Question about BSAs and performance.

[Xaranth]

I've noticed, since starting my Clarissa Winters playthrough, excessive initial loading times for certain objects, specifically the Readius, most of her personal armours, and Olde Tyme Rock and Rolle. This COULD be because the models and textures are more detailed and larger than most vanilla assets, but I was wondering if the fact that they're packed into a BSA has something to do with it. Does using a BSA, even with no compression, incur a performance penalty?

 

Is it better to leave unpacked those things which can be unpacked? I know hair models and specifically egms have to be packed to work right, but those things which don't have to be, would I be better off from a performance standpoint leaving them as loose files?

[jazzisparis]

Though I can't offer a straight answer, I do remember reading somewhere that BSAs can sometimes improve performance, mostly on slower machines. I'm running FNV on a 4-yo PC, and while working on my mod I've never noticed any change in performance when my files were loose or BSA-packed.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I was speaking with one particular modder quite a while back, and he actually did some experiments and found that not only did performance improve when files were compressed in a bsa (including some crashing issues), it got better the higher compression ratio was used.

I was surprised, as it is unintuitive, but I trust his results.

[rickerhk]

The higher compression is understandable. A file can be uncompressed in ram faster than it can be read from disk. Also perhaps since the BSA is already open and has a file handle and partially buffered in RAM - some system calls can be avoided that would be used to open/read discrete files. But I would think that only those with older/slower hard drives would really notice a difference.