Anyone playing Subnautica on a regular non SSD hard disk and don't have / can't use an SSD, try this

0x6A7232

Just a crazy idea, but it can't hurt.

First off, defragment your hard disk.

Right click your steam\steamapps\Common\Subnautica folder, hit properties. Then click "Advanced" (some may not have to click Advanced, if the following option is right there).

Check 'compress this folder to save space' and click 'apply to this folder, files, and subfolders'

After finish, defrag the hard disk again.

* Does this decrease load time or increase it? By how much?
* Does this decrease pop-in and stuttering? By how much?

If you don't like the results, removal is the reverse of the installation. (Uncheck 'compress this drive...' and apply to all subdirectories.) Defrag again.

If this worked, it is because you can transfer compressed data faster than uncompressed data, (drive head can only read so many sectors a second, and compressing stores more data per sector) and your processor was fast enough to keep up with the decompression load.

If this didn't work, it means that even though you can transfer more data per second from the hard disk, your processor couldn't handle the load of decompression fast enough to net you an increase in performance.

Let me know your results!

cdaragorn

An interesting idea, but my guess is that this has almost zero chance of speeding anything up.

The main problem trying to decompress the stream of data isn't actually the processor. It's all the memory allocations. What little compression might get you will almost certainly be lost by having to allocate memory for it twice and of course make the effort to decompress it.

Still, I would be intrigued to see the results.

0x6A7232

Updated OP, apparently the compression option is under the "Advanced" button unless you're compressing the entire drive.

And @cdaragorn you wouldn't have to allocate memory twice AFAIK, as, when uncompressed, it is stored in system memory uncompressed. When compressed, it is read, uncompressed into system memory, and stored uncompressed.

Fun fact: and, if you're running Windows 10, the system memory is actually dynamically compressed automatically, as it's better to be 'paging' to slower compressed pages of memory than it is to be paging to disk, even paging to an SSD is slower than compressed memory. Plus, then you get that bonus of 'it's already compressed, and can be paged as compressed, transferring faster' See here for a very interesting write-up on that by Ethan Creeger (Program Manager in the Base Platform team, he has been in Windows (and Microsoft) for two years working on the hardware aspects of the Kernel such as ACPI and PCIE)

Tarkannen

I'm wanting to get a SSD to install Subnautica and my games to (Steam and otherwise) just so that it reduces overall usage of my hard drive, and lets the game run faster. I know there will still be lag when changing biomes, but I figure the delay between streaming textures and loading data should be drastically reduced with a SSD.

However there is one thing I would like to ask about: My system, as much as I love it, only has 2 banks for DDR memory and so it can't be increased beyond the system's 4GB upper limit. But when trying to decide on workarounds, I thought of this idea - when I do get a SSD is it possible to change the paging file (virtual memory) for Windows to the SSD? Not only would this allow me to have a massive amount of space for virtual memory, but it would drastically improve the load/unload time of data since it's no longer restricted to the limits of a physical drive. Is this possible, and if so would it help things out any?

0x6A7232

Tarkannen wrote: »

I'm wanting to get a SSD to install Subnautica and my games to (Steam and otherwise) just so that it reduces overall usage of my hard drive, and lets the game run faster. I know there will still be lag when changing biomes, but I figure the delay between streaming textures and loading data should be drastically reduced with a SSD.

However there is one thing I would like to ask about: My system, as much as I love it, only has 2 banks for DDR memory and so it can't be increased beyond the system's 4GB upper limit. But when trying to decide on workarounds, I thought of this idea - when I do get a SSD is it possible to change the paging file (virtual memory) for Windows to the SSD? Not only would this allow me to have a massive amount of space for virtual memory, but it would drastically improve the load/unload time of data since it's no longer restricted to the limits of a physical drive. Is this possible, and if so would it help things out any?

Yes, but you'll want to install Windows to the SSD as well. Why? 5-10 second boot times. Not just 'showing the desktop but can't open anything', either. 5-10 seconds to hitting the ground running. You'll never go back. I use a 250GB SSD, and only install a few games to it + Windows. A lot of games don't really need it (RTS for example). But you can always spring for a 512GB SSD.

Good drives:

Samsung 850 EVO (or Pro, but $$$) <- Samsung is faster
Mushkin ECO3 <- Mushkin is cheaper

I have both an 850 EVO (desktop) and ECO3 (two laptops), so I did some research on them.

EDIT: I forgot to say, if you install Windows to the SSD, of course it will put the pagefile on there, as well.