HDD bottleneck

[aksuduud 1]

I've been tinkering with A3 performance for a while now and I'm led to the conclusion that I have a rather severe HDD bottleneck, running YAAB I get ~15 fps no matter if I'm on low or ultra preset and my CPU and GPU usage are around 50%, that is single core usage for the CPU, and resource monitor tells me there's massive read activity going on on my HDD, prior to the 64 bit patch my RAM usage was around 95% and after the patch it remains around 95% with no change in performance, the only difference is that now arma itself is using the RAM instead of the windows prefetch service.

 

This is a rather annoying issue, while I get pretty good frames in short missions long or large missions eventually grind to a slowdown, are there any steps I could take to reduce HDD read activity? An SSD would be an obvious solution and I will probably buy one somewhere in the future.

 

Specs:

Phenom II 960T @ 3.8GHZ

GTX 660

8GB RAM

[oldbear 390]

"Streaming in huge textures in real-time can be a bottle-neck" has said RIE on a TakeOn topic.

There is nothing you can do about the way the game engine is managing textures and the fact that you are using a low level rig won't help.

One way to get a bit around this is to use what is recommended in updated official requirements for Arma3 :

HARD DRIVE 25 GB free space, SSD / Hybrid HDD / SSHD storage 

 

 

[aksuduud 1]

I see, I wonder if distributing the files over the 3 drives I have would help? Storing modfolders on different drives is easy and I guess i could mklink some pbos to other drives, although that might make managing the game a major hassle

[oldbear 390]

Nope, it will be worse!

Windows and Steam Arma3 library on a single 256 Go SSD will help a bit.

[aksuduud 1]

Just posting if it may help others, I gained some five FPS more by moving my pagefile from my relatively poor performance OS disk to another higher performance HDD, I also overclocked my northbridge some more which seemed to help.

[maquez 141]

On 25.3.2017 at 1:29 PM, aksuduud said:

Specs:

Phenom II 960T @ 3.8GHZ

GTX 660

8GB RAM

 

your PC specs are quite low for arma3, second problem is that arma3 does not really like amd cpu's.

arma3 needs a cpu with very good single core performance and unfortunately amd really suck at this.

in your case not even a ssd drive would really help much.

[oldbear 390]

Of course the Phenom II 960T is not the best CPU to get in order to play Arma3, but that's not the point here.

With a low end rig but nevertheless a playable one such as this, there are room for better game experience.

 

The issue aksuduud was speaking about is HDD bottleneck.

On this point, yes a SSD will help because streaming in huge textures in real-time as Arma3 is doing can be a bottle-neck with a low performance HD.

There will be no miracle boost with Windows and Arma3 on a single 256 Go SSD but it will change game experience, due to pagefile & virtual memory management and faster textures access.

[maquez 141]

for better game experience he should really better save money for a way better system

and not throw out money for a ssd, a such drive on this system would be wasted money

my advice for him is that he should run arma3 at least on a 7200 rpm HD and defragment regulary the drive after patches

 

btw the bottleneck is not the drive it is the system in general

[aksuduud 1]

When I'm running YAAB my CPU 1st core&GPU activities rarely go above 50%, other CPU cores stay relatively quiet the entire time as is expected from most videogames, disk read activity however is massive which leads me to believe that the bottleneck lies in the HDD in this particular situation, if I'm just flying around on an empty map the bottleneck is my GPU and disk read activity is limited.

 

I understand my system is rather old by now and has never exactly been high end, but naturally I'm still looking to increase my performance, an SSD is a relatively cheap investment compared to a mobo+CPU combo after all.

[oldbear 390]

That's the point ... budget!

 

Contrary to what you claim, buying an SSD is not money down the drain.

Because you can always reuse this SSD on another rig and just now get a better game experience.

 

Look, Arma gaming wise, the gap between an old Phenom II 960T and the AMD FX 4300 from official "Recommended" specs is very small.

From my point of view, CPUs at this level are way not enough powerful to allow a fully enjoyable performance, nevertheless they are still in the playable zone.

[ViperAleks 7]

Spreading the game data files between couple of HDDs and using mklink  command will definitely help you to increase data transfer performance for ARMA3 game. See my post here.

[oldbear 390]

I had done tests with a lot  of different storage solutions.

HDD alone, SSHD, SSD+ HDD, 2 SSD, 3 SSD and so on.

Based on my own limited experience, the best solution, performance wise, seems to get the OS and the Steam Library hosting Arma 3 on the same SSD.

 

 

[Tankbuster 1747]

I'm inclined to suggest the 6-year-old CPU that wasn't terribly good 6 years ago might be a bigger problem than any HDD.

[oldbear 390]

My answer was about the bottleneck question and even if a SSD will not save the veteran Phenom II 960T it will help a bit.

A modern entry level CPU such as the Pentium G4560, is allowing of course, a better game experience.

[Tankbuster 1747]

I don't think it will help at all. The bottlenecks in the OPs system are the CPU, followed by the GPU. Replacing HDD with SSD will be an utter waste of money.

[oldbear 390]

I don't think so, no waste of money for you can always re-utilise the SSD and it's worth a try.

[Tankbuster 1747]

His stated aim was to address bottlenecks. His HDD is one of the half dozen bottlenecks in his system and not the primary one.

 

Yes, a good SSD would be an investment for a future build - this would be the only reason we could safely advise him to buy an SSD now, provided his motherboard is known to support them. Given its age, I'd be very careful with my research before getting out the credit card.

[aksuduud 1]

Hate to necropost, but a partial solution was enabling AHCI, gave some 5 FPS more, I also suspect that superfetch is doing something it should not be doing but troubleshooting that is beyond my abilities.