Best settings - please recommend.

[Prophet]

Hello. Been playing with FancyCache for a few days. Even got more RAM to see what I can make happen. I want to get the best overall performance. I mainly use the machine for gaming but also do some video editing from time to time along with general use.

Specs
i7 2600K @ 4.8 Ghz
32 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600
SLI GTX 680's (pretty sure this does not matter, but it's here in case)
Asus Maximus IV Extreme (P67)
60GB OCZ Vertex 2
500GB x2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (RAID 0)

Currently I have a 10 GB cache for each drive/volume. So, two in total.

For the SSD

16KB, read/write, LFU-R, Defer ON 20 sec, no L2

RAID HDD

256KB, read/write, LFU-R, Defer ON 20 sec, Overcome C1 ON, L2 off.

Thinking about getting a couple USB3 flash drives to use for L2, but have not done it yet.

Is this good, or should I look at some changes? Thanks in advance!

[Prophet]

over 30 views, but no help? I guess the settings I have are good enough?

[scooper22]

I have a 128 GB SSD and a 2 TB HDD. OS and Programs are on the SSD and bulk data and stuff is on the HDD.

Previously all was on the HDD and then I ran this setup (For Disc version):
Block size 4KB, Cache Size: 2048 MB, read/write, Refer Write with 1h Latency

Now with the SSD installed i fully deactivated the HDD-caching (access patterns are typically slow and seldom, therefore no need to cache) and for the SSD:
Block size 4KB, Cache Size: 512 MB, write only, Refer Write with 1h Latency

Reading from a SSD is fast enough, no need to cache reads. Write caching is interesting for SSDs because writing is 1. slower and 2. minimizing write accesses on a SSD is a good thing.
Enabling Read/Write caching however would thrash the cache by read accesses, forcing write of the cached data and therefore unnececcary writes to the disk.
Because of these reasons I enabled only write caching.
The reason I use a very small cache size is not not enough memory (have enough) but because I only have a write-only caching strategy on the SSD, so I can buffer up to half a gig writes to the SSD, which is fully sufficient for a system drive that gets mostly read.

Also having a RAMDisk to hold your temp files (browser, etc.) is a good thing as access is blazing fast and neither SSD/HDD are accessed which helps preventing drive thrashing and no write accesses with throw-away-files at all.

HTH,
scooper

[Prophet]

Interesting. My setup has the OS and a few others on the SSD but my games and other large files on the two disk RAID 0 setup. So, I access the HDD more often, especially gaming. I will tweak things a bit based on your settings and see what happens. But my needs are a bit different. Thanks for the info though. Gives me more to work with.

Any thing else would be great.

[scooper22]

SSD: OS, Programs, Games
HDD: large files, P2P, Archives, Backups

the SSD is 128 GB (not MB as I wrote, doh), having 32 GB for the OS and programs (currently 50% full with Win 7 x64, MS Office, Libre Office, tons of other stuff) and the rest ~90 GB for games (still more than 80% free)

[Prophet]

I have over 500GB in my steam folder alone. Not really an option to put my games on the SSD.

[Mradr]

I would change the time from 20 to 10 or even 5 sec for the HDD as it seems you will be having a larg amounts of ram. It will also keep your data a bit more safer. As for the SSD, I would use the amount of time that TRIM will kick it to help out (in that case you will have to test out what times work best).

I would not use the L2 in this case either as you have enough ram to hold a larg amount of the cache data. If you do use it, please install a SSD for it or use the SSD already in your system. I would not use a USB flash drive.


Note: at one point your system will be "fast enough for you" that anything "faster" will not be noticed by you unless the system is pushed to its limits every sec of the day (like data centers and server are). Yes, I have a perty close system to yours... the only differents is I only have 16GBs instead of the 32 and a intel ivy b. The only real benfit from a cutomer view would be if you multi-task a lot on programs. For example, I program (compliers), usally have 2 games running so I can play one as the other one loads, and have other programs running mainly because I have 3 screens/desktop space for it all. If you are the normal computer user (meaning you don't have 2+ screens), then you wont need to have that much power at that level. In a way, you can "save" some money and use that money for a better gpu, or get a psu to have power backup for your delay writes (some perty good once for $50-$100 to give you enough power ot shutdown your pc with), or even better a new power supply to have cleaner power for the system (one of them gold + type ones ). I'm sort of joking, but yea at one point there wont be much more you can do to get any better performace with your system. =/

Also note that data is different than cache data. Data is larg and has a lot of overhead that the system needs to turn that data into cache data. Cache data is just the simple base of the data with no information. You can, in a way, have all your data of 500GB into 100GB if the data's cache is small enough. Once FC has some sort of stable caching down, then using the SSD as a cache device instead will benitfit you more than using it as a data drive.

Hope it helps ^^

[Prophet]

Thanks for the info. I already have all the "other things" I could be buying. 1350VA UPS with AVR, dual 680's (can't reall get faster other than adding more), dual screens, gold rated 800 watt PSU. Pretty much the best of the best for the most part. Or close to it.

This is the machine pre 32GB of RAM.



I will look at the tweaks you suggested. I can only feel the difference when doing a lot of things at once. Like running a few web browsers and the Creation Kit for Skyrim at the same time. I have noticed that the searching for items is far faster in the creation kit. Seems to be caching something for that and loading much more quickly.

[Mradr]

Yea, like I said, at one point you will hit the limit of being fast enough. We're not computers (I hope not yet anyways o.o;?) lol, so a few ms won't be noticed by us.

Nice computer there ^^ Yea it is perty much overkill for anything we have today. Hardware finally outpase software leaving a lot of head room now.

I see you do a lot of seraching then, right? Then may I sugest you also use indexing? Go to start->control panel->Indexing Options->Modify->Add in locations you do a lot of searching in. Windows by default wont cache your total drive for searching request. By adding in the location to this caching software, windows will be able to return the updated list a bit faster to the program (if the program uses os search commands like it should be doing). I know for sc2 it does seem to speed up loading/searching for maps a bit faster with indexing on in that location + FC help loading that data faster in that said location.


lol, I hate to see your power bill bro:)

[Prophet]

It's not to bad. Only around $80-100 a month. That is with the A/C on most of the time. It's a bit lower when the A/C is not needed.