Disk Space

[VoidCosmos]

Does more disk space mean that KSP will run faster? I just cleared a lot of space from my disk. see pic below:

[steuben]

Nope.

There's only two and a quarter things that will make KSP run faster. A faster CPU, counts as one. Moar! ram, counts as three quarters, heavier video card, counts as half.
The Kracken… priceless.

[linuxgurugamer]

An SSD will allow the game to load faster, and, if you have the setting set to write to log file immediately,  will let it run smoother (depending on the system specs).

Disk space by itself will do nothing for the speed.

[VoidCosmos]

So how do I know if I have a fast SSD?

And will this help to increase ram:

https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Pen-Drive-As-RAM

Edited April 29, 2020 by VoidCosmos

[VoidCosmos]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

An SSD will allow the game to load faster, and, if you have the setting set to write to log file immediately,  will let it run smoother (depending on the system specs).

And how do I do this?

[steuben]

You buy one and speed roughly half the day backing stuff up, hunting installation disks, reinstalling everything and putting stuff back. Or buying one slotting it into your machine and moving KSP over to it.

If you're a canuk, my usual source FactoryDirect, has some in stock.

As for using a usbkey for extra ram... never tried it. I've always put it in the neat trick category, and useful if you really have to squeeze something in. IIRC though it moves the swap file up to the key rather than leaving it on one of the hard disks. But you're going to be limited by the transfer rate of the usb port and the key itself.

As for figuring out if you have a fast SSD. SSDs are by nature faster than harddrives by about a factor of 50. So don't worry about figuring out if you have a really fast one. Generally if you have to ask, you don't. To figure out if you have one, assuming Windows the app DFRGUI will tell you.

 

 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, VoidCosmos said:

So how do I know if I have a fast SSD?

And will this help to increase ram:

https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Pen-Drive-As-RAM

Most modern computers don't support this; they have too much internal RAM. And it wouldn't actually increase your system RAM; just speed up the swap file.

4 hours ago, VoidCosmos said:

Does more disk space mean that KSP will run faster? I just cleared a lot of space from my disk. see pic below:

So here's the thing about Disk Space; on traditional HDD's not having enough Disk Space could cause slowdown. This is due both to the fact that the length of the tracks increases as you get further to the edge, and how the controller has to handle the position of existing tracks more and more. But this would be a Whole-System slowdown, and very noticeable outside KSP; another thing is "Fragmentation" on traditional HDD's. See because of how HDD's are physically; if the data it needs to read is not all on one track it slows things down dramatically.

However if you bought this computer in the last few years; i seriously doubt that's an HDD. It's almost as small as a drive i had in a 2005 pentium 4 machine i had for a while, and the cost of HDD's has plummeted so much that even 500GB drives became too expensive to manufacture even 4 years ago compared to 1TB drives. And if it's not an SSD; then none of the above apply. SSD's don't get "Fragmented" in the same way HDD's can, nor do they have a physical head reading physical tracks.

I know it sucks to hear, but there is a point where the only option is new hardware if you want a increase in performance.

[linuxgurugamer]

3 hours ago, steuben said:

You buy one and speed roughly half the day backing stuff up, hunting installation disks, reinstalling everything and putting stuff back. Or buying one slotting it into your machine and moving KSP over to it.

Or you use a migration program which will copy the entire disk over to the ssd.  Quick google search provided the following:

https://www.minitool.com/partition-disk/data-migration-software-008.html

Then it's merely a matter of copying the data,depends on how much data you have on the disk

[VoidCosmos]

Thanks everyone! 

[Curveball Anders]

On 4/29/2020 at 7:29 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Or you use a migration program which will copy the entire disk over to the ssd.  Quick google search provided the following:

https://www.minitool.com/partition-disk/data-migration-software-008.html

Then it's merely a matter of copying the data,depends on how much data you have on the disk

I used that (or actually dd) but with a little twist.

My old hdd was much larger than the ssd so I had to shrink the / partition, create a 'stuff' partition, move stuff, re-shrink, grow, move stuff etc etc etc

Finally I could copy the old / to the ssd, reboot, remove the old / and create links from my new /home to the 'stuff' drive.

 

[VoidCosmos]

This drive is going to be KSP only drive

[jimmymcgoochie]

On 5/1/2020 at 12:11 PM, VoidCosmos said:

This drive is going to be KSP only drive

I did that too, although my PC hard drive is about 900GB so space wasn't an issue. Running KSP off the SSD makes it load substantially faster (about 50% for the same KSP instance) and I also use the SSD as a mod cache for CKAN which should in theory make installing and uninstalling mods faster, although I haven't been bored enough to test that yet...

[VoidCosmos]

Does more VRAM help?

[steuben]

No.

Stock KSP is pretty light when it comes to using video cards. Not sure about the heavier graphics mods though.

 

[VoidCosmos]

Just if needed. I have 4gb of VRAM

[Harry Rhodan]

Maybe you should post your actual specs and describe your problem instead of taking wild guesses at what random thing that you heard somewhere could improve your situation?

[VoidCosmos]

[steuben]

On one box I've got 128 MB, and another 2GB. So you're running better than me. 

Though to flip around Harry's question.

What are you aiming to do with your system and KSP?

[VoidCosmos]

I wanted to just find whether KSP will run with better performance on a disk that has only Kerbal and nothing else.

[Geonovast]

You have a 9 year old low-end CPU and only 4GB of system memory.

You didn't list any specs of your GPU.  Given the rest of your specs, I'm imagining you actually don't have a separate GPU and the 4GB of VRAM you're stating is your system memory.  Is that right?  If not, what graphics card do you have?

[VoidCosmos]

2 hours ago, Geonovast said:

VRAM

It's Virtual Ram that I am talking about. For my 'E Drive', I increased the Virtual Memory to 6 GB

My PC Specs

[Curveball Anders]

58 minutes ago, VoidCosmos said:

It's Virtual Ram that I am talking about. For my 'E Drive', I increased the Virtual Memory to 6 GB

My PC Specs

Virtual Ram won't help you much

Paging ram to/from disk is pure pain, even on an SSD.

Stock KSP, or with very light modding, will run on 4G Ram.
But you'll run into trouble with big ships.

ps.
Microsoft ended their support of Win7, including security updates January 14, 2020.
ds.

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Curveball Anders

[VoidCosmos]

12 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

Stock KSP, or with very light modding, will run on 4G Ram.

I litterly have both of the expansions, Restock and Restock+, scatterer, Eve and OPM and it works like a charm! I usually get about 20-30 or even 60 fps

15 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

Microsoft ended their support of Win7, including security updates January 14, 2020.

I am aware about this

[Harry Rhodan]

1 hour ago, VoidCosmos said:

Memory: 4096MB RAM

Shared Memory: 1632 MB

KSP needs about 4GB of RAM without mods. While you have 4GB installed, your integrated graphics card also uses the RAM. With 1.5GB used for the graphics, you only have 2.5GB left for the game, for Windows and anything else in the background. That's not enough. Windows will try to move the data that doesn't fit onto your hard drive, but as Curveball Anders said, this is incredibly slow and the game will either take forever to load as it doesn't know which part to put where or will simply crash. And you seem to be very keen on using mods, which will make things worse.

The obvious solution is to get more RAM or a dedicated graphics card that won't use your system RAM. Preferably both.

[VoidCosmos]

1 minute ago, Harry Rhodan said:

KSP needs about 4GB of RAM without mods. While you have 4GB installed, your integrated graphics card also uses the RAM. With 1.5GB used for the graphics, you only have 2.5GB left for the game, for Windows and anything else in the background. That's not enough. Windows will try to move the data that doesn't fit onto your hard drive, but as Curveball Anders said, this is incredibly slow and the game will either take forever to load as it doesn't know which part to put where or will simply crash. And you seem to be very keen on using mods, which will make things worse.

The obvious solution is to get more RAM or a dedicated graphics card that won't use your system RAM. Preferably both.

Okay