Bartimaeus

Yeah, but the point I was trying to illustrate is that PNY doesn't give anything with the drive, (also, nothing came with it in the very minimal packaging). Kind of weird - I don't see any way to even get the latest firmware off their website. Could swear they used to have a download for it...

http://www.pny.com/support/technical-support/solid-state-drives/faqs Does my SSD require special drivers? No, the standard drivers for any HDD will support PNY SSD drives as plug and play components, such as those bundled with Windows or MacOS.

Hah! I didn't care the slightest about speed, as long as it was within the ballpark, which the later gen Sandforce drives (mostly) are. That, and I only paid $35 for it new. Like I said, I'll have to talk to PNY and get it replaced...uh...eventually.

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=PNY+XLR8&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest&gws_rd=ssl Great suggestion. Really helped figure out what I was dealing with.

Anything that's currently on my SSD is not really sensitive to data loss. All sensitive data is on my 1TB Seagate HDD, and then a copy of it all on my other HDD. Yeah, like I said, the graphics options don't matter in the slightest. I can be on static lighting (DX8!) on the bare minimum settings, and it runs just as well as on the highest, and it runs just the same: only the SSD stuttering mars both. Yes, I have ZRP, which is more likely to make it run better than worse - irrelevant, though, as I tried it without. Additionally, I tried playing the Lost Alpha mod, and it had the same exact problem. I thought it was just unoptimized at the time, but I was incorrect.

Decided to see if any other games would exhibit any problems like Stalker showed while being played off my SSD that never happened while being played off my HDD: loaded up Medieval 2, and what do you know, the game stutters randomly in a similar manner to Stalker right on the main map campaign screen. Not as much, and it's rarer - but that's to be expected, given that it's a fairly static screen. I never remember it happening while playing it off my HDD. Stupid drive...

Yeah. Still: slower than a traditional HDD? Even the absolute worst SSD should be faster than that, haha.

That's the problem: how do I tell? And why would there be? I mean, it's essentially the same as a hard drive for program usage, except way faster, so...there's no reason it should be doing it, especially if a traditional HDD doesn't have the same problem. The reason I haven't done a secure erase yet is because it's currently my boot drive for my main system, and I'm almost absolutely certain it wouldn't make a difference at this point. I'll have to contact the manufacturer to see if they have any ideas.

No, I didn't do a secure erase. As it's a fairly new drive, (approximately 3 months old), what reason is there to? It's a clean...-ish install of the game. The only mod I have is a bugfix and minor feature compilation mod (ZRP) - it's irrelevant, though, as I've played without it on this PC and it had the same problem. So I doubt that'd make much difference!

Did a final test - only one I could think of. Stuck the SSD in another computer as a storage drive - i.e. not the boot drive - and loaded up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. from it. Still suffered from the stuttering, even doing nothing else besides playing Stalker. Blah.

Is this solely a TBS game, or..? Your post makes me want to play the game in question, but I'm usually more of a RTS kind of guy, or better yet, hybrid.

1. Sleep after: Never; Turn off hard disk after: Never. I also have any special "power savings" modes disabled in my BIOS. 2. For the image, what I basically did was setup a super basic computer, stick in an old 80GB Barracuda, formatted it to Windows 7, 64bit, install all the stupid Windows Updates that take forever to install, (this was the main purpose of creating an image - so I wouldn't ever have to install the hundreds of Windows Updates as a result of having the initial release copy of Windows 7 every time I reformatted a computer), and not install any drivers specific to the computer, nor any third party programs, so that I could re-image any computer I wanted within a fairly fast amount of time, and without worrying about incompatibilities. I'm sure a few generic drivers were installed to make the system usable at the time, but that shouldn't be a big deal. My previous AMD system was not a re-imaging, but, as I said, had the same problem - this system was re-imaged, but it came from an entirely different computer I setup, so it doesn't really make sense for the problem to translate over. FTR, it was an old Intel Pentium 4 system. 3. Thanks. Tried it, but no effect. 4. I actually started with the Microsoft standard AHCI driver - I didn't really know I was supposed to install the Intel one. I also started with the third party ASMedia SATA controller, too. As far as I can figure out, there's something wrong with the SSD itself...can't see how it can be anything but at this point. Wanted to fix it on my own, if possible...but at this point, it seems unlikely. Another thing - I only updated the firmware fairly recently - the previous version of the firmware, which was a few versions back, had the same exact problem. Bah. lol. Uhh, thanks.

Once again, I forgot to mention something: its firmware is flashed to the latest. Pagefile...as well as my entire user and temp/appdata folders, are all on my D:\ drive, not my C:\. So, if anything, the stupid SSD should be having an even *easier* time than it would normally - not that there's any bloody excuse for what it's doing now even if I were running a typical setup. I run Diskeeper, an automatic and manual defragmenting program. Enabled for my D:\ drive, completely disabled for my C:\ drive, obviously. You might've missed my previous edit: "(edit): Except, now that I think of it, my previous install, for my AMD computer, was a completely new format - not a re-imaging...and it had the same exact problem. So that's bunk, too."

Oops, I forgot about that. Yes, I did use AS SSD to do that - incorrect alignment, incorrect controller, and incorrect drivers. Fixing all of that didn't really make any difference, besides switching from the ASMedia SATA controller to the Intel solution, which made the SSD go about 15% faster. Speed doesn't really seem to be the problem, as far as I can tell, though, so... I also installed the RST drivers - I didn't originally, 'cos I didn't think I needed them, but apparently they include some semi-important drivers that are good to have even if you're not planning on using RST itself. The alignment was incorrect because I foolishly used the Windows 7 re-imaging process, which was the sorriest excuse of a re-imaging tool I could've ever possibly imagined, so it didn't surprise me when I found out the alignment offset was incorrect and set to 31 K instead of a more normal value, (I corrected it to 2048 K, and it reports as being good). I'm new to SSDs, so give me a break. Like I said, though, none of that really made a difference. Mayhaps I should try a secure erase and a complete, clean reformat - no Windows re-imaging? (edit): Except, now that I think of it, my previous install, for my AMD computer, was a completely new format - not a re-imaging...and it had the same exact problem. So that's bunk, too.

I'm sorry: what was warned against? I didn't propose actually doing anything, I don't think, so I'm not sure what you mean! Thanks for the input. I decided to monitor Resource Monitor on the drive tab on my second monitor while playing the game on my C:\ drive. Strange results. For every spike you see for the queue length on the C:\ drive, there was an associated stutter. This was easy to notice because during the time where there was no drive activity for a little, there were also no spikes. I'm not sure what it's loading, because, as I said, I'm not moving my character or even my camera, and the one major thing that would normally cause stutter loading in in Stalker - AI characters as they reach the arbitrary distance from your character to be switched "on" - I have virtually completely disabled, (the vanilla switch is 150 meters - I have it set to 1 and I'm in a remote location - ergo, no character switching). My OS is also not hardly interacting with my SSD when it's happening, so I don't think it's that that's causing the stutter, either...

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero CPU: Intel i7-4770k RAM: 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz Video Card: AMD 5770 System Drive: PNY XLR8 120GB Storage Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM OS: Windows 7 SP1, 64bit I have two copies of a game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R...one on my SSD, one on my HDD. I'm playing at minimum settings for the sake of the test. The HDD version plays perfectly. The SSD, on the other hand, while having much faster load times, stutters for about half a second every 3-10 seconds, no matter what I'm doing - even if I'm standing perfectly still. I'm loading from the same save, with the same settings. Both drives are plugged into the Intel SATA solution on the board, not any third party controllers. It is in AHCI mode, not IDE. My specifications should be more than capable of running S.T.A.L.K.E.R., particularly on minimum settings. Light benchmarking utilities say my SSD reads close to 400MB/s for 1MB random reads, with my HDD only getting around 50MB/s. The system is not overheating, (having monitored my drive temps, as well as my CPU and HDD temps). Anyone have any idea what's going on? (edit): Oh, also, the SSD is only 40% filled - about the same for the HDD, too. (edit): Also, furthermore: this happened on my previous computer, which was a quadcore Phenom II 3.5GHz with a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard. This is also a recent reformat, and it's new for this computer. So I can't see this being anything else besides the SSD itself.

I don't fully understand what's going on, but it looks ridiculous.

This is making me want to give all three movies a relisten...it can be a little hard at times to appreciate the music with the movies themselves as a backdrop...

I disagree with the latter half of your post, but whatever. Personal preference, I guess. I've always felt like 16:10 is much more aesthetically pleasing than 16:9, having used both...I can't imagine what I'd think of using 21:9.

I don't "get" 21:9. I think 16:9 looks bad enough compared to 16:10 - why would I want the proportions even more stretched out?

Anyone else getting really annoyed by the new chat link filters Steam has put into place recently? (There were old ones, but they weren't nearly as insane as they are now.) It's ridiculous you can't disable it. Drives me a bit crazy.

Isn't Lawful Stupid kind of the role you have to play to be a paladin, though? I mean, you can't just go around murdering people because they registered evil with a spell...that is literally against the law, which following is kind of a big part of your alignment. And can't particular items screw with the alignment detected, to boot? You can't ever know what's on a person...there's reason why the spell is not enough to convict.

Aren't Paladins bound to the *Lawful* Good alignment...at least in 2nd Edition? I'd hate to agree with Volourn, but...

Oh yeah, they should definitely be able to be changed - I mean, I can't see how you couldn't. Funny thing is, a lot of the caps on the board had been popped for years, and I'm wondering why the board hasn't exploded yet...or at least have more problems than it should. It does admittedly crash if I even so much as unlock the CPU for overclocking - not even overclocking, just setting it so I could - but that's a relatively small problem for a board and CPU of their age and condition, (it's still using the default HSF...and I doubt it's had thermal paste reapplied in over five years, at the very least). @Humanoid: I can't even imagine spending $1000 on a computer - much less double that. $800 is pushing it for me...$600-700 is a very good amount, with $500 still being close to enough. I spent less than $400 on this computer sans the video card, which I'm still to buy at some point...although I did buy parts that were very steeply discounted - but if I hadn't been able to, I would've never gotten them, so.

Yeah, the only difference between the audio chips is that the ROG boards are supposed to have better shielding from internal interference or something or another, (all the Realtek chips seem to sound exactly the same to me regardless of their "specs" and anything the manufacturers do to "enhance" them, but your mileage may vary, I guess). Unrelated: does anyone know what the consequences of popped/deformed capacitors might be? I have an old FX-55 housed within this thing, and seems to be working fine, (and has been), but more than half of all the capacitors on the thing are wrecked. I'm wondering if I should be worried about that...