Psymon, only four times?

http://partition.radified.com/ is an excellent article on partitioning strategies, and http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach is a utility that can benchmark your hard drive to show you where it is fastest.
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The laws of physics say that the outer edge is going to be faster, although yes, it won't be night and day. The outer edge of a spinning circle is:

1) Moving faster - if you don't believe me, go take a spin on http://www.tharad.co.za/Pictures/Products/Picture_9.jpg.

2) Larger - more data is squeezed in a skinnier space. This is also an advantage of having very large drives. If you have 1TB of clusters on 3.5" of hard disk, there's going to be even more data crammed in there. And this is why your Velociraptor is a 2.5" drive (in a 3.5" enclosure). The data is more crammed on 2.5 inches, and it's less space for the HD head to cover.

In the end, there will not be a huge difference, but there is a difference between the inner bowels of the disk and the outer edge.

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Anyway, with BSAs, I categorize them. If you have three HDs, you can put some of the BSAs on a second drive (but not on the one with the pagefile). Just don't split them too much, because that would be unnecessary. For example, maybe 3 - 6 texture BSAs, depending on how many texture enhancers you have. You can then categorize them by what's inside to make unpacking/repacking and updating easier, and then split them across your hard drives (but not the one with the pagefile).

And finally, here are a couple of 1GB 4870s for $225 and $230 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121291

Which mod will help me reduce shuttering.

Or would t be better to just try lowering anti-aliasing.

Streamline, if set up properly.
Most other mods will *increase* stuttering...

Laws of physics aside, it's placebo. Seriously. You're talking about a speed difference measured in nanoseconds. Chances are you're gaining most of it simply from the files not being fragmented at all.



I ended up with 3 BSA files. Organized alphabetically by folder name. Yeah, I know, maybe not the best system but it works well enough. Each one is uncompressed and as close to 2GB as things will allow for.



The Sapphire is a good card. I have it and have had no trouble from it so far. I'm sure the Asus is as well.



Windows disk defragmenter is a great mod to reduce stuttering.... oh wait. Wrong type of mod

Regarding BSA files, *are* they noticably more effective than thousands of loose sound and grapics files?

Should they be compressed or uncompressed for best results?

Do each mod need to have it's own BSA, or can I make for example a generic Sounds.BSA?
I guess this will mess up OBMM's detection of OMOD conflicts?

For me, yes. Making BSAs was far more efficient. With loose files, defrag will put them where it thinks is best. Which may separate them by quite a bit. As a BSA, it's all one file to the OS. So there's much less time spent running all over the platter to get the stuff. Only the game engine needs to sort things out.

Compressed vs uncompressed might be a placebo thing, but I went with uncompressed just on the off chance that reducing some CPU overhead would result.

And yes, making a bunch of BSA files may impair OBMM. I only use OBMM to make BSAs though. I much prefer to hand install everything I add to the game.

I'll try the BSA route. Will it work on mods with no ESPs, like QTP3 or would I need a "dummy" ESP for that

Maybe I'm reading the data wrong, but HDTach is telling me that the 1 - 50GB areas of my hard drive have a 50 MB/s faster read/write speed than the 450 - 500GB areas.



I'm looking to get the Sapphire. I'm hoping for a price drop after Christmas.



You would need a dummy ESP for QTP3. However, I've had issues with having replacers in BSAs seperate from the Vanilla BSAs. According the LazyMonk, who helped me solve the problem, Oblivion has a hard time deciding on which files to use. Overwriting the Vanilla BSAs with the replacers solved this problem, though. That's why I split my BSAs, because otherwise they would be too large.

How about unpacking the vanilla BSAs into folder, extract the QRP3 (and other graphics replacers) into the folders and have them overwrite the vanilla files and then repack the BSAs?

And how does TES4LODGEN work with BSAs? Will it be able to read any far_nifs inside the BSAs?

Yeah, that will work fine. Just be sure to split the BSA after that because it will undoubtedly be over 2GB by the time you put in QTP3.

And yes, all you have to do with TES4LODGen is run it, and it will go through all of your BSAs and files in the data folder.

what do you mean set up properly?

Configured according to your computer's needs. Features like streamsmooth and streampurge.

Is there a readme that tells me how to do that?

Uh...Streamline comes with at least four manuals, the biggest one which is (in)appropriately named Quick Config.

And the streamline configuration file (sl.ini) is well commented, to help you know what the different settings do.

Please consider removing this one from your list (and the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=718322, where I personally learned of the program), or adding a more explicit warning about it. In fact, a warning/general disclaimer about these tweak tools would be advised, since they all carry some risk of causing these sorts of issues. Even being aware of the issues such programs can cause, I was a little surprised to find that after running GameXP, not only was I unable to start up Windows properly anymore, but Safe Mode and Safe Mode with Networking wouldn't start up properly either. Using the "Last known good configuration" option from the Safe Mode menu did allow me to get into Windows, but it required me to activate Windows XP again (by activate, I mean I had to do Microsoft's online verification that checks to see if your copy of Windows is legitimate or not -- usually it's just a couple clicks, but sometimes it can require a phone call to MS). From there I was able to use a backup state create by the GameXP software to restore my settings.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has experienced such an issue, as others have reported it on one site that I found that offers it as a download (it received poor ratings in general, as its most significant tweaks apparently can be quickly and easily done by hand, or with better tools).

That said, I appreciate the effort you have put into compiling all of these resources, as well as your other compilations. Very well done, on the whole.

I heard it might enhance performance to convert textures and meshes into BSAs. Does compression make any difference?

Depends on the size of the BSA. My feeling is the larger it is, the more benefit there would be from not compressing it since you eliminate the decompression stage from affecting the CPU. I stuffed as much as I could into repacked BSAs of vanilla + mods and only keep separate ones for mods which add a lot of their own meshes and textures. All of which I repackaged uncompressed and it's been helpful in the over all effort to de-stutter my game.

I was wondering why O&O Defrag has been removed from the list of recommended defrag progs.

Any particular reasons? I've been using it and it seems OK, though Diskeeper is probably better.

I've also been doing the BSA files onto other drive thang this weekend since my 10,000k raptor arrived!
SI and DLC BSA's ARE commpressed, so repacking uncommpressed should make a difference.
Also the latest version on OBMM (1.1.12) allows unpacking and creating of bsa's, so no need for BSA commander!

I'd just like some clarity on the textures thing. I unpacked texture bsa and repacked into 2 uncommpressed bsa's but the description on the 1st page is a bit vague.
in the ini, I should leave the "SMasterTexturesArchiveFileName1=" , then add the new names (T1.bsa etc) to the "SArchiveList=" list. Yes?

Think I've got this now.

As an example, this is with the 'ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa' method.

[Archive]SMasterMiscArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Misc.bsaSMasterVoicesArchiveFileName2=Oblivion - Voices2.bsaSMasterVoicesArchiveFileName1=Oblivion - Voices1.bsaSMasterSoundsArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Sounds.bsaSMasterTexturesArchiveFileName2=Oblivion - Tex2.bsaSMasterTexturesArchiveFileName1=Oblivion - Tex1.bsaSMasterMeshesArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Meshes.bsaSInvalidationFile=ArchiveInvalidation.txtiRetainFilenameOffsetTable=1iRetainFilenameStringTable=1iRetainDirectoryStringTable=1bCheckRuntimeCollisions=0bInvalidateOlderFiles=1bUseArchives=1SArchiveList=Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, Oblivion - Tex1.bsa, Oblivion - Tex2.bsa, Oblivion - Sounds.bsa, Oblivion - Voices1.bsa, Oblivion - Voices2.bsa, Oblivion - Misc.bsa

It wasn't removed, it was never on the list.

Thanks everyone for all the great information! I've quoted a few of you in the main post.

BallofFire

Not sure if this would count has a texture replacer or not..Since I did not resize them, only ran texture through filter and made sure everything was dxt1 with mip map or dxt3 with mip map..My http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=860852in my sig, they perform the same has vanilla if not better for some.

Keep up the good work..

Thanks for That ThumperZ, I'll be using that now! :thumbsup:



Oh right, odd as I'm sure I was made aware of it here, unless it was from a previous (or, indeed, totally different) thread

O&O's alright as a defrag tool, its even got a 'Gaming PC' option.

A pretty dumb question, but here goes... If I install some of the performance enhancers, would it be possible for me to rise the resolution a bit (I play at 800x600). I just don't want to spend a lot on a new machine until a game I really want to play comes out. I was thinking of installing some of them, those that don't degrade graphics, but I don't want to go through all the trouble and then realize I'm not getting anything from it. My game runs very smooth with the best settings I could muster (distant land on, texture size small, no shadows, no water and window effects, no lighting, anti-aliasing off). If I raise the resolution the game is stuttering a bit.

Where can I find screenshots for the lower quality texture updates. They are quite large, so I don't want to download them only to see that they are not what I want.

Thanks.