Frame Rates Issue

[LabRat]

how full do drives need to get before they can't process information at a quick enough pace? I see a lot of information on your HD. when was the last clean up and defragg?

 

did you shut down all you need to inre to the ssd? (page file, etc. )google it

[tmlhalo]

I downloaded CrystalDiskMark and ran a couple tests. CDM did recognize them as two separate drives, so at least I have some kind of data that isolates them. Here's what I got.

2015-01-04_1939.png2015-01-04_1954.png

Crystal disk is a little bit less precise. It is basically just showing averages of the test. There is also the 4k random read / write numbers but those are normal for both drives. How many bad sectors were found?

[DevilishBooster]

how full do drives need to get before they can't process information at a quick enough pace? I see a lot of information on your HD. when was the last clean up and defragg?

 

did you shut down all you need to inre to the ssd? (page file, etc. )google it

This is a brand new PC that has been running for about 3 weeks, and the Black^2 came straight out of the box new. For the HDD portion it would have to be reeeeally full before it could start affecting performance. The SSD isn't normally that full, it just has the game installed on it last night to test. And yes, I have shut off all the processes that i can. Only the OS and core programs are running. I just got done playing DA:O (the game I reinstalled onto the SSD portion last night) for about and hour and half, and the only times I noticed any skipping/freezing was when it was writing a save game file, as would be expected. For comparison I tried playing COD Ghosts (which is installed on the HDD portion) for about a half hour and it was doing the normal frame rate freezing/stuttering, so I'm pretty sure the really slow read times on the HDD portion are what is causing the problem. Thoughts?

[DevilishBooster]

Crystal disk is a little bit less precise. It is basically just showing averages of the test. There is also the 4k random read / write numbers but those are normal for both drives. How many bad sectors were found?

On the one error check I have run, just the one bad sector, but it looks like it was towards the beginning of the HDD part. I'm guessing here since they show up as one drive, but it was just a little over 120GB into the scan.

I'm going to run a second error scan tonight.

[LabRat]

scrap the HD. I think a lot of the better sites will let you make small payments over a span of 6mo's or more (depending$) so you should be able too get a 512 drive quite easily. Maybe even bigger if you have the funds. we already know the drive was bad from the factory.

 

the full drive thing. for some rrason I was looking at the upper section of the last set of pics you posted and pulled it off of there.

 

read.......... http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wincert.net%2Ftips%2Fmicrosoft-windows%2Fwindows-7%2F3158-best-practices-for-ssd-disks-on-windows-7&ei=GhCqVO7yKZLOgwT7n4PADg&usg=AFQjCNEGEDk40ld_99v0t8_ZuEucsXVdLQ&bvm=bv.82001339,d.eXY&cad=rja

[DevilishBooster]

scrap the HD. I think a lot of the better sites will let you make small payments over a span of 6mo's or more (depending$) so you should be able too get a 512 drive quite easily. Maybe even bigger if you have the funds. we already know the drive was bad from the factory.

 

the full drive thing. for some rrason I was looking at the upper section of the last set of pics you posted and pulled it off of there.

 

read.......... http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wincert.net%2Ftips%2Fmicrosoft-windows%2Fwindows-7%2F3158-best-practices-for-ssd-disks-on-windows-7&ei=GhCqVO7yKZLOgwT7n4PADg&usg=AFQjCNEGEDk40ld_99v0t8_ZuEucsXVdLQ&bvm=bv.82001339,d.eXY&cad=rja

I looked at that article, but I have Win 8.1 Pro. At this point the WD hard drive is the only thing that makes sense to me because, after all the testing/troubleshooting we've been doing, I think the graphics card is fine and that it's the HDD not being able to send data fast enough due to it's slow read rate. I'm going to have to look at my finances to see what I can afford. If you have any sites (besides NewEgg or Amazon) that you know usually have good deals and let you finance, let me know. Since it's going to take awhile to get new SSDs and get everything transferred over, I'm going to mark this as solved. If I have the same issue after switching then I'll post a new one. I added you as a friend for easy comms in the future. :-) Thanks for all your help!

[tmlhalo]

This is a brand new PC that has been running for about 3 weeks, and the Black^2 came straight out of the box new. For the HDD portion it would have to be reeeeally full before it could start affecting performance. The SSD isn't normally that full, it just has the game installed on it last night to test. And yes, I have shut off all the processes that i can. Only the OS and core programs are running. I just got done playing DA:O (the game I reinstalled onto the SSD portion last night) for about and hour and half, and the only times I noticed any skipping/freezing was when it was writing a save game file, as would be expected. For comparison I tried playing COD Ghosts (which is installed on the HDD portion) for about a half hour and it was doing the normal frame rate freezing/stuttering, so I'm pretty sure the really slow read times on the HDD portion are what is causing the problem. Thoughts?

Yeah, the mechanical portion of the hard drive is defective. I'd personally go for a refund and pick up two separate drives. They will cost you about the same but can get better quality from both.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/QMwGXL (newegg shows the Black^2 at $144, so going by that price for my estimate).

[tmlhalo]

I looked at that article, but I have Win 8.1 Pro. At this point the WD hard drive is the only thing that makes sense to me because, after all the testing/troubleshooting we've been doing, I think the graphics card is fine and that it's the HDD not being able to send data fast enough due to it's slow read rate. I'm going to have to look at my finances to see what I can afford. If you have any sites (besides NewEgg or Amazon) that you know usually have good deals and let you finance, let me know. Since it's going to take awhile to get new SSDs and get everything transferred over, I'm going to mark this as solved. If I have the same issue after switching then I'll post a new one. I added you as a friend for easy comms in the future. :-) Thanks for all your help!

On the side note, since it sucks to be without a PC between drives. If you have a DVD drive or a 4 GB+ USB drive I recommend burning yourself a copy of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit onto it. You should be able to still use the PC by booting to it. Instructions here: 

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

It is similar to Windows so it shouldn't be too hard to use and it'll work for browsing the web and flash games. Just install the restricted extras. When it boots there is an option to run a Live CD / trail without the need to install.

[LabRat]

I looked at that article, but I have Win 8.1 Pro. At this point the WD hard drive is the only thing that makes sense to me because, after all the testing/troubleshooting we've been doing, I think the graphics card is fine and that it's the HDD not being able to send data fast enough due to it's slow read rate. I'm going to have to look at my finances to see what I can afford. If you have any sites (besides NewEgg or Amazon) that you know usually have good deals and let you finance, let me know. Since it's going to take awhile to get new SSDs and get everything transferred over, I'm going to mark this as solved. If I have the same issue after switching then I'll post a new one. I added you as a friend for easy comms in the future. :-) Thanks for all your help!

 come back to this thread and let us know what happens. don't start a new one or we'll never know what the heck you're refering to. LOL.... yup, usually newegg here. get treated good there. Even got to do some eggspert review stuff. was nice for a while. thanks for the friend thing and good luck.

 

also, the thing above about 2 drives. might be a decent idea if you're in to raiding... but I like the snappiness of the ssd any more.

[DevilishBooster]

On the side note, since it sucks to be without a PC between drives. If you have a DVD drive or a 4 GB+ USB drive I recommend burning yourself a copy of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit onto it. You should be able to still use the PC by booting to it. Instructions here: 

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

It is similar to Windows so it shouldn't be too hard to use and it'll work for browsing the web and flash games. Just install the restricted extras. When it boots there is an option to run a Live CD / trail without the need to install.

Thanks, I'll give that a try. :-) My mobo has an m.2 drive slot, so I'm thinking about throwing a ~250gb drive there for the OS and core programs, and then having regular SSDs for games and mass storage. 

[DevilishBooster]

Well, I decided to go with an Intel 530 Series 180GB m.2 drive for the OS/core programs, and for now I'm going to run two Crucial M550 256GB in RAID 0 for storage. 

[tmlhalo]

Well, I decided to go with an Intel 530 Series 180GB m.2 drive for the OS/core programs, and for now I'm going to run two Crucial M550 256GB in RAID 0 for storage. 

Nice, everything working good?

[DevilishBooster]

Nice, everything working good?

I'm still waiting for them to arrive (I ordered from NewEgg). I should have everything switched over by end of day Tuesday.

[LabRat]

should be a screamer.

[DevilishBooster]

should be a screamer.

Giggity!

[CDHoward]

Interested to hear the outcome of this.

[DevilishBooster]

Alright, the m.2 drive just arrived! I'll post an update with test results as soon as I get everything back up on the new drives. Wish me luck...

[DevilishBooster]

@tmlhalo @LabRat

OK, new speed bump. I put in the Intel 500 Series m.2 SSD, installed the OS and made sure all the drivers up to date. I connected the two Crucial M550 256GB SSDs, set the SATA to RAID in the UEFI, then went into the RAID utility and set the to drives to be a RAID 0 VD. The problem now is that nothing is showing up in Disc Management so I can't create a stripped array to use for Steam/games. The only way that anything shows up in Disc Management is if I set the SATA in UEFI to AHCI. But if I do that I can't create a stripped array because it says that security is enabled on the partitions. Any ideas? I'm in new water here and I have to crash because I've been up for almost 20 hours. Thanks.

[tmlhalo]

@tmlhalo @LabRat

OK, new speed bump. I put in the Intel 500 Series m.2 SSD, installed the OS and made sure all the drivers up to date. I connected the two Crucial M550 256GB SSDs, set the SATA to RAID in the UEFI, then went into the RAID utility and set the to drives to be a RAID 0 VD. The problem now is that nothing is showing up in Disc Management so I can't create a stripped array to use for Steam/games. The only way that anything shows up in Disc Management is if I set the SATA in UEFI to AHCI. But if I do that I can't create a stripped array because it says that security is enabled on the partitions. Any ideas? I'm in new water here and I have to crash because I've been up for almost 20 hours. Thanks.

I was about to type check Intel Rapid Storage but caught myself. Just woke up. Check the SATA utility for your motherboard. Number 4 here:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty%20990FX%20Killer/?cat=Download&os=Win8a64

Here is the motherboard manual for using the RAID utility, page 19 on 2.7,

ftp://66.226.78.21/manual/raid/Fatal1ty%20990FX%20Killer/English.pdf

I would skim through it to see if you missed anything. Ignore the stuff about installing Windows onto the array and loading the driver while in installation.

[DevilishBooster]

I was about to type check Intel Rapid Storage but caught myself. Just woke up. Check the SATA utility for your motherboard. Number 4 here:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty%20990FX%20Killer/?cat=Download&os=Win8a64

Here is the motherboard manual for using the RAID utility, page 19 on 2.7,

ftp://66.226.78.21/manual/raid/Fatal1ty%20990FX%20Killer/English.pdf

I would skim through it to see if you missed anything. Ignore the stuff about installing Windows onto the array and loading the driver while in installation.

Thanks @tmlhalo! There was no documentation like that included with my mobo, and I must have missed it while searching the ASRock website. I already installed the RAIDXpert Utility, but nothing showed up so I used the boot menu. I just re-installed it (again, lol) and now it's showing up in the Start menu, so I'll try again with the proper procedure. 

[Rohit Jackdaw]

Just out of curiosity, I set the GC fans and case fans all to 100% and tried running Dragon Age Origins again while logging with GPU-Z. I have two 120mm fans in the front of my case and the single rear 120mm fan. As shown in the logs, the GPU never got over 46C and I still had the issue of the frame rates freezing/stuttering at least 7 times in about 3-4 minutes of playing. The VDDC stays constant at about 1.25V, but by looking at the log data you can see that the Amps and Watts both dip down like in the other tests.

DAO Max Fans GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt

An AMD GPU with whatever fan speed might not be running at 46C while playing games. I doubt a CPU bottleneck.

[DevilishBooster]

I was about to type check Intel Rapid Storage but caught myself. Just woke up. Check the SATA utility for your motherboard. Number 4 here:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty%20990FX%20Killer/?cat=Download&os=Win8a64

Here is the motherboard manual for using the RAID utility, page 19 on 2.7,

ftp://66.226.78.21/manual/raid/Fatal1ty%20990FX%20Killer/English.pdf

I would skim through it to see if you missed anything. Ignore the stuff about installing Windows onto the array and loading the driver while in installation.

Alright, after reading through that PDF, I tried using their method and the RAIDXpert utility doesn't even work. Some quick research online supports this conclusion. I have now managed to convert the SSDs to Dynamic and combine them into a single drive. Turns out I had to set the UEFI back to AHCI, then in Disk Management I set the drives to MBR instead of GPT (I lost more capacity than if they were in GPT, but whatever). Once I did that then it set them to a striped array and formatted them, and now they show up as a single drive in "This PC" with a total capacity of 476GB. Seems to be solved now. I'm going to run some tests, then install steam and a couple games to test it out.

[tmlhalo]

Alright, after reading through that PDF, I tried using their method and the RAIDXpert utility doesn't even work. Some quick research online supports this conclusion. I have now managed to convert the SSDs to Dynamic and combine them into a single drive. Turns out I had to set the UEFI back to AHCI, then in Disk Management I set the drives to MBR instead of GPT (I lost more capacity than if they were in GPT, but whatever). Once I did that then it set them to a striped array and formatted them, and now they show up as a single drive in "This PC" with a total capacity of 476GB. Seems to be solved now. I'm going to run some tests, then install steam and a couple games to test it out.

Glad to hear you got it working. How are the games running? Issues are gone?

[DevilishBooster]

Glad to hear you got it working. How are the games running? Issues are gone?

I've been focusing on getting important files transferred and resetting system settings, but I was able to get one game installed that had significant issues with freezing/stuttering (SW-KOTOR). It's an older game so I felt it would be a good test as it should not have been freezing even on the WD Black2 drive. Initial results seem to show that the problem has been fixed, so I'm confident in saying that the issue was the HDD portion of the Black2. I will post a second update and (hopefully) mark this as solved once I am able to install a couple more games and run real tests. Here are the HDTune results I got immediately after getting the drive set up and the OS installed.

This is the Intel 530 Series m.2 that holds the OS and core programs.

These are the two Crucial M550 SSDs holding the games/higher demand programs.

And this is a WD Black HDD I'm using for file storage since I don't need lightning fast access for Word and Music.

[tmlhalo]

I've been focusing on getting important files transferred and resetting system settings, but I was able to get one game installed that had significant issues with freezing/stuttering (SW-KOTOR). It's an older game so I felt it would be a good test as it should not have been freezing even on the WD Black2 drive. Initial results seem to show that the problem has been fixed, so I'm confident in saying that the issue was the HDD portion of the Black2. I will post a second update and (hopefully) mark this as solved once I am able to install a couple more games and run real tests. Here are the HDTune results I got immediately after getting the drive set up and the OS installed.

This is the Intel 530 Series m.2 that holds the OS and core programs.

2015-01-13_2100.png

These are the two Crucial M550 SSDs holding the games/higher demand programs.

2015-01-13_2105.png2015-01-13_2118.png

And this is a WD Black HDD I'm using for file storage since I don't need lightning fast access for Word and Music.

2015-01-13_2123.png

Everything looks right by the charts. Access times are low. Transfer rate is sitting above 200 MB/s for the SSDs. As you can see in your 2.5 5400 rpm WD 640 GB drive it doesn't have those extreme dips like the WD Black^2 did. Some part of that Black^2 was defective. Glad to hear the SW KOTOR tests turned out good. If you have any free roam open world games they usually are the most demanding for dynamically loading parts of the map. Though 99.99999% positive the issue is fixed.