64 Bit operating system

[malik22 0]

Hi guys

Does Arma work under window xp 64 or vista 64?

[M9ACE 0]

For Windows XP 64-bit, the answer is yes.  However, I do not know in the case of 64-bit Vista.

[volkov956 0]

my x64 vista when i tried it would just BSOD or crash constantly but my xp x64 worked perfect so far

[ombas 0]

Hi guys

Does Arma work under window xp 64 or vista 64?

arma works fine for me using vista 64

[jamerica 0]

XP-64: runs great, absolutely no problems.

Vista-64: runs, but I get a slight graphics stutter every couple of seconds and it drives me nuts. You can also forget about running ArmA with 4 GB on vista, it just don't work.

[malik22 0]

Thx for the replies does Arma run better on xp 64 or xp 32?

[Lepardi 0]

As for 4gb, it works fine when you use the disable command when going to play arma. It disables 1 gig, so you play with 3 gig but it works. But Vista sucks for ArmA, I recently installed back Vista and now I'm going back to XP, because armed assault didn't work.

[Maxx2206 0]

hi,

i used to play arma with 4gig installed on xp home 32bit and vista home premium 32bit. of course, depending on the actual system only about 3.5gig were actually really used. but at least it worked.

whats the exact use of the disable command youre mentioning here? im just curious because i just replaced my dualboot xp/vista 32bit with a fresh and clean vista64bit system and started having issues with arma now (still 4gig ram installed).

[sickboy 13]

Playing ArmA with 4GB and Vista-64 (confirmed working. not yet confirmed on XP-64).

ArmA Troubleshooting Vista, 64-bit section

[malik22 0]

Any answer to my last question does Arma perform better on xp64 or xp32?

[Madus_Maximus 0]

I've never used XP64, but I'm going to bet XP32 works better because it's the more common and better supported of the two.

[-Puma- 2]

Any answer to my last question does Arma perform better on xp64 or xp32?

i switched from x32 to x 64 XP yesterday, and really cant confirm if

it runs better or not. otherwise i like x64 better so u should change to that if u have a chance

[bonko the sane 2]

i have been using xp64 for a while and the only issue i have is that from the moment i started using 4GB RAM i had the 8007000e CTD everytime i played Arma, im running a Core 2 Duo 6600 and a 8800 GTX. Now i need to use the maxmem=512 parameter, but on xp32 or on xp64 with 2 GB RAM never had any need for it. i will go and try the 3GB boot with and without the maxmem parameter.

[The Susser 0]

Stayed at my mothers for a weekend and attempted to install ArmA on her AMD 6400, 4 gig ram, gforce8800 gts with vista 64. Nothing, it wouldn't even install. double clicked the installer and nothing. German version by metaboli. yes i have tried everything in troubleshooting.

[jamerica 0]

Playing ArmA with 4GB and Vista-64 (confirmed working. not yet confirmed on XP-64).

ArmA Troubleshooting Vista, 64-bit section

Well, to be fair you may have 4GB installed, but you're not running Vista with 4 GB enabled when you play ArmA.

I can confirm that XP-64 runs flawlessly with 4 GB installed/enabled with all the newest drivers (8800 GTS 640 MB & X-FI) and using the maxmem hack. I've seen no difference between XP-32 or XP-64.

In Vista64, I have noticed slightly higher frame-rate than XP-64 with identical settings, although I have some extremely annoying micro-stutters every 1-2 seconds. Perhaps after SP1 Vista64 will be better, but I'm personally sticking to XP-64 for now.

*NOTE* brand new nvidia beta drivers released today for Vista...169.01 has fixed all my micro-stutter problems, so I have no problem recommending it now.

[Maxx2206 0]

Hi,

ok, odd things start to happen here and from what i can see it is not the commonly known/reported 4gb ram problem.

the first time i installed and launched arma since i replaced my xp32/vista32 dualboot system with a pure vista64 one was after i purchased queens gambit.

the game at first didnt even start properly. it showed blocky lowres graphics, the icons (multiplayer, options, exit etc) were just black squares and so.

i restored my old arma config which i backed up prior to setting up the new sysetm and arma launched ok again.

then i wanted to try the new campaign royal flush... it started loading, the first intro movies started and it seemed to run ok, but when the intro was about to end and the actual game about to start i found myself on the desktop - arma had crashed.

i tried it a few times and it was always the same. seeing all the reports about vista64 and 4gig ram i thought this might be the reason. since i didnt like the masconfig method i started learning how to use bcdedit to make different boot configurations comparable to those you could do in the boot.ini on xp.

it was surprisingly easy, so i made a 3gig configuration and tried it again... the result was the same.. intros playing well, crash to desktop when the game would start for real.

interestingly, when i launched arma with the old unmodded icon i could resume my old campaign savepoint there and play the mission without any crash. so at this point it appears to be limited to the queens gambit mod for some reason.

also, i never had this bluescreen some people are reporting, just the crash to desktop.

currently using the latest beta drivers 163.75 on a 8800gts 320mb, amd x2 5200+ EE and vista home premium 64bit.

any ideas or similar issues?

ps. for those interested in the boot config creation:

it takes aless than 2 minutes and only 3 steps to create your own boot menu under vista.

vista stores boot information in memory rather than in a boot.ini nowadays. manipulation is done using the bcdedit.exe commandline tool and it follows some rather simple rules. you can create/edit/delete any number of new configs and set the display order, the display order also affects the standard selection. the only little annoying thing is that working with boot configs requires you top specify a unique ID all the time to tell bcdedit which iof the entries you want to work with.

1. open your commandline (start->execute->"cmd"). type

Quote[/b] ]bcdedit

to view the standard setup.

notice the 2nd set of data which shows {current} as identifier. this is the default configuration and any other config you will create will show a rather long ID instead of "current"

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Insert the name of the config you create here"

this creates a copy of the standard boot configuration with the new description (what its called in the menu) you entered after the /d flag. oh, and and the "curvy brackets" are not a mistake, you need to enter those exactly that way.

now type again "bcdedit" and you will see the result. it will show 2 entries now, one with the ID current, one with a very long alphanumeric ID.

2.

by using right-mouse and mark, you can mark this new ID (right click, select mark, then mark the id by a continuous leftclick+drag, when done right click on it again to copy it to clipboard - not very convenient, but thats how the commandline copy/paste works) and enter the following:

Quote[/b] ]bcdedit /set {paste the marked id of the cloned copy here - dont forget the brackets} removememory 1024

vista knows 2 ways to limit memory size (originally for development and debugging purposes).

removemmemory <megabytes>: removes/disables the specified amount of ram

truncatememory <bytes>: removes/disables any ram higher than the specified amount

3. as a final step, since the default boot timer is set to 30 seconds which is a bit much, reduce it using

Quote[/b] ]bcdedit /timeout 5

or any value you prefer.

reboot your system and enjoy your xp-style bootmanager menus under vista. no need for the more advanced options at this place unless someone has any concrete questions i guess.

[Bergmania 0]

About the /3GB parameter in boot.ini..

Quote[/b] ]/3GB

• Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be met: the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server and the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application. Applies to 32-bit systems only.

Ok.. this wont work on any 64bit system..

There is a funny thing that happens to 32bit XP when you have more memory than 2GB also.. or when PAE is enabled I should say.. to make a long story short.. PAE makes 32bit XP slightly slower as paging is done in 3 levels instead of 2.. Microsoft has basically abandoned PAE in XPSP2 and 32 bit Vista so in most cases they will only use 3120mb out of you 4GB anyways..

So far there are no performance gains using a 64bit OS over a 32bit one (a Microsoft one or Linux) and since driver support is still a big problem for 64bit Im atleast are staying with a OS that I know works..

[-Puma- 2]

About the /3GB parameter in boot.ini..

Quote[/b] ]/3GB

• Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be met: the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server and the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application. Applies to 32-bit systems only.

Ok.. this wont work on any 64bit system..

There is a funny thing that happens to 32bit XP when you have more memory than 2GB also.. or when PAE is enabled I should say.. to make a long story short.. PAE makes 32bit XP slightly slower as paging is done in 3 levels instead of 2.. Microsoft has basically abandoned PAE in XPSP2 and 32 bit Vista so in most cases they will only use 3120mb out of you 4GB anyways..

So far there are no performance gains using a 64bit OS over a 32bit one (a Microsoft one or Linux) and since driver support is still a big problem for 64bit Im atleast are staying with a OS that I know works..

i have never had any driver problems with 64-bit xp. i must add thoug that older hardware (like from the year 200 and such) dosent

have 64-bit drivers.

[Maxx2206 0]

hi,

Quote[/b] ]About the /3GB parameter in boot.ini..

ok, try not to mix up things.. i dont remember anyone talking about the /3gb parameter in boot ini at all tbh.

the original troubleshoot post (refer to the 64bit faq) was about using msconfig to set the maximum ram there.

my post was about the same, just by using the new bcdedit (aka boot.ini replacement of vista). the /3gb parameter indeed is different to the max ram options, which is btw. the recommended way to debug applications for memory issues and low memory system compatibility.

oh, and saying there are no performance differences at all is wrong, too. there are apps that wont show any significant difference as well as apps that will greatly benefit from it. the latter ones are usually very specialized apps/tasks tho, e.g. plugins, effects and filters in video and image processing applications. other apps *might* or might not benefit from it, but thats not really a good reason not to evolve tbh .

but thats a whole different story... right now and here it's ArmA and its compatibility with 64bit systems we're talking about. and seeing how queens gambit results in 100% CTDs all the time while the unmodded ArmA at least seems to run ok here (with 3gig as well as 4) indicates its not all the OS' fault.

ps. 32bit windows doesnt necessarily use the 3120mb ram you mentioned. it is true that win32 (vista and xp alike) cant utiolize the full 4gig, but the actual amount depends on various things. most of all its the gfxmem and the various shadowing/memory mapping options of the mainboard.

you can end up with anything from 3gig up to roughly 3.7gig effective ram on a 32bit windows. my config resulted in 3.5gig with 32bit bit vista and xp (where arma still ran fine most of the time).

[AsRock+SD 0]

Yes it surely does. What i have to do is to put the game on XP computability and by pass DEP then it work with no problems at all..

Noticed no difference from 32bit and 64bit game play..

[Nutty_101 0]

I get the crashes all the time under win2k3 std x64 with 2x zeon's and 8g ram. None of the work around seem to work. However under 2k8 it does seem to run longer but still crashes out.

[echo1 0]

64 bit versions of Windows tend to be problematic with all games, not just ArmA. Vista is slower than XP and has compatibility problems. So, 64bit Vista vs 32bit XP? I'd go for XP. XP 64 bit is meant to have problems too....

[jasooon 0]

Hi

I am running Arma on Vista x64 Ultimate with 4gig of Ram on an 8800 GTS.

The trick is to use the old Nvidia drivers. v 1.58.45 is the one I rolled back to.

All the nvidia drivers since have caused the black loading screen.

I also use the maxmem=256 command in my start icon which seesm to prevent the CTD's.

I am getting fed up not being able to update my graphics drivers just because of ArmA since June, so lets hope they fix it in the 1.09 Arma patch

Cheers

Jasoooon

[baddo 0]

I would say that a good rule of thumb for selecting between 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems today could be this: if you are not sure if you need a 64-bit operating system, then you do not need it.

You should know a good technical reason why you would need a 64-bit operating system.

Looking at the state the technology is in currently, it is better to stay out of it if you don't have that good technical reason.

I even dare to say that most people who have more than 2 gigabytes of RAM on their home computers do not actually need that much. More of an emotional than technical decision. The need for more RAM probably goes up in the future for home users but wasting money today for it is... well... wasting money!

[Nutty_101 0]

I would say that a good rule of thumb for selecting between 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems today could be this: if you are not sure if you need a 64-bit operating system, then you do not need it.

You should know a good technical reason why you would need a 64-bit operating system.

Looking at the state the technology is in currently, it is better to stay out of it if you don't have that good technical reason.

I even dare to say that most people who have more than 2 gigabytes of RAM on their home computers do not actually need that much. More of an emotional than technical decision. The need for more RAM probably goes up in the future for home users but wasting money today for it is... well... wasting money!

Yup, i agree. Just my box isnt a game machine really. It was setup for dev and database dev. Since i run five different types of db's so i can work remotely and still have more than one screen. Tried the VPN but i get tired of dealing with the latency issues. Not that i play the game much anymore.