Sgt.Rock 10 Posted October 11, 2013 Greetings, I LOVE ARMA but there's one major issue I would love to see addressed. An observation: ARMA seems to not like using RAM and prefers pagefile. It's a shame that it loads up ~ 3.5 gig of pagefile and only loads ~ 1.5 gig into my 8 gigs of RAM. Imagine the performance boost if ARMA would actually take advantage of RAM as opposed to pagefile swapping. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fred41 42 Posted October 11, 2013 (edited) Greetings,I LOVE ARMA but there's one major issue I would love to see addressed. An observation: ARMA seems to not like using RAM and prefers pagefile. It's a shame that it loads up ~ 3.5 gig of pagefile and only loads ~ 1.5 gig into my 8 gigs of RAM. Imagine the performance boost if ARMA would actually take advantage of RAM as opposed to pagefile swapping. ... ~1.7GB additional memory from system paged pool is currently used by arma (via file mapping api, whitout using much virtual address space). But if you have enough physical RAM left, your OS will hold most of the allocated pages in RAM, so there should be nearly no performance impact. You can verify this by simple set your pagefile to minimum (16MB), you will observe no performance difference. Of course, on 64bit systems with enough RAM, arma could benefit from the nearly 4GB virtual address space, there is a lot unused potential left. Greets, Fred41 Edited October 11, 2013 by Fred41 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sgt.Rock 10 Posted October 11, 2013 I'm running 64 bit Win7 with 8 gigs of RAM and it never goes over 4 Gig for OS + ARMA (usually around 3.5 max). It would certainly be an improvement to be able to tap the unused RAM and would quite likely make some under-resourced systems more responsive as the time to access data stored in RAM is obviously faster than to access that stored on disk. As to pagefile usage---as I mentioned above, ARMA stores quite a lot of data there, I'm not sure where that 1.7 figure comes from but on my system it's in excess of 3 gig. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fred41 42 Posted October 11, 2013 ... yes, disk access is a lot slower than accessing physical memory ... Do you observe a high "hard faults/s" value, if you open taskmanager->performance monitor->memory->arma ? I'm running 64 bit Win7 with 8 gigs of RAM and it never goes over 4 Gig for OS + ARMA (usually around 3.5 max). It would certainly be an improvement to be able to tap the unused RAM and would quite likely make some under-resourced systems more responsive as the time to access data stored in RAM is obviously faster than to access that stored on disk. As to pagefile usage---as I mentioned above, ARMA stores quite a lot of data there, I'm not sure where that 1.7 figure comes from but on my system it's in excess of 3 gig. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sgt.Rock 10 Posted October 11, 2013 I haven't checked that particular statistic. I'll have to have a look next time I'm in game and see--but I would think that the results will show that there is a considerable amount of swapping going on at one point or another just by the feel of the occasional stutters. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mamasan8 11 Posted October 11, 2013 Some data about HDD vs SSD vs Ram disk Pagefile is so slow. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Leon86 13 Posted October 12, 2013 Arma is a 32bit exe, without using the paging system it can't use that much. Something being written to the pagefile doesn't mean it's gone from memory. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sgt.Rock 10 Posted October 12, 2013 Arma is a 32bit exe, without using the paging system it can't use that much.Something being written to the pagefile doesn't mean it's gone from memory. When the pagefile grows by ~3.5 gig and ram usage by ~1.5 when playing the game then obviously the pagefile contains more than what's stored in RAM.---------- Post added at 09:47 ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 ---------- Some data about HDD vs SSD vs Ram disk Pagefile is so slow. I'm aware of the differences. My point is ARMA only fills about 1.5 gig of RAM leaving the balance of my 8 gig empty (minus 1.6 for the OS) and uses pagefile swaps instead of loading it to RAM. Inefficient at best. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fred41 42 Posted October 12, 2013 @Sgt.Rock, i think the page file usage is not really a problem on your system. As i said, arma creates at start a ~1.7GB so called FileMapping in the swapfile. Because of that you see a higher swapfile "usage", than expected. The swapfile is used by OS to "backup" the related memory pages an disk, this doesnt reduce performance as long as windows OS detect enough free physical RAM. Assuming you use your 8GB only for OS and arma, your OS should hold nearly all pages in memory (no disk access). Your other point, that arma could use more from the (nearly 4GB on 64bit OS) address space, is correct. Greets, Fred41 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jiltedjock 10 Posted October 12, 2013 Put the page file on a Ramdisk http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk Free download. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fred41 42 Posted October 12, 2013 (edited) @jiltedjock, putting swapfile in a RAMDISK, at the surface sounds like a good idea ... The swapfile is basically a disk based buffer, used by your OS to swap memory pages to, if physical RAM is tight. So, please DONT put your swapfile in a ramdisk, you are wasting memory and other resources this way. Greets, Fred41 Edited October 12, 2013 by Fred41 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jiltedjock 10 Posted October 13, 2013 @jiltedjock, putting swapfile in a RAMDISK, at the surface sounds like a good idea ...The swapfile is basically a disk based buffer, used by your OS to swap memory pages to, if physical RAM is tight. So, please DONT put your swapfile in a ramdisk, you are wasting memory and other resources this way. Greets, Fred41 Not the case. A 32 Bit application will swap even when running under a 64 Bit OS with 8GB RAM, because it can only address 50% of the RAM. If you have 8 or 16GB RAM, and use 32 Bit applications, it is worth putting the page file on a Ramdisk whether you are on 64 Bit or 32 Bit OS. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fred41 42 Posted October 13, 2013 (edited) @jiltedjock, really interesting. I dont think you mean, that swapping will increase the virtual address space of 32bit applications? If you take some of your RAM to make a RAMDISK for swapfile, your OS is forced to swap more and earlier. It is always better to avoid swapping by give the OS all the RAM you have. Greets, Fred41 Edited October 13, 2013 by Fred41 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jiltedjock 10 Posted October 13, 2013 hi, the OP has 8GB RAM. I am assuming that anyone who intends to use a Ramdisk has spare RAM (for example I have 16GB). Putting the swap file on a Ramdisk is a good use of spare RAM. For example, with 8GB and x64, at least 2GB is spare when using a 32 Bit app. A 32 Bit app can only address the 32 Bit address space, irrespective of whether it is running on a 32 or 64 Bit OS. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
simjedi 10 Posted October 14, 2013 I don't use a RAM-Disk anymore as A3 uses up to 6gb of RAM....:) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sgt.Rock 10 Posted October 14, 2013 I don't use a RAM-Disk anymore as A3 uses up to 6gb of RAM....:)If A3 would use 6 gb of RAM I'd be a happy camper...never seen it go that high here. What manner of sorcery do you use to get that to occur? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
