using large page memory mapping, for increased performance

[fred41 42]

minor update for GMF.exe:

- for simplified usage, GMF now prompts you for useraccountname in console window

(please see initial post for changed usage details)

[sofianebilal 10]

thank you very much Fred 41, now it is clearer and easier to use

[John Kozak 14]

Deleted.

[k0rd 3]

It was a fair enough statement :) no need to delete. Although I think you will find that this "feature" does artificially limit your computer.

[TomTomas88 1]

Hi Fred,

I am using win 8.1. And when i sart GMF.exe as admin and type in my username it says it doesnt exist. What to do?

[fred41 42]

Hi Fred,

I am using win 8.1. And when i sart GMF.exe as admin and type in my username it says it doesnt exist. What to do?

... did you follow this hint:

- find out the name of user account, that is used to run arma (start arma as usual, then open taskmanager and look for: 'taskmanager'->'processes'->'User Name' of arma3.exe process) ?

[cochise 10]

I have an increase in performance noted while in the editor but now when I try to access expansions I crash. Windows 8.1 as per the instructions.

[GodAmongMen 0]

I have an increase in performance noted while in the editor but now when I try to access expansions I crash. Windows 8.1 as per the instructions.

In General Discussion:

When I click in the settings on extensions since the update to version 1.21.124479 (Development Buid) crashes the program! Do you know the problem and possibly have a solution? I have Removes all mods and it did not help

Same for me.

Just guessing but I don't think it has anything to do with the tweak. =)

[cochise 10]

Thanks for the update, I did notice that steam updated something this morning as it took a while to load Arma3. I did the same, changed my shortcut to remove all mods, still crashes anytime I select scenario or expansion.

[John Kozak 14]

It was a fair enough statement :) no need to delete. Although I think you will find that this "feature" does artificially limit your computer.

That's why I deleted the comment - because this may actually work, unlike homeopathy.

[oldy41 61]

In General Discussion:

Just guessing but I don't think it has anything to do with the tweak. =)

Not in my case. At least I don't think so. Due to lazyness and for the time being I reverted the tweak. I am also using the default malloc right now.

Will keep an eye open though. Thanks for the hint.

[fred41 42]

@GodAmongMen, thanks for helping out :)

I thing it is not a big challenge to find out, that this devbranch bug occurs with or without this tweak.

[k0rd 3]

That's why I deleted the comment - because this may actually work, unlike homeopathy.

It is easy enough to see whether or not your cores are parking. The CPU tab in resource monitor (task manager -> performance tab -> hit the resource monitor button-> cpu tab) will show you in real-time. Any parked cores will be marked 'parked' and you will not see activity on them.

After using this method, you'll want to start arma with the new -EnableHT flag, and you will want to remove any -cpucount or cpu related options from your command line as well. You should see significant activity across all of your cores when the game is running :)

[cochise 10]

Hey guys, wanted to test my issue with and without the tweak. How do I go about reverting this?

[MavericK96 0]

Alright guys, I made super sure I was running ArmA 3 as an administrator and I did the tests again:

(Stable Branch, "Benchmark Altis" mission)

Stock vanilla - 43 FPS

Vanilla w/ TBBMalloc - 44 FPS

TBB Malloc + LargePages tweak - 44 FPS

I will say that with the LargePages tweak it did seem smoother (subjectively), and texture popping seemed lessened a bit.

Overall I will stick with using the tweak but in terms of raw FPS I don't think it does much. However if you have stuttering and lots of texture pop-in it might help with that.

[fred41 42]

Hey guys, wanted to test my issue with and without the tweak. How do I go about reverting this?

... just merge GMF_off.reg (see github repo, as administrator)

or

use regedit to change in [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\arma3.exe] value 'UseLargePages' manually back to 0 ...

---------- Post added at 19:08 ---------- Previous post was at 19:06 ----------

Alright guys, I made super sure I was running ArmA 3 as an administrator and I did the tests again:

(Stable Branch, "Benchmark Altis" mission)

Stock vanilla - 43 FPS

Vanilla w/ TBBMalloc - 44 FPS

TBB Malloc + LargePages tweak - 44 FPS

I will say that with the LargePages tweak it did seem smoother (subjectively), and texture popping seemed lessened a bit.

Overall I will stick with using the tweak but in terms of raw FPS I don't think it does much. However if you have stuttering and lots of texture pop-in it might help with that.

... have you take a look in your mallocxxxx.log file (a3 rootdir), to verify that large pages are fully used?

[MavericK96 0]

I am running with -nologs so I don't think such a file exists. I will try a run without that and see what it says.

[fred41 42]

I am running with -nologs so I don't think such a file exists. I will try a run without that and see what it says.

... this mallocxxxx.log file should be always generated by tbbmalloc (not by arma) ...

[MavericK96 0]

Okay, well with or without -nologs I am not getting that log file being generated. I am using -malloc=tbbmalloc as the first item in the command line.

EDIT: I notice on your github there is a nolog version of tbbmalloc. Maybe I am using that one. Let me check.

[nikiforos 450]

Try to run arma and maybe steam as an admin. I didn't see any change until I run the game as admin.

[MavericK96 0]

Yeah, I'm already doing that.

I was running the nolog version of tbbmalloc, so I got the regular version and here's what it says:

SeLockMemoryPrivilege: granted, huge pages enabled

0.000s: 1.251ms 2048k at:0x00000000 Alloc LP failed -> fallback

0.016s: 0.002ms 2048k at:0x08940000 Alloc SP ( 2M)

0.016s: 0.002ms 128k at:0x003c0000 Alloc SP ( 2M)

0.031s: 0.002ms 1728k at:0x09630000 Alloc SP ( 3M)

0.031s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x098e0000 Alloc SP ( 4M)

0.031s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x099e0000 Alloc SP ( 5M)

0.031s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x09ae0000 Alloc SP ( 6M)

0.031s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x09be0000 Alloc SP ( 7M)

0.421s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x0d360000 Alloc SP ( 8M)

0.421s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x0e320000 Alloc SP ( 9M)

0.437s: 0.001ms 1024k at:0x0e420000 Alloc SP ( 10M)

0.437s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x0e520000 Alloc SP ( 11M)

0.827s: 0.002ms 1024k at:0x0e620000 Alloc SP ( 12M)

And then a million lines of that. So does "LP failed -> fallback" mean it's not using large pages? If so, I have done the reg tweak, I am running as admin...not sure what else more there is to try.

[nikiforos 450]

Please make a fresh of your computer. It's all about fragmented memory and you need to restart your computer sometimes to get the real results. Also shut down programs that use a lot of memory. Sorry but I have no other tips.

[MavericK96 0]

Yeah, I read through some of the thread and saw that, so I rebooted and then re-ran the benchmark first thing. Same 44 FPS, though in the file it now says it is using Large Pages most, if not all of the time.

SeLockMemoryPrivilege: granted, huge pages enabled

0.016s: 0.102ms 2048k at:0xffc00000 Alloc LP ( 2M)

0.016s: 0.002ms 128k at:0x02100000 Alloc SP ( 2M)

0.032s: 0.316ms 8192k at:0xff400000 Alloc LP ( 10M)

0.999s: 0.179ms 4096k at:0xff000000 Alloc LP ( 14M)

0.999s: 0.165ms 4096k at:0xfec00000 Alloc LP ( 18M)

0.999s: 0.160ms 4096k at:0xfe800000 Alloc LP ( 22M)

1.014s: 0.159ms 4096k at:0xfe400000 Alloc LP ( 26M)

1.280s: 0.205ms 4096k at:0xfe000000 Alloc LP ( 30M)

1.280s: 0.164ms 4096k at:0xfdc00000 Alloc LP ( 34M)

1.280s: 0.166ms 4096k at:0xfd800000 Alloc LP ( 38M)

1.280s: 0.168ms 4096k at:0xfd400000 Alloc LP ( 42M)

1.919s: 0.236ms 4096k at:0xfd000000 Alloc LP ( 46M)

Etc.

As for memory usage...I have 12 GB of RAM and ~8.5 GB of it is completely free, not cached or anything, with my normal startup items. So it's not a matter of running a lot of crap in the background.

So I guess here's my thoughts on this. The first time(s) I ran the benchmark I had only had the computer running for a half hour or so, and had barely used any other programs other than ArmA 3. So if this tweak requires me to basically reboot my machine every time I want to play ArmA 3...not worth it, especially considering that I saw basically no increase in framerate.

If it works for you, great. I will leave the tweak because even if it doesn't work it still runs about the same either way. If I get any marginal gains by leaving it on, all the better. It's certainly not blowing my mind with the performance, though. :p

[tonschuh 3]

Is the RC7-Test-Build only for internal use ?

:confused:

[fred41 42]

@TONSCHUH, this thread is still primarely about GMF tweak ...

But, yes there are some non public allocator test binarys around, mainly for investigating some special details in respect to armas memory usage.