64-bit executable

[Insanatrix 0]

and that is why mine is turned off :)

And windows will still create one if it needs to. The illusion of control is quite powerful.

---------- Post added at 13:27 ---------- Previous post was at 13:25 ----------

It does no such thing as I do not run any programs that require that much RAM. Dosen't it only write to the page file once you run out of RAM? Isn't that what it's designed for?

Log your virtual memory commit charge and size, while running say ArmA 3. See if I'm wrong or not.

[jiltedjock 10]

Let's not even get into the effect of vram in a 32 Bit environment, where the graphics card's vram will be mapped to the <4GB address space

---------- Post added at 10:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:33 PM ----------

It does no such thing as I do not run any programs that require that much RAM. Dosen't it only write to the page file once you run out of RAM? Isn't that what it's designed for?

A 32 Bit app will page if it needs more than 1.7GB in a 32 Bit OS, or around 2.5GB in a 64Bit OS.

[simjedi 10]

I did a quick loading of the Helicopter Showcase and let all the AI move out of screen and it looks like nothing changed that much, unless I'm reading it wrong.

ETA: NVM looks like it used some.

[k3lt 3]

I was able to put pagefile on ramdisk, i didn't noticed any performance increase.

http://i.imgur.com/1xZjx57.jpg

Edit:

Disregard this, actually it didnt worked.

Basically after i set pagefile to ramdisk i have to restart computer and since after restarting the ramdisk partition is not mounted until the ramdisk application starts windows sets pagefile to HDD automatically, so there is no way to set pagefile on ramdisk partition unless you it will mount before starting windows which could be problematic. :p

Edited March 17, 2013 by k3lt

[Insanatrix 0]

I was able to put pagefile on ramdisk, i didn't noticed any performance increase.

http://i.imgur.com/1xZjx57.jpg

Did it as well, problem is that even though it says there isn't a pagefile on one of the other drives, there's a pagefile on one of the other drives. You set a maximum capacity of 5800mb yet it's showing a currently allocated size of 8500mb.

[k3lt 3]

Yeah i edited with explanation. ;)

[Insanatrix 0]

I did a quick loading of the Helicopter Showcase and let all the AI move out of screen and it looks like nothing changed that much, unless I'm reading it wrong.

http://i.imgur.com/PNf4x1q.png

ETA: NVM looks like it used some.

Look at the Maximum commited virtual memory size versus physical memory used. Yep, that's a 2gb swapfile. Good times man.

[jiltedjock 10]

I was able to put pagefile on ramdisk, i didn't noticed any performance increase.

http://i.imgur.com/1xZjx57.jpg

Edit:

Disregard this, actually it didnt worked.

Basically after i set pagefile to ramdisk i have to restart computer and since after restarting the ramdisk partition is not mounted until the ramdisk application starts windows sets pagefile to HDD automatically, so there is no way to set pagefile on ramdisk partition unless you it will mount before starting windows which could be problematic. :p

I have got my page file on a Ram Disk, using Dataram RamDisk. make sure you are not trying to load or save image at shutdown/startup as that will screw it. also sometimes a USB peripheral can interfere with it on particular USB ports

[k3lt 3]

I have got my page file on a Ram Disk, using Dataram RamDisk. make sure you are not trying to load or save image at shutdown/startup as that will screw it. also sometimes a USB peripheral can interfere with it on particular USB ports

So did you noticed any performance increase in Arma?

[Insanatrix 0]

I have got my page file on a Ram Disk, using Dataram RamDisk. make sure you are not trying to load or save image at shutdown/startup as that will screw it. also sometimes a USB peripheral can interfere with it on particular USB ports

That's what I used was Dataram RamDisk. Your page file won't change until you restart your computer and when you restart your computer it will assign a new page file to a physical drive before the Dataram driver even loads.

At this rate we'll be using octo-clusters of raid 0 SSD's just for our pagefiles :rolleyes:

[Leon86 13]

In arma2 I did a test, and arma2 never read from the pagefile unless I was actually assigning too much ram to my ramdisk and I was actually running out of memory.

If you have an assload of ram and a ramdisk program running arma off it is very simple. Just copy the AddOns folder there. Say the ramdisk has letter R then go to arma in steam, properties, set launch options.

-mod=R:\

then monitor disk acces :) Anyway, the performance problems are probably somewhere else. The ramdisk was because arma2 was stuttering pretty badly, but the fps didn't change. After a bunch of patches there wasn't really a point in using a ramdisk anymore.

[k3lt 3]

Actually if you disable pagefile completely, then restart Windows you will be able to set pagefile on ramdisk without restarting. (it seems to be working, correctly allocated the pagefile size on Ramdisk from what i see)

Though i'm still not sure if it's not using HDD, i dont see any performance increase tbh and cpu usage is still horrendous.

Edited March 17, 2013 by k3lt

[white 1]

considering i have 16gb ram and a ssd (in case windows misteriously pages something since pagefile is turned off)

my fps is consistent to other people with similar cpus but with hard drives and less ram. i even get lower fps than people with better cpus but with hard drives.

so, right now, i dont think it would have a direct performance impact.

IO might be an issue and might help something, afterall i see no point of not using 64bits already, but, i think that it will only become a bottleneck after the true bottleneck is fixed, if ever.

Edited March 17, 2013 by white

[5133p39 12]

Why would you need to accommodate the whole game? In a given mission, only one island is streamed in, for example. Try watching which pbos are constantly accessed during a typical mission, you can see that 4GB of address space would be more than enough for most missions.

I am not the one who is saying we need more RAM - it's mr. white who is saying that reading the data from HDD/SSD is a bottleneck we should get rid of by going 64bit and using all possible RAM - now what you say, is exactly the opposite of what he is saying, so i guess you should go argue with him, not with me :)

On the other hand, i have no idea what a "typical mission" means - is it a "Steal the car", or Warfare? or maybe DayZ or Wasteland - i hear they are being played a lot.

What may be enough for your typical mission, may not be enough for someone elses typical mission.

Anyway, the talk was about getting rid of reading the data from SSD/HDD on the fly - how else you can do that, than by reading the data all at once at the start of the game?

In my case, only the addons i usualy start the game with, are having approx. 4GB of data, so your 4GB of RAM wouldn't be enough even for those addons only - you may think "but if i have a 1GB weapons addon, it doesn't mean that the mission uses all the weapons" - yes, the mission may not use every weapon, but you have no way of knowing that, so you must preload the whole addon (if you want to get rid of loading on the fly).

[charliemilk 10]

ARMA IV will be 64bit. (I would imagine)

[oo para oo 12]

ARMA IV will be 64bit. (I would imagine)

Wrong we are stuck with 32 bit. Its been discussed before Arma 3 will use a MAX of 2 gig ram as most people do not have gaming rigs :(

[calin_banc 19]

So if it's not the HDD, not the AI, not the physics obviously, then what? The draw calls perhaps or it's just the engine that's stumbles upon itself and needs to be seriously redone or just make a new one entirely?

[Deadfast 43]

Wrong we are stuck with 32 bit. Its been discussed before Arma 3 will use a MAX of 2 gig ram as most people do not have gaming rigs :(

Yes, it has been discussed before. And the conclusion was that it is untrue. Since OA Arma is /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and therefore can address up to 4GB on a x86-64 system.

[Insanatrix 0]

Yes, it has been discussed before. And the conclusion was that it is untrue. Since OA Arma is /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and therefore can address up to 4GB on a x86-64 system.

Sure, except the engine still pages over 2-3gb of data, uses roughly 1.5gb of physical memory and 1.1-1.5gb of VRAM. The memory footprint is over 4gb, and even with /LAA it can only address close to 3gb of memory due to the windows kernel and subsequent data residing in memory, even on a x86-64 system. I've got plenty of logs that show as the I/O demands become higher, the processing threads begin to stall and overall utilization goes down while render performance goes down as well.

[Mac 1]

Wrong we are stuck with 32 bit. Its been discussed before Arma 3 will use a MAX of 2 gig ram as most people do not have gaming rigs :(

I respect your opinion but it is foolish to assume you know what the future holds. By the time Arma 4 is released things will have changed dramatically

[Leon86 13]

I've got plenty of logs that show as the I/O demands become higher, the processing threads begin to stall and overall utilization goes down while render performance goes down as well.

But is that cause and effect? If you have a 100 ai firefight in a city with low viewdistances there's barely any disk activity and performance is awful.

[Insanatrix 0]

But is that cause and effect? If you have a 100 ai firefight in a city with low viewdistances there's barely any disk activity and performance is awful.

Whats CPU/GPU utilization like? Do you have any logs? Can't say that I've honestly experienced the same.

[Leon86 13]

Whats CPU/GPU utilization like? Do you have any logs? Can't say that I've honestly experienced the same.

50% total cpu use, one core near max, 3 cores with lower loads, gpu utilisation very low of course, gpu use isn't really relevant. about 25 fps.

had the resource monitor on, checked arma3.exe and system, disk util went as low as 100kb/s still low fps.

I remember in arma2 there were a bunch of problems at launch with disk acces but that caused massive stutter instead of the low but steady fps we have now.

If you run with insane viewdistances the I/O might lead to a performance problem, but the ones at "sane settings" are probably something else.

the dev build has an I/O problem :), the sound files for walking on dirt are missing, so it stutters on that type of ground.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=4943

Edited March 18, 2013 by Leon86

[jiltedjock 10]

I am not the one who is saying we need more RAM - it's mr. white who is saying that reading the data from HDD/SSD is a bottleneck we should get rid of by going 64bit and using all possible RAM - now what you say, is exactly the opposite of what he is saying, so i guess you should go argue with him, not with me :)

On the other hand, i have no idea what a "typical mission" means - is it a "Steal the car", or Warfare? or maybe DayZ or Wasteland - i hear they are being played a lot.

What may be enough for your typical mission, may not be enough for someone elses typical mission.

Anyway, the talk was about getting rid of reading the data from SSD/HDD on the fly - how else you can do that, than by reading the data all at once at the start of the game?

In my case, only the addons i usualy start the game with, are having approx. 4GB of data, so your 4GB of RAM wouldn't be enough even for those addons only - you may think "but if i have a 1GB weapons addon, it doesn't mean that the mission uses all the weapons" - yes, the mission may not use every weapon, but you have no way of knowing that, so you must preload the whole addon (if you want to get rid of loading on the fly).

You misunderstand. I am saying that we only need to load the current mission into RAM, and that in most cases 4GB would be enough for that, and to do that would require a 64 Bit executable.

Of course the mission and required assets need to be read from disk at mission start and then stored. You do not need to store a 1GB addon in RAM in order to make a weapon available from it, the PBO just needs opened by engine and the appropriate data and textures loaded into RAM, as already happens. The difference is that if the executable is 64Bit, much more of this data can be held rather in RAM rather than being accessed more than once.

---------- Post added at 03:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:12 PM ----------

That's what I used was Dataram RamDisk. Your page file won't change until you restart your computer and when you restart your computer it will assign a new page file to a physical drive before the Dataram driver even loads.

This won't happen if you do it properly, I only have a page file on Ramdisk, persistent across thousands of reboots.

---------- Post added at 03:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:13 PM ----------

Yes, it has been discussed before. And the conclusion was that it is untrue. Since OA Arma is /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and therefore can address up to 4GB on a x86-64 system.

No it can't, because some is reserved for the kernel and some is reserved for the vram mapping, both in the address space below 4GB. You will be lucky to see more than about 2.4GB used on a 64Bit system.

[Leon86 13]

I thought the vram mapping was fixed with dx10?