Would an SSD help improve performance for Arma

[wingnut1186 10]

I notice my pc stuttering and lagging when I turn quickly and there are alot of texture pop-ins.

Some people have told me an SSD would help with texture loading and a few other perfomance issues (other than load times). Anybody know if this is true? (I'm using a WD Caviar Black 7200 currently)

I feel like my specs should handle the game at its normal settings at least...but I've been using a mix of low and normal with res and 3D res set to my native 1920x1080 with 1000-2000 view dist ( No antilising or anistrophic ) and no PP but I still get stuttering and pop-ins.

would a GPU overhaul be more effective?

[Mr. Charles 22]

try loading up a ramdisk with some of the data needed, then you wil see if it is your HDD or GPU

[nettrucker 142]

I notice my pc stuttering and lagging when I turn quickly and there are alot of texture pop-ins.

Some people have told me an SSD would help with texture loading and a few other perfomance issues (other than load times). Anybody know if this is true? (I'm using a WD Caviar Black 7200 currently)

I feel like my specs should handle the game at its normal settings at least...but I've been using a mix of low and normal with res and 3D res set to my native 1920x1080 with 1000-2000 view dist ( No antilising or anistrophic ) and no PP but I still get stuttering and pop-ins.

would a GPU overhaul be more effective?

I wouldn't know about performance using an SSD, but try to defrag your hard drive where ArmA is installed on. Use a 3rd party defragger, because windows default defragger might not be up to the task. When applying big patches the files in the ArmA directory are getting heavily fragmented which might lead to lag and stuttering.

kind regards

[Leon86 13]

Please don't start a new thread for hardware questions. There's a sticky hardware thread and the ssd/gpu questions have been asked and answered there a million times already

[Gera_CCT 12]

A SSD drive won´t help in FPS only in loadings. ArmA is heavy cause of AI and a lot of details to generate, so a CPU and GPU upgrade is always better for performance.

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

A SSD drive won´t help in FPS only in loadings. ArmA is heavy cause of AI and a lot of details to generate, so a CPU and GPU upgrade is always better for performance.

This is not actually true. Since Arma2 streams textures from the drive installing it on a SSD will lead to an increase in performance. CPU is the main factor though.

[flattermann 12]

There already are several threads about Ar][mA running from an SSD. To sum it up,

Less microstutter ingame: YES

Overall shorter loading times: YES

Overall smoothness: YES, textures and objects are being loaded (streamed) faster

Increased FPS: NO, at least not directly, maybe as a result of the above

I notice my pc stuttering and lagging when I turn quickly and there are alot of texture pop-ins.

An SSD might help here. The WD Caviar Black is actually a good disk. How much free space do you have left? For how many years have you been using it? A (nearly) full disk and/or a high percentage of fragmentation does cause stuttered streaming in Arma. A cheaper alternative to an SSD would be setting up a RAID0 with another HDD of the same size and speed as the one you are using now, although you would have to reinstall your entire system

Edit:

You've mentioned the RAID0 in the other thread you've started. Try disabling your pagefile, you've got enough RAM, maybe that's gonna fix it...

In case you tried the Ramdisk approach, please keep us posted, i'd be interested in this too

Edited January 15, 2011 by Flattermann

[Kenwort 0]

I got a new intel SSD, installed A2 on it.. and guess what.. no more long textures pops and best of all no more stutter when driving or flying.. you know what I'm talking about.

Previously I was running A2 on 2 western 500gb in raid0. The texture loading time was better than with one hdd but still I felt the stutter.

[c0nse-0n3r 19]

I got a new intel SSD, installed A2 on it.. and guess what.. no more long textures pops and best of all no more stutter when driving or flying.. you know what I'm talking about.

Nice, that's my next move for sure. Heard alot of good things from running on SSD and worth it for us ARMA lovers :D

[EDcase 87]

I've got a 30Gb vertex2 SSD just for ARMA.

Very happy with performance (compared to HD)

[Baff1 0]

Me too.

I can see the difference.

It's not a real game changing experience, but it's a definite improvement. An enhancer so to speak.

An enormous amount of RAM would be an even better imrovement.

Say 16 GB.

That will be my next advance. One of these days. When Mrs Baff loses all intrest in me and I can afford toys once again.

Edited January 17, 2011 by Baff1