Upgrade RAM, or Harddrive?

[Cycho 10]

Hi all, I'm thinking about making an incremental upgrade to my PC to boost performance. I'm wondering which of the following would be the best option in Arma 2's case...

Currently I have:

2x2GB DDR3 1600 7-6-6-20 RAM

640GB 7200RPM 32mb Cache

I'm thinking of getting one of the following:

4x4GB DDR3 at roughly the same speed when downclocked.

or...

2x64GB SATAIII SSD's (one for OS, and the other for intense games. keeping page file and temporary internet files on the 640GB spindle.)

Any thoughts on which would be more beneficial?

My thinking in getting 16GB of ram is that the majority of game files would pretty much allocate themselves into the RAM for playing and distribute smoother to the CPU/GPU. In the other case, the SSD's would load the files into my smaller RAM for the time being making that flow better. I'm planning on doing both upgrades eventually, but I want to make the biggest impact first. Thanks all.

[Hud Dorph 21]

Im pretty sure that arma-vise you will not get any difference in putting 16gb in stead of 4gb. I would def go for ssd (i already did), but why on earth would you not put the pagefile on it ? And why 2x64gb ? I bought a intel x-25 160gb ssd and never regreted, i keep win7 64 + arma2 on it and got rid of the "stutter problem" in arma2 OA.

[Cycho 10]

The thing about the page file is that it will wear down the SSD considerably faster if it's constantly writing onto it. SSD's are moreso designed for reads. Every write process deteriorates the drive from everything I've read about them. So, for that kind of cash, I'd like to prolong the use of the drive. The idea between two separate drives would be the pathways... with all windows core processes being read from the OS drive, I would leave the entire SATA cable bandwidth on the other hard drive devoted to the game that is running.

I suppose if you say there's no problem with having it all on one, than that's good to hear. I'm definitely interested in the SSD. Yet, still apprehensive about constant writes going on it wearing down the NAND chips.

[[frl]myke 14]

16 GB will help nothing at all. The biggest bunch of required memory space are textures and those go into the VRAM of the graphic card. I just did a quick test on my PC (8 GB Ram) runnin a dedicated server and a client and it didn't go past 5.6 GB of used memory. Please note that i have quite a bunch of processes runnin in the background aswell.

So the best "bang for the buck" is probably a SSD as this will definately help for faster loading the textures.

For your case i would probably suggest to make a combination: 2x4GB Memory and a SSD for the game(s).

[Cycho 10]

Myke;1899006']16 GB will help nothing at all. The biggest bunch of required memory space are textures and those go into the VRAM of the graphic card. I just did a quick test on my PC (8 GB Ram) runnin a dedicated server and a client and it didn't go past 5.6 GB of used memory. Please note that i have quite a bunch of processes runnin in the background aswell.

So the best "bang for the buck" is probably a SSD as this will definately help for faster loading the textures.

For your case i would probably suggest to make a combination: 2x4GB Memory and a SSD for the game(s).

Cool. Yea' date=' I've been doing some research and it seems the more memory sticks physically installed causes a hit in performance than having 2 with higher capacities. Good to know. Thanks.

---------- Post added at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:50 PM ----------

Impulsive me just ordered a 128GB SSD. Time to get drunk and forget it ever happened so I'll be surprised when it shows up next week.

[Muscular Beaver 0]

16 GB will help a lot, if you use like 12 GB for a Ramdisk and put most of ArmAs directory on it. Especially in Chernarus stuttering will almost be nonexistant that way and popping up low res textures or low detail models will also be gone. See http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1464956#post1464956 for explanation.

But also a SSD will do quite a bit in that aspect, but not nearly as much since even in a RAID the transfer rate is nowhere near that of your RAM.

Edited April 16, 2011 by Muscular Beaver

[[frl]myke 14]

16 GB will help a lot, if you use like 12 GB for a Ramdisk and put most of ArmAs directory on it. Especially in Chernarus stuttering will almost be nonexistant that way and popping up low res textures or low detail models will also be gone. See http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1464956#post1464956 for explanation.

But also a SSD will do quite a bit in that aspect, but not nearly as much since even in a RAID the transfer rate is nowhere near that of your RAM.

Good advice indeed. I thought givin that advice aswell but i thought a SSD will give the better cost/gain ratio overall. With a Ramdisk only ArmA 2 can take advantage while a SSD probably has enough place to take other games alongside.

So for the first step, one SSD and 2 x 4 GB Ram is a good start, later maybe upgrading to 4 x 4 GB and go for a Ramdisk if the SSD is still too slow.

Myself i'm runnin ArmA 2 from a RAID 1 with regular harddisks and even on Chernarus i have rarely any stuttering, mostly when in a fast moving jet but even there it doesn't really bother me.

:EDITH:

Another probably interesting option: PCIe SSD

Edited April 16, 2011 by [FRL]Myke

[liquidpinky 11]

Having been an advocate of Ram-drives for ArmA I would actually suggest you go with the 8GB of RAM and an SSD, your system will benefit the most from this and the more recent builds of A2 perform much better with loading of textures anyway.

I have 24GB RAM installed with the intention of putting the whole game into RAM but the performance from an SSD has left me feeling that I no longer need to.

[Cycho 10]

Very good. I will eventually do the RAM upgrade as well. Maybe they will work out DDR3 so that higher frequencies will accept lower latencies. I seem to have gotten a really rare piece of ram, a non-low voltage OCQ ddr3 1600 that can have very low latencies. It seems to have been discontinued and all of their new models are low voltage with higher latencies. I doubt it makes a big difference, especially with RAM in the 2000MHz range, which seem to carry a standard CAS9. Having greater amounts of that RAM also jacks up the price unbelievably.

Price-wise, the SSD seems the cheaper upgrade for the moment as a whole. Even though the price/GB ratio is still a little off the mark that I had wanted it to be at. I'm just in the eager mood to get Arma running even smoother. Chernarus seems to have been optimized a great deal, Zargabad however is still a drainer with so many buildings and textures floating around. Takistan is good clean wholesome fun even at 10k vis because it's a pretty barren map comparatively due to low density.

I probably won't RAID SSD's in the future since performance reports show little performance increase with it, plus the W7 TRIM feature doesn't work while SSD's are raided.

I've looked at those PCIe SSD's, they are monsters, but they appear to be for big corperations, looking at those prices. I just cant swing that for games. Maybe in the future when the next Arma comes out.

Anywho, I'm excited to see what this SSD does. I do eventually want to get the RAM, maybe just go for 4 sticks and fill up my slots to make it look plump and pretty. Thanks guys.

[BasileyOne 10]

imo:

1. get 16Gb. apply IOlockLimit tweak, increase SuperFetch agressivness.

2. get 7200RPM harddrive[not WD] or 10000 RPM harddrive.

3. upgrade you GFX with more ram onboard. like swapping 5870 1Gb toward 6970 2Gb or GTX570/560 with ~ one Gb into double-sized counterpart.

4. collect/store cash for upcoming new AMD CPU's[promised perf boost Arma2 should enjoy, being extremely CPU-hungry :-].

[Cycho 10]

well... the system is as follows right now.

ASRock 790GX

AMD Phenom II x4 955 OC 3.85GHz

OCZ 2x2GB 1600 7-6-6-20

Nvidia 480GTX 1536mb

640GB WD Caviar Black (no problems here?)

secondary 160GB WD containing a pagefile

Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card

Asus Blu-Ray/DVD

I'm fine with everything in it. SSD will be the next step. RAM, later.

[flattermann 12]

The thing about the page file is that it will wear down the SSD considerably faster if it's constantly writing onto it.

That's a myth and not true. Yes, the write-longevity is lower or shorter than on standard HDDs, but this is not an issue with the pagefile. Your system's performance will actually benefit from the pagefile being on an SSD. Just make sure you got TRIM working (enable AHCI in Bios), disable SuperFetch and _never_ defrag it.

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

* Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,

* Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.

* Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

This boils down to the fact that the service life of every disk, HDD or SSD, is limited anyway. The degrading impact of pagefile writes on the flash cells exceeds the service life of an SSD.

Edited April 17, 2011 by Flattermann

[Muscular Beaver 0]

Having been an advocate of Ram-drives for ArmA I would actually suggest you go with the 8GB of RAM and an SSD, your system will benefit the most from this and the more recent builds of A2 perform much better with loading of textures anyway.

I have 24GB RAM installed with the intention of putting the whole game into RAM but the performance from an SSD has left me feeling that I no longer need to.

This is true for Takistan, but on Chernarus it has only improved slightly. There are still lots of stutterings, low detail models and low res textures popping up without a Ramdisk, even with a SSD.

[flattermann 12]

i dont have any stutterings / LOD problems on Chernarus with my ssd.. sure you got AHCI enabled?

[Cycho 10]

This is interesting information about the page file. I will try it out when my drive arrives. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. Damn, RAM would have been the easier upgrade, could have just popped it in, set it, and go. Now I gotta do the fresh install routine again... eh, it'll be fun!

[flattermann 12]

Having an SSD is just awesome, and it will give you a feeling of 'exclusiveness' for at least 12 months to come :D It really pays off, install Windows on it and watch it boot up :) You won't regret it, i'd always prefer an SSD to a high-and GPU now.

[BasileyOne 10]

Having an SSD is just awesome, and it will give you a feeling of 'exclusiveness' for at least 12 months to come :D It really pays off, install Windows on it and watch it boot up :) You won't regret it, i'd always prefer an SSD to a high-and GPU now.

just don't store important DATA on it.

stick with system-purpose IO and personal data workload over it.

p.s.

SSD way faster on read[esp random], but ... slower on writing than HDD's and consume MORE power[oppose to common opinion], compared to HDD's in real-world-usage[ie, read-write, not RO]

until they based on [hopeless]flash technology, not i-RAM, f-RAM, e-RAM&etc&etc[4 example].

[Cycho 10]

haha, I would generally consider an Operating System to be important data, but whatever.

Power consumption isn't really a problem for me, it's a gaming PC, and as it is, it runs pretty efficiently for the tasks it accomplishes. I believe the power efficiency shines in an SSD's idle state. For instance, when used in a mobile device such as an apple geek's mac, they can sit and read their high brow comic strips till they feel satiated with pompousness while having ample time to do so with extended battery life.

On a side note, I couldn't help myself... went ahead and I bought RAM too... lots of it.

A spending problem. Luckily it's relegated to "PC enthusiasm."

So anywho, I guess the case is closed. Thanks all!

[Cycho 10]

Alrighty, 128GB SSD 128MB cache installed (native 450MB/s read probably halved from Sata6GB/s to 3GB/s)... 16GB DDR31600 7-8-7-20-1T RAM installed...

So far running Takistan full out, all very high, 10k vis.... its very playable. Its not the fluidity I would adore, but I haven't looked into nearly the amount of optimizations and I'm still experimenting.

I had bungled the first couple installs of windows because I was trying to preload my AHCI drivers from the mobo manufacturer, and it caused some problems. Just setting BIOS to AHCI and installing the sucker went perfectly after that. I was able to install some "after the fact" material pertaining to AHCI when all was said and done, but no problems.

Prime95 stress testing has been successful now that I have everything volted correctly. The RAM is amazing, I'm happy to introduce it to the rest of my rig as it will probably last me for years until it becomes the grandpa of the rig.. as long as new sockets allow DDR3.... and this RAM is defaulted for 2133 operation, so there is headway.

I feel the same way about the SSD boot drive... it's for Sata6GBs which I don't currently have, but when I do make a mobo upgrade, I will unlock an even more powerful being. I could always get a PCIe sata6 card... but i think at this point.... the MAIN gun that would make Arma fluid... is for the game engine to efficiently use a six or eight core processor. Unless they want to readdress the GPU usage. As it is, I'm certain my processor is the sole limitation of unlocking the full experience of Arma 2's capabilities.

Those mysterious windows experience index scores show me improvement has been made, while my RAM remains at 7.8(fine by me for 16GB).. my HD went from 5.9 to 7.4(5sometimes).

As it is, I'm a happy camper. I will fiddle away with this and that. I set some Arma2 config setting, I think maxrederedahead from 1000 to 8 in accordance with my nvidia control panel and that seems to help. We'll see what the future may bring.