.
You can then repurpose the wd blue as you wish, perhaps as a backup device.

As to gaming performance, IDK. certainly such functions as level loads, game checkpoints and perhaps texture loads will go much faster.
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Not exactly sure, what you consider lagging. Can you do some diagnosing first?

Use MSI Afterburner, launch your game, where lagging is experienced and post screenshot from MSI Afterburner hardware monitoring window.
Graphs should be visible: FPS, cpu temperature/usage, gpu temperature/usage, memory usage, ram usage, pagefile usage.
Hardware monitoring window looks like this. Press detach button, to make monitoring window separate from MSI afterburner app window.

Monitoring.png
 
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SkyNetRising said:
Not exactly sure, what you consider lagging. Can you do some diagnosing first?
Click to expand...

The character movement is slow. As for Wolfenstein, the starting cinematics is slow. It plays for 2 seconds then freeze, then plays for few 2 seconds, and freeze, and so on.

I have never used MSI Afterburner. So I had to figure out the ways to do those hardware monitoring tasks that you asked. This is the best I could do.

COD Black Ops 2010

I don't even know how to upload images like you did, but tried the Google drive and got these links.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1u8K90nC573WuUsn8gUcdPyiuNwQU8W3Z

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1B3i2hJ4fK7huV3VipjpyR2OkkohQD54G

https://drive.google.com/open?id=17cvw4E-fFx6UUPCm_LfUZQYL7bnKGwtC
 
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Cpu and gpu temperatures are fine.
But your cpu is maxing out. It's rather weak 2core/2thread cpu (weak for modern standards). And it shows.

I didn't see pagefile usage graph in there. That could show, if there's any virtual memory utilization problem.
 
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SkyNetRising said:
Cpu and gpu temperatures are fine.
But your cpu is maxing out. It's rather weak 2core/2thread cpu (weak for modern standards). And it shows.

I didn't see pagefile usage graph in there. That could show, if there's any ram utilization problem.
Click to expand...


I don't know how to bring the pagefile graph. The drop down list doesn't have anything called the 'pagefile'. Is it by any other name in the list?

Also, like I said earlier, this is Black Ops which came in 2010. My PC was able to run this game fine with a Core2Duo processor, which was weaker than my current G4400 6th Generation.
 
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SkyNetRising said:
Press detach button on MSI afterburner, to get separate hardware monitoring window.
Pagefile usage graph would look like this:


If pagefile gets utilized extensively, this will slow down your pc to almost halt.
Click to expand...

The pagefile usage is not available in the MSI afterburner.

The next option for me below the RAM usage is Commit charge, followed by Framerate.
 
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SkyNetRising said:
Ok, then your only issue is weak cpu.

You could also check health of your HDD. Use HDtune health. Post screenshot.
Click to expand...


I doubt that the CPU is weak.

Check this out:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWvigFIuu7I


This guy is running GTA 5 on the same CPU + GPU + RAM.

When this CPU is able to run a game like GTA 5 decently, then how can it struggle to run a COD game from 2010.

There was another game Unreal Tournament 2009. This CPU was able to run that game smoothly as well with the inbuilt Intel HD graphics.

This is the benchmark for my previous CPU along with my current.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G4400-vs-Intel-Core2-Duo-E7500
 
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Laptop drives like yours are designed for battery savings, not performance.
5400rpm is not good for the C drive.
Yes, you would be better off with a ssd.
My suggestion is to buy a 500gb(or larger) samsung 860 evo. About $75
Use the samsung ssd migration tool to move your entire C drive to the ssd and replace the WD blue.
You will be amazed at the overall performance difference.
You can then repurpose the wd blue as you wish, perhaps as a backup device.

As to gaming performance, IDK. certainly such functions as level loads, game checkpoints and perhaps texture loads will go much faster.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
geofelt said:
Laptop drives like yours are designed for battery savings, not performance.
5400rpm is not good for the C drive.
Yes, you would be better off with a ssd.
My suggestion is to buy a 500gb(or larger) samsung 860 evo. About $75
Use the samsung ssd migration tool to move your entire C drive to the ssd and replace the WD blue.
You will be amazed at the overall performance difference.
You can then repurpose the wd blue as you wish, perhaps as a backup device.

As to gaming performance, IDK. certainly such functions as level loads, game checkpoints and perhaps texture loads will go much faster.
Click to expand...


Thank you so much for the advice.

I will try the SSD then. I'm thinking of a 240GB SSD which I will use as my primary and will install the games in it. And I will make my current one the secondary for storage purpose. Will this be fine?

However, the Samsung SSD is kind of out of my budget right now. I am planning to go for the Kingston instead.

Is the one in the below link good enough?

https://www.amazon.in/Kingston-SSDN...71948515&s=computers&smid=AJRK4JF48YXA&sr=1-3
 
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Different ssd vendors have utilities to migrate to their ssd devices.
Some are clone utilities which is a bit for bit copy. For those, your target drive must be the same size as the source or C drive.
The samsung utility is a proprietary version of clonix which is a C drive mover.
The difference is that the target drive needs only to hold the used portion of the source and large data files can be excluded.

Regardless, I think 240gb is a bit small if you will be installing games on it.
One of the best value in ssd devices is the intel 660P m.2 nvme drive.
A 1tb drive is $99. It is a bit slower than others, but vastly better than any HDD.
 
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geofelt said:
240gb is a bit small if you will be installing games on it
Click to expand...

My plan is to install one game at a time. At this moment, my C drive is is filled till 44GB out of 97.6GB. With few Softwares installed apart from Windows.

So if i assume that even if C drive on my SSD will consume 50 GB, I would still be left with 150+ GB for a game. This is just an assumption though.
 
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