Getting a game to run faster

[WarFreak131]

The last time I tried to run a game, it was 1gb in size, but I only had 512mb of RAM. Now I have 1.5gb of RAM. Since the entire game can be dumped into the RAM, will the game run considerably smoother or not? Also, I have a really good video card with pixel shader 2.0, will that help too?

 

[Toasty]

I imagine you will probably achieve 10%-20% full speed, like the rest of us. Unless you were already using all of your physical memory and the OS was being forced to resort to overusing the page file, I doubt the extra memory will improve performance. Bare in mind that the Gamecube only has 24MB of RAM - there is no need to load the entire image into RAM, only the parts that are currently being used.

 

[Allnatural]

Since the entire game can be dumped into the RAM, will the game run considerably smoother or not?

You would theoretically speed up disc access considerably (not that the HD isn't fast enough), but that has nothing to do with the actual emulation of the system.

 

[WarFreak131]

?

The HD is a lot slower than the ram, cuz the HD has to physically get to a certain area before writing a new piece of data, while RAM just goes to a certain point and does everything electronically. What I meant is that since not all of the game could be dumped into the ram with 512mb, the game would run slower because some of the HD would have to be used for a dump file, making the game run slower, but since I now have enough RAM, the entire game can run at the speed of the RAM.

 

[Allnatural]

And the HD is significantly faster than the optical drive. Regardless, emulation is slow for myriad reasons other than disc access speed, so your idea would have no appreciable impact.

 

[Toasty]

Yes, like I said before, the Gamecube has only 24MB of RAM. It does just fine loading little pieces of the game at a time off the optical drive, which, as Allnatural said, is far slower than any modern hard drive. If a hard drive were not fast enough, then the optical drive on a real Gamecube would be in even worser straights. The CPU is by far the greatest bottleneck in Gamecube emulation, so if you overclock to maybe 20GHz, you might get up to full speed. (I don't think that speed has been achieved even on liquid nitrogen cooling though, so in other words, no full speed Gamecube emulation for now, except for a few games like Bust-a-Move 3000.)

 

[Jerro]

HHAAHAH, overclocking to 20GHz.... i dared my friends to do that when it was 43 degrees celcius outdoors....
also, i've read in an australian pc magazine that some pplz tried overclocking their computer while it was dipped in pure ethanol... the computer turned on but the cabling between the monitor and graphics card snapped inside....