ARMA demo and memory utilization

[sailindawg 0]

I really anticipated the release of this demo and the eventual release of this game in the US. My initial enthusiasm is dampened by how poorly the demo plays. First, my pc specs:

DFI LP SLI-DR Expert (06/04/2006 BIOS)

Big Typhoon

4400 X2

2x1024 Mushkin Redline pc4000

OCZ GamerX 700

EVGA 7950 GX2

1-Seagate SATA 120 G

2-Seagate IDE 120 G RAID 0

X-Fi Xtreme Music

WinXP Home

I run all games off the RAID drives. The games I play include BF2, Company of Heroes, HL2, Red Orchestra & GRAW. All of these games are played at maximum settings at a resolution of 1920x1200. Framerates (fps) range from 40-100's, averaging 50-70 fps. These games are played either in SFR or AFR mode. I play BF2, RO & COH in SFR mode. The rest are at driver stock settings.

When I run the demo and go to COOP mode, my fps range 20-45, average ~30-35. The amount of lag in the other demo game modes is very noticeable. Even when I lock a COOP server and use only AI, the amount of lag makes the game unplayable.

I have tried different SLI modes similar to other posts on this forum. However, I tried differing resolutions as well. Ther is no improvement in game play as I go from 1026x768 - 1280x960 - 1280x1024 - 1368x768 - 1600x1200 - 1920x1200. I get the same fps over all of those resolutions.

How is this possible?

Memory utilization. The demo only uses at most, 215 MB of system RAM. The demo is running poorly because it cannot use all of my available system RAM. Comparing ARMA to BF2, both games use large maps, both games use large texture files to describe the maps, both games intensively use shading.

However, where BF2 will utilize 890 MB RAM, ARMA will only use ~215 MB. That's why the demo lags. I can't speak for the full version game, but I cannot imagine it utilizes RAM any better.

Is this solvable? Of course. However, one cannot easily determine what file can be modified to force the game to use more RAM. The demo seems locked at 215 MB RAM. The maps, texture calculations, AI calculations, etc... are being forced into an exceptionally small amout of RAM yielding dropped frames and very choppy, laggy play.

How did I determine RAM utilization? Well, start task manager see what RAM utilization is at idle, then fire the game up. Start a map, now alt tab out. Look at RAM utilization now. Or use a 3rd party mem utilization tool that will show ingame memory utilization, such as this, NVTray.

This game has a lot of potential. I like the idea of it. However, it is not optimized to effectively use system RAM. Can any of the game dev's comment on how to modify a game file to enable the use of my system RAM?

I would like to be able to see this game as the dev's envisioned it. However, I cannot until this demo/game will effectively utilize my system hardware.

Respectfully.

[andersson 285]

Hello.

I have 1024mb memory. I put this in my shortcut

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">...wherever...\ArmADemo.exe -maxmem=768

You can try a higher number as you have more memory.

edit:

here is a quote from Chris Death from this thread.

Quote[/b] ]Well, i got 2 gigs of ram and tried the 1536 maxmem's but it

ended up in a crash to desktop after a while of playing.

A second time the game has just frozen up.

I didn't experience this when not using maxmem before.

In the german forums (morphicon) i've read ppl having same

issues with maxmem equal and over 1024.

Now it sounds logical to me, since even after using enditall

to shut down most useless services there's something running

in the background, + what is reserved for the graphics and if those require more than 512it will most likely end up in a ctd.

So the maxmem parameter should be used wise and not just

out of the wristle.

~S~ CD

[Kode 0]

Memory utilization.  The demo only uses at most, 215 MB of system RAM.  The demo is running poorly because it cannot use all of my available system RAM.  Comparing ARMA to BF2, both games use large maps, both games use large texture files to describe the maps, both games intensively use shading.

However, where BF2 will utilize 890 MB RAM, ARMA will only use ~215 MB.  That's why the demo lags.  I can't speak for the full version game, but I cannot imagine it utilizes RAM any better.

The games are very different. First of all, the map of Arma is huge compared to BF2 (400sq miles). BIS uses a streaming engine because the entire island doesn't fit into the memory. BF loads the entire map into his memory, that's the cause BF uses such large amount of memory.

Actually, BIS is just good at using RAM, as it will run on computers with smaller amount of RAM.(and it's actually windows that allocates RAM etc...)

The demo doesn't lag because it only uses 215Mb, it's +- the same amount the demo uses on my computer, and it runs smoothly here, the reason it lags has to be somewhere else.

Have you tried 800x600 and all settings on low/disabled?

If that still lags, it's not your GPU, but I'd really doubt it would still lag then.

If it's still the case, you might check if your harddisk isn't defragmented a lot, as Arma constantly uses the hard disk(constantly loading things into the memory)

Normally an image is fluid when it's 25 FPS, and also this belongs more in the troubleshooting-forum

[NeMeSiS 11]

You didnt tell us our settings (or i missed it).

However, if you are using high or very high settings on 1280x960 with 30-35FPS you have nothing to worry about, if you are using low-med settings there may be something wrong somewhere.

[Taxidriver 0]

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">...wherever...\ArmADemo.exe -maxmem=768

Shouldn't this be:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">...wherever...\ArmADemo.exe" -maxmem=768

difference being the "

I'm not trying to nitpick, just thinking if correct it might be more clear for people wanting to try this.

[Deadpool2k 0]

Actually the shortcut that armademo creates does not contain any quotes in it. Where as my other shortcut icons on my desktop does.

[sailindawg 0]

Quote[/b] ]You didnt tell us our settings (or i missed it).

However, if you are using high or very high settings on 1280x960 with 30-35FPS you have nothing to worry about, if you are using low-med settings there may be something wrong somewhere.

Everything was set to high or normal. What struck me as odd, was that the demo played the same across all resolutions. One dies not usually see that. At higher resolutons, your gpu is more highly loaded, at lower resolutions, the cpu becomes more loaded. FPS will usually increase or decrease, but not stay exactly the same across that many resolutions.

I have as much pc computing power as one should need. I'm running the latest and greatest games at high ingames quality settings or highest. Do not blame the end user. The game/demo requires optimization.

@Taxidriver - Thanks. I will try that and paost results.

@Kode - Yes the games are different, however both games are similar in that both handle complex calculations computing relative positions of AI, players, aircraft, tanks and other moving vehicles across a large area. BF2 gameplay is arcadish, while ARMA seems to be more of a military combat simulator. If ARMA is using a streaming engine, then preloading data should be all the more important so that the data can be calculated as gameplay situations change. Because the game is not preloading and not fully utilizing available system RAM, the game runs laggy and jerky. Not using system RAM will also cause higher use of the operating system page file. Again, leading to slower cpu access time, yielding laggy play. I have not run XP's perfmon while running this game. That would be interesting to see page file usage.

Not a slight, but an observation. I really do not see how this game will run well on lower amounts of RAM given the intention of the game dev's.

Thanks for the comments. I would really like to see this game run very fluidly and smoothly. It seems to have great potential.

[Mogadon 0]

Make sure the AF and AA settings in NVidias control panel are set to 'application controlled'. I've found big performance hits if I try to force either AF or AA on ArmA.

edit - and add the -maxmem command, with the full game I have had stability problems using amounts bigger than about 800MB and I have 2GBs RAM.

[shataan 1]

"If it's still the case, you might check if your harddisk isn't defragmented a lot, as Arma constantly uses the hard disk(constantly loading things into the memory)"

You do know how abysmally slow hard disk swapping is incomparison to ram right? I wouldn`t call this a smart way to program a game. BIS has a ton of tweaking to do.

[max power 21]

I have a rig quite similar to yours only with x850s in crossfire. When I attempt to use crossfire the game freezes on start up. Using 1 256 meg card I can get around 30 fps... now I am overclocking like a son-of-a-gun, but I think your graphics cards are later than mine. Without knowing anything about the speed of your hardware components, I think that maybe you can squeeze a bit out by properly tweaking your system and drivers. I don't think it's memory usage or anything that makes ArmA slow, just a whole lot of detail over a whole lot of area. Either that or there's something horribly wrong with your system... because ArmA seems to work fairly well on mine, and I'm not even running with a graphics card that meets the recommended specs!

[LT.INSTG8R 0]

I did alot of testing on Pagefile size and VRAM usage and in those tests the Maxmem command did nothing.

You can find it in the troubleshooting thread about Foilage and VRAM usage

Oh and plaintiff CF is broken with ArmA. A friend and felloe CF user and I have been messing around with renaming the .exe and he has had some success renaming it to hl2.exe(I havent tried it yet as it will mess up myTrackIR seeing the game launching)

I have submitted a Feedback ticket to ATI and I would suggest you do too as the more voices the are the sooner they will fix it.

[max power 21]

I did alot of testing on Pagefile size and VRAM usage and in those tests the Maxmem command did nothing.

You can find it in the troubleshooting thread about Foilage and VRAM usage

Oh and plaintiff CF is broken with ArmA. A friend and felloe CF user and I have been messing around with renaming the .exe and he has had some success renaming it to hl2.exe(I havent tried it yet as it will mess up myTrackIR seeing the game launching)

I have submitted a Feedback ticket to ATI and I would suggest you do too as the more voices the are the sooner they will fix it.

Thanks for the heads up, mate! Will do!

[Mogadon 0]

I did alot of testing on Pagefile size and VRAM usage and in those tests the Maxmem command did nothing.

You can find it in the troubleshooting thread about Foilage and VRAM usage

We're talking about RAM usage though.

Test the ArmA mem usage when running without -maxmem and with -maxmem 900.

[LT.INSTG8R 0]

I did alot of testing on Pagefile size and VRAM usage and in those tests the Maxmem command did nothing.

You can find it in the troubleshooting thread about Foilage and VRAM usage

We're talking about RAM usage though.

Test the ArmA mem usage when running without -maxmem and with -maxmem 900.

You can try any number you like it wont affect Arma one bit. ArmA uses your Pagefile for mem allocation and the maxmem has no effect on it.

[Mogadon 0]

I can tell you that ArmA uses more physical RAM with a higher -maxmem number. Whether this actually has any performance benefits I have no proof, it does result in less hard disk access.

[berghoff 11]

ArmA could use a bit more RAM but I think this is one of the positive things about ArmA. And

Quote[/b] ]my fps range 20-45, average ~30-35

is very normal and playable for ArmA. Below 20fps is different story.

[Jack-UK 0]

I did alot of testing on Pagefile size and VRAM usage and in those tests the Maxmem command did nothing.

You can find it in the troubleshooting thread about Foilage and VRAM usage

Oh and plaintiff CF is broken with ArmA. A friend and felloe CF user and I have been messing around with renaming the .exe and he has had some success renaming it to hl2.exe(I havent tried it yet as it will mess up myTrackIR seeing the game launching)

I have submitted a Feedback ticket to ATI and I would suggest you do too as the more voices the are the sooner they will fix it.

Thanks for the heads up, mate!  Will do!

If that doesnt work rename the exe to FEAR.exe, this is confirmed to work for SLI users (see my Hardware thread in the troubleshooting forum) by Shadow...

That way it tricks it into thinking that its running an SLI enabled game and voila

-----------

On this topic...

I think most people would be very happy to have the FPS that you have...

And maxmem does have an effect... at least it does on my machine and others who i have spoken to...

[baddo 0]

ArmA uses your Pagefile for mem allocation

Hi

I'm quite sure ArmA does not use the pagefile, it is the operating system that uses pagefiles. You could try to adjust your Windows settings to try and make it behave more like a Linux-kernel based operating system. On a Linux-based system I am using, 768 MB of RAM can be almost totally used up and no pagefile is used (until it is absolutely necessary). I did some programming the other day which included monitoring memory usage: amount of free RAM went down to about 15 MB and no pagefile was used.

I recall there are some optimizations for Windows XP to try and force it to not use pagefile for kernel (core of an operating system) at least. I've forgotten about the details of such settings so you need to look them up from a Windows tuning website like tweakxp.com and see if you can get a difference.

BR,

Baddo.

[karl76 0]

Excellent thread by the OP because it shows the same issue that I have with Arma and even with a slightly faster PC (C2D at 3.2Ghz and a 8800GTX, 2GB Ram).

I agree, the pre-caching and memory utilization is poor, and it almost makes me wonder if BIS doesn´t have PCs with 2GB and video cards with 512MB (or more).

The main culprit really seems to be how VRAM/SystemRAM and pagefile are used. The game runs really nice for roughly 15 minutes, but after that time its gets slower and slower (stutters, a lot of HDD access, ugly LOD issues) but once I "alt-tab" out of the game (which btw still ignores more than 1GB of my fast SystemRAM at this point) and get back in its just as fast/smooth as it was before (for another 15 minutes or so).

Either there´s some kind of memory leak or the whole memory management is extremely poor and ineffcient or buggy. It fills up the 768MB of VRAM and roughly 800MB of SystemRAM (thanks to maxmem) over the 15 minutes and then it hits a level where it almost becomes unplayable. Arma doesn´t move unnecessary data OUT of the memory AND at the same time CAN´T use the rest of my system ram either, but instead uses the slow HDD pagefile memory. The game is bottlenecks itself thanks to its own memory management system.

I hope BIS will be able to optimize Arma and at least try to solve this issue because it gets annoying when you have to alt-tab in and out of the game to "fix" this issue.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Excellent thread by the OP because it shows the same issue that I have with Arma and even with a slightly faster PC (C2D at 3.2Ghz and a 8800GTX, 2GB Ram).

I agree, the pre-caching and memory utilization is poor, and it almost makes me wonder if BIS doesn´t have PCs with 2GB and video cards with 512MB (or more).

The main culprit really seems to be how VRAM/SystemRAM and pagefile are used.  The game runs really nice for roughly 15 minutes, but after that time its gets slower and slower (stutters, a lot of HDD access, ugly LOD issues) but once I "alt-tab" out of the game (which btw still ignores more than 1GB of my fast SystemRAM at this point) and get back in its just as fast/smooth as it was before (for another 15 minutes or so).

Either there´s some kind of memory leak or the whole memory management is extremely poor and ineffcient or buggy.  It fills up the 768MB of VRAM and roughly 800MB of SystemRAM (thanks to maxmem) over the 15 minutes and then it hits a level where it almost becomes unplayable. Arma doesn´t move unnecessary data OUT of the memory AND at the same time CAN´T use the rest of my system ram either, but instead uses the slow HDD pagefile memory.  The game is bottlenecks itself thanks to its own memory management system.

I hope BIS will be able to optimize Arma and at least try to solve  this issue because it gets annoying when you have to alt-tab in and out of the game to "fix" this issue.

This is reported by other users with a 8800 and it seems to be related to that card (maybe game/driver conflict..?)

[aus_twisted 0]

Excellent thread by the OP because it shows the same issue that I have with Arma and even with a slightly faster PC (C2D at 3.2Ghz and a 8800GTX, 2GB Ram).

I agree, the pre-caching and memory utilization is poor, and it almost makes me wonder if BIS doesn´t have PCs with 2GB and video cards with 512MB (or more).

The main culprit really seems to be how VRAM/SystemRAM and pagefile are used.  The game runs really nice for roughly 15 minutes, but after that time its gets slower and slower (stutters, a lot of HDD access, ugly LOD issues) but once I "alt-tab" out of the game (which btw still ignores more than 1GB of my fast SystemRAM at this point) and get back in its just as fast/smooth as it was before (for another 15 minutes or so).

Either there´s some kind of memory leak or the whole memory management is extremely poor and ineffcient or buggy.  It fills up the 768MB of VRAM and roughly 800MB of SystemRAM (thanks to maxmem) over the 15 minutes and then it hits a level where it almost becomes unplayable. Arma doesn´t move unnecessary data OUT of the memory AND at the same time CAN´T use the rest of my system ram either, but instead uses the slow HDD pagefile memory.  The game is bottlenecks itself thanks to its own memory management system.

I hope BIS will be able to optimize Arma and at least try to solve  this issue because it gets annoying when you have to alt-tab in and out of the game to "fix" this issue.

I think the engine has a memory issue aswell, games like Flight Simulator X and other flight sims use streaming terrain and objects etc with far more data needed then ArmA does. I'm still thinking this is a problem coming from the XBOX Version (Elite) where the streaming terrain engine was built for and now it's causing some problems on the PC like some other issues that have been converted over from the XBOX version that didn't exist in OFP 1.96.

[baddo 0]

Hi

Just a thought: if you can't get more RAM used instead of using a pagefile on hard disk drive automatically by Windows, can you try to fool Windows by creating a RAM disk and using that for a pagefile? Is it even possible? If you can only get maximum of 1 or 2 GB out of your 4 GB of RAM used, then in theory this could help (even though it is ideologically totally wrong).

Or can the same effect be achieved by disabling the pagefile(s) completely? That could help if Windows can live with it otherwise.

Baddo

[whisper 0]

Hi

Just a thought: if you can't get more RAM used instead of using a pagefile on hard disk drive automatically by Windows, can you try to fool Windows by creating a RAM disk and using that for a pagefile? Is it even possible? If you can only get maximum of 1 or 2 GB out of your 4 GB of RAM used, then in theory this could help (even though it is ideologically totally wrong).

Or can the same effect be achieved by disabling the pagefile(s) completely? That could help if Windows can live with it otherwise.

Baddo

Using pagefile on RAMDisk doesn't work at all.

The running apps are mostly running on physical RAM first, it's only when you hit your RAM limit that you use pagefile on filesystem. If this filesystem is on RAM... well, I let you see the not-so-good consequences

If ArmA is low on RAM usage, it's simply that it doesn't use RAM much. Mainly because of terrain streaming that doesn't load much of the island on RAM.

The principle of it is that, the whole island cannot be held on RAM, so you'll need HDD access ANYWAY, there is no way to avoid it (unless you remain static in game), so if you're forced with HDD access, you better try lowering RAM usage, don't you?

[karl76 0]

The principle of it is that, the whole island cannot be held on RAM, so you'll need HDD access ANYWAY, there is no way to avoid it (unless you remain static in game), so if you're forced with HDD access, you better try lowering RAM usage, don't you?

I know how streaming works but this doesn´t mean that 1GB (or 1.4GB at default setting) should be ignored, or am I wrong? I have no problem if the pre-caching would increase load times of another minute if it would offer a smoother gameplay in the end.

Actually like I said before, the loading into the memory isn´t the issue here, but rather that old data/textures doesn´t move properly OUT of the memory and this creates a bottleneck after some time.

@ofpforum:

It´s possible that it might be a 8800 driver issue, after all the card and its architecture is rather new and drivers are more beta than final but other users with 7950/7800/7900 cards have reported similar issues. So it´s either a game issue or an Nvidia driver issue.

[baddo 0]

@whisper

Oh yes I am indeed not saying that having a pagefile in RAM is a good thing, if you look at my post for a second time It is just an idea to get around the imho stupid way Windows is designed to work. In my first post into this thread I gave an example of what happens in a Linux kernel -based system; no pagefile is used until it is absolutely required. Please have a look at your Windows system and see is all of your RAM used before Windows starts to use a pagefile... well no it isn't I can tell you. Windows likes to keep stuff in a pagefile even if there is a whole lot of free RAM available. Because that's the way Windows is designed.

Maybe my suggestion to try and disable the pagefile(s) is a much better thing to try. But I have done no testing with that so I don't know if it really will help, if it even is practically possible to not let Windows have a pagefile.

The point is, let us fill our RAM completely before using a pagefile. My suggestions are an attempt to do that, no matter how ideologically right or wrong they are. Using RAM for a pagefile is for sure not ideologically sane but tell us better ideas to force Windows use RAM instead of pagefile and we'll be thankful. Other than disabling pagefiles, that is.

Cheers,

Baddo