Search for a best memory handling

[suma 8]

I have experimented a lot to bring you as good virtual memory handling as possible, so that you can use as much as possible of the RAMs and VRAMs you have installed in your computers. I have tried several different memory allocation schemes. Before we will release the ArmA patch as public, I would really like to know what of that I have tried works for you best.

Please, select the version and settings which give you best performance and stability. In needed, feel free to post an additional info in the topic.

Share your experiences here and help us to make the final patch stable for everyone.

If you select "No version works for me", could you please describe briefly your setup (CPU, RAM, graphics card, operating system)?

[HitmanFF 6]

I'm probably not the only one looking for the -vm108 parameter description: -vm108 parameter explanation.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Hmmm. The best configuration I've got would probably be 1.08 with -512 or lower (I usually use 256), however, 1.09 has not yet suffered a single error after a 3 hour SP-fest, so I put that it.

E6600 C2D @ 3.6GHz

ASUS P5K Deluxe

ASUS EN8800GTX

Creative X-FI Fatal1ty

4GB (3GB enabled   ) Corsair DDR2 XMS2 @ 1200MHz

Vista Ultimate 32

[mr burns 132]

Voted 1.08 since it gave me better LOD/Detail stability in highest settings.

With 1.09 there´s alot of texture swapping going on which pretty much breaks any screenshot.

Other than that - and the fact that my comp is totally outdated* - 1.09 felt alot more fluid when i first ran it with the default profile.

With the old 1.08 profile activated it felt more sluggish, could be caused by higher freeaim setting though.

/*

AMD XP2500+ @2100

1Gig RAM

GF 7800GS AGP

[-=seany=- 5]

I have 2 PCs.

1st is AMD3500+@2.5ghz, 7800gs256mb, 2gb of system ram.

I don't use any maxmem commands. Works fine, never have any mem issues.

2nd PC is AMD 2400+@2.0ghz, 6800LE 128mb ram. 512mb system ram. On this PC I have to use -maxmem=512 or the game is unplayable (constant paging, textures taking forever to load).

However, Maxmem=512 only works for about an hour or so of Evolution then it becomes too slow with constant paging.

I intend to get more ram for PC 2, but I figured I let you know what its like anyway with just 512mb.

[Dwarden 1125]

i used 1.08 with -maxmem=1023 so atm i experimenting with same for 1.09

[Väinämöinen 0]

-maxmem=256, always stable but lots of HDD activity.

-maxmem=512, smooth game play but eventually crashes every time

My rig:

x6800

2gb ddr2

2xraptor150gb raid-0

x1950xtx

[mattxr 9]

Well 1.09 allows me to play the game without maxmem or anything like that, now my HD doesnt go all crazy and i dont crash. But with 1.08 and earlyer versions i always used to crash unless using maxmem=256 so i can tell you 1,09 has been a big improvement for me.

AMD x2 duel core 4200+

8800 GTX

4gig Ram

SB Xfi Xtream Music

[Heatseeker 0]

Never had the need to use maxmem but 1.09b seems by far the best.

e6600

2 gig ddr2

8800gtx

xp32bit

HD activity is low, performance is very good.

[luki 53]

Same here.. runs without props

[BroK3n 0]

1.09's working pretty cool for me.

But it seems that without the maxmem command I get the LOD issue very quickly along with texture loss.

Very smooth with maxmem=512 though. However back to the same problem as above after a period of time, mostly when I've been doing a lot of teleporting and parachuting.

Gonna try with -vm108 to see if there's anything there.

EDIT: Nope.. ran slower.

[Mr_Tea 0]

Voted 1.09 what works well.

But after some more testing, it looks like ArmA stays fluid only with -maxmem512.

System used:

AthlonXP 3200+(Barton) not oc`d

2GB DDR1 RAM 4200 in Dual-Channel mode

MSI GeForce 7600GS 512MB AGP (auto overclocked by 5-10%)

Creative Audigy 2

OS: Win2K Prof. SP4

[Jack-UK 0]

WOW forgot to add maxmem=512 on 1.09 and after doing so HUGE performance boost It feels like OFP again

[NeMeSiS 11]

1.08 or 1.09 with -wm108 gives me by far the best experience. 1.09 default seems to give me a slight decrease (most of the time) and horribly slow LOD switching like in 1.00.

Amd 4200+

2gb ram

x1600XT

Im not sure if its relevant but im almost out of free HD space, only a few hundred MB left.

[Mr_Tea 0]

1.08 or 1.09 with -wm108 gives me by far the best experience. 1.09 default seems to give me a slight decrease (most of the time) and horribly slow LOD switching like in 1.00.

Amd 4200+

2gb ram

x1600XT

Im not sure if its relevant but im almost out of free HD space, only a few hundred MB left.

What is terrible stressful for you`re HDD, change that asap.

[NeMeSiS 11]

1.08 or 1.09 with -wm108 gives me by far the best experience. 1.09 default seems to give me a slight decrease (most of the time) and horribly slow LOD switching like in 1.00.

Amd 4200+

2gb ram

x1600XT

Im not sure if its relevant but im almost out of free HD space, only a few hundred MB left.

What is terrible stressful for you`re HDD, change that asap.  

I wish i knew how, its like something is eating all my free HD space.

[Mr_Tea 0]

By another HDD, bit bigger maybe, or try to get rid of no longer needed data.

It`s the death to HDD`s, to run them filled up to the max.

The DVD recorder can be very useful, not all data have to stay on the HDD and eat space.

[croc4 0]

Well, I have a slightly different experience. If I run maxmem=512, my system will crash or the mission will show odd gfx artifacts on fences and other structures. So I have to run with either nothing set or maxmem=1024.

I did try this with 1.08 and I don't recall the crashes.

I am running

3.0Ghz P4

2Gig mem

Nvidia 7800 GS 256Mb

[xxbbcc 6]

1.08 worked fine for me with maxmem=768. I'm now trying 1.09 with maxmem=1024 and turning off the Windows paging file. I'll be back with results. In general, 1.09 seems to be better, but plant detail keeps changing very frequently (plant morphing.)

[B-C 0]

No version works for me, I experience critical problems in all of them:

Computer system

Intel Core Duo 2 1.8 GHZ (800MHZ bus speed)

2x 512MB = 1GB DDR2 Ram 800MHZ

Video Card: Asus 7600GT, 256MB DDR2 video RAM, 128bit (latest drivers)

Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI

HDD Western Dig 320MB SATA 16MB Cache

550W powersupply.

22inch Asus monitor 2ms response time

Tried almost every hint and tip. Crashes after 10 mins about 60% of the time. Been watching system monitors... FRAPS reports good frame rates of an average of 25 or above maybe a little lower in cities.

Also been using Nvida monitor.. i noticed ram goes up to 99% (not sure if this is VRAM or normal RAM) If a play in window mode of 1024x768 and adjust some of the ingame graphics settings i get this down to a steady 70% but game still crashes.

Tried things such as window mode... maxmem 512, 256. Tried adjusting all settings in ingame graphics. Tried most tips.. cant remember them all.

Other things that i have noticed is that i have been playing the game and has been going good for 30 mins with a frame rate of about 30 and all of a sudden drop to 8-10 FPS and then crash.

I have noticed that after a crash about 50% of the time when go in to desktop properties i can only choose lower screen resolutions... not sure why this is... my guess is that the ingame crash has disable or created errors so that my screen either doesnt register or some other error.

Looking through error reports it always looks like it some video card error as i see Nvidia .dll files in the error report.

Notice some slow loading graphics... usually in cut scenes i get soldiers that start of as blocks and graphics build on them over a second. No other graphic problems apart from at times of starting game guns have a permanent muzzle flash.

If you need error reports let me know and ill get them

[kabong 1]

1.09 without maxmem is good for me. No more out of memory errors, artifacts or crashing BUT still have to limit my system memory to 3 GB or I suffer from black screen problems (described in sickboy's Vista help thread). This occurs even in the very latest Nvidia WHQL drivers (169.25).

Because it seems to be related to memory, I am reporting it here.

Core 2 Duo

Geforce 8800 Ultra

4 GB ram

Vista 64 (with ALL fixes applied)

[BraTTy 0]

never had to use memory switches with my Arma.

I used to play on my laptop (XP4000+,1 gig ddr,x600 256m video,XP Home)

And now on my home pc, I just bought a cheesy videocard so i can play games on it again, well actually I bought a x1950gt for it but it died two days later and I lost 50$ shipping it and they were outta stock,so I bought a localcard (that way it dies, I can bring it back)

PIV 3.0 gig,1 gig ddr400,nvidia 7600gs 512m,XP home, asrock p4v88 mb w/ via chipset

(asides from benchmarks I didn't see any performance difference between the 7600gs and x1950 , prolly cause of its failure)

Arma didn't run any faster with the x1950, weird that

with version 1.08 and 1.09 I don't use memory switches

( I was having problems MP, it would sit at "wait for host" and lockup) I tried memory switches then and noticed degraded performance

Haven't had "wait for host" lockup in a while, not sure what problem was, I think it was the server I was using

[andersson 285]

I didnt vote as I dont have that much experience with 1.09 yet.

I had never problems with 1.08 -maxmem=768

I tried 1.09b without -maxmem but on occasion the computer froze and I had to force it off. I will now try with -maxmem=768.

[Dwarden 1125]

without maxmem or with values 256,512,768,1023 i get terrible LOD / texture switching and delayed loads

after like 30-60 minutes of gameplay all You need is 2.5-3km viewdistance and walking thru city...

you slowly turn and houses fail to load correct LOD / textures etc ...

sometimes this happen for vehicle or tree (rnd in forrest some are fine some not)

tested also -vm8 w/o major difference

(for some reason there is lot of VRAM free and even more Texture memory free)

very noticeabled with 'NORMAL' or lower

also i failed to run 1.09b with -maxmem beyond 1023MB (CTDs or BSOD)

system specs:

CPU Intel C2D 3.4GHz (tested stock speeds too)

CHIPSET Intel P35

RAM 2GB DDR2-1066 (also tested 3-4GB DDR-2 800)

VIDEOCARD AMD.ATI HD3870 512MB GDDR4  + Catalyst 7.12

* (tested underclocked, default and overclocked by 10%)

SOUNDCARD Creative Labs X-fi XtremeGamer + latest Openal and official beta driver (with WHQL it's even worse)

* multi drive multi RAID config (ARMA itself sits on raw read 250MB/s block)

OS tested Windows XP SP2 and SP3 RC1 public

[KeyCat 131]

also i failed to run 1.09b with -maxmem beyond 1023MB (CTDs or BSOD)

I have similar issues here, the CTD seems to happen as soon as ArmA 1.09 Beta uses more than 1024 KB RAM. Without using -maxmem ArmA never uses more than ~650 MB even if plenty free RAM is available.

While testing with -maxmem=1023 yesterday I got the following lines in the RPT-file after CTD... The CTD don't happen right away, I have to fly around on Sahrani for ~30 min before the issue appear and most of the times the graphics goes crazy just before the CTD.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

...

Vertex buffer not allocated

Virtual memory total 2047 MB (2147352576 B)

Virtual memory free 590 MB (619446272 B)

Physical memory free 1101 MB (1155497984 B)

Page file free 3123 MB (3274903552 B)

Process working set 282 MB (295809024 B)

Process page file used 279 MB (293326848 B)

Runtime reserved 1055 MB (1107034112 B)

Runtime committed 202 MB (211824640 B)

Longest free VM region: 75558912

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

Error during v-buffer creation: error 8876017c (D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY)

...

Currently I'm trying the same but with the -vm108 parameter and we will see how that works out...

System specification:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ stock 3.0 GHz

Gigabyte P35-DQ6 with 2 GB DDR2-1066 RAM

Realtek High Definition Audio System (driver version R1.81)

GeForce 7950 GT 512 MB with nVidia driver version 94.24

Windows XP Pro SP 2 and DirectX 9.0c

ArmA settings:

Resolution: 1280 x 960

View Distance: 2400 m

Terrain detail: Very High

Objects detail: High

Texture detail: Very High

Shading detail: Very High

Postprocess effect: Low

Anisotropic filtering: Normal

Shadow detail: Very High

Anitaliasing: Normal

Blood: High

ArmA startup parameters:

D:\Games\Armed Assault\Beta\arma.exe -mod=beta -maxmem=1023 -nosplash -profiles=d:\games\armeda~1\

/KC