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[HARDWARE] How each PC part affects the compile time?

J

Jaqueta

Guest
I'm upgrading my computer, and I want to reduce the compile time. How each of these can improve the compile time?

HD/SSD - Getting an SSD instead of an HDD will drastically improve the read/write speed, I'm not sure how this would improve the compile time, but in theory, it would improve the "Saving Project/Loading Project" time.

CPU
- I suppose that this would have the biggest effect in the compile time, right?

RAM
- The one that I have more doubts about it. Higher Clock Speed and Lower Latency does have a big difference? Would a 2666/3200Mhz Clock speed have a significant improvement over the standard 2133/2400Mhz? On some softwares this does make a big difference, on others not much, and I'm not sure how this would affect GameMaker.

Thanks in advance.
 

Surgeon_

Symbian Curator
Now, I don't remember who was it that tested this, but basically the conclusion of the experiment was that an SSD makes barely any difference in compile times (because all data gets loaded into RAM and processed from there) and that the CPU is by far the most important component when it comes to compilation speeds. I can't say for sure how the performance of RAM modules would affect compilation speed, but my guess would be that it would help a little, and only as long as the processor can effectively utilize the increased speed of read / write operations to and from RAM.
 

Mike

nobody important
GMC Elder
I disagree, SSDs make a massive difference to me, but it does depend on the size of the project. bigger ones are sped up more as there is more to load (obviously). But if your project file is 2-300mbs, then all this needs loaded in, and a slow HW will....well... be slow. audio conversion is mostly a file based activity, as the conversion doesn't take long really at all, but if you have lots of file ogg generation could take a while to load/save.

On top of this, windows itself is much, MUCH faster. boot times are vastly reduced, and general usage is smoothed out a lot. (same for OSX BTW)
 
A

AnonyMouse

Guest
I made some tests, here published a thread, also in yoyo... helpdesk maybe, forgot.
I upgraded my pc with pentium and ssd, tested my game, then removed the ssd, reinstalled the windows, tested it again and it is the same (the compiling speed). It is not the best ssd but... Also I put the game in ssd and in hdd, no difference.
Dont know about the RAM, it will be interesting.
CPU - check my thread in "Programming", I've tested few configurations and put a test file.
 

Roa

Member
Why even stop with an SSD? Just go RamDisk lol.

I was going to comment, but Mike and Surgeon beat me too it.


In ram, lower latency is always better than higher clocks(always as in anything but APUs and some very specific rendering situations), as long as you keep it 1600mhz and above, which is standard. It doesn't matter how fast you cram the bandwidth in if it takes exponentially longer per access to store the data. A single transitional phase off ram can boost speed from 10%-20%. Ram isn't really the limiting factor regardless though.

@Mike Yeah, my copy of windows 7 once configured for UEFI cold booted in less than 11 seconds on SSD. Whats funnier even still is that some motherboard (like mine) actually have options to offload some checking and boot processing to the GPU giving you stupid fast boots, like 5-8 seconds cold boot lmao.

I hardly turn off my machines though. I've had up times of over a month so I dont stand to benefit too often unless I'm loading BS games off it like battlefield 4. which quite literally takes over a minute and 30 seconds off load times.
 
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kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
I don't know specifically in the case of compiling GMS projects, but I DO know in a general sense.

An SSD, if you are coming from a traditional platter spinning drive, is going to be the best upgrade you can do, bang for buck, and even not considering bang for buck. On modern systems, and even on older systems, the spinning hard drive is just about 95-100% the bottleneck of performance affecting the most things from startup to shutdown. A computer 10 years old(but with an SSD) would possibly outperform a brand new PC that has the spinning style drive, assuming the hardware was in good shape of course. Everything touches the hard drive at some point. Even modern games tend to mess with the hard drive at times, as worlds get bigger, games can only load so much into RAM and VRAM, so things get loaded from the hard drive quite often. It's like Mike mentions...certain projects, depending on how big they are and what they contain, will see bigger benefits than other projects with an SSD, but the SSD takes the cake unless your issue is trying to game on integrated graphics.
 
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