Best settings for gaming

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Dietrich
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Best settings for gaming

Post by Dietrich »

Hi

I am using a caching setup with Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250GB and a 2TB hard drive. This drive is only used for gaming and I'm mostly playing the same game. What are the optimal settings for the caching setup?

These are my current settings. When gaming with these setting i already have 15.5gb/16gb ram usage. Should i change the block size? Add a lvl cache? Add write?

PrimoCache Cache Configuration
------------------------------------
Level-1 Cache: 0MB
Level-2 Cache: 238398MB
R/W Ratio: R 100%, W 0%
Gather Interval: DEFAULT
Options: -
Block Size: 32KB
Defer-Write: Disabled
Prefetch: Disabled
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Support
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Re: Best settings for gaming

Post by Support »

You system RAM is not sufficient when gaming, so don't add a Level-1 cache.

You may also check the value of memory overhead in PrimoCache status with current configuration. If memory overhead is quite a lot, you may increase block size to reduce memory overhead, thus giving more RAM back to system.

Since there is no L1 cache, defer-write is also not needed. Using L2 with defer-write may wear the SSD too much, so usually it is not recommended.
janusz521
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Re: Best settings for gaming

Post by janusz521 »

A game taking close to 16GB of RAM is rather unusual. A big MMO I play right now consumes around 2GB of RAM and was being played comfortably (kinda) before the upgrade on a system with the total of 8GB of RAM.

Try running your game without any cache and related memory overhead, a 256GB SSD should be enough to host Windows and the game. Any memory you save this way you could use for L1 cache.
Dietrich
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Re: Best settings for gaming

Post by Dietrich »

Hi, thanks for the info. I changed it to 64kb block size.

I was playing Call of Duty Warzone on max settings with discord, and warzone was using up to 7.2gb ram when checking. Warzone also doesnt fit on a 256gb ssd anymore... For games only i dont think a lvl 1 cache is useful.
Windows is already installed on an ssd.
janusz521
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Re: Best settings for gaming

Post by janusz521 »

I see lot of speedup using L1 cache with a MMO being conservative in memory usage and performing a lot of zone loadings. But it may be different if a game is already optimized for big RAM and preloads everything it needs. In your case you may still look for a balance between L2 cache size and the RAM used to handle it by decreasing the size of the L2 cache. I suppose you could use a smaller cache partition, like 64 GB. It still should be quite generous to store the most frequently used parts of the game.
Dietrich
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Re: Best settings for gaming

Post by Dietrich »

Thanks, I'll look into it! Depending on the game i'm playing most, I can change some settings. Warzone has extreme usage of everything, like storage and RAM. But when playing other games I can definitely see the advantages of using an L1 cache.
Before games got so huge is played a lot of games with a RAMCache software.
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Jaga
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Re: Best settings for gaming

Post by Jaga »

A L1 cache is fine for gaming, and in fact highly advantageous (even with really large games). It tries to keep the most used blocks in at all times, and (if the game is large enough and you use a L2 also), keeps the most used blocks in the fastest cache.

I'm currently re-playing Borderlands 2 with all DLC, and my save/load times are nearly instantaneous compared to most of the YT'ers if I'm farming something. I use a 30GB L1 and no L2. If I was playing a rather large MMO, I'd probably drop on a NVMe as a L2 and give it ~128GB to use.

Your RAM for gaming + caching is what's small. My gaming rig has 64GB on it currently. I'd never build a new rig with less than 16GB in it, and for gaming I'd recommend 32GB to my hardcore clients.
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