Im over the Mun :)

[maceemiller]

If this is the wrong place to post then please move

So, after a few years of playing KSP on my C: drive Ive noticed it starting to become sluggish from time to time. Ive been looking at the forum (and other sites) trying to stop the sluggishnes from happening but to no avail. Tried many "fixes" but nothing really worked for me.

Long story short I came across an idea of sticking KSP on a seperate partition on a slimmed-down version on Windows 7 (I tried Linux but epic fail for me).

Wow! I have to say that now KSP is running as smooth as butter, even with a 200 part craft, even on my rubbish laptop :

HP Elitebook 8440p with 8GB RAM, nvidia NVS 3100M, 2.4GHZ CPU

The difference is out of this world if im honest.....I only partitioned 80GB of my HDD to it yet I will only ever use this to play the game. I still cant beautify the game with the likes of EVE or scatterer (rubbish graphics card) but that doesnt matter......the key here is the timer stays on green 99.9% of the time where on my C: it would be on constant yellow even with a single command pod on the launchpad.....

....yes, I understand it could be many things on the C: causing that yet Im always defragging, virus scanning, etc so Im putting it down to background processes (which I have looked into and disabled etc).

For me anyway it has seriously improved my experience on KSP......I recommend this to all players on low-end machines, I can help if you like, but this, for me, is a game changer

 

[Geonovast]

As much as I hate seeing you staying on the dark side, I'm glad you're up and running. 

[Snark]

More of a discussion than a gameplay question, really-- will move it there.

[A_name]

6 hours ago, maceemiller said:

If this is the wrong place to post then please move

So, after a few years of playing KSP on my C: drive Ive noticed it starting to become sluggish from time to time. Ive been looking at the forum (and other sites) trying to stop the sluggishnes from happening but to no avail. Tried many "fixes" but nothing really worked for me.

Long story short I came across an idea of sticking KSP on a seperate partition on a slimmed-down version on Windows 7 (I tried Linux but epic fail for me).

Wow! I have to say that now KSP is running as smooth as butter, even with a 200 part craft, even on my rubbish laptop :

HP Elitebook 8440p with 8GB RAM, nvidia NVS 3100M, 2.4GHZ CPU

The difference is out of this world if im honest.....I only partitioned 80GB of my HDD to it yet I will only ever use this to play the game. I still cant beautify the game with the likes of EVE or scatterer (rubbish graphics card) but that doesnt matter......the key here is the timer stays on green 99.9% of the time where on my C: it would be on constant yellow even with a single command pod on the launchpad.....

....yes, I understand it could be many things on the C: causing that yet Im always defragging, virus scanning, etc so Im putting it down to background processes (which I have looked into and disabled etc).

For me anyway it has seriously improved my experience on KSP......I recommend this to all players on low-end machines, I can help if you like, but this, for me, is a game changer

 

Could you give a quick guide on how to do this?

[Ty Tan Tu]

8 hours ago, maceemiller said:

If this is the wrong place to post then please move

But I don't want to move. Do I have to? Do you know how hard it is to find an affordable apartment in near in SE Portland, OR?

I have thought about installing KSP on a fast USB 3 drive. They are definitely faster then a 7200 mechanical HD. I wished I knew more about how Windows work, but maybe Windows gives the separate volumes equal time, and since KSP is the only process running on the new partition it runs faster? But I am thinking it might have more to do with the slimmed down Windows 7. The fewer background processes running the better. Judging from the experiment with Linux, I am guessing that it is a clean install of Windows 7 and there are far fewer processes running in the background - that seem to grow over time no matter how diligent you are.

It is not a luxury most of us can afford, but it might be interesting to see how KSP runs on a dedicated computer that runs nothing but KSP - sort of like and embedded KSP system. Are there Linux versions out there that are designed for that?

Edited January 5, 2018 by Ty Tan Tu

[Geonovast]

5 minutes ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

I have thought about installing KSP on a fast USB 3 drive. They are definitely faster then a 7200 mechanical HD.

I'm assuming you mean a USB flash drive and not an just an external USB 3.0 Harddrive.  Those are still platen drives unless you specifically find an SSD one.

Either way, I fail to see how USB 3.0 is going to be faster than a 6Gbps SATA connection. 

Disregarding that even, a fast drive will simply help you load the game faster.  KSP is played almost exclusively from RAM.  AFAIK the only drive access is going to be saving/loading games/crafts.

10 minutes ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

but maybe Windows gives the separate volumes equal time, and since KSP is the only process running on the new partition it runs faster?

I'm not sure what you mean by "separate volumes equal time".  It doesn't load both installs when you start the computer.  You pick which one you want.

It's running better because instead of the computer running Windows, KSP, anti-virus, and who knows how many other processes (Since almost all programs installed in Windows for some reason believe they should run when the computer starts), it's only running Windows and KSP.  Of course if you kill as many processes as you can, KSP is going to run better.

13 minutes ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

It is not a luxury most of us can afford, but it might be interesting to see how KSP runs on a dedicated computer that runs nothing but KSP - sort of like and embedded KSP system. Are there Linux versions out there that are designed for that?

Embedded?  You mean like a virtual machine?  That would be worse.  That would be the hardware actually running two operating systems at once, and KSP.  The way @maceemiller has it set up is probably his best bet without spending money on hardware.

 

[Ty Tan Tu]

5 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "separate volumes equal time".  It doesn't load both installs when you start the computer.  You pick which one you want.

I was assuming that the OP divided his HD in two two volumes, a "C:" drive and a "D:". The computer  boots off the C: drive, but KSP is installed on the D: drive. It is still the same physical drive, but I was speculating that maybe the increased performance that maceemiller is obviously experiencing might be due to how Windows allocates time to separate volumes.

My comment to the embedded system has nothing at all to do with virtual machines. Quite the opposite! Instead of running 'Windows' what would happen if you ran 'Window'? An computer system that is designed to only run one program would be powerful. I am sure it can be done. I doubt that NASA and Boeing are running simulators with Apple Tunes and HP print drivers running as a processes in the back ground.

It can be done. But How easy is it for us with limited income? 

You could build a computer based on a Pentium G4560 and NVIDIA GTX 1050 relatively cheaply. And with a Linux operating system dedicated to just KSP, it would kick butt. No internet drivers. No printer drivers. No nothing running in the background. The computer just runs KSP. That was what I was imagining. 

[maceemiller]

4 hours ago, A_name said:

Could you give a quick guide on how to do this?

Im sure I can write something up

[maceemiller]

1 hour ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

I was assuming that the OP divided his HD in two two volumes, a "C:" drive and a "D:". The computer  boots off the C: drive, but KSP is installed on the D: drive. It is still the same physical drive, but I was speculating that maybe the increased performance that maceemiller is obviously experiencing might be due to how Windows allocates time to separate volumes.

My comment to the embedded system has nothing at all to do with virtual machines. Quite the opposite! Instead of running 'Windows' what would happen if you ran 'Window'? An computer system that is designed to only run one program would be powerful. I am sure it can be done. I doubt that NASA and Boeing are running simulators with Apple Tunes and HP print drivers running as a processes in the back ground.

It can be done. But How easy is it for us with limited income? 

You could build a computer based on a Pentium G4560 and NVIDIA GTX 1050 relatively cheaply. And with a Linux operating system dedicated to just KSP, it would kick butt. No internet drivers. No printer drivers. No nothing running in the background. The computer just runs KSP. That was what I was imagining. 

I do have now a C: and a D: drives on one HDD and both have windows 7 on.

My C: drive has a normal version of windows 7 ultimate on and all my everyday stuff on it.

When I switch my laptop on now I choose to boot from D: which has a slim version of windows 7 running only a few processes and KSP.....nothing else....this is my dedicated KSP install now.

[Geonovast]

10 hours ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

Quite the opposite! Instead of running 'Windows' what would happen if you ran 'Window'? An computer system that is designed to only run one program would be powerful

Ahh, I see what you mean now.  That would be pretty neat.

Although, I'm running Linux with an i5-7500 and a GTX 1050Ti.  16GB of DDR4.  Got three monitors hooked up.  Runs KSP beautifully while Firefox is running with a movie playing or Spotify running (Spotify is memory hog.  Usually it uses more RAM than KSP.)  Last night I even had it going while I had Blender up.  I honestly can't say if this is more that I'm running Linux or that this is simply the beefiest computer I've ever had. 

Probably wouldn't take much to run a barebones Linux box just for KSP.  Might not even need the DE for it.

[wumpus]

My experience is that running Linux basically reduces GPU power (typically pixel rendering) by a half, maybe more.  Of course, if you can deal with a launch with your GPU the main issue is the CPU when you try to dock large crafts together.

I'd be more concerned with the OP's "everyday" (non-KSP) windows experience.  I'd be more inclined to recommend dabbling with Linux for that (especially browsing and social media: all that gunk is getting into the machine somehow) if it can be installed into the laptop (anyone who can repartition a hard drive and install a clean windows install should be able to install Linux, perhaps there are particularly incompatible parts in that laptop.  It normally isn't all that hard.)

[Geonovast]

4 minutes ago, wumpus said:

My experience is that running Linux basically reduces GPU power (typically pixel rendering) by a half, maybe more.  Of course, if you can deal with a launch with your GPU the main issue is the CPU when you try to dock large crafts together.

I'd be more concerned with the OP's "everyday" (non-KSP) windows experience.  I'd be more inclined to recommend dabbling with Linux for that (especially browsing and social media: all that gunk is getting into the machine somehow) if it can be installed into the laptop (anyone who can repartition a hard drive and install a clean windows install should be able to install Linux, perhaps there are particularly incompatible parts in that laptop.  It normally isn't all that hard.)

OP did, problem was the GPU

 

[maceemiller]

3 hours ago, Geonovast said:

OP did, problem was the GPU

 

Correct, I did try Linux but I couldnt get it working properly for me however now I know creating a new partition etc works well, I may well create a new small partition and play around with various linux releases to see if I can get one working which im sure will please @Geonovast

Edited January 5, 2018 by maceemiller
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