RAMDisk size with 8GB of RAM

[NeuroFunker 11]

btw a friend of mine, installed arma at ramdisc. so every new pc start, he has to redownload arma. But he says it's worth it, with his 32gb ram.

[steven breen 0]

Buy 8GB more ram and use the ramdisk. I'm a 8 GB ramdisk and can load most of A3, and most of A2.

There is nothing faster than the memory controller on the cpu. :D

This may be the route I go down as Arma 3 is the only game I play. Cheaper than a SSD, too!

[dayglow 2]

I wish they made 1TB SSds. Right now Arma 2 takes up 101 GB (109,461,381,663 bytes to be exact), and that isn't the highest game size I have on disk.

Arma3 hopefully will take less space. I have it on my game SSD, but have all my mods and missions in my File Library on a different drive.

[ramius86 13]

btw a friend of mine, installed arma at ramdisc. so every new pc start, he has to redownload arma. But he says it's worth it, with his 32gb ram.

Ill do the same, 32 gb here but.... ?!?!? redownload arma at every pc start?!

I installed arma 3 on my ssd, made a copy of directory Addons, made an mklink locked to my ramdisk... At every startup I simply move the directory Addons ( backup ) to ramdisk... Done...

Also with the mod...

[cjph 0]

I use one of the commercial RAMDisk products available (DataRam I think) to run an 8Gb one which holds most of the Arma3 pbos in the Addons folder, with the rest of the game, mods and OS on a 250Gb Samsung 840 SSD. OS limitations mean I can't go over 8Gb though I do notice the difference when running from the RAMDisk, with very occasional slight stutters, usually when gunner in a helo and firing off bursts of rapid fire into towns. I use a startup command line to point to the RAMDisk (mod=G:\Addons from memory) and the RAMDisk software does give an option to same the image at shutdown and auto load it on startup. As mentioned above with this method you do have to track updates like patches to ensure they get applied.

I have Win 7 Professional another 8Gb waiting to be installed to bump up the RAMDisk to 16Gb when I get around to it, though at the moment the setup does not suffer enough to need changing just yet. I should add this is all on SP, three monitors, most graphical settings high/very high and 3000/1500 VD. My experience in Arma2 was that an SSD was that after the patches and optimisations an SSD was sufficent for stutter free play (with the right CPU/GPU etc).

cj

[aoshi 1]

Can anyone tell me how much fps you gain when you put an ssd?

[cjph 0]

I don't believe an SSD will increase your FPS on its own, as framerate is more a function of your GPU and CPU. An SSD will help reduce or even remove stuttering from the game, leading to a smoother experience. Also be aware there are several threads indicating that some people are suffering from low framerates in multiplayer games and various posts indicate this is happening to SSD and non-SSD users. I would not want you to spend money on an SSD and no gain in fps. I would suggest searching for someone with a similar system to yours and see if they have found a way to optimise performance (there are also threads on tweaking system settings and so on).

cj

[Valken 621]

I used to swear by RamDisk but aren't the constant daily Dev updates a bit taxing to update to Ramdisk? Curious how you have that set up..

Here is how I've set it up for folks who want to know based on the original thread from here

System Specs - Intel I5-760 cpu, 16 GB RAM, Windows 7 x64

My CPU has a dual channel memory controller so I am limited to 16 GB of ram (4x4GB) right now. For my next PC, I will buy a system that supports at least 32 GB or maybe even 64 GB of RAM. But if you are strapped for cash 8 GB ram upgrade is a good fast upgrade vs SSD.

It is when going to 64 GB of ram that you want to compare SSD prices since 64GB of DDR3 ram right now is 500+ USD on average. I wish I bought 64 GB of ram last year when it was half that cost. :P

---

I use Imdisk to make my ramdisk. http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/

I use this BAT file to create the RAMDISK on startup for 8.5 GB. Note you can change the drive letter to anything you want so long as it is free. For me, I set it at W: since I have X: Y: and Z: for virtual disks.

8.5GB RAMDISK BAT FILE

imdisk -a -s 8704M -m W: -p "/fs:fat32 /q /y"

mkdir w:\addons

mkdir w:\temp

Save this into a BAT file on your HD. Can be in your ARMA2 or ARMA3 folder such as ARMARAMDISK.BAT

Note if you want to change the size of the ramdisk, you would need to multiple 1024 x Y to get the total GB you want to use. So for each GB you want to allocate is X x 1024M which stands for X x 1024 x M(egabytes).

Then you need to schedule a task in Windows Scheduler to run this on bootup everytime.

Here is a tutorial on how do set up the task.

You need to rename the BAT file to a *.CMD file for windows task scheduler to work: EG RAMDISK.CMD.

You can also run the RAMDISK.CMD file as a bat file. It works.

At this point, you should run the bat file to make sure it actually creates the ramdisk. If it works, and you have setup an automated schedule, reboot your computer to make sure it creates the ramdisk on startup. This is optionnal of course. You can always just manually run the bat file prior to playing ARMA.

And yes, I use my ramdisk for my temp folder when not running ARMA and for any temp operations. And all the trash gets dumped on restart and is extremely fast.

Next steps -

1) For ARMA2, I first rename my ADDONS folder to ADDONSRAMDISK. This is my backup of the ADDONS folder.

2)I copy all the files FROM my ARMA2\ADDONSRAMDISK folder TO my RAMDISK:\addons folders. This loads the map chernarus, utes and all the textures, models and etc...

Lazy guys can use this bat file from within the ARMA2 folder - note to change the ramdisk drive to whatever you have it set it. Mine is set to W:

copy addonsramdisk\*.* w:\addons

You can also use this for ARMA3.

3)Next I make a NEW empty ADDONS folder in my arma 2 directory.

4)I install and use Link Shell Extension to make SYMBOLIC links of all the files FROM INSIDE my ramdisk:\addons folder, to my NEW ARMA2\ADDONS folder.

This fools the computer to think the symbolic link files in my ARMA2\ADDONS folder are real, when in fact, it is reading off the ramdisk.

Now just run ARMA2 from steam or launcher or click on the exe.

My game is butter smooth with this setup when streaming the map and very fast loading speeds for the default content.

--

For ARMA3, I literally just copy my entire stock ARMA3 folder to the RAMDISK and run ARMA3.exe from ramdisk.

If you have a ton of mods, you can follow the instructions above and make a copy of the ARMA 3 ADDONS folder to the RAMDISK , symbolic link back the files and run ARMA3 exe off the HD. When the game loads, it will use the ramdisk for the map, models, sounds and etc...

Note the current build of ARMA3 is now ~ 10 GB. Before the Altis map, it was ~ 8 GB so you would probably need to increase the ramdisk size to 10 GB or modify the bat file so it reads:

10 GB RAMDISK BAT FILE

imdisk -a -s 10240M -m W: -p "/fs:fat32 /q /y"

mkdir w:\addons

mkdir w:\temp

9 GB RAMDISK BAT FILE

imdisk -a -s 9216M -m W: -p "/fs:fat32 /q /y"

mkdir w:\addons

mkdir w:\temp

You can also dump other temp or cache folders into your ramdisk such as Opera CACHE folder.

Just use Link Shell Extension to create the symbolic links to the ramdisk.

If you want it to be really super easy, you can use the commercial version of DATADISK RAMDISK software instead of IMGDISK since that can save an image of your ramdisk and automatically copy everything to ramdisk on bootup.

No need to click on bat files.

The good thing about IMDISK is that I can delete the ADDONS folder from my ramdisk and get all my ram back for use as system ram. It dynamically allocates the ram even though it has marked it off for ramdisk use which I find it pretty smart.

[steven breen 0]

Got another 8GB of RAM! :) Running most of the .pbo's from the "Addons" folder on an 8GB RAMDisk. This, coupled with the recent Dev Branch and sensible graphics settings, have improved things quite a bit. The stuttering is alot better. Its not a "night and day" difference but it is noticeable.

I may switch back to the HDD on monday if the dev branch updates prove to be a pain, moving files around all the time, and compare the performance some more.

i5 2500k @ 4.4ghz

ati 6950 @ stock

win 7 64bit

Thanks for all the tips guys!

Edited September 22, 2013 by steven breen