Help with turn speed

[Rich.h (OP)]

Ok I know Aurora likes to get slow when things get bigger, but I am hoping to reduce this effect as much as possible. With this in mind I am trying to work out what the biggest taxes on a system are so as to attempt to overcome them.

With that in mind here is what I have as my current system setup.

Setup 1:
Windows 7 64bit
OS running from a 64GB crucial m4 ssd
Aurora running from a 256BG crucial m4 ssd           
16GB ram in 2 x 8GB config

Setup 2:
Windows 7 64bit
OS running from a 64GB crucial m4 ssd
Aurora running from the same drive as OS
16GB ram in 2 x 8GB config

Setup 3:
Windows 7 64bit
OS running from a 64GB crucial m4 ssd
Aurora running from a 2GB ramdisk
16GB ram in 2 x 8GB config

I haven't included any other stuff like gpu etc as I don't think Aurora really asks anything of those components? Now I understand there can be lots of reasons for slowdown such as npr fighting, civillian ships etc etc. But at the current point in my game I am getting the following approximate times for a 30 day increment.

Setup 1 = 6-7 minutes
Setup 2 = 6-7 minutes
Setup 3 = 6-7 minutes

Now I didn't bother to use a stopwatch on any of these. I left up the system view and event screen, hit the 30 day button and sat reading various web pages while keeping an eye on the clock and when the date changed in the system view. So there could be as much as a 30 second difference on these times. However even with that in mind they are all identical for argument sake as the difference would not be noticed when playing.

So that makes me think the method of drive storage has no major effect other than perhaps slower hdd installations. I doubt throwing more ram at this machine would make any major difference either as I am aware of the diminishing returns on larger ram. I wondered if the cpu could be acting as a bottleneck but while it isn't the latest model it has been clocked up to a hefty enough speed to blast around most programs with ease.

So can anyone offer any advice here on this issue, I understand that Aurora is simply huge in scope and scale and only gets bigger as time goes on (with real stars). However I would like to think that this can be beaten as much as I would like to think I could take on an entire star swarm. The technical challenge is there and thus is has to be taken on.

So can folks with a deeper knowledge of how the game works offer up any ideas on what the main bottlenecks to turn times in Aurora are? is it hardware related? if so what sort of things will help? Or is this a software issue and the game simply is not designed to run quickly?

Thanks in advance for any and all ideas.

[Rich.h (OP)]

Forgot to mention I have tried both with/without hyperthreading and seen no real difference, perhaps if i used a stopwatch there could be upto 20 seconds but no more.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

30 day increments are only really intended to speed up conventional starts.  If you're to the point that 30 day increments are taking a while you should probably be running 5 day or even 1 day increments normally.

There's probably some bottleneck in visual basic that makes performance improvement impossible past a certain point *shrug*

[Charlie Beeler]

Rich,  what you're running is common.  The main problem is that VB6 is internally limited to how much of the available RAM in can allocate for any applications use (the stack).  Add to this that Access also has performance issues with memory management.  Both are also known to have issues with memory leaks and poor CPU usage compared to more up to date langauges and databases. 

I'm seeing roughly the same turn around times that people complain about on a much older P4 systems with a 40gb/5400rps drive.  Until Steve ports to say C#.net and MS-SQL Server(Developer) it's not going to change.  And that is not a small undertaking.

[Rich.h (OP)]

Ah the old software problems eh, well that at least takes a load off my mind that I can do nothing about it but thank you folks anyhow.

[Kirkegaard]

Does turning orbital movement for planets and moons off, give any significant speed improvement?

[Theodidactus]

It has a small effect on my (very large) game, but not so much that it's really worth it.