Search for a best memory handling

[KeyCat 131]

Did some more testing and concluded that 1.09 Beta works best for me with the following startup parameter...

"D:\Games\Armed Assault\Beta\arma.exe" -mod=beta -nosplash -vm108 -profiles=d:\games\armeda~1\

Without using -vm108 I get CTD after flying around Sahrani for 30-45 min.

I don't have any stability issues with 1.08 so I guess the new memory handling does more harm than good on my rig (see specification and ArmA settings above).

Let me know if you are interested in the RPT-file + memory dump when CTD occured and I will make them available for you.

/KC

[oChaos.DNJ 0]

1.09 without any commands has seemed to work great for me.

Ive played for many hours without any crashes, Ive only noticed that if I Alt-Tab, after awhile it will crash with the cant create dx texture error.

But if I dont alt-tab, I havent crashed yet.

Its way better then 1.08 for me, without maxmem Id crash within 20 minutes mostly depends on what I was doing... With maxmem it would take longer before Id get the crash but it felt alot more laggy. Texture lods took forever to come in when zooming/ect.

In 1.09 the lods come in much quicker then before, if not instant in alot of cases.

I have a 8800, so I can now see the game, before it was rediculous. Pushed my viewdistances up and can see a lot further and clearer then before with about the same performance.

Windows XP Pro x86

C2D @ 3.2Ghz 400fsb x8multi

Gskill DDR2-800 1:1 4-4-4-12

2-WD Caviar SATA Raid 0

Gigabyte 965P DS3 Rev 3.3

8800GTS 640MB 621-Core 1458-Shader 1890-Mem

NVIDIA Beta 169.13

Prerender limit set to 1 (aka Render frames ahead)

All other drivers and windows are up to date.

Disabled page file, and set disablepagingexecutive to 1 threw registry.

[Placebo 29]

Are any of you monitoring your ram usage whilst playing? I've been using rivatuner to show me fps/temp/Vram usage and system ram usage, I noticed that setting maxmem at 1.5gb and above (i have 2gb ram in my system) I'd see my overall ram usage creep up to nearly 1.9gb then I'd CTD, now I'm using maxmem=1280 and the overall ram usage doesn't get too high, settles at around 1.8gb and the game remains stable.

[gL33k 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

Arma need 2GB ram , whatever they write on game box.

normal game session use 600MB in ram for data, + 256MB-700MB for texture buffer. with the minimum (100% of your graphics cards )and windows, you are over 1GB.

fixe: buy another Gig.

[Dwarden 1125]

Are any of you monitoring your ram usage whilst playing? I've been using rivatuner to show me fps/temp/Vram usage and system ram usage, I noticed that setting maxmem at 1.5gb and above (i have 2gb ram in my system) I'd see my overall ram usage creep up to nearly 1.9gb then I'd CTD, now I'm using maxmem=1280 and the overall ram usage doesn't get too high, settles at around 1.8gb and the game remains stable.

placebo if You get 2GB memory total (physical max) then ofc when You set 1.9GB memory to be used it's call for trouble...

not just because lot of this value will be swapped to non physical mem

OS related processes itself use memory between 96 and 256MB (sometimes more depends what all services and drivers etc You run)

then You get some applications running (e.g. that rivatuner)

in short let say this is 384MB used by OS components and needed programs (private and shared dll)

then You need to count with Kernel memory (paged and nonpaged)

paged physical max is default in XP 256MB, usually at 64~128MB but with load ot increases > not always is swapped 'in time' *

non-paged pool (kernel resources NEVER swapped to pagefile) is around 50-128MB

both depends on what system actually does

* (lot of troubles with some applications were that paged pool overshoot paged pool limit > crash / bsod etc.

as example lets use Team Fortress 2 beta and early retail time)

to figure out your actual paged /nonpaged pool usage i suggest you download and use

ProcesExplorer from SysInternals http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

You may view paged and nonpaged 'LIMIT' value if You use correct debugger/symbols for Your OS build

in PE then use CTRL+I and it shows table with System Informations

---

also PE is able to show for each process Private set, Working set and Virtual set of memory used

PrivateSet is memory used only by process itself, Working set are used resources which may be used by other applications or OS itself (so they not decrease free memory as they reused) and VirtualSet mean what's moved to swap file

this increase or decrease on drivers quality and various advanced OS settings so in some systems it may be even less

and don't forget so called Non-local Video memory (texture memory) block from D3D which is usually 256MB on PCIe systems

so that gives 2047-384-(128+128)-256 = 1151 MB

by this You can approx tell size of available physical memory to ArmA process to be less than 1.2 GB w/o running into problems

p.s. i wrote this in hurry so sorry if it's not perfect techie talk  

[Stag 0]

Had no problems at all until about a month ago when I updated a load of out of date drivers for my system, then ArmA would lock up after about 10 mins of offline play. Nothing worked, maxmem or any other tweak I gleaned from the troubleshooting forum. 1.09 arrived just in time for me; I was about to throw the bloody DVD out of the window! My problems have ceased though sometimes textures are slow to load. For what it's worth, I played a long session with my mates last night/this morning, and I was the only one who didn't have any problems at all.

At least for me, 1.09b seems to be the bee's knees, though if the speed at which textures are loaded can be increased, that would be good.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

Still testing, but will report that the vm108 has no noticeable effect on LOD switching here.

[hbien 0]

While testing with -maxmem=1023 yesterday I got the following lines in the RPT-file after 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)

...

How do you get the additional details of memory usage in the RPT file? All I see are a series of errors and initialization comments - never any information on memory usage. Is there an additional command-line argument we need to get the program to report the memory usage?

I would love to help out the developers by giving feedback, but so far I cannot tell whether any one option is better than the other. I have 4GB physical RAM, but with XP32 it only can use up to 3.25GB. I've tried -maxmem=512,1024,2048 but values larger than 512 often result in CTD. Meanwhile, setting to 512 does not appear to change anything that I can tell.

In posting this poll, perhaps it would help if the developers can give us specific items to examine/check in order to best respond.

[KeyCat 131]

How do you get the additional details of memory usage in the RPT file? All I see are a series of errors and initialization comments - never any information on memory usage. Is there an additional command-line argument we need to get the program to report the memory usage?

I don't really know hbien....It was the first time I saw it as well. Maybe BIS included more error reporting on specific errors in 1.09 Beta?

/KC

[spetznaz14 0]

What would cause this anyone?

[KeyCat 131]

What would cause this anyone?

I think this is part of the new memory handling. I got a few of these as well when not using the "-vm108" parameter in 1.09 Beta.

Do you get that everytime and have you tried using "-vm108"?

/KC

[spetznaz14 0]

I have not tried -vm108 I will try it thanks.

[rowdied 44]

I got that same error on two different machines last night and made it go away by turning down textures, shading and object details down to normal. I've also lowered my refresh rate on both lcd monitors to 60 mz. Anything higher, whether the screens support it or not seems to cause memory tears, especially when looking at the map and only after a few minutes of playing.

I've tried turning vsync on, off and app controlled and same problem of crashing or severe stuttering and lockups.

Lets hope 1.09 final is better.

I haven't tried the -vm108 setting but will test it tonight.

[spetznaz14 0]

Just loaded a coop map with loads of harriers on and that caused arma to show weird textures and then crash...

[Mr Luder 0]

1.09 is sweet.

running fine with and without maxmem=

actually playing with -maxmem=512 and got 60 fps on the highest hill in the northern part of the island.

my rig (even way out of date! ):

pentium 4 ht

2600 mhz

2048gig geil ddr ram (400mhz)

hd2600pro 512mb ddr2 ram

newest catalyst drivers.

even with aa on normal i got 40 fps and this is just awesome.

[nobrainer 0]

1.09 works fine for me. Runs without any parameters.

I got:

E6850 @ stock speed

Nvidia 680i SLI

2 GB DDR2

8800GTX SLI

I can play for hours without problems, but I still get CTD when I'm editing and switching betwen ArmA and other applications alot. When I remember to Flush videocards, it remians stable a bit longer.

[.kju 3244]

guys please mention your OS

[B-C 0]

Quote[/b] ]Arma need 2GB ram , whatever they write on game box.

normal game session use 600MB in ram for data, + 256MB-700MB for texture buffer. with the minimum (100% of your graphics cards )and windows, you are over 1GB.

fixe: buy another Gig.

Edited by gL33k on Dec. 28 2007,11:27

Thanks for the tip, however i decided to re-install windows as well as a HDD format as a little clean out. Now Arma in window mode works AWESOME!. Just installed the news drivers and 1.09b.

Not sure what was the cause of the problem in the last 9 months! I got a feeling it was an issue with old video drivers conflicting with new ones (if that is possible) Now i can turn all settings to normal and AA on very high.

I get 30 FPS in the fields and down to 15FPS in cities with heavy combat. Anyone else have any guesses on why its now working perfect? Havent monitored memory yet to see if there is a reduction in usage since the format.

I will buy some more ram... was going to upgrade to 4GB

[oChaos.DNJ 0]

Not sure what was the cause of the problem in the last 9 months! I got a feeling it was an issue with old video drivers conflicting with new ones (if that is possible) Now i can turn all settings to normal and AA on very high.

Yes its possible.

Its advised that after you uninstall old drivers, boot into safemode and run a program like "Driver Cleaner" or "Driver Sweeper", or even manually delete the left over driver files which were not cleaned up from the uninstall.

[smiley_ie 7]

Game runs a lot faster more me with 1.09 beta. I tried maxmem=768 and it a lot lot smother.

XP sp2 / quad core / 8800 ultra / 4 gig.

[BigBadBobNed 0]

I've tried all those and some; tested during all different types of game-play (multi/single/editor) and used different graphics settings.

Seems to be worse of all if you have another program running in the back-ground, i.e. team-speak, ventrilo, msn, etc etc.

Oh and also if you minimise at any point.

Spec:

Intel Core2Duo E6750

OCZ 2 GB P6400 800 Mhz RAM

Gigabyte N650SLI motherboard

Asus Extreme EN Nvidia geforce 8800 GTS 512 MB

Barracuda 250 GB 7200 rpm 16 mb cache Hard Drive (SATA)

Just also like to say thanks to the team. I for one, appreciate your work. Its a cracking game, possibly my all-time fav. Keep it up!

[Mr_Tea 0]

With Evolution SP, what is what i call a big mission, i get the best results with 1.09 Beta and maxmem1024.

Win2k Prof. SP4, AthlonXP 3200+, 2GB Ram in dual-channel, GeForce 7600GS 512MB AGP.

I hope the maxmem parameter can be used with 1.09 Final too.

Edit:

Of course i shut down nearly everything, that is not needed to run ArmA. Anti virus and firewall too, that`s why i play Evo SP, and not online.

[-=seany=- 5]

With Evolution SP, what is what i call a big mission, i get the best results with 1.09 Beta and maxmem1024.

Win2k Prof. SP4, AthlonXP 3200+, 2GB Ram in dual-channel, GeForce 7600GS 512MB AGP.

I hope the maxmem parameter can be used with 1.09 Final too.

Edit:

Of course i shut down nearly everything, that is not needed to run ArmA. Anti virus and firewall too, that`s why i play Evo SP, and not online.

your specs are quite similar to mine. in what way is it better than 1.08, what did it improve? was it paging issues or fps increase?

thanks

xp64, Athlon64 3500+, 2GB Ram in dual-channel, GeForce 7800GS 256MB AGP.

[ArmaVidz 0]

I've been using the 1.09 Beta for the last two days and I find the time from click to in-game has been drastically improved. As well, I've been alt+tabbing quite alot (once every 30-60 seconds for 2+ hour periods) and I haven't had a crash yet.

Running 1.08, every 30 min of alt+tabbing at roughly the same rate would produce an error "DXT5 cannot create...2048..." That was perfectly acceptable to me considering how it would crash every ten minutes previous to 1.08. 1.09 is shaping up quite well in the department of memory handling and lack of crashes.

Question: Does memory handling have anything to do with LOD loading? Because the LOD changes in trees and terrain in 1.09Beta is to say it politely, are very unacceptable in my opinion.

<s>Edit: I knew I should have put "knock on wood" somewhere..first crash just after posting. Here's the tip end of error report:</s>

Quote[/b] ]Region: 7FFD4000,12 KB,Free

Region: 7FFD7000,40 KB,Comm

Longest free VM region: 4345856

ErrorMessage: Cannot create system memory surface DXT5,2048x2048 (size 5636096 B)

Error code 8007000e

Edit#2My bad - I had the pagefile turned on. Once my pagefile was turned off again - Arma went back to being rock solid for the last two days of editing.

<span style='color:olive'>System:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600

eVGA 680i SLi

eVGA 8800 GTS 640MB

2x1024MB Buffalo Firestrix DDR-1000

WD Raptor 74GB

Creative Audigy2 ZS

Silverstone Decathalon 750W</span>

[RN Escobar 0]

never had any trouble with any version and never needed any switches

had huge problems with Nvidia drivers, and rolled them back to some old ones that worked, had to get them from guru3d

C2D 6600 OC'd to around 3Ghz

8800GTX @ stock

2Gb corsair XMS2pro (recently added another 2x512sticks to give 3GB and keep dual channel)

asus P5B-Deluxe Wifi Ap

raptor 10k for OS and ArmA

2 X 320Gb SATAII for other Aps and data

Vista 32