How Much Does Defrag Help?

Generally DCS World with A-10 and Ka-50 runs fine and smooth for me on my PC, but there are occasional slight pauses / stuttering, like when it seems there is some reading going on in the hard disk, especially during target hits, etc.

Would disk defrag help much here? Should I invest in a disk defrag utility?

Years ago I used O&O for my FSX. Is O&O a good defrag program? Any other highly recommended ones? Thanks.

Windows has defrag built in. You can also set it up to run on a schedule. You will see the biggest difference by switching to SSD's if you haven't yet.

Windows has defrag built in. You can also set it up to run on a schedule. You will see the biggest difference by switching to SSD's if you haven't yet.

Go to a drives properties, defrag is under Tools. If you do get an SSD, never ever defrag it, in case you didn't know.

Edit: more RAM can help with the pauses, although stuttering during target hits is a known issue (lots of smoke, fire, particle effects causes it).

Before investing in O&O I would take the money and get a SSD.

O&O aint bad, it does a good job but for gamers you would need to identify the game folder(s) and tell O&O to move them to the fastest part of the HD. It won't do that by default.

Other than that, get a SSD and forget about defrag, best way to fight any bottlenecks that originate from hard drive data shuffle.

Bit

If you are sitting in the pit and shooting stuff your HDD (theoretically) is no longer being used. Everything needed by the application (world database, mods etc..) are loaded into RAM by the time you start flying. Any heavy HDD activity during flight is either another app on your machine or lack of RAM resulting in the app having to swap data to and fro your HDD/memory (assuming you don't have any 3rdparty DCS mod's/scripts that are dumping data etc.. to disk).

Defrag helps load times but once you've done it once I wouldn't expect any further need to (from the game perspective) to do it again The vast majority of the load time is the world database and your mods, if they don't change regularly then they are unlikely to drift into a fragmented state. SSD's help with load time only, in game they have no effect on performance.

How much ram do you have? If its under at least 6 that could be why and no amount of degragmentation will change that.

Go to a drives properties, defrag is under Tools. If you do get an SSD, never ever defrag it, in case you didn't know.

 

Edit: more RAM can help with the pauses, although stuttering during target hits is a known issue (lots of smoke, fire, particle effects causes it).

Why not to defrag an SSD?

Why not to defrag an SSD?

Stupid-Silly-Drives will break or have issues,Save your moeny and stick with a HDD drive.

The diffrence some "Claim" is Silly,when there actually IS A diffrence (which is rare) its only 1-3frames tops. Cause most comparisons done by "Experts"(aka bloggers) they compare drives from 5 years ago.

Actual advice other than what youll see from people who spend 2000$ or more on "Gaming" Pcs

-Use the Defrag Tool to see if your computer needs to be Defragged

-Use Disk Cleanup to Remove unwanted Temp Files ECT

-Make sure your startup is Clear of unwanted programs (WindowsKey+R) (Type msconfig)(then click STARTUP and uncheck anything you dont want starting when you turn on your PC)

-Make sure Nothing is Running while you are playing(something might try downloading while your playing for example)

-Depending on your RAM (I didnt have the Stuttering when I had 2 GB of RAM) might want to grab a Stick

-Tinker with the Graphic Settings inGAME, Drop them all to LOWEST (TEMP) to see if the Stuttering is still there even at lowest settings, To Determan if its the GAME or your PC stuttering(Games can sometimes do that)

-Clean out your PC of DUST,And I mean,Take the Case off, Take the Graphic's Card Out (Asuming it isnt built-in) Blow Fans out, Blow everything out.

-Make sure your computer isnt overheating.(Fans dont have to be screaming for it to be over heating)

If you posted a quick spec of your computer for example like tis

Windows 7

4GB RAM

Nvidia Geforce GTS 240

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.99ghz

Might be able to help ya out a tad more after you tried everything above.

Also dont listen to people who say " your computer sucks you need to get a new one" most of them take their computers to geek squad when firefox stops working :lol: Happy Flying,and Get back to us on whats goin on.

Why not to defrag an SSD?

Because solid state drives avoid wearing themselves out by deliberately fragmenting data to avoid recalling from the same areas of the drive over and over. The recall is so fast that the issues of fragmentation are nonexistent compared to a mechanical drive.

+1 for SSD.

Drastically faster loading of Windows and all applications (including, but not limited to, DCS), plus it got rid of the in-game stutters for me.

You can also keep your old HDD and either use it as a backup-drive or store everything on it that doesn't fit onto the SSD so that you get the best of both worlds. :thumbup:

When data is written to an SSD it is scattered across the memory chips, in a sense it is very fragmented but this doesn't affect it's performance, unlike a traditional HDD. Defragging an SSD can reduce it's lifespan, as they have limited write cycles.

@Soulres: Installing an SSD is not about improving frame rates, and I never said it was, it improves load speeds and disk access times; this can reduce pausing and stuttering caused by disk access in-game. As I mentioned, extra RAM also helps.

Sure, you don't need an SSD but when you see your PC boot up in under 20 seconds instead of over a minute, you'll never look back!

e.g. Windows 8.1 booting time with an SSD is around 8 seconds. With a normal HDD it was along the lines of 90 seconds for me. Similar thing in DCS as well.

My old Windows 7 installation was pretty quick on HDD. Booting it and loading programs beat all other PCs I had access to at work, even though some of them were nominally much faster.

I then installed the same Windows 7 to an SSD and it was even quicker.

But I didn't realize just how much quicker it was until I later reinstalled the old HDD and bootet from it for the sake of comparison. Oh boy, if this SSD crashes, I'll get a new one right away. There's just no substitute for SSDs right now! :thumbup:

(I still have an HDD for data and for other game installations and wouldn't miss it; large SSDs are still too expensive to replace HDDs altogether IMO, but for OS and important applications, they're the way to go!)

Okay, heres my point of view to defragmentation.

In all the years of gaming and heavy computer use i maybe defrag'd TWICE. I survived without issues. :D

SSD's bring no frame rate increases.

They are however WAY faster in loading and access times, the difference is like day and night. Once you go SSD you wont go back.

Of all the other sims I have, RoF, X-Plane & BoS. DCS is the one that showed the most improvement in load times with an SSD. In fact it loads the fastest of all them.

Thanks a lot folks. My PC has quite nice amount of RAM -- 16 Gb. Is that enough for DCS? It is an ASUS ROG, an I7 with OC to 4 Ghz I think. By right such config shouldn't encounter much stuttering (not that there are much, only occasionally). Not much else on PC, mostly flight sim stuff. Using Norton IS.

Thing is during those brief pauses, I could sometimes actually hear the hard disk reading something. With 16 Gb RAM, by right everything should have been pre-load into the RAM, no?

Hope to get the right deserving juice out of my PC.

With 16Gb of ram you could turn off page filing. I have it turned off with only 8 Gb and never run out of memory. My 4Gb laptop will run out of memory sometimes when I play CS:GO.

You might want to try disabling Norton, as it's a memory hog, to see if that helps. Windows 7 and 8 have built in anti-virus that doesn't take many CPU cycles to run. I haven't used a 3rd party anti-virus since XP.

You should have about 50-60 processes running on your system. If you have more then you have to much bloatware running.

Download ccleaner to check for and disable any unnecessary programs from starting that might be hogging resources.

smartdefrag is a good free defrag utility that is better than the Windows one and has a drive map as well.

With 16Gb of ram you could turn off page filing. I have it turned off with only 8 Gb and never run out of memory. My 4Gb laptop will run out of memory sometimes when I play CS:GO.

You might want to try disabling Norton, as it's a memory hog, to see if that helps. Windows 7 and 8 have built in anti-virus that doesn't take many CPU cycles to run. I haven't used a 3rd party anti-virus since XP.

You should have about 50-60 processes running on your system. If you have more then you have to much bloatware running.

Download ccleaner to check for and disable any unnecessary programs from starting that might be hogging resources.

smartdefrag is a good free defrag utility that is better than the Windows one and has a drive map as well.

Thanks there. I read up on disabling pagefiling and see there is much against doing so, something about making system unstable. Is it so? I'll certainly give it a try though.

As for Norton, there is a mode that keeps it to a minimum when other full-window apps are running. So I think having Norton should be okay.

Thanks.

Just out of interest, during the moments of stuttering etc.., do you have the TGP or MAV views showing on your CDU(s)? One trick that I do (because I have a very low spec graphics card), is to flip my CDU over to a text only display (for example Waypoint view) when I've launched/dropped a missile or bomb. I find that my system simply can't render the main view and TGP/MAV view at the same time when there's a lot of activity going on. As soon as I flip the TGP/MAV views off my framerate greatly improves. I then quickly flip between a TGP view and WAYPOINT view just to get SA on the target etc..

You can safely turn off Pagefile with 16GB RAM, unless you are a power user that uses software that uses that much RAM ( VMware, Rendering SW, Maya, CAD etc.. ).

If you would use such progs I am sure you would know about it. Give it a try.

If you get into trouble, enable it but set it's size to a fixed upper and lower limit that are identical, like 4096 upper & lower limit. That eliminates the resizing and gains some cycles on CPU and HD.

Bit

SSD's bring no frame rate increases.

This is not true. Well, it depends on your definition of "frame rate". If you define fps as an average frames per second over a given interval, then a SSD could (and in most times will) improve fps. That's because any stutter will reduce the fps at this moment to 0 fps and the average fps per second (averaged over a interval greater than a second) will drop.

If you define fps as an average over an interval excluding stutter or over a single large interval, then a SSD will not improve fps (or at least not much). But's thats not a definition that does make any sense for a player.

The most useful definition of frame rate in a simulation would be the minimal average fps for a short given interval (a few seconds or less) measured over a couple of those intervals (several minutes or more in total). And any stutter in one of those intervals will decrease fps drastically then.

I have played DCS without a SSD at first. And ever then and now there was stutter. It was quite annoying and I have noticed hard disk access at every stutter. After installing DCS on a SSD the stutter was gone COMPLETELY.

This is not true. Well, it depends on your definition of "frame rate". If you define fps as an average frames per second over a given interval, then a SSD could (and in most times will) improve fps. That's because any stutter will reduce the fps at this moment to 0 fps and the average fps per second (averaged over a interval greater than a second) will drop.

 

If you define fps as an average over an interval excluding stutter or over a single large interval, then a SSD will not improve fps (or at least not much). But's thats not a definition that does make any sense for a player.

 

The most useful definition of frame rate in a simulation would be the minimal average fps for a short given interval (a few seconds or less) measured over a couple of those intervals (several minutes or more in total). And any stutter in one of those intervals will decrease fps drastically then.

 

I have played DCS without a SSD at first. And ever then and now there was stutter. It was quite annoying and I have noticed hard disk access at every stutter. After installing DCS on a SSD the stutter was gone COMPLETELY.

Then you have too little memory in your computer or some other problem, there is no framerate increase (or decrease) from switching between hard drives.

Thanks there. Will give some of the suggestion here a try.

I did try though turning off pagefile but didn't seem to help much. Also tried setting minimum to 1000 and max to 2000, and the result seemed the same.

And I thought with my config I should have no problem having smooth play throughout instead of the occasional micro-stutter. But I must say in between those stutters, my frame rate is generally very smooth.

Currently no plan on switching to SSD though.

your issue is the overclocked cpu. and the settings used to make an overclocked cpu stable. the gpu is overclocked too?

the original Q. was how much does defragging help. and the answer is not much after the first run of a defragging program (they all do the same thing)

once the files are put in a sequential position on the drive there is not reason to do it again. fragmentation only going to happen with windows elements after that.

Defrag never does anything.

Assuming you are computer-savvy enough to come here.

On an SSD it does even closer to absolutely nothing... absolutely nothinger.

Slight stutter is usually because of memory issues or maybe because you have an archaic HDD.

your issue is the overclocked cpu. and the settings used to make an overclocked cpu stable. the gpu is overclocked too?

 

the original Q. was how much does defragging help. and the answer is not much after the first run of a defragging program (they all do the same thing)

once the files are put in a sequential position on the drive there is not reason to do it again. fragmentation only going to happen with windows elements after that.

I only overclocked the cpu not the gpu. And I thought OC cpu is supposed to help. Didn't know it could be an issue.