tweak for 2gb users

[binkster 0]

I tried this with windows vista, I only have 2gig's and of coarse like he said above vista saves 1gig for itself.

I did get an error running low on virtual memory, but I was able to play on.

This makes me mad since i spent so much money on a

-c2d e6600,

-8800gtx,

-680i mobo

-2 X 1gig 800mhz ddr2 ram

I got this just for arma and most people with lower end gpu has 0 problems.

I really dont have big issues but after the latest patch i have to have settings on normal.

I still get good FPS but some times it hangs for a sec, and I also get LOD issues.

I bought a extra hard drive, same speed and space but different brand. Does anyone know of a tutorial to utilze your harddrive for best page file performance. Maybe Raid 0, not sure how to set it up.

[BLSmith2112 0]

In percentage terms, how much performance do you say this page file thing increases ArmA performance?

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Doesn't seem to have much of a performance effect here while running Vista, not like it shouldn't though, since due to that evil system texture problem I can't run stably above normal texture detail. No crashes either, though.

[CallMeSir 0]

MS is so self-loving , that they want to use they're own shit (pagefile), before 3rd party interrupts, like utilizing RAM as primary memory.

Oh dear some people really need a bit of help.

There is no perfomance gain to be had by turing off the PF.

[spetznaz14 0]

No difference here, arma still pages to the hdd even with pagefile disabled.

[dirtylarrygb 0]

No difference here, arma still pages to the hdd even with pagefile disabled.

The performance gain was no crashes for me since I disabled the pagefile.

not sure this works for vista as vista works a bit different to XP.

I also dont go above normal texture.

[dirtylarrygb 0]

I tried this with windows vista, I only have 2gig's and of coarse like he said above vista saves 1gig for itself.

I did get an error running low on virtual memory, but I was able to play on.

This makes me mad since i spent so much money on a

-c2d e6600,

-8800gtx,

-680i mobo

-2 X 1gig 800mhz ddr2 ram

I got this just for arma and most people with lower end gpu has 0 problems.

I really dont have big issues but after the latest patch i have to have settings on normal.

I still get good FPS but some times it hangs for a sec, and I also get LOD issues.

I bought a extra hard drive, same speed and space but different brand. Does anyone know of a tutorial to utilze your harddrive for best page file performance. Maybe Raid 0, not sure how to set it up.

C2 Duos seem to report issues with arma alot, a future patch or drivers from nvidia for Nforce etc may fix this.

I was getting stalls till i deleted the nvidia memory manager, ntune and I also switched to to the latest guru 3d drivers the 100+ 32 bit ones.

I can now fly NAp with nice eye candy at 1600x1024 at a rock solid 60 FPS or better.

I have found having objects on low and terrain on low, allows this, the 8800 seems to dislike the LOD in ARMA but likes the shadows and AA and even SSAA. I levae aa on high and AF on normal.

[-Puma- 2]

mind u that, vista reserves 1gb for istelf, and the reast goes to other programs, so vista with 2gb, is like xp with 1gb

[MachoMan 0]

Quote[/b] ]mind u that, vista reserves 1gb for istelf, and the reast goes to other programs, so vista with 2gb, is like xp with 1gb

That would only be true if XP didn't use any of that 1GB RAM at all.

[quiet_man 8]

No difference here, arma still pages to the hdd even with pagefile disabled.

Arma cannot "page to the hdd" as this is a system feature

the page file is used by the system to emulate virtual ram.

Point of it is the "locality assumption", means: It is assumed that programms use during a certain time only stuff in the same memory range. (This is also the assumption behind "cache" function.)

For most of the data it is "assumed" it is not required, and the systems stores it to the hdd to free up space in RAM. Arma has nothing to do with it, it doesn't even know about it.

Problem starts when a program always tries to access data that was just swapped out of memory. If you know the configuration and the algorithm used, you can bring any big *** server down to his knees by filling RAM with nonsens and always make a read command on the part the server just tries to swap on hdd.

It simply seams the MS used a fixed (or at least limited) config for virtual ram management at XP, which does not addapt to > 1 Gig RAM. Together with Arma using just a bit more Data than windowns "assumes" any program would require. So sometimes windows tries to swap (for no reason as there is enough RAM) data which Arma is heavily using, with the result that your system speed appears like C64 levels.

Only change BIS could do is to throw some Arma features out (cause their to much for windows)

QuietMan

[4 IN 1 0]

i need someone to confirm that if maxmem= command line works, so that while windows use some 512 mb of ram, arma make use of the rest

[-Puma- 2]

for me maxmem=1024 didn't show any noticable boost.

[4 IN 1 0]

i am not looking for boost, but instead system stability

[-Puma- 2]

MS is so self-loving , that they want to use they're own shit (pagefile), before 3rd party interrupts, like utilizing RAM as primary memory.

Oh dear some people really need a bit of help.

There is no perfomance gain to be had by turing off the PF.

I wrote this pretty drunk, so ingnore it.

There is a big gain to turn off pagefile, like I said million times before, it eliminates slow pagefile usage, and stuff are loaded only from the fast RAM.

as for HD loading, offcourse arma loads stuff form HD, but it loads the stuff in to RAM, not in pagefile, when disabled pagefile.

[4 IN 1 0]

ok something cames to my head:

is a USB 2.0 interface, as fast as the SATA or ram?

just wanted some fun on trying

[Dwarden 1124]

for these who don't want or can't disable PF i suggest to try expand system filecache in memory to extreme value (GB+) ...

because IF YOU disable pagefile then You not eliminated paging ...

You in fact forcing all paging to be done to pages containing code and mapped files (in memory)

thus crippling the file cache and slowing down code execution, among other things.

Some apps demand to create what's called "pagefile backed sections" and w/o PF they fail miserably.

btw. about 4 GB limit (largest address given 32-bit addresses) = VIRTUAL address space, not physical (RAM).

EVERY PROCESS can us up to 2 GB virtual address space, plus there's 2 GB for the OS (/3GB switch changes this to 3:1).

Your system's total usage of virtual address space can  exceed 4 GB.

problem itself is way more complicated that it seems ...

for these interested i suggest to check

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/default.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/08/22/218527.aspx

---

about maxmem, for me -maxmem=1023 used as first cmdline parameter

results into constant ArmA usage of 1050-1060MB (topped after some time of playing with 2.5km viewrange on action happy server)

if anyone of You manage to utilize -maxmem=2047 without  any crash after ArmA process eats 1100+ MB* memory please tell ...

* above applies only for these with 3/4GB systems ... forget about it when using less than 3GB

[4 IN 1 0]

OK it seems it works for me

but really is there anyway other then disabling pagefile could be done to force the game use all we give it?

[baddo 0]

Well the game played in this thread is "How to force Windows to use more of the RAM we offered to it?" With the streaming system in place in ArmA I think it is quite hard for us to get it do what we want; it is a BIS programmer decision to decide how much RAM ArmA asks from the operating system. They can tune it up or down, to decide to keep stuff in RAM instead of dumping it and loading it again in a few seconds.

My opinion is, unused RAM is wasted RAM when we are talking about a computer game that could fill the RAM but doesn't. The BIS programmers might have, ahem, a bit more experience and knowledge in programming, so maybe they have a really good reason to keep the amount of utilized RAM down. Some say it is wise use of resource to not take all into use, but I think when it's about a computer game which we normally do not use at the same time with many other RAM-hungry programs, then it is questionable why RAM utilization is low and then we have the problem of textures and models not loading fast enough from the HDD... I have only 768 MB of RAM and I certainly would like to see it almost full when playing (there's plenty of it free when I play ArmA with maxmem=512, ArmA uses something around 250 MB I recall), as clearly the constant loading of resources from the HDD does not happen quickly enough on this computer.

Let us fill our RAM!

[OFPDude 0]

having 2GB or more of ram does not mean that ALL programs and ALL games will run faster or use ALL of that ram.

the pagefile is more than just a 'memory overflow buffer' and without it, many of the cache features in windows will fail or perform ugly.

maybe you should be removing memory sticks instead of disabling the os memory management.

anology: if you have $200 and you buy a $10 candy bar, you don't give the candy man all of your cash...or force him to take it

[Mave 0]

Planned on running some benchmarks on ArmA today, I might add few more to my list:

1. 2048-8192MB pagefile on "it's own" 7200rpm HD

2. Set ~2GB pagefile to 133x CF Card (23MB/s read, 20MB/s write)

Accesstimes should be much faster than from HD

3. Disabled pagefile.

OS is WinXP SP2

HW: C2D E6600 (350x9=3150MHz), 8800GTX (630/2000MHz), 2GB DDR2-800 (at 700MHz)

[troop 0]

^

Interesting;..please share the results!

[Bad Pilot 0]

When I disable pagefile, windows creates a large hidden pagefile on its own, lol. That can be solved by making a small pagefile. Even if you make your main pagefile on a seperate disk, you need to create a small 2 meg pagefile on system drive or else windows XP will create a hidden one(probaly about 1.5x the size of your ram). Its just the way XP is coded.

Maybe XP64 with its increased memory capacity is different.

XP doesn't create hidden pagefiles if you turn off pagefiles. There's a BSOD memory dump setting you need to turn off in My Computer Properties in order to be able to negate the need for the 2MB pagefile. I'd do that anyway; you don't want memory dumps mouldering in your C:\ drive.

My XP computer isn't very good and struggles with ArmA. To start with, I was playing with pagefile enabled on a separate hard-disc. Disabling the pagefile made the game run faster.

After running like that for a day or few, I heard about and started to use the maxmem parameter because I have 2GB RAM. Initially, I made some mistakes by setting it too high: my AGP aperture was there hiding and when ArmA started using that RAM, it crashed.

Now, I'm generally running ArmA with '-maxmem=1280'.

Benefits of turning off the pagefile and increasing the game RAM include faster map screen switching and faster texture loads. The game just plain runs better.

Turn off 'prefetch' too, and empty the windows prefetch folder.

And upgrade Vista to XP :P.

F

[mc sonar 0]

win xp didnt boot after deactiv. the pagefile....after restart there was a file missing to run xp. after restarting in safe mode and reactivating pf evreything runs fine.

any ideas??

[4 IN 1 0]

do not do this if you only got a few ram(atless not lower then 768MB), it might not burn your system but god knows what would happen

about prefetch, someone say it is a good idea, someone say not, who is true?

[keefehb 0]

I tried this under windows vista (ultimate 64bit), it was ok under arma, no crashes or anything but the lod bug remained

however when i tried to play project reality thats when it all went tits up. I just renabled the page file,

oh i have 2gb of ram