Hard disk cache affect performance

[stajnko 10]

Hey guys, I own Lenovo Y580 with GeForce 660M

Arma 3 should work OK on my laptop, but sometimes it is stuttering and FPS drops from 40 to 8.

It usually happens when I use binoculars and watch a city from 2km distance or something like that. Correct me if Im wrong - I think that the game starts loading data of the city (buildings, trees,...) from my HDD to RAM/GPU, right?

Another case: Im just travelling on foot and for example every 4 or 5 minutes the stuttering starts - could it be that the game starts loading my surroundings again (as it changes as Im moving) - from HDD to RAM/GPU again, right??

If all this is correct, then would it make sense that the stuttering is caused by my 1TB HDD which has 'only' 8MB cache?

Or is it something else causing it?

I think that 8MB cache in my HDD is affecting the OS in a bad way generally - browsing files/copying/etc. takes too long.

So, please, what are your suggestions? Should I replace my HDD with a better one having bigger cache?

Is the stuttering caused by my HDD or is it caused by someting else?

[SavageCDN 231]

I'd say it's the primary reason for the stutters - you are correct Arma is loading in new textures from disk. If you can get your hands on an SSD drive try moving your A3 install to the SSD... personally I saw a big difference when I used the SSD instead of my 7200rpm SATA drive.

[Sneakson 1]

Viewing lots of buildings: lots of geometry, CPU/graphics card sweats.

I’m not sure how HDD/memory affects this however intermittent stuttering sounds quite HDD/memory-ish. Could very well be something moving in or out of cache/memory.

8MB cache is a lot less than the 64MB cache mine has so I would suggest you google about what effects that may have.

Also 40 down to 8 fps is quite massive.

Do you have any idea what the full specs of the computer is? What settings?

Also try the usual: update mobo bios, mobo drivers, graphics card drivers, turn off as many background programs as possible, watch CPU/Graphics/HDD/Memory use while playing and temperatures.

May be able to detect an issue somewhere.

Since you’re on a laptop you may also want to try changing power settings in Control Panel/NVidia Control Panel to Maximum Performance and see if it makes any difference. Could be power saving.

[jiltedjock 10]

Hey guys, I own Lenovo Y580 with GeForce 660M

Arma 3 should work OK on my laptop, but sometimes it is stuttering and FPS drops from 40 to 8.

It usually happens when I use binoculars and watch a city from 2km distance or something like that. Correct me if Im wrong - I think that the game starts loading data of the city (buildings, trees,...) from my HDD to RAM/GPU, right?

Another case: Im just travelling on foot and for example every 4 or 5 minutes the stuttering starts - could it be that the game starts loading my surroundings again (as it changes as Im moving) - from HDD to RAM/GPU again, right??

If all this is correct, then would it make sense that the stuttering is caused by my 1TB HDD which has 'only' 8MB cache?

Or is it something else causing it?

I think that 8MB cache in my HDD is affecting the OS in a bad way generally - browsing files/copying/etc. takes too long.

So, please, what are your suggestions? Should I replace my HDD with a better one having bigger cache?

Is the stuttering caused by my HDD or is it caused by someting else?

If you have spare RAM, try using a RAM cache and see if it improves. The Beta here is good http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/index.html